The 200% Wife

by Jennifer Greene

  “Don’t insult me, Cameron.”

  “Insult you?”

  “My mom didn’t raise any dumb daughters—and I’d have to be incredibly dumb to be involved with someone I didn’t trust. I don’t need to see any lab tests. You told me, that’s the end of the matter. You’d never have gotten to first base—and we sure as patooties wouldn’t be having this confounded embarrassing discussion—if I had any doubts about your integrity.”

  Gar scratched his chin. “What makes you so sure about that integrity? What makes you think I’m not your basic, average wolf on the prowl, hot for your bod and gone in the morning?”

  She sighed, the sound lead-weighted with feminine dry humor. “I know you’re hot for my bod, Cameron. And I know about the integrity because I’m an expert on men.”

  “Oh, yeah?” A slash of a grin. “You’ve been hold ing out on me. You didn’t mention this whole long history with men before.”

  She hadn’t told him a lot of things—including that her whole long history with men had been limited to the business arena. Temporarily she sidestepped the devil’s teasing by claiming starvation, and they went inside.

  Night fell fast. They’d barely finished a glass of Pinot Noir before the cabin windows showed off a black-pepper sky studded with stars. Inside, brass gleamed and reflected off soft lantern lights, as waiters hustled to serve still-sizzling filet mignon. A trio with a bass, drum and keyboard started playing a mix of old and new nostalgic love songs. It was impossibly easy to let the whole romantic mood seep and sweep into her mood, but somehow that drumbeat of music’ thrummed in her mind like a warning.

  Integrity did shine from Gar. She’d sensed it from the moment she met him. She’d worked with too many scoundrels driven by greed and ambition not to recognize a diamond. And it troubled her that she hadn’t been equally up-front and honest with him.

  The cabin buzzed with music and quiet conversation. When the waiter served coffee, she thought of the black-and-white cameo that Paige had made her. Her youngest sister claimed that a cameo had always been a symbol for truth.

  Yet Abby wasn’t sure she could define the truth anymore. She’d never failed at anything before being fired. Recognizing her mistakes wasn’t that hard—and she was doing her 200% best to change so she’d never repeat those mistakes again.

  But to admit to Gar about her failures, about being fired…she just couldn’t seem to get the words said. Her shame seemed greater next to his own obvious personal successes. She couldn’t imagine him loving a failure. And more troubling was recognizing how much his respect had already come to mean to her.

  Lust alone wouldn’t have been such a mess, Abby thought desperately. Maybe she wanted him. Maybe her hormones sang out-of-control arias if she came anywhere near him—but that was just the dangerous, wondrous power of desire. Much more terrifying was that she’d come to respect him. To admire him. And it was those nasty respect-and-caring elements that made her hopelessly aware she was falling in love with him.

  “Hey,” Gar murmured. “Is the cheesecake that bad?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You took one bite of that cheesecake and suddenly I saw this big broody frown—”

  “No, no, it’s wonderful…. I’m just really full,” she admitted with a smile.

  “Me too.” He cocked his head toward the dance floor. “It looks like twenty people are already packed in a one-by-one-foot square, but we could squeeze in there with them—”

  Abby shook her head. “Trust me. You’d be risking your life.”

  “Is that a dare?”

  She chuckled. “No, honestly—the truth is, I just never learned to dance.”

  That was when she realized that owning up to any such problem to Gar was a bad, bad mistake. He immediately stood up and hooked her hand. Threats of damage from her three-inch heels couldn’t dissuade him. Neither did warnings of embarrassing both of them.

  “You love trying new things,” he reminded her.

  That was true. Her competitive streak had always excited her into trying anything new—and usually barreling into it with 200% enthusiasm—but she just didn’t want to risk bumbling and being clutzy around Gar. It didn’t happen. The trio was playing a silky, sappy love song, and she discovered in two minutes flat that Gar didn’t know how to dance any more than, she did

  Neither of them had to know how. He noosed her arms around his neck and wrapped his around her waist, and they simply moved, cheek to cheek, pelvis to pelvis. The trio changed to a rumba. They didn’t. The musicians tried some old rock and roll. They didn’t. The miniature dance floor was so squish-packed that couples bumped them right and left.

  She didn’t see them.

  She didn’t hear them.

  Every time she lifted her head, his eyes were waiting for her. His big hands were both supple and subtle, moving down her spine until his fingers rested on the swell of her hips…lower than they should be in public, low enough to press, just enough, so she could feel the heat and hardness of his arousal growing between them. Her breasts were crushed the same way against his chest, molding to him, as if her whole body were a puzzle piece that fit his in perfect belonging. Even behind that starched white linen shirt, he had to know how warm she was becoming, how shamelessly responsively her body reacted to the closeness of his.

  Vaguely she became aware that the cruise was nearly over. They were coming back to dock. Others hustled to get a last drink, to find their coats. Not Gar. Not them. His cheek snuggled against her brow as if they were glued together. And though it wasn’t wise, her eyes closed as she shuffled with him to music only they could hear, maybe music only they could dance to.

  Abby couldn’t even try to deny the magic. This was what she’d always been missing. Him. She’d always been hurt by the stereotype of ambitious women being tough and unfeminine, and she’d slowly, painfully, come to understand that she always secretly believed in that stereotype herself. So far, it seemed through her whole life, she’d failed and floundered at every traditional woman’s role she ever tried….

  But not with him. Some crazy, mystical thing happened every time she was with Gar. She felt exactly like the woman she’d always wanted to be. Pure female. Desired. Vulnerable, but exhilarated and high on those powerful feelings, too…just to be with him. Just to be touched by him.

  Gar murmured, “If you rub against me any harder, Ms. Stanford, I may just give you more trouble than you’d appreciate in a public place.”

  “You’re blaming me? You’ve been giving me trouble ever since we stepped out on this dance floor.”

  “You could have slapped my hand and told me to behave.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want you to behave.”

  “I think you like taking big risks.”

  She lifted her head, the smile on her lips fading at the intense, dark look in his eyes. “Yeah, I do. I love taking risks, always have. But not this kind, Gar.” She sucked in an uneasy breath. “This kind of risk is so rare for me that I can’t even…”

  “You can’t even what?”

  He’d stopped shuffling. So had she. Hell’s bells, the trio had deserted the dance floor five minutes ago. The paddleboat was docking, noise and action all around them. Everyone was getting off. Still, he didn’t move, and neither did she.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said quietly.

  “So tell me.”

  “You’ve been so open about your life, your ex-wife, so many things. I know I haven’t been frank the same way.” She swallowed hard. “Gar, I did something that I don’t want you to know. Something I’m ashamed of. I haven’t meant to lie to you or hide something in some…devious sense. This is just a problem that I need to face and fix on my own.”

  “Talking about a problem can help, Abby.”

  She shook her head. “Not this. And I didn’t bring up the subject to raise your curiosity…but because I wanted to be honest with you. I can’t make you any promises right now.”

  His knuckles brushed her ch
eek. “Did you hear me asking for any?”

  “No, but…I don’t know where you think the two of us are going. And I don’t want to mislead you. I’m not playing, Gar. Playing with your emotions, using you. I just really feel unsure about anything in the future right now.”

  “Abby?”

  “What?”

  “The future is a giant unknown abyss. And some decisions have a way of taking care of themselves. Where we’re going from here, tonight, though, is damn clear to me.”

  Abby understood what he was asking her. He neither wanted nor intended to sleep alone tonight.

  Neither did she.

  She took his hand. And led him off the dance floor.

  Demo version limitation

  Chapter Ten

  The phone showed no inclination to quit ringing. Shards of the nightmare were still slicing through her mind as Abby fumbled for the receiver.

  “So,” her sister Paige said, with no preamble, “who is he?”

  “Good grief. You’ve been talking to Gwen, haven’t you?”

  “He isn’t still there, is he?”

  Abby rolled onto her back, suddenly aware of how hard her heart was pounding. She just couldn’t shake the stomach-dropping feeling that the nightmare had come back to haunt her for a reason. Last night had upped the ante on every risk she had ever taken with a man. When she was with Gar, everything seemed right—so right that she blithely and easily forgot about firings and failures.

  But the nightmare hadn’t scared her half as much this time as waking up to reality. Failing a stupid job seemed like a pipsqueak nothing compared to the risk of failing a man she’d fallen hopelessly, dangerously, in love with.

  “You’re aren’t talking,” her youngest sister scolded. “Is this guy still there?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re not awake yet.” Assuming her yes, Paige started pelting out directives. “There has to be a traveling phone somewhere in the place. Go get it. You can brush your teeth and go nuke some coffee while we’re talking.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but you’re the squirt in the family. The low man in the hierarchy. The youngest, the one we get to bully and give orders to. I’m in the lofty oldest-sister seat.”

  “Uh-huh. I want a name on this dude. And unless you answer all the questions correctly on his being a good guy, I’m likely to fly out there to take him out.”

  Abby scrambled downstairs to claim the traveling phone, and hooked the receiver in her ear as she hit the kitchen, poured instant coffee and put it in the microwave. “How did I get two sisters with a secret Rambo streak?”

  “Don’t you give me any grief. All the times we’ve called you, not once—not once—have you ever had a guy sleeping over. We don’t know whether to be happy for you. Or kill him. Either way, there isn’t a prayer of us not prying. Now, I don’t have to ask if he has a brain. You were never bowled over by a set of biceps. So he’s smart and he sure as gold must have something going for him to level you—”

  By then, Abby had hiked up the stairs and had a toothbrush in hand in the bathroom. “Excuse me? What is this ‘level me’ talk? Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours, you dimwit. Now. Are we conceivably seeing orange blossoms and rings in the future?’’

  The toothpaste tube shot a glob of rainbow gel onto the mirror. “For Pete’s sake, Paige. Nothing has remotely gone that far. Neither of us are thinking in that direction. We’re just getting to know each other—”

  “I’d say it’s gone beyond that, if he spent the night. How was it?”

  “Paige!”

  “Spit out the toothpaste. I can hardly understand you. And I’m just asking in general terms. Like Gwen puts it, on a scale of one to ten, ten being Mel Gibson and one being you could have more fun folding the laundry.”

  She spit. Then scrubbed her face with a cold washcloth. But nothing seemed to wake her up well enough to handle this phone call. “Didn’t we quit rating guys in junior high?”

  “When we’re talking to other grown-up women, yes. But you’re talking to a sister now. Gimme a number, or I’ll never let you get to that coffee.”

  “All right, all right. Five hundred and one.”

  “Holy cow.” All teasing disappeared from her sister’s voice. “Are you scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad scared, huh?”

  Abby gulped. “Yes.” It was a relief to say it. And although her sisters bullied and pried and interfered and teased, there was no one on earth she could have admitted that to but Paige or Gwen.

  And Paige had the sensitivity—and love—to understand that she wasn’t willing to talk further about the subject, because she dropped it. By the time Abby was downstairs, and pulling the mug of coffee from the microwave, her sister had moved on to another topic. “You’ve been in Tahoe for a month now. Have you made up your mind what you’re going to do next? Are you looking for a job, and what’s happening with your place in Los Angeles?”

  “My lease isn’t up on the L.A. place for another couple months, but I know I’m not going back there to live. I need to make a trip and box things up, get the place closed up.”

  “So when do you plan to do that packing-up thing?”

  Abby gulped down several sips, wishing she could inhale the caffeine. “I was thinking about going back in a couple of weeks, definitely before the end of February. It’s not like I have to rush, but it’s hanging over my head. I’m trying not to push myself into forcing a job decision—or even job hunting—until I’m ready. But closing up the apartment has to be done. I know positively that I don’t want anything to do with a big-city life-style again.”

  “You know you can come and camp here for as long as you want, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, sweetie, I know. And for the record—even when you’re being a total pain in the keester—I love you, sis.”

  “That’s mutual,” Paige said gruffly, and then hesitated. “You still beating yourself up about that job?”

  “Um…some.”

  “I figured you were. And I hope you don’t rush into another job, any other job, until you’ve really taken a serious break.” Paige paused again. “You know, I was thinking the other day…about how the three of us were so dead positive what we wanted when we were girls. We each started out on one road, and ended up doing something entirely different. But I don’t think we were wrong, Abby. I just think women’s roles are complicated in the nineties. And as we grew up and changed…the truth of what we wanted changed, too.”

  Even after they hung up, the conversation lingered in Abby’s mind. When she hiked upstairs to get dressed, her gaze lanced on the onyx-and-pearl cameo her sister had made for her—black and white, a symbol of truth, and Abby had always been a relentless truth lover…until she was fired.

  When she lost the job, it had seemed she didn’t know what the truth was anymore. Maybe she’d sold herself a lie about what really mattered to her, but finding a new direction for herself was not so easy. As hard as she was trying to change, to turn herself around, every woman’s role she tried seemed to fit her no better than a hand-me-down dress. She’d screwed up by giving a career too much importance, but her humorous debacles with cookie making and crafts were outright failures on the traditional homemaking front, too.

  Pensively Abby strode across the room to touch the smooth carved profile in the cameo. The woman had an inner glow. Not beauty, exactly, but a look of serenity that reflected a joy and confidence from the in-side out It seemed exactly what Abby had always searched for. Serenity. A feeling of being at peace with herself. It never mattered whether she could make cookies—or get a CEO position. What mattered was becoming a woman she could respect and like.

  Those answers might come in time, but her sister’s phone call jolted her into realizing what she was doing with Gar. They’d made love. That irrevocably upped the ante from a casual relationship to a potential serious one. Abby had no regrets. Last night, Gar had more than touched her heart. He’d touche
d her soul. But it was one thing to fall in love with a preciously special man—and another to selfishly risk hurting him.

  Abby hadn’t forgotten that his ex-wife had been an unhealthy, dependent woman, floundering in life. The last thing he needed was another flounderer. He needed an equal. And Abby needed to have the integrity to either come up to snuff and get her life together—or get off the playing field and leave him free to find someone who could.

  She turned away from the cameo and started burrowing into drawers for clothes, thinking, Two weeks. That wasn’t a lot of time to force answers from herself, but the trip she needed to make to Los Angeles would make a natural break point—if there had to be one.

  Gar had been forthright from the start; he wasn’t looking for a casual affair. And neither was she, but Abby had never anticipated that a man could capture her heart so swiftly, so completely. If she couldn’t control her feelings for him, she could at least control her actions. Her mind laid down indelible ground rules. She could be with him for these two weeks. She could do things for him, with him—as long as those things were clearly positive in his life. As long as she didn’t disappoint him.

  A woman had badly disappointed him before who was floundering in life. She couldn’t let it happen to him. Not again. And of all the things she’d seemed to fail at lately, none were worth a plugged nickel compared to this. She had the painful, dread-anxious feeling that to fail Gar was to fail herself as a woman—at a level she’d never understood before. At a level she wasn’t sure she could recover from.

  Gar stood in the doorway and rubbed the back of his neck. When he returned from a late-afternoon meeting with his banker, half the staff had reported that Abby was around. The chef claimed she’d poured a mug of hot chocolate for herself in the restaurant kitchen. Robb claimed she was talking to Simpson in the downstairs lobby. Simpson claimed she was in the upstairs office talking with Robb.