The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

by Jennifer Greene

  “I cared. In fact, I loved you.” Again his gaze seemed to sweep her face, her hair, her mouth. All of her. “Don’t think I didn’t. It was never that I wanted to leave you, wanted to hurt you. I was just frustrated and angry at the life I felt forced into here, always at war with my father. I couldn’t stay here.”

  “I understood then and now, Garrett. The hurt’s long healed, honestly.” She smiled. “To tell you the truth, I think of you, too. Once the hurt healed…they were just good memories. Nothing like that first feeling of being love, is there? It’s the kind of memory you can take out on a rainy day and just…enjoy.”

  “Trust a woman to soften it up. What I remember was a sexual high so damned painful I’m positive I came close to dying from it. All those Friday nights we took a blanket to Silver Point…Remember that? I’d go home and spend the rest of the night in a cold shower.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  He was smiling, yet his eyebrows suddenly lifted in a curious expression. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you’re full of the devil, no different than you always were.” She was a long way from the shy teenager who blushed when a guy tried a little flirting. But somehow the look in Garrett’s eyes-the electric energy of being with him again-was putting a hot sizzle in her pulse. She was too physically aware of him for comfort. Quickly, competently, she steered him away from personal topics.

  It worked. In fact, it more than worked. As the minutes passed, she felt relieved they’d found a way to talk naturally together again. He obviously needed and wanted to get back to his sister, but these few moments with some fresh air and a little food had eased the taut strain in his expression. He’d so clearly needed to climb off the anxiety train for a bit. So she told him about the current scandal in town-Bunny Baldwin’s death, the infamous missing diaries, everyone worrying about what secrets Bunny had known, Jack Cartright being blackmailed and his marrying Lily and how much happiness had come out of that horrible mess in the long run…

  She didn’t talk long, just enough to fill him in on the town’s personalities. The instant he started to look restless, she stood up, and then swiftly so did he.

  “I know,” she said without his having to speak up. “You’re going back to Caroline. And I need to head home and get some sleep.”

  “I do need to get back upstairs. But for all this catching up, I still didn’t take the chance to ask anything about you.” Quick as a sliver, he asked, “So-you aren’t still on the loose, are you? You in a good marriage?”

  “I’m engaged.” The instant the words came out of her mouth, she felt a flush of guilt because, damn, she hadn’t thought of Reed in hours now. Not that she’d done anything wrong. She hadn’t touched Garrett or kissed him or done anything suggestive in any way.

  Yet the instant she said engaged, his expression immediately changed. It wasn’t as if he stopped smiling at her, but…the lights went off. He quickly closed a door on possibilities that, until that instant, she hadn’t realized was open.

  Yet on her drive back to the art gallery, alone in the dark, she admitted fibbing to herself.

  She might not have touched Garrett, but she’d thought about it.

  She might not have taken his personal comments seriously, but her heartbeat had been galloping like a young girl’s.

  She might not have done anything wrong, but her disloyalty to Reed was still real. And wrong.

  Most of the time she lived at her parents’ house, where she had a private suite of rooms on the second floor. Often enough, though, she worked late at the gallery and then just stayed in town. Tonight it was already too late to drive home, so she let herself in the back door of Color and slipped off her shoes.

  Several years before, she’d converted a small anteroom off the first floor into a home away from home. She kept books, cosmetics, several changes of clothes there, but the room had slowly been filling up with the oddest assortment of treasures. A two-centuries-old Chinese desk, candles wrapped in a necklace of amethysts, a white fur rug by the bed, a narrow Louis XIV mirror…She shook her head at the wild assortment often enough. They were things she loved, but they certainly didn’t represent any standard decorating style. The silliest of all was a framed sign-Shall We Dance in the Kitchen?-that meant nothing at all, except that sometimes she wished she were that whimsical and romantic. Or that she could be.

  Plunking down on the bed, she kicked off her shoes and phoned her parents to let them know she’d be staying in town, then got ready for bed and switched off the light. She was beat, yet somehow she lay there for hours, staring at the film of white curtains whispering in the window. Garrett refused to leave her mind.

  It made no sense. He was the wrong man. Reed was the right man, the man she was supposed to be marrying. So why couldn’t she stop Garrett from haunting every corner of her thoughts?

  In the morning, she promised herself, she’d call Reed. First thing. And until then, she mentally slapped herself upside the head and determined to squash her shameful attitude.

  At least she tried to.

  Garrett hadn’t meant to doze off, but he must have. Because when he opened his scratchy eyes, his neck and knees were cramped from sitting in the straight-back chair. The wall clock claimed more than an hour had passed…and his sister’s eyes were open.

  He lurched out of the chair, exhaustion forgotten, as he picked up Caroline’s hand. He hated hospitals. Never knew what to say or do. But one look at his sister-her face as pale as the sheets, and the sad look in her eyes scaring him-and he wanted to shoot someone.

  “Garrett.” She said his name as if trying to talk through a mouthful of fuzz. Still, her frail voice managed to communicate relief and love at seeing him.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. Beyond sorry,” he said fiercely. “I don’t know why you did this, sis, and I don’t care. I’ll help you make it right.”

  She tried to shake her head. The effort seemed to exhaust her. “You can’t. But…glad you came.” She licked dry lips. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too. I want you to rest. We don’t have to talk about anything until you’re ready. I just want you to know that I’m here. I’ll be here. And I won’t let anyone pressure you about anything, I swear-”

  “Garrett…” Her fingers closed weakly around his wrist. “I know you want to help me. But you can’t fix this. No one can. I did something…terrible.”

  She fell asleep before he could ask anything else, before she could try saying anything else. Garrett wasn’t used to anything shaking him, but the defeat and fear in his sister’s voice rattled him hard. He sat there, worrying up a storm, until a nurse came in and shooed him out.

  He’d have battled the nurse-and won-if he thought there was anything further to gain from staying with Caroline. But right then it was obvious she needed rest more than anything. And if he wanted a chance to get to the bottom of his sister’s mess, he needed to get some rest himself.

  The Keating estate was a short five miles from town, a two-story brick house set on a hillside, with a curved deck and a sculpted sloping lawn. It loomed in the moonlight like a gothic castle. He used his old house key, let himself in the kitchen entrance and immediately stepped out of his shoes, not wanting to wake his parents or any of the household staff.

  It struck his ironic sense of humor that he used to tiptoe just like this when he was a teenager sneaking late into the house. One step into the living room and his big toe crashed into a chair leg. That was a déjà vu, too.

  Moonlight flooded in the windows, so that once his eyes adjusted he realized his mother had redecorated again. The decor this time seemed to be some French period. Lots of gilt and tassels. Lots of mean furniture legs. Very elegant, if you went for that sort of thing. Garrett didn’t, and his toe was stinging like a banshee.

  “Garrett!” His father switched on the light from the paneled doors at the stairway.

  “Dad.” He offered the hug, knowing his father wouldn’t think to.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t.” Merritt wore pajamas, but his iron-gray hair was brushed, his eyes tired but alert. “Your mother and I are both up. Waiting for you. Hoping you’d gotten something out of Caroline that we didn’t.”

  Upstairs, his parents had a mini living room off their sleeping quarters. Whiskey was poured, neat. His mother pecked his cheek, then curled on the couch in the window seat by the bay windows. “I hope you talked to her,” Barbara said immediately.

  Garrett plunked down on an oversize footstool. He wasn’t about to replay his sister’s words. “I stayed for a few hours, but she was sleeping deeply.”

  “I just don’t understand why she’d do this to us!”

  Garrett didn’t expect either parent to ask how he was, how his life was going. The conversation was immediately about them. “Caroline didn’t do anything to you. She did it to herself.”

  His mother rubbed her temples as if she were at the end of her rope. “That’s the point. That’s the exact point. Everyone will talk. Especially with all this scandal about Bunny’s death and those diaries…Now there’s just more fuel to the gossip fire. People could think we did something, when you know we gave that girl every advantage a daughter could possibly have. I swear, Caroline was selfish from the day she was born-”

  “Mom. She’s troubled. She has to be in major despair over something or she’d never have done this.”

  “Oh, pfft.” Barbara stood up, waving her glass. “She’s spoiled and wants attention. Like always. She doesn’t think of me or your father. Or our reputation in the community. She has everything she ever wanted in this life, but does she ever think of us?”

  Okay. He’d been in his parents’ house all of ten minutes and already he wanted to smash a wall. That fast, he remembered why he’d left Eastwick and never looked back.

  Later, though, when he lay in bed in the spare room, he recalled how hard it had been to leave his younger sister alone back then. And more than that, how painful it had been to leave Emma.

  Right now it just didn’t matter if his parents drove him as crazy as they always had. He couldn’t leave his sister to the wolves. Until her husband came home from China-and until Garrett was certain she was going to be all right-he was staying here. Which meant he had to find a way to make his business work here for an indefinite period of time.

  Before drifting off to sleep, Emma’s face whisked into his mind again. Her thick, glossy hair used to swish all the way down her back. Now she wore it shoulder length, but it was still like moonlight on black silk. So raven-dark, so rich, yet with light in every strand. Her soft mouth was as evocative as it had always been. So were those unforgettable eyes, so deep blue they were almost purple. Eyes a guy could get lost in.

  God knows he had.

  It still puzzled him that she hadn’t looked at him like an engaged woman.

  And that her classy clothes showed off a successful, poised woman…yet that wasn’t how she’d looked at him either.

  From the first second their eyes met, he’d suddenly remembered rolling in the grass with her. Stealing kisses after football games. Pressing her up against the locker after school, feeling her breasts against his chest, pretending to be talking about homework. She’d blush and flush and fluster, but then she’d look at him from under those thick black eyelashes. Teasing him. Emma had loved turning him on, loved the power of it, the fun of it, the joy of it. They’d tempted wicked every which way from Sunday. She’d made him hotter than fire-and far more frustrated.

  She’d been shy back then, but there’d been no guile to her, no ability to hold back. For sure there’d been no distance. There’d just been all that honest, helpless young-woman heat in her eyes. The dare-you-to-melt-my-bones look. She’d turned him into putty.

  And he’d loved dying from all those hard-ons with no release.

  But hell and damnation, if she was engaged, how come she’d still looked at him that way? Unguarded, winsome…as if she were dying to feel those feelings again. With a man. With him.

  You’re imagining all this, he told himself-and knew it was true. He was soul-tired, beyond the ability to think clearly. He needed a good night’s sleep-and then he needed to concentrate on his sister.

  Not on a woman who was already claimed by someone else.

  Three

  A few mornings later, Emma stood outside Color with a contractor. She’d been running nonstop, organizing her traditional art show in July, when she’d run into a major maintenance problem.

  The contractor hiked up his jeans. “Actually, ma’am, the house didn’t suddenly start to sink on that side. The problem was likely developing over a long period of time.”

  “Well, no one noticed it before.” Emma wanted to tear out her hair. A maintenance problem certainly wasn’t news. Two-hundred-year-old houses regularly developed ghastly ailments. If it wasn’t dry rot one year, it was corroded wiring or termites the next. “I just can’t have a big mess right now! Can we put off the work until October?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t, ma’am.”

  “You call me ma’am one more time and you won’t see October, either,” she said crossly, and sighed. “Okay. Let’s hear the plan.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re gonna put up new house jacks. Take down your old porch pillars. Reframe pillars around the new house jacks, but hinged, like, so they’re accessible. That way we could do this slow, push up that second story a smidgeon at a time. Don’t want to crack this pretty foundation, now, do we?”

  Emma’s eyes narrowed. He was so twinkly. “But why did the house decide to sink now?”

  “Taking a wild guess now…but probably because the house is older than the hills and then some?”

  “Easy for you to joke. You’re going to charge me, what, five figures?”

  “Yup, in that general ballpark,” he confirmed.

  And there was the real rotten apple. Her thirtieth birthday was on August thirty-first-so close now, but not close enough to access the trust fund her grandmother had established for her. In the meantime, she knew her parents would float her the money, but there was always a heavy price tag for those gifts.

  To add to the morning’s confusion, Josh chose that moment to poke his head out the back door. “Mrs. Dearborn’s on the phone, Emma-”

  “If you don’t mind, just tell my mom I’ll call her back, okay? Thanks-”

  She’d barely given the contractor the okay to destroy her spring budget when she noticed a woman pause at the gate of the white picket fence. The woman was so familiar and yet not. Years before, Emma had attended high school with a girl who had curly, waist-length hair; wore wildly unconventional clothes and had an irrepressible rebellious streak. This woman was groomed to the teeth, a grown-up debutante by Eastwick standards in every way, yet there was just something…“Mary?” she called out hesitantly. “Mary Duvall? Is that really you?”

  “I was wondering if you’d recognize me,” the woman said.

  “As if I could ever forget you!” Emma flew across the lawn to whisk open the gate and draw her old friend into a huge hug, the day’s frustrations immediately forgotten. “I thought you were still in Europe, living the high life. It’s wonderful to see you!”

  “You, too, Emma. And God, I could smack you. You’re as beautiful as ever, except…” Her old school friend laughed as she noted the bit of clay under Emma’s fingernails. “What’s this?”

  “I volunteer a couple of hours a week at the local grief center, working with the little ones-and I mean really little ones, the pre-K set. I do finger painting with them or drawing or clay. Love it…” She chatted on a moment more, trying to absorb the changes in her old friend. Mary had disappeared right after graduation to go party in Europe. She was an artist, Emma had heard. It was just…unnerving to see her dressed like a dowager going to a tea party when she’d always been so flamboyant and unconventional. “What are you doing in town? Any chance you’re back for good?”

  “I have no
idea how long I’ll be here. Right now I’m just here for my grandfather. He’s not well. At his age, there aren’t a lot of great choices, you know? But he can’t be alone, so I’m just going to live with him for a while.” Mary motioned to the Colors sign. “The last time I was home, your gallery was just a dream.”

  “She’s still my dream,” Emma admitted with a chuckle and then snapped her fingers. “Say, did you bring any work home with you? Anything you’d like me to display? I have a room for local artists, but especially for you, I’d always find a special spot.”

  “Maybe. I did bring some work with me. I figured I’d be sitting with my grandfather a lot, so I might as well set up an easel while I was home… In the meantime, what’s new with you? Married now, kids or anything?”

  “Engaged. To Reed Kelly.”

  “You’re kidding! Reed, the horse breeder? The racehorses-”

  “Yup, that’s him.”

  “He was older than us in school, so I didn’t know him well, but I always thought he was such a great guy-”

  “He is, he is…” Yet Emma felt a sudden odd itch in the middle of her back. Nothing painful. Just as if a mosquito had suddenly nailed her.

  She purposefully ignored it and talked a few more minutes with Mary until she had to leave, and heaven knew Emma had mountains of work still waiting for her. Messages had accumulated in her office-three from her mother. A fund-raiser her mother wanted to attend, a ribbon cutting on a new boutique, a reception for a visiting senator. Nothing Emma wanted to do. All, she suspected, that she’d get roped into. Josh was framing a set of canvases in the back room-stealing her favorite job, or so she teased him.

  She’d just run outside to accept a delivery from UPS when she spotted Garrett hiking down the walk of the real-estate office across the way. He turned in the direction of her gallery-probably because his car was parked on Maple-yet he seemed to glance in her direction almost instinctively.

  His smile was immediate. His stride quickened. By the time he’d crossed the street, she had the oddest sensation that he’d been taking her in, head to toe. As a boy, he’d always had those bedroom eyes-but teenage boys always had their minds on one thing. It was completely different feeling assessed-and appreciated-by a man who knew women, who knew how much fun-and how dangerous-the right kind of chemistry could be.