“I have to talk to you about something,” he said, his expression anxious.
It made her very uneasy. What if he’d decided that the latest incident was the last straw? What if he was leaving right here and now?
She glanced over to his closet and saw that he hadn’t started packing. Not yet, at least.
“All right,” she said, leaning lightly against the door frame. “What are we talking about?”
“Well…it’s a little difficult to explain, but…Could you maybe come in and sit down for a minute?”
“Sure,” she said slowly, suddenly very aware that all she had on was her robe.
He was a toss-everything-on-the-chair kind of man, so the only place to sit was on the edge of the bed. She perched there beside him, her heart racing and that sweet ache beginning inside her once more. He smelled of soap and summer. And when he looked at her, his eyes were so warm she could feel their heat in her heart.
Nick gazed at Carly, trying to make the right words form in his mind. But yesterday, when he’d convinced himself he had to come clean, she hadn’t been sitting beside him, smelling like desire and wearing only a thin robe. And he hadn’t been hard with wanting her.
“Nick? Is something wrong?”
“No…not exactly. It’s just that…” He tried to force the rest of the words out, but he simply couldn’t
What on earth had made him think he could make her understand? How was he even going to start? By saying, “Carly, I haven’t been quite straight with you, but just let me explain?”
Hell, she wouldn’t hear beyond the “I haven’t been quite straight with you,” and she wouldn’t understand. She’d think he’d taken her for a fool. But maybe if he told her how he felt about her first, then got around to explaining things…
“It’s just what, Nick?”
He cleared his throat. “Carly, I didn’t expect this to happen, but I guess we don’t have much control over…over who we fall in love with.”
She smiled. Tentatively at first, then it reached all the way to her eyes. “Oh, Nick,” she murmured. “Oh, Nick.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him so enticingly that every single thought in his head was of her.
Burying his hands in the rich silk of her hair, he breathed in her wonderful scent. Her kisses were the most delicious things he’d ever tasted, and he wanted her so desperately he’d die if he couldn’t have her.
He deepened their kiss, easing them both down onto the bed, then undoing her sash and sliding his hands beneath either side of her robe. As it fell open, leaving her all but naked, she reached for his zipper.
Quickly getting rid of his jeans and her robe, he snuggled close to her, kissing her throat, smoothing his hands across her baby-smooth skin, caressing her breasts—first with his hands and then with his mouth.
“Oh, Nick,” she whispered, raking her fingers through his hair. “You’re not too stiff and sore for this?”
He stopped and grinned at her. “You know, sometimes you say the darnedest things.”
“Sorry. And I didn’t mean to interrupt what you were doing, either.”
At that instant, he knew he was going to love her forever.
“NICK?” CARLY MURMURED, cuddling her sweatslicked body even closer to his. He kissed her shoulder. “Mmmm?”
“We’ve been here for hours. Do you think I should go down and get those sandwiches?”
“Do you want to move?”
That was a truly silly question. She wanted to stay right here with him for the next hundred years. “No, but I figured you might be hungry.”
“Well…yeah, now that you mention it. But I’ll go.”
“You’re not too stiff and sore?”
That made him laugh. “You know, for the rest of my life, every time I hear that phrase I’m going to remember today.”
“Really?” she said, a little cloud of unhappiness drifting through her mind. Remember?
But she’d known all along he was going to leave. Had known when she’d chosen to get this involved with him. Which meant that worrying about it now was foolish. She’d be better off just enjoying the time they had together and not thinking about the future.
She disentangled herself from the sheets and Nick, then grabbed her robe off the floor. “There’s no iced tea made, so I’ll go get things. Yo.. just stay where you are. And you’d like a beer?”
“Uh-uh. After last night, I think I’ll go with tea.”
He watched Carly until she’d disappeared down the hall, then stretched and grinned to himself.
He’d fallen in love with the most fantastic woman in the entire world. And even though he wasn’t sure how they were going to handle the logistics, he was sure they were going to turn this relationship into a permanent one.
Maybe that hadn’t been his thinking earlier, but things were far clearer in his mind now. It was obvious he’d be insane to do anything but spend the rest of his life with Carly.
He propped himself up against the headboard, then fantasized about their future together until she came back upstairs. When she did, she looked as if she’d seen a ghost
“What’s wrong?”
“I…nothing, I don’t think.” She put the tray of sandwiches and tea on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Now that the food was in front of him, he realized he was starving. But he left the sandwiches alone and waited to hear about whatever she didn’t think was wrong.
“It’s just…Nick, Dylan brought the mail up from the box this morning and left it in the kitchen. I had a boo at it while I was downstairs, and there’s a letter for you.”
She drew it out of the pocket of her robe, hesitated, then added, “From Gus.”
It took him a second to get up to speed. “You mean from our Gus?” he asked. “Our deceased Gus?”
She nodded. “It’s his handwriting.”
A funny little shiver ran up Nick’s spine. He’d never gotten a letter from a dead man before, and it was a weird feeling.
Carly sat down on the edge of the bed and held the envelope out to him. “It’s postmarked Port Perry. It was mailed to you in Edmonton, then somebody forwarded it here.”
“My neighbor. She said she’d send on anything that looked interesting.” Nick took the envelope, ripped it open and unfolded the pages. The letter was dated about a year ago, and began:
Dear Nick,
I left this with a friend, and instructed him to mail it a couple of weeks after my death.
By now, you’re aware that I bequeathed you a share of my estate, and I sincerely hope you intend to make a trip east to see about the property and business firsthand—for several reasons, which I’ll get to shortly.
I suspect learning about your inheritance raised a lot of questions in your mind, and I’m writing this letter with a view to answering some of them.
First, you must wonder how I even know you exist, let alone where you live. Well, that’s an easy one.
I still have a friend in Edmonton who over the years has kept me up to date on our family—not that there’s much family left now. I know you have some relatives on your mother’s side, but with me gone you’re the last of the Montgomerys.
Nick glanced at Carly, saw how curiously she was eyeing the letter, and handed her the first page. Then he read on.
This brings me to one of the reasons for the bequest. My friend tells me that, as far as he’s been able to establish, you’re an intelligent, personable man who’s interested in the opposite sex. (I couldn’t help wondering about that when you never married, but I have to assume my friend’s information is accurate.)
At any rate, I’ve always thought it would be a shame if our branch of the family tree died, but the older I got, the less I wanted the responsibility of a wife and children.
So, Nick, at this point you are it. The Montgomerys’ only potential procreator, we might say. And since you apparently haven’t found the right woman on your own, I thought I might
be able to help you out.
Which gets us back to my hope that you’ll be making a trip east, and thereby meet Carly Dumont, because she’s a truly wonderful woman. After living in the same house with her for many years, I can attest to that. But for some reason, she hasn’t found the right man.
“Why, the old devil,” Nick said. Leaning forward, he cupped Carly’s chin with his hand and kissed her.
“That was nice,” she said when he finished. “But why was Gus an old devil?”
“He’s playing matchmaker from the grave. He’s a little late, though, isn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
Grinning, Nick handed her page two and turned his attention to the next one.
I imagine you’re curious about why I divided the inheritance the way I did. Well, at one point, I intended to leave everything to you—out of guilt. I’m sure you’re only too well aware what I mean by that
He nodded to himself. Carly had said that Gus got into the animal actor business when he won a share of Wild Action in a poker game. Most likely, though, the money he’d used to buy out his partner, as well as to purchase this property, was money he’d stolen from the family business.
“Nick?” Carly said. “What Gus says here—about the fact that you’ve never married. Why haven’t you?”
“Never met the right woman.”
She eyed him for a moment, then said, “In a city the size of Edmonton, you’ve met thousands of women. And some of them must have been pretty close to right.”
“Well…then maybe it’s partly because I’ve always known what bad husband material cops are. You run into so much garbage that it gets hard to relate to normal people. Then there’s the shift work, and…Oh, a lot of different things. But the bottom line is that the divorce rate on the job is awfully high. And I always found it hard to believe I’d be an exception.”
“Then you’re never going to get married?”
He swallowed uneasily, but this wasn’t the moment to come clean. If he did, they’d get into a big discussion and it would be tomorrow before he got to finish reading this letter.
“Not as long as I’m a cop,” he finally said. Then he looked back down at the page before she could say anything more and picked up where he’d left off.
But the longer Carly worked for me, the more I felt that she deserved a share of things, since I never paid her half of what she was worth. And the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed right to give her a controlling interest.
Wild Action means so very much’to her that I didn’t want you in a position where you could force her to sell it. (I hope you’re not the sort of man who would do something like that, but I couldn’t be sure when I only had my friend’s information to go on.)
At any rate, I imagine that by now I’ve answered most of your questions except for one. Why did I do what I did, way back when?
Quickly, Nick turned to the next page, curious to see if Gus would admit the truth.
“Don’t I get that one?” Carly said.
She was expectantly eyeing the page he’d just finished, so he handed it to her.
By the way, if you do go east and meet Carly, I’d appreciate your not telling her I stole the money. She always thought more highly of me than I deserved, and I’d hate her illusions to be shattered after I’m gone.
But, that aside, the question is, why did I embezzle the money? Well, as you know, your mother grew up in the house next door to your father and me. Beyond that, I don’t know what they told you, but your mother and I dated for a while.
Nick paused. His parents had never told him that, but it could be true.
I was madly in love with her. At least I thought I was at the time. But her feelings for me weren’t nearly as strong. So, being a little crazy in my younger years, I decided I had to do something stupendous to win her. And the most stupendous idea I could come up with was to get my hands on so much money that I’d be able to buy her anything in the world.
When Nick turned to the next page, Carly reached for the one he’d just finished, saying, “Come on, I’m dying to see what he did, way back when.”
“Ahh…he’s gotten into some personal, family stuff. I…just let me finish the whole thing, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, clearly disappointed.
But she’d be a lot more disappointed if she learned that Gus had practically plunged his family into bankruptcy. And since Gus didn’t want her illusions shattered, so be it.
Pretending he couldn’t feel her eyes on him, Nick continued reading.
If I just had enough money, my naive reasoning went, she wouldn’t be able to resist me. And that’s what made me steal from the family business. There’s no excuse for having done it, except that I was an idiot, but at least now you know the reason.
In any event, I told your mother I’d acquired this fortune and asked her to run away with me—said we’d get married in some romantic place like Paris. Needless to say, the runningaway part was important. I knew it wouldn’t take long for my father and brother to discover what I’d done.
But instead of being swept off her feet, your practical mother’s first question was where had the money come from? I couldn’t tell her the truth, of course, so I said I’d won it at the race track. Unfortunately, I said it before I realized it wasn’t racing season. Your mother picked up on that in a second, though, and decided I must have done something illegal to get it. And she told me in no uncertain terms that she’d never marry a criminal.
So there I was with my big plan blown up in my face. There was no way of simply putting the money back without anyone ever knowing, and I just couldn’t face my father and admit what I’d done. (I expect you are aware that your grandfather was a most unforgiving man.)
Under the circumstances, I couldn’t see any alternative but to take off, and so I did. After that, your mother began dating your father. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Well, Nick, I can’t think of anything more to say—except to tell you that I know the odds on you and Carly falling in love are pretty remote, but I’ve always been a man to buck the odds.
Oh, and if you ever do have children, I’ve always hoped there’d someday be another Augustus Montgomery—even if I didn’t want to take on the responsibility of being a father.
So maybe after you have a Nick Junior and another son to name after your father, you might consider a “Gus.”
If I’m watching from somewhere, that would really tickle me.
Love, Your black sheep uncle, Gus.
Nick folded the last couple of pages, then held out his hand for the others.
“You’re not going to let me read the rest?” Carly asked
“Maybe later. But the only other thing he said about you was that he hopes we get married and name a son after him.”
Nick expected her to laugh at that, but she didn’t. She simply said, “Name a poor defenseless little baby Gus? Oh, I don’t think so. Although I might be able to live with naming a girl August.”
Nick gazed at her, his heart hammering. Was she saying that the idea of marrying him and having children…?
Hell, he didn’t know whether she was or not. At the moment, he wasn’t sure he’d know black from white. His thoughts had begun to spin so fast, his head felt dizzy.
Until a few hours ago, he’d been thinking that all he and Carly could have was a short-term thing. Now, suddenly, he was thinking in terms of the rest of their lives.
He liked that, and yet it scared the hell out of him. But right this second just had to be the time to explain how things really stood with his job and all.
Then Carly eased closer and wrapped her arms around his neck, and that thought got lost in the spin cycle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Moment of Truth
IT WAS ALMOST eight o’clock, but the sun was nowhere near setting, so after Nick lit the candles on the kitchen table he closed the shutters. Then he let his mind drift back a few hours.
He still
wasn’t sure which had surprised him more—Gus’s off-the-wall suggestion that he and Carly should get married or the fact that she hadn’t said the idea was ridiculous.
Of course, she really hadn’t said anything—except that she wouldn’t name a baby Gus. And then, after they’d made love again, the issue hadn’t resurfaced. But they had to talk about what was going on between them. About where, if anywhere, it might be leading.
Before they did, though, he just had to tell her the truth. He couldn’t put it off any longer, no matter how angry it made her.
He glanced at the table one more time. The candles, a white cloth, the good cutlery and dishes, salad and wine on the table, and his specialty—pepper steaks— under the broiler.
It was the best he could do. He only hoped it was enough to put her in the right frame of mind to see the humor in the situation.
“Now, no smart remarks from you,” he warned Crackers. “And no begging at the table,” he told the Marx brothers. “I want this dinner to be perfect”
He considered telling the cats to behave themselves, too, but since they never listened to him, he didn’t bother—simply gave the table a final onceover, then headed for the front porch, where Carly was sitting with a glass of iced tea.
“Okay, dinner’s ready,” he said, opening the screen door.
She followed him to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. “Oh, Nick, this looks so…romantic.”
“Hey, I’m a romantic kind of guy.” He held her chair, then got the steaks out of the oven and the vegetables from the microwave.
Sitting down across from her, he poured the wine and raised his glass. “To Gus. For bringing us together.”
She smiled one of her fabulous smiles. “I’m awfully glad he did. If you hadn’t been here the last little while, I don’t know how I’d have survived.”
“Well…helping out is as much to my benefit as yours.”
“No, Nick, it isn’t nearly as much. We both know that.”
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