One Night Mistress...Convenient Wife

by Anne McAllister

  She should look away. Step back. Close the door. Lock it.

  Instead she stood there, a doe trapped in headlights. “Christos.” His name on her lips was barely more than a whisper. She paused and ran her tongue over them. The very air seemed to shimmer between them.

  “Send me away.” His voice was harsh.

  She frowned at the tone. “What?”

  His jaw tightened. “You heard me, Nat. Tell me to go.”

  She hesitated, then drew a breath, steadying herself. She knew what he was demanding. And she knew the wisdom of it. But she couldn’t do it.

  Dear Reader,

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  Harlequin Presents—still the original and the best!

  Best wishes,

  The Editors

  Anne McAllister

  ONE-NIGHT MISTRESS…CONVENIENT WIFE

  All about the author…

  Anne McAllister

  RITA® Award-winner ANNE MCALLISTER was born in California. She spent formative summer vacations on the beach near her home, on her grandparents’ small ranch in Colorado and visiting relatives in Montana. Studying the cowboys, the surfers and the beach volleyball players, she spent long hours developing her concept of “the perfect hero.” (Have you noticed a lack of hard-driving type A businessmen among them? Well, she promises to do one soon, just for a change!)

  One thing she did do, early on, was develop a weakness for lean, dark-haired and handsome lone-wolf-type guys. When she finally found one, he was in the university library where she was working. She knew a good man when she saw one. They’ve now been sharing “happily ever afters” for over thirty years. They have four grown children, and a steadily increasing number of grandchildren. They also have three dogs, who keep her fit by taking her on long walks every day.

  Quite a few years ago they moved to the Midwest, but they spend more and more time in Montana. And as Anne says, she lives there in her head most of the time anyway. She wishes a small town like her very own Elmer, Montana, existed. She’d move there in a minute. But she loves visiting big cities, as well, and New York has always been her favorite.

  Before she started writing romances, Anne taught Spanish, capped deodorant bottles, copyedited textbooks, got a master’s degree in theology and ghostwrote sermons. Strange and varied, perhaps, but all grist for the writer’s mill, she says.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  NATALIE pulled her car into the garage below her mother’s apartment, shut off the engine—and felt a panic unlike anything she’d felt in the last three years.

  “Wholly unnecessary,” she told herself firmly out loud because the truth of the assertion stood a better chance of making it past her nerves if she heard the spoken words. If she heard them, she thought, she might even believe them.

  Actually, in her mind she did believe them.

  But what she believed logically and what her guts were telling her was not even close to the same thing.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “It is absolutely no big deal.”

  And it wasn’t. She was cat-sitting, for goodness’ sake! She was watering a few plants and living in her mother’s apartment for two or three weeks because her mother had to go to Iowa to take care of her own mother after a hip-replacement operation. And while the cat was portable, the seven-foot rubber-tree plant was not.

  “Harry was supposed to do it,” Laura Ross had explained apologetically on the phone very early this morning. “You know, the boy across the way? But he broke his leg skateboarding last night. Spiral fracture, his mother said. Not even a walking cast yet. I’m sorry to have to ask you—”

  “No. It’s all right,” Natalie had made herself say. “Of course I’ll do it. I’ll be glad to,” she’d lied.

  So here she was.

  All she had to do was get out of the car, go around the building, up the steps to her mother’s apartment, open the door and go in.

  She’d done it once already today. She’d come to pick her mother up to take her to the airport late this morning and it had been perfectly straightforward. No worries at all.

  Because there had been no danger of running into Christo Savas then.

  Chances were, Natalie assured herself, she wouldn’t run into him now, either.

  What was the possibility, after all, that she would be rounding the building to go up the stairs at the very moment her mother’s landlord—and boss—was coming up the walk to his house or stepping out on his back porch?

  Slim, she decided. None was preferable, of course. Please God she would not see him at all these next two or three weeks.

  But even if she did, she reminded herself, she was an adult. She could smile at him politely and go her own way. And it didn’t matter what he would be thinking. It didn’t matter at all!

  “Right,” she said now in the no-nonsense tone her mother had used all the time Natalie was growing up. “Grass never gets cut by looking at the mower,” she would say when Natalie or her brother Dan balked at doing the chore. It had since become a family slogan applied to any reluctance to get the job done. Laura would be saying it now.

  Of course her mother had no idea why Natalie had spent the last three years avoiding Christo Savas—and she never would.

  Taking one last deep breath, Natalie got out of the car, being careful not to let the door bump against Christo’s Jaguar next to it. It was the same one he’d had three years ago.

  Once she’d ridden in that car with the top down, had tipped her head back and felt the wind in her hair, had laughed and slanted a glance at the man driving and had dared to dream ridiculous dreams.

  Now she turned away and shut her own car door with a bit more firmness than absolutely necessary. Then she opened the back, grabbed her laptop case and the suitcase with the clothes she’d brought, shut it and, heart still pounding more rapidly than she wished, she opened the door to the small walled garden.

  It was empty.

  She breathed again. Then, with barely a glance toward Christo’s big house on the far side of what her mother had turned into the closest thing southern California probably had to an ‘olde English garden,’ she made a sharp right and quickly climbed the wooden stairs that led to Laura’s apartment over the garage.

  Once on the porch, she had a view down the broad street that led to The Strand and the beach beyond. It was empty. She set down her suitcase and laptop and fumbled in her purse for her mother’s key.

  It was nearly six. Her mother had said Christo usually went surfing right
after work—“to decompress,” Laura had told her—and then came back for dinner which they ate at six-thirty.

  “You eat with him?” Natalie had said when her mother imparted this surprising information. Her brows had lifted in dismay—and consternation.

  Laura had gone right on packing her bags. “I don’t like cooking for one.”

  “You cook for him?”

  “I cook for myself,” her mother said primly in the face of Natalie’s undisguised disapproval. “And I make enough for two.”

  “Well, I’m not cooking for him,” Natalie said firmly.

  “Of course not.” Her mother dismissed the notion. “He wouldn’t expect it.”

  No, Natalie thought, and he wouldn’t want it, either.

  “He doesn’t even know you’re going to be here,” her mother had gone on, brightening Natalie’s day considerably. “He knew I had arranged for Harry to come. But when Carol, Harry’s mother called this morning, I didn’t even tell Christo because I knew he’d feel responsible. He’d think he needed to take care of Herbie and do the plants, and he couldn’t possibly. He’s much too busy for that.”

  Well, perhaps the day wasn’t all that bright. But Natalie knew her mother was telling the truth. She didn’t have to be reminded how hard Christo Savas worked. She’d seen it firsthand. And if he didn’t know she was here, even better. Perhaps she could keep it that way.

  Her fingers found the ring of keys. She picked out her mother’s, stuck it in the keyhole, gave it a twist, and pushed open the door. Then with one last quick glance down toward the ocean where, yes indeed, she could see silhouetted against the bright sun a muscular man with a surfboard just coming up the beach, she picked up her laptop and her suitcase, hurried inside and banged the door.

  In the blessed shadowed coolness of the small entryway she dropped her bags, shut her eyes and took a deep relieved breath.

  “Natalie?” The voice was gruff, masculine and sounded as shocked and disbelieving as her own ears were.

  Her eyes snapped open. She blinked rapidly, trying to accustom them to the dim indoor light, to see the cool empty living room she expected, to see Herbie the cat, whom she expected.

  Not to see the man who had been crouched by the fireplace and was now straightening, drawing himself up to his full six feet two inches and staring at her with narrowed suspicious eyes.

  Her mouth felt as if someone had suddenly dumped a pail full of sand in it. “Christo?” She barely choked his name out. Then she frowned, too.

  Their gazes met, locked. And then, in unison, “What the hell are you doing here?” they said.

  “I live here. There,” he corrected, jerking his head toward the house beyond the garden. His gaze went to the suitcase by her feet. “What’s that for?”

  The suspicion in his voice rankled. Natalie stood straighter. “I’m moving in,” she said, pleased at how firm her voice sounded. “Temporarily.”

  Christo’s brows drew down. “What for?”

  “I’m taking care of Herbie. And the plants.”

  “Your mother said Harry—”

  “Harry broke his leg.”

  Now the brows went up. “First I’ve heard about it.” There was clear disbelief in his voice. He rested an arm against the mantel of the fireplace and regarded her doubtfully.

  Natalie drew herself together. “Feel free to go over to Harry’s and ask. You might be right. Maybe this is all some great plot of my mother’s to throw me and you together.”

  Christo grunted at the scorn in her tone. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.” Laura might well be thinking that it was a good idea for her twenty-five-year-old daughter to start looking around for a husband, but she wouldn’t meddle. Natalie was sure of that.

  “I can feed the cat and water the plants.” Christo’s tone made it sound not like a suggestion. It sounded like an order.

  Natalie bristled. She’d already survived the part she wanted to avoid. “I’m sure you can,” she said starchily. “But my mother didn’t ask you. She asked me. And I’m doing it.”

  His teeth came together. She imagined she could hear them grinding. Well, so be it.

  “So we know what I’m doing here,” she said pointedly. “What about you? You don’t just habitually wander into my mother’s apartment, I hope.”

  The teeth did grind, then. “No, I don’t habitually wander into her apartment. I was measuring for bookshelves.” He held out his hand. There was a measuring tape in it.

  “Bookshelves?” Natalie echoed doubtfully.

  “She’s always saying to me how much she loves this room, but that it would be perfect if it had bookcases on either side of the fireplace.” He shrugged, but also jerked his head toward the space behind him and, studying the space, Natalie could see her mother’s point. His mouth twisted. “A belated birthday surprise.”

  Natalie was surprised he knew her mother’s birthday had been last week. “And you were going to have them put in while she was gone?”

  “No. I was going to put them in myself while she was gone.”

  They stared at each other. An awareness Natalie didn’t want to acknowledge arced between them. It had been there ever since she’d heard his voice and opened her eyes to see him standing there. It was a feeling she’d felt with no one else—ever. Once she’d thought she understood it. Had cultivated it. Relished it.

  Now she wanted nothing whatever to do with it at all.

  “Well, you can’t,” she said and folded her arms across her chest.

  His jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything. Their gazes were still locked and Natalie refused to be the one to look away first. Not this time. She was in the right this time.

  “Fine,” he said shortly. “I’ll finish measuring now. I’ll order the wood. I’ll put them up when she gets back, mess up the living room while she’s here.” He turned and knelt back down, ignoring her. In effect, dismissing her.

  Natalie glared at his back. Why had she ever thought she wanted to spend the rest of her life with this man? Why had she ever been in love with him?

  She hadn’t, she told herself sharply. She’d been infatuated, the victim of a law-school clerk’s foolish crush on a brilliant up-and-coming litigator. She’d been dazzled by his brilliance, his extraordinary good looks, and whatever perverse sexual chemistry had always seemed to hum between them whenever he was in the room.

  And the kiss, her mental memory box reminded her. Don’t forget the kiss!

  No, God help her, she couldn’t forget the kiss. Try as she would she’d never been able to forget entirely the moment she and Christo Savas had locked lips. It had been the most blazingly hot kiss of her then twenty-two years. The most blazingly hot anything of her entire life—even up to this very moment.

  It had been the impulse that had spurred on her unutterably foolish action that night three years ago.

  Action she was not about to repeat no matter what Christo Savas thought. And it was no secret, Natalie knew, staring at him now, what he thought.

  “All right,” she said abruptly. “Go ahead and put in the bookshelves.”

  He was kneeling on the floor, about to measure. But he slanted her a quick glance, and in it she saw the instant wariness she expected.

  She gave him a saccharine smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay completely out of your way. Won’t bother you at all. Won’t invite you to my bed and won’t turn up in yours. You’re perfectly safe.” She made her tone sound mocking.

  But they both knew she wasn’t mocking him. She was mocking herself, the hopelessly naive girl who had taken a summer’s working relationship, a sense of kindredness that was, in retrospect, obviously one-sided, and a single spontaneous kiss to celebrate a triumph in the courtroom as an indication of something far deeper. A girl who had thought he must love her the way she imagined she loved him—and who had actually gone to his bed to prove it.

  She made herself smile and hold his unblinking jade-green gaze, willing him to believ
e it because, God knew, it was the truth. There was no way on earth she would ever make a fool of herself like that again!

  “If you’re sure…” Christo began.

  “Of course I’m sure.” She gathered her laptop case and the suitcase up into her arms, fleetingly aware that she was probably using them as armor, even as she carried them into the room. “I was just…surprised to see you. In here,” she qualified because she didn’t want him thinking she’d been intending to avoid him—even if she had been.

  She set the laptop case on her mother’s dining-room table. “I’ll just put this away.” She nodded down at the suitcase, then turned toward the bedroom. “And I’ll come back and help you measure.”

  “I don’t need any help,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Which meant that, even though she’d pretty much spelled it out, he still didn’t entirely trust her not to fling herself at him even now.

  “Fine. Suit yourself.” Natalie shrugged and carried the suitcase into the bedroom, only sagging down onto the bed and letting out a shuddering breath once she got there.

  She could, of course, just leave the suitcase on the bed and deal with the contents later. But rushing back into a room where she clearly wasn’t wanted—and didn’t want to be—was not the best idea.

  And there was a whole lot to recommend staying right where she was. She could use the time to put her clothes away—and regain her equilibrium in the process.

  She hadn’t wanted to run into Christo at all. She’d done her best to avoid him for the past three years because she still writhed in mortification every time she thought about that night in his apartment.

  That night she’d waited for him in his bed.

  Even now her cheeks burned at the memory.

  That he’d been shocked to find her there when he got home from a business dinner that night went without saying. She’d expected that.