THE MILLIONAIRE SHE MARRIED

by Christine Rimmer

  She couldn't resist. She bent one more time, gave him one last, lingering kiss, one he bore in a breath-held, agonized silence.

  Then she raised her gaze to his again. "Come down to me."

  He didn't move, only looked at her, a look that burned like the light from the slowly sinking sun, a look that claimed her. She shivered a little, but not with cold.

  She took his right hand, tugged on it. "Mack…"

  With his left hand, he reached for the drawer in the nightstand and came out with a small foil-wrapped pouch.

  Jenna stared at the pouch and remembered.

  Mack had always used protection.

  Because he did not want to make a baby.

  She closed her eyes, old hurts rising.

  "Jenna." He said her name so gently.

  She kept her eyes closed, despising herself a little for her own reaction. She was not the lost and confused young woman she had once been, the woman who had begged for a baby to fill the emptiness in her life.

  It was totally appropriate that he'd have protection. Totally appropriate and right.

  And really, what would she have done if he hadn't shown a little forethought here, since she wasn't on the Pill and she'd failed to pack a diaphragm? Would she have pushed him away at the last minute? Or worse, taken a foolish, thoughtless chance and possibly ended up pregnant, when nothing between them was settled or sure?

  She opened her eyes, gave him a smile. A real smile, though perhaps it did quiver a little at the corners. "I see you're prepared."

  "Did you think I wouldn't be?"

  "I guess I didn't think about it either way. Until now."

  "I made no secret of wanting you, Jenna."

  "No. No, of course you didn't. You did the right thing, to be ready when the moment came. This is just … old stuff I'm reacting to, that's all."

  His eyes narrowed briefly. She knew that he understood exactly what "old stuff" she meant. But he didn't speak of it.

  She sighed.

  He was staring down at her. Waiting, still clearly aroused, but holding himself tightly in check. The light in the room was redder, deeper, as the sun touched the ocean at the edge of the world.

  "Do you want to stop?" he asked, his voice rough, dangerous—yet at the same time rigidly controlled.

  She pressed her lips together, drew in a breath and shook her head.

  Another surge of heat flared in his eyes. And then his face changed, the look of strain passing, leaving his hard features softer.

  He tore open the foil pouch.

  She held out her hand. "Let me."

  He said her name then, softly, hungrily, with a needful tenderness that brought tears to shimmer in her eyes and made everything suddenly all right again.

  He set the torn pouch in her palm. She peeled it open to reveal the condom inside. Then slowly, lovingly, she rolled it down over him.

  She set the empty pouch on the nightstand and held out her hand again. This time he took it, coming down onto the bed with her, straddling her, reaching for her other arm and raising them both above her head.

  He held her there, in that vulnerable position, rising up enough to slip his legs between hers and then kneeling at the juncture of her open thighs.

  He bent close, kissed the soft whiteness at the underside of each upraised arm. She moaned, lifting her torso. After a moment of sweetest agony, he gave her what she wanted, his mouth closing hot and strong over a nipple. She moaned again, and pushed herself toward his suckling kiss.

  He drew deep. She felt the pull, down in the female heart of her. She wanted to reach for him, to drag him down and take him inside her.

  But he continued to hold her arms helpless over her head, as he went on kissing her breast, drawing so deeply that she thought she might faint from the sheer erotic pull.

  She couldn't bear it.

  Yet she did bear it.

  And bore it some more when he turned his attention to the other breast.

  At last, long after the point when she felt absolutely certain she could bear it no longer, his mouth went roaming. He trailed one endless wet kiss over the top swell of her breast, up to her neck, her throat, her jaw, her cheek…

  He sank down upon her as his mouth covered hers. She opened for him, rising toward him as he filled her. They cried out together.

  Perfect, yes. Exactly right.

  Even after all these years.

  They began to move together, finding the old rhythms instinctively, with no thought or effort required. She wrapped her legs around him and they were one, in the red, burning light of the slowly setting sun.

  She felt his pleasure cresting. Her completion rose to meet it. They hit the peak together on an endless, seeking kiss.

  * * *

  Jenna realized she must have slept.

  The sun had set long ago, the red glow slowly fading to darkness. Now the room was silver and shadows. She lifted her head. Out the window, the night sky looked hazy, the stars bled away in the gleam of harbor lights.

  Mack lay almost on top of her, his cheek against her breast and an arm across her waist. She looked down at his head, dark in the half-light, and she smiled a woman's knowing smile.

  He stirred, as if he felt her looking at him. She wanted to touch him. Maybe she should have let him sleep some more. But the reality of having him here, where she could put her hand on him, was too tempting to resist.

  So she ran a finger around the whorling shape of his ear.

  He lifted his head and opened droopy eyes.

  Then he smiled. And she smiled right back—just the kind of smiles they had given each other nine years before, the first night they met, when they'd ended up right where they were now: in bed together. That night, she remembered, Byron had jumped on the mattress between them, settled himself in and purred so loudly that they had both laughed.

  Mack touched her cheek with a finger and guided a swatch of hair back behind her ear. "You're frowning. Why?"

  "I miss Byron. I wish he were here."

  He chuckled. "I don't know. The way I remember it, he always took up more than his fair share of the bed."

  She idly traced a figure eight on the hard bulge of muscle at his shoulder. "I hope he's doing all right. He needs companionship, and I have this feeling that Lacey might be leaving him alone too much."

  "I'm sure he's fine." He kissed her chin.

  A question occurred to her. And now that she'd truly given herself to this two-week endeavor, she felt perfectly easy in her mind about asking it.

  "Mack?"

  He rolled to his back, then turned his head to lift an eyebrow at her. "What?"

  "Why did you fight me so hard over Byron—and then all of a sudden just decide to let it go?"

  He turned his face to the ceiling and put his arm across his eyes. Unease tightened her stomach. Was he going to evade, or maybe become angry with her for bringing up an unpleasant part of their past?

  He dropped his arm and met her eyes again. He didn't look angry at all. The tightness in her stomach faded away. "Hey. I had a real soft spot for that damn cat. And I considered him mine as much as he was yours."

  "I know. But those aren't the real reasons you tried to take him from me, are they?"

  He was watching the shadows on the ceiling again. A silent moment passed before he answered. "The 'real' reasons aren't so simple. They're angry reasons, and they're vengeful. I'm not proud to admit to them."

  "Please. I just want to understand."

  His chest rose and fell as he drew a deep breath. "I don't know. Sometimes I think that honesty between the sexes has been highly overrated."

  She realized he was teasing her. She nudged him in the side. "Come on. Tell me."

  He rolled over, lifted himself up on his elbows and stared at the headboard, which was an interesting creation of dark wood and wrought iron. "I didn't want to let you go," he said, "but I knew you weren't coming back to me. And I was damn insulted that you wouldn't take any alimony. I'd worked
my tail off to make a decent living—and the price, I was beginning to realize, had been losing you. It seemed to me that the least you could do was take some of the money, ease my pride a little. That way I could have told myself that at least I'd been good to you financially. But you wouldn't take any money. All you wanted was the cat."

  She touched his back, starting at the swell of his shoulder and running her hand downward, over hard muscle and tight skin. "So you decided you wouldn't let me have him."

  "That's right. But after a year of the old back-and-forth, demands and counter-demands from your lawyer and then mine, I started to see it a little bit differently."

  She suggested, "You mean you realized you were acting like an ass?"

  He leaned closer, kissed the tip of her nose. "Exactly. And I told my lawyer to get it over with, that you could have the cat."

  She dared to ask the next meaningful question. "So then, if you wanted to get it over with, why didn't you sign the papers?"

  He let out a long breath. "I thought we'd been through that one. I didn't sign the papers because I didn't really want a divorce from you, not subconsciously, anyway. Your lawyer worked up the settlement and sent it to my lawyer—who was a colleague of mine, by the way, someone who worked in the firm, which I left shortly after you and I came to terms."

  "Because of the class-action suit?"

  "Right. The firm wouldn't touch it. But I knew I could win it and that it would pay off big. So I left the firm. And when the divorce papers came through, my lawyer got hold of me and told me to come in and sign them. I never got around to it. I was too busy with the lawsuit, getting what I'd always wanted, making myself into a millionaire—or that's what I told myself. I paid my lawyer off and, periodically, his assistant would call me to remind me to come in. In the end, I went and got those papers, thinking that I'd take care of them myself. But I didn't. I stuck them in a drawer and told myself I'd forgotten about them."

  He glanced directly at her, saw her disbelieving expression and added, "Just as I'm sure you told yourself you didn't notice that the final decree never happened to come through. But, as I have pointed out before, I think you did notice. And you didn't do anything about it, either. Not for all these years."

  She acquiesced. "Maybe you're right."

  "Whew." He pretended to wipe his brow. "I think we're making progress here."

  "So do I. And I want us to continue to make progress." She touched the side of his face, which was slightly rough now with evening stubble. "I have another question. A request, really. And before I ask it, I want to say that I promise you, I do intend to stay with you for the remainder of our two weeks. I want these two weeks now. I hope you believe me."

  She saw in his eyes that he knew what was coming. He moved back to his own pillow. "Damn it, Jenna."

  She didn't allow his retreat, but canted up on an elbow, so that she could wrap her hand around the back of his neck. She rubbed, gently but insistently. "Mack…"

  He gave her a measuring, wary look. "You want the divorce papers, don't you?"

  She leaned closer and kissed his rough cheek. "I do, Mack. And I want them now."

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  He rolled away from her, brought his feet to the floor and rose to loom over her. "Why?"

  She sat and plumped her pillow against the headboard. Then she reached for the sheet and pulled it over herself. "I want us to start fresh, Mack. You don't need to hold those papers over my head anymore to get me to be with you. Please. Just give them up."

  He stared down at her. He had on his lawyer look now. Calculating. Distant. "You don't need them until our two weeks are over."

  She ached for him then, for that part of him that still couldn't quite trust her good intentions, the part of him, she realized now, that always expected to be abandoned in the end.

  "You're right," she said. "I don't need the papers right now. But I do need for you to give them to me now."

  He asked again, "Why?"

  She phrased her answer with care. "You agreed to certain things, Mack. First, that you would sign those papers five and half years ago. And then, a few weeks ago, that you would sign them and send them to me. Those were … promises, Mack. Promises you broke. I think you owe it to me to do what you can now to make good on those promises. I think you owe it to yourself."

  A muscle worked in his jaw. "What about the first promise? The one we made to each other. To have and to hold, damn it. What about that?"

  "The time came when we both agreed we couldn't keep that promise anymore."

  "Not for me it didn't. You were the one who left."

  Patience, she thought. She raked her tangled hair away from her face and kept her voice calm and low. "Yes, Mack. I did leave. And you may be right that we both knew we weren't … finished with each other. But I also believe there was a time when we both accepted that our marriage had ended."

  "I didn't," he said. "I never accepted that, not really."

  She reached out and caught his hand. He didn't pull away. She decided to consider that a good sign. "Come back to bed. I didn't want this to end up a battle. I honestly didn't." She lifted the sheet with her free hand. "Please?"

  His jaw remained set, his eyes cool and wary—but he allowed her to pull him back to the bed. Using the hand that wasn't holding his, she propped his pillow against the headboard for him and then settled the sheet over them both.

  "It was over, Mack. You know it was."

  He looked down at their joined hands. "What is this? You just have to be right about this, is that it?"

  "No. I'm only trying to convince you to do what you know in your heart is the fair and best thing."

  He squeezed her hand—and not gently. "Don't try to tell me what's in my own damn heart."

  "Mack. Let's look at this another way."

  He slid her a suspicious glance. "What other way?"

  She sucked in a breath and took another big leap into even more dangerous territory. "Tell me this. Have you made love with any other women since we've been apart?"

  He turned toward her then. His eyes gleamed through the dark, feral and a little frightening. "Your point being?"

  "My point being that I know you took your wedding vows seriously. You would not have slept with someone else unless you believed at the time that you weren't married to me anymore."

  They stared at each other. Jenna's heart drummed in her own ears. She felt like a woman who'd decided to stroll across a swamp—using alligator backs as stepping-stones.

  Mack asked softly, "Did you? Make love with anyone else?"

  She knew for certain then that there had been other women. Strangely, the knowledge caused her no more than a twinge of sad regret. Whom he'd slept with in the time they'd been apart was his business. Jenna truly believed what she was trying to make him see: they had been divorced—in their hearts, anyway. She only hoped that his lovers had been good to him, and that he had treated them well in return.

  "No, Mack. I didn't make love with anyone else, but not because I felt I was still married. I was divorced from you. I just … never found anyone else I wanted that way."

  "Not even the good doctor?"

  "No. Not even Logan." She waited, almost wishing she hadn't taken the argument in that particular direction.

  He looked straight ahead, toward the door to the main room. "You make me ashamed."

  "I swear to you, that was not my intention."

  He gave her hand another quick, hard squeeze. She squeezed back.

  He said, "You'll have to let go—if you want me to get those damn papers from my suitcase."

  She did let go. And he went into the walk-in closet in the corner of the room. When he came out again, he was carrying a large manila envelope. He sat on the edge of the bed and opened it, then pulled the papers out. "Look them over. They're signed and notarized."

  "I trust you," she said.

  He chuckled at that, and ruefully shook his head. Then
he shoved everything back into the envelope and handed it to her.

  "Go on," he said. "Put it away."

  She canted forward and kissed him. "Thank you."

  "Go ahead. Do it."

  She pushed back the sheet and left the bed, strolling nude to the door, through the main room, and into her part of the suite. There, she tucked the envelope into a side pocket of one of her suitcases.

  When she returned to him, he had slid beneath the sheet and leaned up against the headboard again. He watched her walk toward him.

  "You look good, Jenna."

  She smiled her pleasure at the compliment as she pulled back the sheet and got in beside him.

  "Are you hungry?" he asked. "It's after nine."

  She shook her head. "Not right now. You?"

  "Not really."

  She felt his hand brush her thigh. She cuddled up closer, rested her head against his chest. "It's been a long time."

  "Too damn long." He put his hand beneath her chin and guided it up so that their lips could meet.

  * * *

  The small funeral chapel was filled with flowers.

  There were arrangements on stands, in tall vases, in baskets and in urns. Doreen's especial favorite had been white roses, so two giant vases of them flanked the open casket. Unlike most hothouse blooms, they actually gave off a scent.

  "Lovely," Lois said. "The smell of those roses…"

  "Dory would be pleased," Alec added in a tight voice.

  Inside the open casket, Doreen Henderson McGarrity Telford lay in a bed of white satin, her tiny, thin hands resting on her stomach. She wore a trim blue suit with a slim knee-length skirt. The short jacket had three-quarter sleeves and a round collar. A little round hat with a half veil sat daintily atop her graying chestnut-brown hair.

  During the viewing, which preceded the funeral ceremony, Jenna stared down at Doreen's small, serene face, thinking that she looked like a nice, aging housewife from an earlier era, a nice housewife who had lain down for a nap in her favorite suit.

  Jenna sat with Mack and Alec and Lois, in the front row. The chapel was small, and only about a third full.

  "Mostly people from the agency," Alec whispered. "The people we worked with. And a few neighbors, of course…"