The Corporate Wife

by Leigh Michaels

  Erin looked over her mother’s head at the monitors, beeping and blinking and racing in their cryptic, hypnotic patterns. She noticed the door opening behind her once more, no doubt as the anesthesiologist came in. She saw her mother’s gaze drift past her to the doorway.

  And, feeling as if she was watching herself in a dream, she launched herself into an audacious calculated risk. “Slater’s asked me to marry him. And I’m going to tell him yes.”

  She braced herself, expecting – even hoping for – surprise and shock. Angela might not exactly disapprove, but she wasn’t likely to be pleased. She couldn’t possibly be thrilled to hear that her daughter intended to marry a man Angela had never even met.

  Erin was betting, however, that Angela’s consternation would promptly be outweighed by determination. Not only was an announcement like that bound to take Angela’s mind off her own problems, it was positively guaranteed to spark her maternal instincts. Any mother worth her salt wouldn’t give up on life till she’d made sure her daughter’s crazy notions were properly sorted out.

  Which was what made the whole idea absolutely perfect, Erin thought – for as soon as the danger was past, she’d just quietly cancel her pretend engagement. Angela would be pleased, Erin would have accomplished her purpose, and Slater would never know anything about it.

  It was Erin, however, who was surprised. Her mother didn’t react at all; it seemed as if Angela hadn’t even heard her.

  This doctor must have horns and a tail, Erin thought, if he can take my mother’s mind off an announcement like that! She turned to steal a look.

  The man in the doorway not only didn’t look like the devil, but he was not wearing a white coat or a stethoscope. He was dressed in a dark gray business suit that she had seen very recently.

  Erin felt like a days-old party balloon; all the air was slowly seeping out of her lungs, leaving her limp.

  “Hello, Mrs. Reynolds,” Slater said. “I hoped you wouldn’t mind me dropping by.”

  He didn’t look at Erin, and her heart skipped madly as she considered the question of what he might say or do.

  “Of course I don’t mind,” Angela said gently. “I’m delighted to meet you, Slater – especially since it appears we shouldn’t waste any time in getting onto a first-name basis.”

  “I’ll consider it an honor, Angela,” he said.

  The door opened once more and to Erin’s relief the cubicle suddenly overflowed with medical personnel – not only the anesthesiologist they’d expected but an entire troupe of students who trailed after him.

  Erin inched through the crowd and finally reached the hallway, where she leaned against the wall and dragged in a much-needed deep breath. But she’d scarcely begun to enjoy the cool influx of air when Slater braced a hand on the door jamb just above her shoulder and said, “Do you want to tell me what brought that on?”

  Erin parried, “My little announcement, you mean?”

  “That’s what I had in mind, yes. Why? Is there anything else I need to be warned of?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything.”

  “So you’d better tell me how we managed to get engaged.”

  Erin shrugged. “She guessed I was planning to borrow the money. In a million years, she wouldn’t have believed the bonus story.”

  “So you spun her a different sort of tale.”

  An aide hurried by with a stretcher; Slater stepped closer to Erin in order to leave more room in the hallway. Though he wasn’t touching her, she could feel his warmth.

  She tried not to shrink back against the wall. “And she started talking really crazily about final arrangements and how she didn’t expect to live through the surgery. So I thought I’d give her something else to think about.”

  “I’d say you succeeded. As a change of subject, that one boggles the mind.”

  She couldn’t quite meet his gaze.

  “Of course, it leaves me with a question,” Slater said. “Pardon me for interrogating you, Erin, but I’d like to know where I stand. Did you really mean what you said? Or was that little announcement simply meant to occupy your mother’s mind for the moment?”

  Erin closed her eyes. She could hardly tell him the truth – that she hadn’t even considered the question he was asking now, because the words had just been there on her tongue and she’d said them before she’d even thought them through.

  He was offering her an easy way out. All Erin had to say was Of course I didn’t mean it, really. If we can just pretend for a few days, till she’s had the surgery and she’s better—

  It was the sensible thing to do. All the reasons that had prompted her to refuse him a couple of days before were still just as large, just as weighty. If it hadn’t been for her mother’s gloomy mood, Slater’s proposal wouldn’t even have come to Erin’s mind again. So of course she hadn’t meant what she’d told Angela. She had no intention of making this incredible engagement real.

  And yet...

  Angela’s door swung open once more and the students trooped out in a ragged line. The doctor came last and paused to hold the door open. “You can go back in now. You’re Mrs. Reynolds’s daughter, is that right? Do you have questions about the procedure?”

  Erin was too frazzled to think of anything reasonable to ask. “You’ll take good care of her?” she murmured, and felt incredibly foolish.

  The doctor’s steel-sharp gaze softened. “Of course we will. I don’t know how much the surgeon’s told you…?”

  In the next five minutes, Erin got an explicit and incisive explanation of everything that would happen in the operating room tomorrow. Only at the end of the lecture did she realize that Slater wasn’t beside her any longer; when the doctor said goodbye and once more held the door for her, she saw Slater leaning over her mother’s bed, holding Angela’s hand as if they’d just shaken on a million-dollar deal. Not that either of them looked precisely happy about it, Erin reflected; in fact, Angela appeared almost somber. Did that mean she’d seen through this story as well? What had Slater been saying to her?

  Warily Erin came up to the other side of the bed. Angela gently tugged her hand away from Slater’s and turned to Erin with a pensive smile. “I must say you two know how to take a woman’s mind off everything else. Now run along for a while, will you? You’ve given me far too much to think about to have you hanging around complicating things. Slater, take Erin out to dinner, and make sure she eats – all right?”

  Erin was speechless at the sudden dismissal. Obediently she leaned over to kiss her mother’s cheek, and she didn’t find her voice till they were almost to the nurses’ station. “What did she mean, too much to think about?” Erin asked. “What did you tell her? And why didn’t you just wait till I could go in too?”

  “Because you were too busy with the doctor to see the summons she gave me.”

  “She wanted to talk to you alone?”

  “That seems a reasonable conclusion. Where would you like to have dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Erin said automatically. “Did she seem suspicious at all?”

  “I don’t know her well enough to judge that. If you don’t have a preference on restaurants, I’ll choose. There are a couple of places close by, and I’ll leave my pager number at the nurses’ station in case your mother needs you.”

  Erin gave up. After a year of working for him, she knew perfectly well that if Slater didn’t want to answer a question, he wouldn’t. But she couldn’t stop chewing over the problem. Had Angela simply wanted a moment alone to welcome a new family member? Had she taken the announcement at face value, or had she been laying a trap?

  Why can’t anything be simple? Erin thought irritably.

  At the restaurant, she merely glanced at the menu and shook her head. Slater consulted with the waiter, and a few minutes later he pushed a wine glass across to Erin. “Drink this, at least,” he ordered.

  She picked up the glass, more to have something to do with her hands than because she wanted
the wine. “So here we are,” she said, “because my mother told us to go out for dinner. I wouldn’t have thought that you would be quite so agreeable to being ordered around.”

  Slater shrugged. “Surely you didn’t expect me to argue with her – a woman in her condition. To say nothing of the fact that she was right. You do have to eat, whether you want to or not. You’ll need all your strength tomorrow, and there’s nothing you can do for her tonight anyway.”

  “So you decided to humor her.”

  “And now you’re wondering how far I’ll carry that? Quite a long way, actually.”

  The waiter set a basket of bread between them. The rich, yeasty aroma tugged at Erin’s senses. Perhaps she was feeling a little hungry after all.

  Slater said, without looking at her, “She asked me whether I was in love with you.”

  Erin’s heart gave a strange little flutter. “And you said...”

  Slater reached for a bit of bread and began spreading herbs and warm olive oil on it. He looked thoughtfully across the table. “You surely don’t think I’d have confided in her that of all the women who filled out applications for the position as my wife, you were the one who had the best references. Do you?”

  “Even though it’s sort of true.” She smiled just a little at the thought of what Angela would have said about that. “So you told her what she wanted to hear?”

  “As best I could guess what it was – yes.”

  “Did she believe you?”

  “Just because I had very little success a few days ago in convincing you that I was sane, logical and sensible, it doesn’t mean I can’t be reasonably persuasive on occasion.” He handed the piece of bread across the table. “Try this. And you still haven’t answered my question, Erin. Did you mean it? Or were you just pretending for your mother’s peace of mind?”

  Erin took the bread, but she hardly knew she was holding it. She looked straight into his eyes and thought of fading red roses and crystal vases, of images and reality, of solidity and sensibility and security.

  We fit together, he’d said. They were a good combination, and they could make their partnership permanent.

  So why not?

  She trusted him. She had turned to him for comfort, for reassurance, for help – and he had been there.

  It wasn’t love, of course. It wasn’t magic. But what was it he’d said about love? – that magic sometimes turned to melodrama?

  What Slater proposed to give her wasn’t wild, soaring, breathtaking romance. It was a partnership which could be expected to last forever because it had already proved itself.

  The marriage he was offering wasn’t a fairy tale built of spun sugar. It wasn’t glamorous and showy, like Dax’s glorious red rose.

  But roses faded, wilted, withered. Spun sugar crumbled.

  Not everything was like that. Some things lacked the initial glamour of the velvety flower, the elegance of spun sugar, but they didn’t fade or wilt or disintegrate. They were built on a far solider foundation. They lasted.

  Things like Slater’s crystal vase.

  Things like... Slater himself.

  Erin took a deep breath. “I meant it,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Very slowly, Slater set down his wine glass. Erin thought he looked like a man caught in a vat of syrup, having to exert himself in order to move at all. He was reacting as if he wasn’t quite sure what he’d heard.

  Or, perhaps, as if he’d heard all too well, but the news wasn’t precisely welcome.

  For the first time, Erin wondered why he’d offered her the alternative of a pretend engagement, instead of a real marriage, at all. Had he actually been hoping she’d take it?

  Why had it even occurred to him to wonder if she’d made up her own terms instead of accepting his? There’d been nothing vague about the way she’d announced her decision. Of course, the fact that she’d told her mother before mentioning the matter to her intended husband did have a suspicious aroma – but then, these were unusual circumstances.

  There was also the minor detail that just two days ago, she had turned him down – and pretty definitely, at that. Had Slater, in the meantime, moved on to other options? Even started looking at other... how had he put it? Applicants for the position as his wife – something like that.

  Erin sat up a little straighter. “Of course, if you’ve changed your mind…” She couldn’t keep her gaze fixed on his face; she found herself staring at the neat knot in his striped silk tie instead. “I wouldn’t blame you,” she added honestly. “The last couple of days I haven’t exactly been that model woman you proposed marriage to. You remember – the solid, sensible and practical person you thought I was.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind,” Slater said. “I just want to be certain that you know what you’re doing, and why. And let me point out once more that marrying me isn’t a condition for my helping with your mother’s medical expenses.”

  “Because you’re not a blackmailer, I know. We’ve been over this before.”

  “We haven’t discussed precisely this variation. I wouldn’t put it past you to have gotten some crazy notion in your head that if I’m financing Angela’s treatment, the best way to pay me back would be to sell yourself to me.”

  The tension had begun to seep out of Erin’s body, and she could actually begin to see a little dark humor in the situation. “Considering what her hospital bill is likely to be...” She shrugged. “Frankly, Slater, I doubt I’d be worth that much.”

  She raised her gaze to his and wasn’t surprised to see the quick flash of appreciative laughter in his eyes. What did amaze her was how every line of his face seemed to soften with his smile. She’d never before seen him look quite so relaxed, and she watched him for a long moment in utter bemusement.

  Slater stretched out both hands across the table to her. “Partners?”

  Erin hesitated for only a fraction of a second before laying her hands in his, palm to palm. His fingers were warm, steady, reassuring. “Partners,” she whispered.

  “Good. Then I just have to break the rest of it to you.”

  That sounded positively ominous. Startled, Erin tried to pull away, but his grip had tightened. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing much, really. Only the fact that your mother has already scheduled the wedding for three days after her surgery. She’d have made it earlier than that, except it does take a certain amount of time to get a marriage license in Missouri.”

  Erin’s jaw dropped. “Three days?”

  “I suspect by now she’s got the caterer lined up and she’s started to look for a dance band.”

  “But she can’t—”

  “It’s a good thing you decided to go through with it, I’d say.” Slater’s eyebrow arched slightly. “What’s the matter, Erin? I thought you said you wanted to take your mother’s mind off her medical condition.”

  *****

  The surgical waiting room was drab and worn, its chairs uncomfortable. The morning stretched out before Erin; they’d warned her that this delicate kind of surgery would take hours. Erin wriggled deeper into her chair and idly flipped the pages of an old magazine, not even seeing the print. She was thinking about Angela, squeezing Erin’s hand as she was wheeled off and murmuring, “I’m so glad, Erin. About Slater, I mean.”

  Erin was just relieved Angela hadn’t said anything about caterers or dance bands – or even wedding dates.

  Slater might have been right about Angela’s intentions, but he must have overestimated her stamina. At any rate, there would be time to sort all that out later. There wasn’t any hurry; surely once her equilibrium was restored, Angela would recognize the sense in putting off any wedding plans till she was fully recovered. She’d need Erin, after all – for a while at least.

  She felt Slater come in – or rather, she felt the change in the room as people around her sat up straighter or looked toward the door. She wasn’t surprised by their reaction, because Slater was known for bri
nging rooms to high-pitched attentiveness just by showing up. But she was startled by the wave of gratitude that swept over her at the sight of him. She hadn’t expected him to come to the hospital this morning; she certainly hadn’t asked him to come. What good would it do for both of them to sit there and wait? And no one knew better than she the amount of work he must have left behind. But she was unreasonably pleased to see him nevertheless.

  Slater was more casually dressed than she’d seen him before, in an open-collared shirt and corduroy blazer. He was carrying not the briefcase she’d have half-expected to see, but a wicker basket.

  She moved a stack of magazines from the chair next to her, and he sat down. “Are you doing all right, Erin?”

  “I’m better now,” she said honestly. Even the room seemed to have grown brighter, as more sunshine spilled in through the skylight above them. “Mother asked about you this morning. You seem to have taken her by storm.”

  “I was lucky enough to catch her at a vulnerable moment.”

  “Right,” Erin said dryly. “I’d like to know how you really managed it. You couldn’t have had any more than five minutes alone with her yesterday, but the pair of you obviously covered an immense amount of territory.”

  “I was impressed with her decision-making abilities,” Slater said genially. “There’s no doubt where you inherited your talents. Can I interest you in breakfast?”

  “No, thanks. I tried the cafeteria here yesterday, and believe me, if hospital cooks can turn oatmeal into rubber, I don’t want to see what they can do with eggs.”

  “I suspected the food here might not be any better than the coffee, so I asked Jessup to create something you’d like.”

  As if on command, the heavenly aroma of hot cheese, tomato, and green pepper drifted toward Erin, and her mouth watered. “On the other hand,” she said thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t want to hurt Jessup’s feelings by refusing to eat.”

  “Now that is an attitude I applaud. We definitely want to look after Jessup’s feelings.” He glanced around the room. “The trouble is, it smells so good I expect we’ll be mobbed the instant I start to unpack it. But there’s a little alcove just down the hall that’s empty at the moment.”