Rhys's Redemption

by Anne McAllister

  Mariah was glad Sierra had made her go to the game.

  It made her focus on something besides herself.

  Of course she’d focused on her work over the past three months, but she hadn’t really had much of a social life since she’d discovered she was pregnant. She’d gone to lunch with Chloe or she’d had dinner with Finn and Izzy.

  But she’d never been able to relax, to let her hair down, to be herself. Not completely. Because she’d always been waiting for Rhys.

  “Not worth waiting for,” Sierra had said flatly. When they were at the game, out of the blue she added, “If you want, I’ll kick him in the ass.”

  Mariah had laughed. It was the first time she’d laughed in months.

  “I did kick him in the shin,” Sierra told her.

  Mariah gasped. Then laughed. “You didn’t!” she protested, half horrified, half thinking it served him right.

  “I certainly did,” Sierra said indignantly. “I don’t know why I ever thought he was a nice guy.”

  “He’s doing what he can,” Mariah said. She knew that—even as she admitted how much it personally hurt.

  Sierra snorted. “You can say that when he says he doesn’t want anything to do with you and the baby?”

  “He’ll support it financially.”

  “Big deal. The courts would make him do that anyway. He’s a jerk,” Sierra said. “You need a better man.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Sierra stared. “Rhys told you to find another man?”

  Mariah nodded. “To be supportive personally. He saw Gib and Chloe, and Finn and Izzy, and he thinks I’ll need that.”

  Sierra hadn’t said anything for a moment. Then she just shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure kicking him is going to be enough.”

  Sierra never did anything by halves.

  “I’ve decided Rhys is right,” she informed Mariah the following evening as she strode into the apartment with a list in her hand. “So I’ve made up a list of guys for you.”

  “What?” Mariah, who was usually one step behind when it came to keeping up with Sierra’s machinations on her own behalf, was completely at sea now. “What are you talking about?”

  “About finding you a man.”

  “I don’t want a man!”

  “Nonsense. These are all very nice men. Lo-o-o-ovely men.” Sierra drew out the word, making it sound delicious, smacking her lips at the end. “And they’re eager—very eager—to meet you.” She grinned.

  Mariah’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What are you up to?”

  Sierra got her butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth look on her face. “Me? Nothing? Just helping out.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mariah said. She took the list out of Sierra’s hand and scanned it. “Who are these guys?” She half expected a list of Sierra’s ex-boyfriends. She didn’t recognize a single name.

  “Guys I know,” Sierra said easily. She took the list back. “Damien is coming by tonight. He’ll go to dinner with us. Then tomorrow you can have lunch with Kent. Brandon will take you to the concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday—”

  “Whoa! Wait. Stop. What are you doing?”

  “Doing what Rhys wants,” Sierra said piously. An unholy light glinted in her eyes. “Come on, Mariah. You’ll have a good time.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “You want Rhys.” Clearly Sierra had figured that much out. “And you aren’t getting him. So you have to move on.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You have to move on, Mariah.” Sierra was glaring at her sister. “Trust me.”

  Their gazes met. Held. Years of sisterly battles and friendship and support and devotion were in those looks. Finally Mariah nodded.

  “Damien tonight,” Sierra said. “Be ready at seven.”

  He’d told her to go out, but he didn't mean every damn night.

  After her night out at the Yankees game he figured she’d stay home. He knew Mariah—she was no social butterfly. She had friends, but she didn't live in a social whirl.

  Or she hadn’t.

  Now she was the busiest damn bee in the hive.

  Every time Rhys turned around, she was going out the door on some new guy’s arm. At first he’d figured they were Sierra’s boyfriends—now there was a woman in a social whirl—but Sierra kept showing up with the same guy—some longhaired geek. The other guys were the ones hanging all over Mariah.

  And she wasn’t fighting them off, either!

  He’d told her to find a man, but he hadn’t figured she’d put out a general casting call and just start auditioning them. What the hell did she know about these guys? They could be ax murderers! Rapists!

  She didn’t have to look so damn pleased every time he saw her with them, either. They couldn’t all be that charming.

  She was out until all hours, too. Ten-thirty! Eleven o’clock! Didn’t a woman in her condition need sleep?

  Rhys sure as hell wasn’t getting any—not when he was pacing around half the night waiting for her.

  He needed to get away. He needed a break.

  So when his brother Nathan called and wondered if he’d like to go to Vancouver for a week he jumped at the chance. Nathan was a wildlife photographer of some repute. More footloose than Rhys had ever been—because he’d never been married, never even been close—Nathan traveled all over the world doing photos for articles and, more recently, books of his own.

  Like Rhys, Nathan had turned his back on the family business long ago, though for far less obvious reasons. No one in the family knew why one day Nathan had been there, and the next he’d taken off.

  No one asked.

  Nathan took the family—when he took them at all—on his own terms.

  That was fine with Rhys. He didn’t feel like sharing the intimate details of his life either.

  He met Nathan in Vancouver. They spent the week prowling the coastline of Vancouver Island, then renting a boat and a guide and checking out some of the smaller islands. They slept in bivy sacks on hard ground, ate food out of cans, and more than once got drenched from heavy rains.

  Rhys loved it. Got distracted by it. And every time his thoughts drifted to Mariah it was easy to shove them away.

  The week ended all too quickly. Nathan headed back to Paris where he lived when he wasn’t off shooting photos somewhere.

  Rhys headed back to New York.

  But coming home didn’t feel nearly as good as it usually did. Of course, he reminded himself, he wasn’t coming home from weeks of firefighting. He was coming home from vacation.

  To what?

  A host of handsome hunks all slavering over Mariah?

  No, thanks. So he stopped at a phone booth in the airport and called his brother, Dominic.

  “Don’t suppose you want to go fishing again?”

  Dominic ran the family business, with interference from their father. He was consumed with work, trying to prove to the old man that he was perfectly capable, competent and could run things even better than the old man. It was true, but their father couldn’t see that.

  Rhys was wondering why he’d bothered when Dominic said, “Fishing? Hell, why not? Now?”

  “If you want…”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow morning. We can head out to Montauk again.”

  It made going home easier—knowing he’d be leaving in the morning. He spent the evening doing his laundry. He avoided his living room, avoided being able to see the stoop. Didn’t want to see if Mariah was going up or down with the Hunk of the Week.

  Didn’t care!

  He was up bright and early and was ready when Dominic came.

  “We’ll catch a ton,” Dominic grinned when Rhys got in the car. “It’ll be great.”

  “I’m surprised you were able to get away so easily.”

  His brother shrugged, keeping his eyes on the traffic. “Needed to. The old man has been coming around lately. Meddling.”

  “I thought he’d backed out of the d
ay-to-day business stuff.”

  Another shrug. This one slightly more uncomfortable. “This isn’t entirely business.”

  Rhys’s eyebrows lifted. When had their father ever not been obsessed with business?

  But Dominic didn’t elaborate until they were on the Throg’s Neck Bridge. Then he said, fingers tight on the steering wheel, “He’s found another woman.”

  Rhys’s eyebrows went even higher. “Dad?”

  Their father, Douglas Wolfe, a widower for over twenty years, had never been known to have any women since the death of Rhys’s mother when he was eight, let alone another one. “What do you mean, he’s got a woman? What’s he going to do with a woman? Does he want to marry her?”

  Dominic shot him a hard look. “No, he doesn’t want to marry her! He wants me to marry her!” He raked his fingers through his hair. “He’s been hauling them in left, right and sideways lately. He wants me to get married. Again.”

  Not that Dominic had been married before.

  He’d come close, though. He’d been engaged.

  And jilted on his wedding day.

  Twelve years ago, Dominic had been going to marry Carin Campbell, the daughter of one of his father’s business associates. It was a match made, if not in heaven, at least on Wall Street—the union of the heir to D. Wolfe Enterprises and the daughter of the head of Campbell Limited.

  Everybody in the world had been invited to the Wolfe family home in the Bahamas to witness what even Douglas Wolfe smugly and cheerfully called “the merger.”

  Rhys had been best man, Nathan having gone off to Antarctica at the last minute because he’d been given a chance to shoot penguins or some such thing.

  The two of them, he and Dominic, had stood on the veranda, where the wedding was to take place, and had waited—and waited—for Carin to appear.

  She never had.

  Later they learned she’d fled the island that morning.

  She was gone.

  No one knew where.

  No one, as far as Rhys knew, had seen her since. Not even her apoplectic old man.

  No one brought Carin’s name up around Dominic. No one brought up marriage around Dominic.

  He’d missed Rhys’s wedding to Sarah the following year. He’d been in Hong Kong on business. Deliberately.

  “Still touchy,” Douglas had explained to Rhys. “He’ll get over it.”

  But he’d never been willing to risk marriage again.

  “He’s trying to shove another girl down my throat,” Dominic said wearily now. “He’s getting frantic.”

  “Why?”

  “He’ll be seventy next month. Old as the hills, he says. One foot in the grave, to hear him tell it. ‘The line is dying off,’ ” Dominic quoted in his best Douglas Wolfe imitation. He sighed. “He wants grandchildren.”

  Rhys looked away.

  The old man would be over the moon if he found out about Mariah. He’d be dragging Rhys to the altar himself.

  Rhys shut his eyes.

  “The world isn’t run by one irritating old man,” Dominic growled.

  “No,” Rhys said.

  They stared straight ahead, the two of them. To look back, to face the past, was to see the pain of failure, of hopes dashed, of dreams broken.

  “I won’t do it,” Dominic said harshly.

  “No,” Rhys said again.

  Neither would he.

  They fished for five days. They went out in a boat every morning, they prowled the shoreline. When they returned in the evenings, they walked miles on the beach.

  They didn’t speak again about women or about their father. They talked about the weather and the fish. They argued about bait and about baseball. They caught a ton of fish.

  It was wonderful. Elemental. As being with Nathan had been.

  Rhys loved it. He felt strong. Powerful. In control.

  He didn’t even flinch when, as they drove back into the city, Dominic suggested he share some of his catch with his neighbor.

  “The woman upstairs,” Dominic said vaguely. “What’s her name?”

  “Mariah.”

  Dominic nodded. “Yeah, Mariah. She’d probably appreciate it.”

  Maybe she would. Maybe it would be a good thing to do.

  He could stop in and give her some fish. Be friendly. Casual. Get things back on an even footing. Yeah, maybe he would.

  He imagined himself going upstairs later that evening and knocking on her door. He’d hand her a big parcel of freshly caught flounder and tell her to enjoy it.

  But when he went up later that night she wasn’t there.

  He scowled. He rocked on his heels. He held the damn packet of fish in his hands and fumed.

  Mrs. Alvarez came up the steps. “You’re back.”

  He nodded. “I just… stopped up to give Mariah some fish.”

  “She’s out.” Mrs. Alvarez smiled. “With Kevin.”

  Rhys’s eyebrows drew down. Who the hell was Kevin?

  “You give it to her tomorrow. She’ll be in late tonight,” Mrs. Alvarez suggested.

  “How late?”

  Mrs. Alvarez shrugged happily. “Dunno. But you’re always out late when you’re having a good time.”

  Rhys stood there, glowering, as she trundled past and went on up the next flight of stairs. He glanced at his watch. It was almost ten.

  That was late enough.

  He stomped back down the steps and stuck the fish in the refrigerator. Then he picked up his address book and thumbed through it, feeling irritable and itchy and in the need to do something.

  He knew plenty of women. One of them ought to be willing to do something on the spur of the moment.

  Carrie? Annie? Shauna? Teresa?

  Teresa, he decided, and punched in her number to see if she wanted to catch a late film. In the old days Mariah would have been willing.

  “The old days are over,” he reminded himself as he stabbed in the numbers.

  Teresa was willing too. Delighted, in fact. Delighted to go to a film with him, eager, it seemed, to spend the night with him.

  “You can come back here after. Stick around,” she offered, running a hand up his arm, curving it around his neck and pulling his head down for a quick teasing kiss.

  Rhys shifted away. “I’m pretty bushed,” he told her, yawning. “Another time?”

  She rubbed against him provocatively. “You bet your boots, sweetheart.”

  He noticed that Mariah’s light was still on when he came in. It was almost one a.m.

  Pregnant women needed their sleep. He was sure they did.

  And tomorrow when he took her the fish he’d tell her so.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  Mariah stood gripping the front door of her apartment at eight-thirty the next morning, bleary-eyed and rumpled in an oversized T-shirt and shorts, looking like death warmed over.

  “Hard night?” Rhys drawled, annoyed all over again. He didn’t know what time she’d come in, but by the time he’d gone to sleep at past two her light was still on upstairs.

  Now she looked pale—ashen, almost—and not at all happy to see him.

  Well, he wasn’t exactly happy to see her either. Not like this.

  “You look like hell,” he told her bluntly.

  “Thank you very much.”

  “It's the truth. And you wouldn’t,” he told her righteously, “if you got more rest. You shouldn’t be up partying until all hours.”

  Her mouth opened. And shut.

  “It can’t be good for you, getting so little sleep,” he went on. “Women like you need more rest.”

  “Women like me?” There was a hint of acid in her tone.

  “Pregnant women.” He said the words through his teeth. “You need your rest, Mariah. Obviously more than you’re getting. You should be getting a good eight hours. And you shouldn’t be out drinking and—”

  “I wasn’t out drinking!”

  “—and you need good food, too. Here.” He th
rust the package of fresh fish at her. “Dom and I went fishing this week. We caught a ton. Take this. Have it for dinner. It’s flounder. Lots of fatty acids. It’s good for you.”

  Her eyes went wide, her face stark white. She didn’t say a word. She could have said thank you, he thought irritably. She could take the fish instead of standing there staring at it looking horrified.

  Then she gagged, clapped her hand over her mouth and bolted away.

  “What the hell—?” Rhys, still clutching the packet of fish, went after her. The bathroom door slammed in his face. “What are you—? Oh.”

  And as he listened to the sound of retching beyond the door he caught a whiff of the fish in his hand.

  Suddenly Mariah’s pale face and bleary-eyed look took on another meaning.

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “Oh, damn. I’ll be right back,” he told her through the door.

  He didn’t know if she heard him or not. He clattered down the stairs, stuffed the fish into his own refrigerator, washed his hands thoroughly if hastily, then hot-footed it back up to her apartment.

  The door to the bathroom was still closed.

  “Mariah?”

  She didn’t reply. Rhys paced the hallway outside it. How was he supposed to know she got sick in the mornings?

  Was she sick every morning?

  It was dead silent beyond the door.

  He tapped. “Mariah?” he said a little more forcefully. “Are you okay?”

  Still nothing. Then at last he heard the water begin to run. He heard it splash. Then it shut off.

  At last Mariah opened the door.

  She still looked like death. He didn’t say so this time. He started to reach out to steady her, then thought better of it. He jammed his hand in his pocket instead. “How are you doing? Okay now?” he said, willing her to say yes.

  “Oh, fine.” Her voice was raspy, her tone dry. “Just dandy. Can’t you tell?” She gave him a disgusted look and padded past him toward her bedroom.

  He went after her. “I didn’t know. That you got sick. You can’t think I brought the fish to make you sick.”

  She flopped down onto her bed and lay with her forearm covering her eyes as if he weren’t even there.