The 200% Wife

by Jennifer Greene

  Lots of people had seen her. But he’d followed all the leads as faithfully as a cop after a murder suspect, and come up with no body.

  Until now.

  Technically the office was the first place he should have looked, since this was where he’d set her up with a computer and desk space days ago. Heaven knew what had made Abby change her mind so fast—particularly as she was still claiming to have no forte in business—but she’d taken on “playing” with a public relations program for the lodge with bulldog determination and racehorse speed. He’d never wanted her to work that hard, but it was like trying to stop a moving train.

  Still, he hadn’t thought to look in the office, because of the hour. It was almost eight at night, blacker than a thief’s heart outside, the wind howling up a blizzard storm. It was time for normal folks to have dinner dishes done and be curled up in front of a sitcom.

  He didn’t live normal hours. Neither did she. But he’d just never expected to find her holed up in front of a computer terminal this late. Her hair looked like a silvery-gold curtain in the eerie monitor light. A long black sweater made a dramatic contrast to her ivory coloring and blond hair. Desire stirred, just from looking at her—but that wasn’t headline news.

  “What,” he said from the doorway, “do you think you’re doing?”

  “Skiing,” she answered him. She flashed him a welcoming “hello” smile, but her eyes darted right back to the computer monitor.

  “Funny, you don’t look like you’re skiing.”

  “That’s how much you know.” With her gaze still glued to the computer, she lifted one long, shapely leg—and pulled up her pants cuff. “Is that the mother of all bruises on my shin, or what? And I’ve got another award-winner on my fanny—although I don’t believe it’d be politically correct to show you that one at the moment. I’m getting good on the slopes, Cameron.”

  “So I hear.” He was almost hearing a report on every breath she took from his employees, all of whom she’d won over like a witch weaving a magic wand. He had a good staff. A fine staff. But no one had ever won over Robb and Simpson, and Jennifer had been known to screech bloody murder if any outsider set foot in the kitchens—except for her. “Did you, um, realize it was eight o’clock?”

  “Can’t be,” she assured him blithely. “I came in off the slopes around three, freezing, just thought I’d pop in here and play with some marketing ideas for a couple of minutes while I warmed up…. Your cousin is adorable, isn’t he?”

  The last Gar noticed; the subject on the table was her problem with losing track of time, not his family tree. But he played along. “Which cousin?”

  “Ryder.”

  “Adorable? Are you kidding? Ryder’s fat, prematurely balding, and short as a fence post.”

  “Now don’t try selling manure to a horse trader, big guy.” Her fingers clattered on the keyboard nonstop. “I may have only talked to him on e-mail, but I know men.”

  “So you keep telling me.” It was another of her infamous fibs, as far as Gar could tell. She hadn’t been a virgin that first night they made love, but her lack of experience had come as a stunning surprise.

  So had her responsiveness—that night, and the four nights since. Abby was slowly, dangerously and maybe irrevocably insinuating herself into his mind, his nerves, his heart. She made love the way she did everything else. Total immersion. 200%. Forget the obstacles and ignore any risk. Unfortunately, she tended to tease him 200%, too.

  “So what gives you the idea that my baby cousin is adorable?” So she wouldn’t miss it, he stressed the “baby.”

  “I just know, that’s all. And for the record, he asked me to marry him.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Just on e-mail, and don’t be raising your eyebrows at me. If you hadn’t told him to introduce himself to me via cyberspace, it’d never have happened. He’s a real e-mail flirt.” She sighed humorously, but then turned serious. “Cameron, he’s a lamb in the woods. A brainchild. So cute. So bright. But so naive. And I need your help. We were just chatting about his new business, and I offered him a couple ideas—nothing, really—and I got a note from him that he’s sending me a thousand bucks and putting me on retainer.”

  “So what part in that scenario do you need my help for? The marriage proposal, or knowing how to cash a check?”

  “Handling the marriage proposal was nothing. I told him I weighed three hundred pounds and was built like a Hummer.”

  Gar scratched his chin. “That could present a real interesting problem if you meet him in person.”

  “One crosses one’s bridges when one comes to them,” she said judiciously. “And what I want your help with is the money. I don’t want his money, Gar, and he’s just getting this company started. I just offered him a little friendly advice, that’s all. I don’t know one thing about the gadget thingamabob he’s manufacturing. Which I told him.”

  “Uh-huh.” She’d told him a lot of things, many of which would take a magnifying glass to find a grain of truth. The more he was around her, the more her background and natural bent in some field of marketing was obvious—and so was her love for that kind of work. Yet she persisted, vociferously, in claiming a total dislike for anything to do with business.

  Honesty mattered to him, way too much, for him to ignore this tiny problem he had with her. Yet he was slowly coming to understand that Abby wasn’t precisely fibbing to him—or to the rest of the world, but more to herself. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, she seemed determined that broccoli would turn into carrots if she just said it aloud often enough.

  Gar suspected the base of the problem had to be that mysterious “thing” she admitted to being ashamed of. So far, she’d ducked the subject faster than quicksilver whenever he tried to bring it up. Initially he’d guessed that the problem had to be a man—maybe a married man, something hairy like that—because Abby definitely had one of those staunch New England consciences, and the problem had to be seriously dicey to wrestle that kind of shame from her.

  Initially, he’d also figured that he was gonna hate the story, and really hate the guy. But judging her had never crossed his mind. Gar, too, had made mistakes of his own. If he could just coax her into bringing the problem out in the open, he couldn’t imagine anything she’d done that they couldn’t get past…or handle together.

  Time had passed since Gar first reasoned that out, though, and he’d since concluded positively that his first guesses had been wrong. The problem wasn’t a man. Couldn’t be. She seemed too stunned at her own responsiveness in bed. She was a poignant contradiction between terrible shyness, and honest wildness. How such a naturally sensual, earthy lover of a woman could be so unfamiliar with the pleasures of her own body was beyond him.

  He decided he might get enough of her. By the twenty-third century.

  In the meantime, she obviously intended to get off the computer, because she was standing up with her fanny in the air—but her fingers were still clicking those keys.

  “Stanford,” he said sternly, “I’m going to unplug the computer if you don’t turn it off.”

  “I am, I am—”

  “You have to be hungry. Think food. Think a nice glass of wine, and dinner, and’ a decadent chocolate dessert—”

  “Chocolate!” That did it. She punched the save button and exited, grabbed her jacket and purse, and was at his side faster than a racehorse at the Derby.

  “Nothing works with you half as well as bribery,” he teased. Hooking an arm around her shoulder, he steered her out the door and toward the lobby. “We can eat wherever you want, but I want to head upstairs for a couple of minutes, if it’s okay. I’ve been in this suit all day, just want to change in something more comfortable.”

  “No problem. And how’d the meeting with your banker go?”

  “Long and boring. All it takes to make a banker happy is giving him money. It’s no fun when there’s no challenge….” As they passed the front desk en route to the elevator, Gar cocked his
head toward Simpson. “What did you do to my receptionist?”

  “Simpson? Nothing.”

  “I hardly recognized her when she showed up for work this morning.”

  “Oh, that. She looks wonderful without the extra five pounds of mascara, doesn’t she?”

  “You told her to tone down the hair and makeup?”

  Abby’s eyebrows arched. “Heavens, no. I’d never tell another woman what to do. I think everyone’s entitled to their own sense of style. But we were sort of casually chitchatting about how heavy makeup can appear…defensive. Like you’re hiding behind it. And there are certain guys who’ll pounce on you if they sense you have a weakness….”

  “And?”

  “And she has a lot of guys pouncing on her. The wrong kind of guys. She came to her own conclusions about throwing out the circus paint, Gar, I really had nothing to do with it….”

  So Abby claimed about everything else she’d done over the past few days. That first morning, Gar hadn’t been sure what made her change her mind about coming in. But she’d popped in “for an hour” and never quite gotten around to leaving. The next day, she’d come to ski—and had—but had somehow ended up paired with Robb, poking her nose in every cranny and cupboard in the lodge. And today was no different from the others. She’d come “to play.” And ended up working slave hours on this public relations program for him.

  Twice, she had bluntly and carefully asked if she was intruding. She’d gotten all nervous, hugging her arms, said he needed to be frank with her—she didn’t want to be in his way. But she only had about two weeks of straight vacation time left, so if she had any serious chance of coming up with some good marketing ideas for him, she really needed to know more about the lodge and how it was run.

  Gar didn’t object to her knowing a damn thing, and she wasn’t remotely in his way. Hell, there wasn’t an employee in the place she hadn’t charmed. He was the only one who never seemed to see her.

  But her mentioning that “two weeks” had come back to haunt him. Usually, when a couple made love, the woman half of the pair hustled to pin the man down. Abby seemed to be warning him that their relationship had an end point—that was coming up ominously and imminently fast.

  Right now, though, she wasn’t running. As soon as he unlocked the door to his suite, she dropped her things on the couch and aimed for his minifridge. “You want a beer? Or a glass of wine?”

  “I want a kiss.”

  “Honestly. Men.” She bounced to her feet and. swung her arms around him with a cheeky grin—and a big scold. “Don’t try taking more than one, Cameron, until you feed me.”

  But she gave him more than one. The first was a sassy bird peck, but he hadn’t kissed her all day, for God’s sake. And she never came close enough to even brush his hand, not in front of his employees or anywhere near people in the lodge. He respected her sense of decorum…but he liked stripping it away from her even more.

  She’d missed him. Maybe it was his imagination that she was scared of this relationship and planned to fly. She never kissed him like she was going anywhere, ever. Her mouth molded under his, softer than whipped cream, tasting him, teasing him, taking his mouth, no different from the yearning, hungry way he took hers.

  She pulled back her head. Eventually. And muttered, “Dammit, Cameron,” which about summed up his immediate problem with frustration, too.

  “Are we, um still hungry for dinner?”

  “No,” she said dryly. “But it’s not like that problem’s going anywhere, and I know you’ve been on your feet since daybreak. You need food. And a chance to wind down, I think.”

  “I would like to take a quick shower and get out of this damn suit—”

  “So go. I’ll pour myself a glass of wine and catch some CNN. I’m perfectly fine on my own. Take your time.”

  He had no intention or interest in taking his time. Peeling off the suit and a hot, fast shower couldn’t have taken him ten minutes. He attacked his chin with an electric razor and pulled on jeans and an old black sweater, mulling over how she took care of him. It wasn’t like she overfussed. She just had a way of assessing his mood and picking up whether he was tired or revved up or whatever.

  She was 500% woman, right to the bone, Gar mused. But her feminine perception, her instinctive way of showing caring, was subtle, not intrusive, not demanding. He hoped he was the same way with her from the masculine side of the fence, and he couldn’t stop thinking of how good they were together—good for each other—and how already he couldn’t imagine her not in his life long-term. Slow down, he mentally warned himself.

  But when he strode back into the living room, he expected to find Abby slowed down…and instead, she was pacing in front of CNN, holding her jacket in one hand, and his in the other. The instant she spotted him, she announced, “We’re leaving.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You didn’t hear the phone ring?”

  “I thought I did once, but between the shower and the buzz of the electric razor—”

  “Uh-huh. Well, there’ve been three calls. All women. Your ex-wife. Then a woman with a dark, sultry voice by the name of Narda. Then a peppy little redhead-sounding voice by the name of Suzanne.” She tossed him his jacket. “I put your answering machine on. Your other women are simply going to have to get ahold of you another time. You, Buster, are coming with me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Once they left Gar’s lodge, starvation was the first problem.that needed solving. Abby admitted to taking charge, but somehow a simple dinner plan had accidentally become a little…decadent.

  Heaven knew, she was striving to obliterate the workaholic side of her character and become a lazy, laid-back hedonist. Until now, this worthwhile goal had been a total failure. She was trying. But mastering laziness refused to come easily. She didn’t do “idle” well. Shaking loose the wholesome, responsible—boring—side of her personality had been backbreakingly hard work.

  Tonight, though, she was tasting her first heady flavor of success. Her gaze wandered around the bath-room. Two vanilla candles flickered from the shelf of the square malachite tub. A few feet away, a fat peach, candle reflected a teardrop flame in the long vanity mirror. Whirlpool jets thrummed a rolling surge of hot water. The piped-in stereo played Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D barely loud enough to hear, but still music to bring out the winsome romantic in the most hopeless cynic. Steam whispered around the semidark room, clinging to the rich emerald-green malachite, dancing around the candlelight, carrying the scents of peach and vanilla into the shadows.

  The white cartons of Chinese lining the tub shelf seemed a tad out of place. Eating dinner in the bathtub, in fact, had initially chafed against all of Abby’s New England puritan nerves. It was disgraceful. It was sinful. It was silly.

  But it was working, Abby mused dryly. She’d only been joking when she brought up the idea to Gar. The thing was, when they finally caught up with each other around eight, she’d caught the strain lines around his eyes, the tense muscles in his shoulders. He was more revved up than an overheated engine. She’d lived a workaholic’s hours too many years not to recognize the symptoms—he’d had a good workday, just too long. Maybe he was whipped, but it wasn’t that easy to turn off the power switch.

  Gar had outright laughed when she suggested the whimsical idea of eating Chinese in the bathtub. He hadn’t taken the outlandish idea any more seriously than she meant it, but he’d started relaxing with that laughter…which was exactly what he needed to do. And it wasn’t half as hard as she expected to jettison her New England puritan nerves and follow through, when the rewards for misbehaving were right in front of her eyes.

  He was naked now. He’d staked out one corner of the tub, she had another, and beneath the concealing bubbly water, their toes touched. Both of them had knees raised—knees were hardly substitutes for tables, but they successfully balanced cartons of Chinese and chopsticks pretty well. Glasses of white wine glowed in the candelight. His skin l
ooked as burnished as a pirate’s. Water droplets riveled over the smooth hard slope of his shoulders, droplets that sneaked into his wiry chest hair and hid there.

  Her gaze had a nasty tendency to stray toward his body. Not a good idea, when looking at him inspired a hopeless hormonal reaction, and just then she didn’t want to be distracted. She was no pro at chopsticks. Gar was, and most of that hard-edged tension had slowly seeped out of his muscles. But not all. They still had one teensy thing to discuss, she suspected; before he would—or could—completely relax.

  He’d leveled a pint of shrimp fried rice and another of steak kow before he got around to bringing it up.

  “Um, about those other women calling me…”

  It was the first time Abby had ever seen him nervous. She decided even a saint couldn’t have resisted stringing him along just a little bit. She raised her eyebrows. “You’re naked with me in a bathtub and you want to discuss other women, Cameron?”

  “Actually, it seemed the most logical time—considering I was already in hot water up to my neck.” Gar cleared his throat, then blustered on. “You were right about Suzanne being a redhead. She’s my broker. And she tends to call me at night because I’m hard to reach at a desk during the day. She’s about fifty, fifty-five, married thirty years, two grandkids—”

  “Uh-huh. Pass the war sui gui, would you?”

  He checked the row of white cartons perched on the rim of the malachite tub and handed her the appropriate one, but his eyes homed in on her face with a watchful wariness. “Narda…she’s a little more awkward to explain.”

  When Abby dived into the war sui gui without further comment, he forged ahead with that awkward explaining. “I’ve known her almost from the time I moved here. In the beginning, we went out just to see if it was going anywhere. In more recent times, we’d occasionally call each other if either of us needed a convenient date, some function or occasion where it was easier to walk in as a pair. She’s nice—great sense of humor, a lot of fun. A friend. You’d like her. In fact, I think you’d like her a lot.”