by Jeanne Allan
“A lot can be shared in a few days. All we shared was our bodies. I know nothing about the inner you.”
“I’d have told you anything you wanted to know,” Luke said.
“I’m not blaming you. I never asked.” Her face flushed. “I didn’t care, -You looked at me, touched me, smiled at me, and all I could think about was the pleasure you gave me.” She swallowed. “I’m more sorry and ashamed than I can ever say, but I didn’t love you and I don’t love you.”
“Of course you didn’t love me,” Luke said impatiently. “Falling in love is for teenagers. Adults commit to each other, to their future. They work at building a life together. Love is their reward. We were physically attracted to each other, and I thought you were the kind of woman I wanted to share my life with. I thought we could build a future together. I was wrong. You don’t want to share a man’s life. You want him to tag along with yours.”
Every one of J.J.’s brothers used to blame her when he didn’t get his own way. Luke Remington was no different. “Burton and I will share each other’s lives,” she said stiffly. “We have a lot in common, think alike, have mutual interests, share the same tastes in movies, art, music. We believe in each other.”
His mouth curved in disgust. “O’Brien, for a lawyer lady, you’re about as dumb as dirt.”
“You think anyone who disagrees with you is dumb. You wanted me to give up everything I’d worked for, that I’d dreamed of. For you. What were you going to give up for me?”
“I offered you half of everything I have, but that wasn’t enough for you. You wanted everything your way.” He shrugged. “If Burton doesn’t mind being bossed around by you, it’s no skin off my nose.”
“For your information, I care about Burton, and he cares for me. I know about his past, know his hopes for the future. I know he needs me. And he’s not having second thoughts.”
Luke contemplated her for a long moment. “Burton won’t make you happy because he believes the lies you spin, the person you invented, the costumes you wear.”
“I do not—”
“The hell you don’t. Shut up and let me finish.”
JJ. shut up. For the moment.
“And because he believes, you’ll never be able to let him know who you really are. Your life together would be a lie.”
“He knows who—”
“I told you to keep your mouth shut.” He pressed her head back against the door, his callused palm over her mouth. “How can he know? You don’t know. You don’t see it now, lawyer lady, but I’m doing you a favor.” He smiled crookedly at the gobbling sounds she made. “I’m giving you three weeks to figure out who you are.”
Something glittered in the depths of his eyes. “Maybe I’ll use those three weeks to answer some questions of my own. I used to lay awake nights wondering why I thought you were a real woman, and wondering why the hell I married you. The answers to those questions could be interesting, don’t you think, O’Brien?” He slid his palm from her mouth and ran a finger over her bottom lip.
J.J. suppressed an urge to wrap her lips around his finger. “I already know the answers. You wanted to sleep with me.” The tip of her tongue brushed against the end of his finger.
“You think I couldn’t have persuaded you into bed without a marriage license?”
“No. I mean, yes.” How was she supposed to think when he distracted her by drawing circles around the small beauty mark at the corner of her mouth? “You couldn’t have.”
A knowing smile doubted her denial before fading away. “One other thing, O’Brien. You’re not the only one who refrained from adulterous behavior. I haven’t slept with another woman since our marriage.” Moving her to one side, he opened the door. “I’ll carry your stuff up to your room.”
She wanted to ask him why he’d honored that particular wedding vow. Instead she objected to his dumping her on his employers. “I can’t stay here.” The Stirlings owned a ranch, not a hotel.
Luke grabbed her bags from near the front door. “I know it’s not up to your usual standards, but you’ll survive.”
“It’s not that. I assumed I’d stay at your place.”
Luke headed up the narrow enclosed staircase. “Where do you think my place is?”
“Don’t single ranch hands usually live in a trailer or something? It might be crowded, but we could manage.”
“There’s no way we could coexist in a trailer. I’d either end up wringing your neck, or...”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence for J.J. to know what he meant. He needn’t worry. It took two to tango and she had no intention of doing the tango or anything else with Luke Remington. “I can’t inflict myself on perfect strangers,” she protested to his back.
“Bathroom’s there.” Luke nodded to the right as he turned sharply into the room on the left at the top of the staircase. “We’ll have to share it. My room’s across the hall. This’ll be your room.”
J.J. halted in the doorway to the large bedroom. “Your room? You live with the Stirlings?”
“Zane Stirling died almost five years ago. I live by myself.” Luke tossed J.J.’s luggage on the worn chenille bedspread, which might once have been white. “My wife lives in Denver.”
“I am not a snob,” J.J. told herself for the umpteenth time. She yanked the skin off a raw piece of chicken. Last year Luke had told her he was a cowboy. Anyone seeing his worn jeans, scarred boots and beat-up pickup truck would have guessed he didn’t have two dimes to rub together. It wouldn’t have killed him to have mentioned he managed the family ranch, fifty-five percent of which he’d inherited from his uncle. Not that it mattered. With a loud whack of the butcher knife J.J. severed the chicken thigh from the leg. He could own a ranch the size of Texas, and they’d still have nothing in common.
“What are you doing? Where’s Birdie? What’s this?” Luke walked through the back door into the kitchen carrying the blackened skillet J.J. had set outside in the snow.
She answered Luke’s second question. “Birdie’s over at Ethel’s house packing a bag. She’s going to stay in that small bedroom in the back until Ethel returns. The room doesn’t look as if it’s used except for storage. I cleared some space.”
“Need a chaperone as well as a cook, O’Brien?” Luke set the charred pan in the sink and leaned against the cabinet, his hands braced on the countertop behind him.
“Birdie is nervous about staying alone in an empty house,” J.J. said evenly.
“I finally reached Ethel on the phone.” Luke watched JJ. toss a couple of chicken pieces into a plastic bag of flour, crumbs and spices. “She said her sister has gone totally to pieces. Ethel could be up in Wyoming a week, a month or more. I told her not to worry about us, we could hold the fort here. Ethel didn’t come right out and say it, but I don’t think we can expect much out of Birdie.” He crossed his booted feet at the ankles. “I guess you’ll be doing the cooking, O’Brien.”
J.J. arranged the chicken on a baking sheet. She had no trouble interpreting the amused speculation in Luke’s voice. In her Denver neighborhood a number of restaurants specialized in meals ready for patrons to pick up on their way home from work, and Luke was remembering the deli meals, the take-out food, and the delivered pizzas they’d shared in Denver. JJ. knew he assumed she’d burnt the pan. She didn’t think it worth mentioning Birdie was the one who’d forgotten the oil heating in the pan.
She didn’t feel challenged to prove she knew her way around a kitchen. On the other hand, she had to eat. “I can cook,” she finally said. Her assurance failed to impress Luke.
A little over an hour later J.J. enjoyed the disbelief on Luke’s face as he sat at one end of the dining-room table surveying the perfectly browned, oven-fried chicken, fluffy mashed potatoes, scalloped corn. applesauce muf fins and tomato salad. Spreading a napkin over her lap, she bet herself he’d starve before admitting he’d been wrong about any of his assumptions about her.
“Where’s Birdie?” Luke asked.
&nb
sp; “I invited her to eat with us, but she preferred a tray in her room.”
“Ethel usually fixes cream gravy with fried chicken.”
J.J. met Luke’s artless gaze across the corner of the table. “I’ll bet her sister does, too. The sister whose husband is in the hospital with a coronary attack.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a health food nut. I like meat on the table.”
Maybe he’d like it in his lap. A model of restraint, she handed Luke the bowl of salad. “You’ll get it. In moderation. My dad and Kenny are doctors, my mother’s a nurse, and Logan’s in med school. I know more than I want about clogged arteries.”
Luke piled his plate with food. “Kenny and Logan?”
“Two of my brothers.”
“There’s more?”
“Two more. Blaine teaches biology back in Iowa, and Brendan is at the university majoring in bio-chem.”
“Does your family know you’re married?”
J.J. concentrated on removing chicken meat from the bone. “Mom and Dad have been married almost thirty-seven years. They believe in bringing potential mates home for inspection, long engagements and big church weddings. Over three hundred people were invited to Kenny and Casey’s wedding.”
“They don’t know.” When J.J. didn’t respond, he asked, “Did you take Alexander home with you at Christmas to meet the family?”
“Of course not. He and his daughter, Carrie, spent Christmas with Burton’s first wife’s parents in Boulder. Burton’s a widower.” She avoided meeting Luke’s eyes.
The anniversary clock in the living room chimed the hour. As the last chime faded away, Luke asked grimly, “When did you introduce him to your parents as your future husband?”
CHAPTER THREE
“WHAT makes you think I introduced Burton to anyone as my future husband?” The minute the question left her mouth J.J. knew it incriminated her. She should have given Luke an immediate denial. “Thanksgiving,” she muttered into her potatoes. “Carrie went on a ski trip with friends, and Burton flew back to Iowa with me for the long weekend. But we didn’t say anything about getting married.” Not that her family hadn’t made a few guesses, which she’d cowardly chosen to ignore.
“Why not?”
J.J. wished Luke would quit grilling her and eat his dinner. Might as well wish she could wiggle her nose and transport her body back to her Denver town house. To a time before she’d met Luke Remington. His unrelenting silence finally goaded her into answering. “It’s awkward, okay? Mom saved her wedding dress for me to wear at my wedding. She won’t understand Burton and I having a modest ceremony in front of a judge.”
“You’ll have to tell her sometime.”
“There’s no rush.” She doggedly ate her dinner. “I have to get divorced first, remember?”
“I’m not likely to forget.”
“To this day I can’t believe I actually married a total stranger. Nobody held a gun to my head, I was perfectly sober, there’s no mental illness in my family... What was I thinking?”
“The same thing I was thinking?”
JJ. gave him a murderous look. “Why didn’t we just sleep together? We didn’t have to get married to have sex.”
“You weren’t into casual sex,” Luke said evenly, “and I wanted you.”
“Yeah, right.” J.J. reduced her muffin to crumbs. “It’s my stupid mouth with its stupid fat bottom lip. If I’ve had one man, I’ve had a dozen, tell me how they adore my sexy pout. It’s enough to make a woman gag.” She gazed skyward. “And thanks, Nika, for the dumb beauty mark.”
“Nika?”
“An ancestor of my mom’s from way back. Supposedly a member of the Russian aristocracy. My mom has a picture of her.” J.J. laughed shortly. “My dad says we’re imperfectly blended blender kids. English, Irish, German, Finnish, Russian, Slavic, French and American Indian genes all tossed into the blender, only somebody turned off the machine before we homogenized. Not only do we all look totally different, we’re all chunks of this or that. Lucky me got the pouty bottom lip and beauty mark so I look like some kind of bimbo sexpot. Do you have any idea how hard it is to convince a male client I have an IQ over ten when I look like this?”
“I like your mouth.”
“Of course you do. Men are so shallow. Never mind, my brothers insist the color of my hair is mousy brown, my colorless face looks like an anemic square, my eyes are faded aqua and my eyebrows are practically nonexistent. All you men see is the mouth and the beauty mark.”
“You should be grateful. If I hadn’t seen that provocative little beauty spot, I’d have let the horse run over you.”
J.J. pointed her fork at him. “It’s not funny...it’s a curse. Because of this darned face, I’ve had to work harder and longer than any ten men. Men wear a shirt the color of their eyes, and people admire the shirt. I wear a pretty dress and some jerk pats my behind, or I’m accused of using my sex as some kind of weapon. When a man wins a case, people praise his abilities. If I win, there’s always someone who says I flirted with the male jury members. Newspapers discuss a man’s legal arguments—they talk about my hair. You don’t know what it’s like to spend your entire life fighting to prove yourself.”
“Everybody grows up proving himself.” Luke spread butter on a muffin. “Take me. I’m an army brat. I started out fighting kids whose dads were enlisted. I had to prove I wasn’t soft because my dad was an officer. The older I got, the more trouble I got into. It wasn’t enough to prove I wasn’t a goody-two-shoes, I had to lead the pack of troublemakers. Later, I had to prove I was as tough as my dad even though I refused to follow in his footsteps and go to West Point.”
“And now you’re proving how tough you are by forcing me to bend to your will for three weeks. Daddy must be proud.”
“Bend to my will?” Luke snorted. “Tell another one, O’Brien. We both know you’re not here because I threatened to fight the divorce if you didn’t come.” He leaned back in his chair. “One of these days I’ll figure out exactly why you did come.”
“Not because I want us to reconcile.”
“Reconcile!” The shock on Luke’s face was hardly flattering to J.J. “I sure as hell hope not. I’ve spent the past year thanking my lucky stars you gave me my walking papers.”
“Thanking your...” Speech temporarily failed her. “Then why didn’t you immediately agree to our obtaining a divorce?” J.J. asked in exasperation.
“I would have if you’d written me a letter asking for one. Unfortunately I saw you.” Memories blazed deep in his eyes. “Crowded as the art gallery was, I spotted you the instant I walked through the door. While I watched you, this damned movie kept fast-forwarding through my head. Starring you and me in your apartment.”
“Town house,” J.J. said automatically, fighting in vain to keep those same images out of her head.
“I kept seeing your sheets. A pale pink, the color of your skin.”
“Shell pink.” She told herself the dry climate caused any electricity in the air.
“I thought I’d managed to forget what you keep hidden under those ugly businessmen suits of yours, but seeing you again—” his voice thickened “—I wanted you. As much as before.”
J.J.’s heart skipped a beat. Luke still wanted her. The knowledge pleased her, in itself a terrifying revelation. She didn’t want him to want her. She didn’t want to want him. Infatuation flew in the face of good sense and reason, and she’d always been a sensible, reasonable person. Only Luke had had the power to transform her into an impulsive stranger. She couldn’t let him beguile her again. “Is that why you insisted I come? To satisfy your hormonal urges once more?”
“Hell no.” Shock turned to horror on his face. “Just the opposite. I figure three weeks of you whining and complaining and demonstrating how totally unfit you are to live here will be all I need to erase you and your pale blue underwear from my head forever. If and when I marry again, my wife won’t be as soft as the skin under that silk underwear of yours
. And she won’t be pseudotough, pretending she’s as good as any man. She’ll be a woman, a real woman,” he emphasized, “soft where a woman’s supposed to be soft and strong where a woman’s supposed to be strong. The kind of woman you don’t know anything about.”
“I know all about the kind of woman you want. One who hops into bed when you snap your fingers and hops out to cook your breakfast or wash your socks when you snap your fingers again.”
Luke snapped his fingers, his gaze locked on J.J. She glared back, not moving a muscle. “Yup,” he said, “you’re definitely not the kind of woman I want for my wife.”
JJ. scowled at the phone sitting on the office table desk. When she’d told Burton about the ranch, he’d said she ought to have realized Luke had too much self-possession to be a mere employee. A diploma on the wall caught her eye. Luke had graduated from Colorado State University. Another little tidbit he’d neglected to mention.
She looked around the room, curling her lip at the elk antlers. From the little she’d seen of the ranch house, it seemed to be furnished in a mixture of Oregon Trail castoffs and garage sale leavings. Definitely not to her taste. At least the unknown Ethel, who’d turned out to be Luke’s housekeeper, kept the place spotlessly clean.
“Mrs. Remington?”
JJ. looked up. Birdie hovered in the doorway to the hall leading to the kitchen, nervously twisting around her finger a small section of the hair hanging lank around her shoulders. J.J. gave the young woman a reassuring smile. “Call me J.J.”
A timid smile flickered across Birdie’s thin lips. “J.J.’s a funny name for a woman.”
J.J. wrinkled her nose. “My mother named me Jacqueline June and said no one was to call me Jackie. Then my brother Logan came along, and he had trouble saying Jacqueline so my name came out sounding like JJ. Soon everyone called me JJ.”
“Did your ma get mad?”
J.J. rolled her eyes. “My brothers can charm my mother in or out of anything they want.”
