A Proper Wife

by Sandra Marton

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed. OK, he thought. OK, let’s have this out, here and now.

  He jerked his head up, spotted a restaurant marquee down a side street, and grabbed hold of Devon’s wrist.

  “Where are we going?” she demanded.

  “To have lunch,” he growled, “and to talk, like civilized human beings.”

  Ryan hadn’t chosen the restaurant so much as it had chosen him. The second he tugged Devon inside the door, he knew he’d made a mistake.

  The place he’d unknowingly entered was one of Manhattan’s newest, most exclusive restaurants. Ryan had been in it once and once had been enough. He was not impressed by pretention, and pretention was what this pocket of smoked glass, recessed lights, and overbearing waiters specialized in.

  He was about to turn on his heel and walk out—but before he could do that, he caught the captain looking over him and Devon, all but sneering at their jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers.

  Considering Ryan’s mood, wild horses couldn’t have dragged him out after that.

  The captain approached, his face screwed up with distaste.

  “Did you have a reservation, sir?”

  Ryan looked beyond the tiny entryway. The restaurant was a sea of black leather booths, most of them empty.

  “No,” he said coldly.

  “Ah, well then, I’m afraid—”

  “Your restaurant is all but empty. I see no need for a reservation. We’ll have a booth, please, and lunch menus.”

  “Sir, even if I ignored our reservation policy, you are not dressed—”

  “Are you saying the lady and I have no clothes on?”

  Devon bit her lip. “Ryan,” she murmured, “really, I’m not hungry at all. Can’t we just—”

  Ryan’s hand tightened on her arm. “Show us to a booth, please.”

  “Truly, I cannot.”

  “Truly, you can.”

  “Sir, I have already said—”

  “I know what you said.” Ryan’s jaw thrust forward, his green eyes glittering dangerously. “And I know what I said. Now, what’s it going to be, pal? A table? Or a little man-to-man chat?”

  Color swept into the captain’s face. He spun on his heel, marched them past several interested diners, and led them to a booth.

  Devon kept her head up and her eyes fixed straight ahead until they were seated. Then she leaned forward and shot a furious look at Ryan.

  “Are you incapable of behaving civilly?” she snapped.

  “I am incapable of suffering fools gladly,” Ryan snapped back. “Now, what do you want for lunch?”

  “What are you so upset about, Ryan? I should think a ‘man about town’ like you wouldn’t be the least bit put off by running into his mistress with his—with me at his side!”

  “Sharon is not my mistress.”

  “Sorry. Wrong terminology. I meant to say your lover.”

  “She’s not that, either. She told you, our relationship ended months ago.”

  “Yes.” Devon smiled, but it felt as if there was a knife twisting in her heart. “Five months and three weeks ago, to be precise.”

  Ryan gave her a long, hard look. “Listen,” he growled...

  Two heavy vellum menus clattered onto the tabletop. Ryan looked up sharply. A waiter was standing over them, his face even more frozen than the captain’s.

  “Are you ready to order?”

  “How could we be?” Ryan said through his teeth. “You only just delivered the damned menus—and by air express!”

  “Ryan,” Devon said, “please.”

  He took a deep breath. “OK. OK. Devon, what would you like?”

  Devon shook her head. “I—I don’t want lunch. I told you, I’d have been happy with a—”

  “A hot dog,” Ryan said.

  The waiter recoiled as if he’d been struck. “Is that a joke, sir?”

  “Do I look as if I’m joking?” Ryan’s lips drew back from his teeth in a cold approximation of a smile. “The lady will have a hot dog. I’ll have the same thing. On rolls, with mustard and sauerkraut.”

  “But—” The waiter’s eyes met Ryan’s. “Of course,” he said stiffly.

  Ryan took a deep breath after the man was gone. Hell, he thought, what was he so angry about? What was Devon so angry about? Damn Sharon anyway, for trying to stir up trouble.

  He leaned forward across the table.

  “Devon, listen to me. Sharon’s not important. Let’s forget all about her, OK?”

  Devon hesitated. She wanted to believe him. But first, she had a question to ask. Every bone in her body told her not to ask it, but she could no more have kept it in than she could have stopped breathing.

  “Ryan? Is... is that where you were?” she said softly. “All the nights you came home late, were you with her?”

  Ryan looked as if she’d struck him.

  “No,” he said sharply, “of course not.”

  “I just—I just thought...”

  “Thought what?”

  He was furious. Furious! He had honored his marriage vows, dammit, even though Devon’s cold dismissal of him had rendered those vows meaningless. Where in the hell did she get off, accusing him of infidelity?

  “Thought what?” he repeated, his eyes cold. “That after months of forcing me to live like a monk, you suddenly had the right to ask me where I’d been spending my time?”

  “I did not force you to live like a monk! You knew from day one that I had no intentions of—that our relationship would be...would be celibate. As for asking you where you’d been spending your time, Ryan Kincaid, even though I had the right to do that, I never once did!”

  “What do you mean, you had the right?” Ryan’s mouth twisted. “I’ve got news for you, baby. You signed on as my wife, not as my keeper.”

  “A man like you needs a keeper! A wife would have to be crazy to put up with your behavior, with...with you coming and going as you please and never an explanation or a phone call.”

  “You’re damned right! It’s a man’s privilege to live his life as he chooses.”

  Not if he lives with a woman he loves, Devon thought desperately, not if he cares for her happiness.

  “Not if he’s married,” she said.

  “But I’m not married,” Ryan snapped. “Remember telling me that? And you were right. I’ve got a piece of paper that says I wake up, free and unencumbered, in less than a week’s time.”

  He saw the shock of his words register in her eyes, as soon as he’d said them. Oh, Lord, he thought, I’ve done it now. I’m a fool, a damned, stupid fool.

  “Devon. I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you did,” she said.

  Don’t cry, she told herself fiercely. Dammit, Devon, do not cry!

  “And I’m very, very grateful to you for bringing me back to reality.” She slid toward the edge of the booth, a smile pasted to her lips. “Here I was, telling myself I could grit my teeth and get through the next week without screaming or tearing my hair out, but—”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that I have had enough.”

  Devon took a deep breath. Her heart was breaking but he must never know that. Never.

  “For months,” she said, “I have endured your bad temper and your arrogance, your ego and your vanity.”

  “You? You’ve endured? I’ve been the one who’s had to endure, dammit!”

  “Last night, just before you came home, Bettina phoned. She reminded me that...that it would be to her advantage, and to mine, if I could convince you to renew our contract. And so, last night, I decided even to... to—”

  She cried out sharply as Ryan’s fingers clamped, hard, around her wrist.

  “Don’t,” he said. He spoke softly, but it didn’t disguise the tightly contained fury coiled in every muscle of his body. “Don’t say any more, Devon, I warn you.”

  She wrenched her hand from his and rose from the table, her back straight, determined not to let him see her pain or
the depth and ugliness of her lie.

  “Under the circumstances,” she said, “I think you’ll agree we can call the stipulations of our contract fulfilled and the term completed.”

  Devon turned, walked out of the restaurant, and out of Ryan’s life.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “ARE you sure you won’t have some more of that roast?” James Kincaid asked, smiling at Ryan across the dining room table. “Brimley may have outdone herself this evening, don’t you think?”

  Ryan looked up at Agnes Brimley, standing beside him, the usual look of prim disapproval in her eyes.

  And well she might disapprove, he thought, his gaze settling on the serving platter in her hands.

  Thick slabs of rare, well-marbled roast beef lay covered by a glistening sauce béarnaise. And why not? he thought wryly. The asparagus had been swimming in hollandaise, the potatoes had been adrift in butter.

  What was roast beef and béarnaise sauce, compared to that?

  “There’s plenty for seconds,” the housekeeper said brusquely.

  Ryan smiled politely and shook his head.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I’ve had more than enough.”

  More than enough was right, he thought as Brimley cleared the table. Mealtime at his grandfather’s house had become one adventure in dining after another.

  In fact, it had almost reached the point where Ryan would have been grateful to see a bowl of plain brown rice appear once again on the table.

  Still, he thought, eyeing his grandfather as he went through his familiar after-dinner cigar ritual, the change in diet didn’t seem to have done the old man any harm. If anything, James looked more robust than ever. He seemed that way, too. Lately, instead of announcing that it was his bedtime as the clock approached nine-thirty, he’d taken to settling in for a chat.

  For three months now, the topic had been the same. Not, The World and How Much Better it Was Seventy Years Ago: James had given that up, along with Advice on How to Manage Kincaid, Incorporated, and the lecture that began with the words, “Time is passing,” and ended with the admonition that Ryan was going to be thirty-three soon and it was time he settled down.

  No, Ryan thought, his jaw tightening. No. Ever since July, when his contract with Devon had expired, the Kincaid Friday night chat had begun with the same half dozen words...

  “Have you heard anything from Devon?”

  Ryan looked at his grandfather. And there the words were, he thought, smiling politely. He shook his head and gave the response he always gave.

  “No, sir. I haven’t.”

  “Ah,” James said. “No letters? No phone calls?”

  “No.”

  “And you have not tried to contact her?”

  “No, Grandfather, I have not.”

  James nodded. “Shall we adjourn to the library?”

  Ryan sighed. Discussion ended, he thought with relief.

  “Of course,” he said. “Let me help you.”

  “No,” his grandfather said briskly. “Thank you, but I can manage.” He rose from his chair creakily but with surprising speed for a man who had recently passed his eighty-seventh birthday. “Ring for the old witch, will you, Ryan? Tell her to serve our coffee by the fireplace—and tell her she’d better have made that chocolate cream pie as I told her to.”

  Ryan’s lips twitched. “I’ll do that.”

  He made his way to the kitchen and delivered grandfather’s request—a much more polite version—firsthand. By the time he entered the library, James was seated in his favorite chair. There was a glass of cognac in his gnarled hand.

  “Pour yourself a drink, my boy, and come and sit with me.” When Ryan was settled in a chair alongside, James cleared his throat. “Why haven’t you?” he said.

  Ryan frowned. “Why haven’t I what?”

  “Contacted her. Devon, I mean.”

  Ryan’s frown deepened. This was a new tack.

  “There’s no point,” he answered.

  James looked at him. “A man’s wife runs off and he thinks there’s no point in getting in touch and asking why? The modern world is strange, my boy. Very strange.”

  Ryan sighed and got to his feet. “Grandfather,” he said gently, “I think you may be a bit confused about the circumstances here. Devon didn’t run off, she walked out. Calmly, coolly, and very deliberately. And I’ve told you the reason—”

  “Yes, yes, you’ve told me. Because she didn’t want to stay married to you any longer.”

  “And because I felt the same way.” Ryan’s mouth thinned. “She wasn’t really my wife, Grandfather. Do you remember? I told you about the contract she and I signed. I told you about it before the wedding, and you said you understood. You said—”

  “For pity’s sake, Ryan, I am not senile. I know what you said and I know what I said.” James’s bushy white eyebrows knotted across the bridge of his nose. “I also know what any fool with half a brain can see. You fell in love with that girl, Ryan, and you are still in love with her.”

  Ryan flushed and put his glass of cognac down on the fireplace mantel.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I am never silly, young man.”

  “Look, Grandfather, I know you have this dream that I’ll find the perfect woman, marry her, settle down and have kids but—”

  “You did find the perfect woman,” James said sternly. “And you let her slip away from you.”

  “The only thing ‘perfect’ about Devon was her acting ability.”

  “Nonsense. She adored you.”

  Ryan laughed. “She adored my money, you mean.”

  “Ryan, you are my flesh and blood and I love you—but sometimes I wonder if you didn’t inherit your brains from your mother’s side of the family. Adored your money, indeed! If that’s the case, why hasn’t she touched her trust account?”

  “How should I know?”

  “And her charge accounts—did you ever get around to canceling them?”

  Ryan frowned. “She probably forgot she had them.”

  “Ah. Well, that would be logical, wouldn’t it? This avaricious creature would certainly tend to forget she had unlimited credit and a fat trust account.”

  “Two,” Ryan mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Two trust accounts. I, ah, I set one up for her myself. I thought—it seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Even better,” James said crossly. “She hasn’t touched two trusts and who knows how many credit cards. Yes, that certainly fits the profile of a greedy female who married you for your money.”

  “She married me because it was what her mother wanted,” Ryan said, his tone sharp. “Believe me, Grandfather, Devon showed a true daughter’s devotion to her mother, right to the end.”

  “I’m sure that has some deep, dark meaning,” James said testily, “but it doesn’t hold water, considering that Devon’s hardly had anything to do with her mother since she left New York.”

  Ryan’s frown deepened. “How do you know that?”

  “Bettina phoned me. She was all sniffles and tears.”

  “I’ll bet. She wanted money, I suppose.”

  “She wanted to know what had happened here, to turn Devon against her. It seems the girl only drops her an occasional card and phones less frequently than that.”

  “What are you talking about? Why would Devon have to write her postcards when they both live in San Francisco?”

  “They do not both live in San Francisco, Ryan. The girl lives somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “How should I know?”

  Ryan looked at his grandfather, his face grim. “Didn’t Bettina tell you?”

  “She may have.”

  “Grandfather, dammit, did she tell you where Devon lives or didn’t she?”

  The old man shrugged. “Chicago, I think.”

  “Chicago? What in hell is she doing there? What’s she living on, if she’s not tapping into the trust funds? Does she even know anybody in C
hicago?”

  James’s eyebrows lifted. “Which question would you like me to answer first? Not that it matters. My answer is the same to all three. I’ve no idea. And, when one comes right down to it, why should you give a tinker’s dam?”

  Ryan’s mouth opened, then shut. He turned away, busied himself pouring more cognac, then looked at James.

  “I don’t. I’m just—curious. After all, when our divorce is final, the papers will have to be sent somewhere. I thought, all this time, they could be sent care of Bettina, that Devon was—”

  “That she was what? Living with her mother? Did you picture the two of them laughing up their communal sleeve at what a fool you’d been to have fallen in love with the girl?”

  “Dammit, Grandfather, I did not do any such thing!”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it,” James said mildly. “I’d hate to think you’d turned into a hermit because you were carrying the torch for your own wife.”

  “Carrying the...” Ryan laughed. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”

  “Oh, from the fact that you’ve taken to coming here every Friday for dinner, instead of begging off so you can paint the town red with your friend, Frank Ross.”

  “I still see Frank. It’s just that—look, there comes a time in a man’s life when he’s bored, playing around...”

  “Your secretary says you stay late at the office nights and you spend half your weekends there.”

  “That’s crazy,” Ryan sputtered. “And besides, it’s my business if I work late. What the hell right have you got to question Sylvia—and what right has she got to tell you how I spend my time?”

  James smiled slyly. “She didn’t. It was just a lucky stab in the dark.”

  Ryan glared at his grandfather. Then he began to laugh.

  “You’re a sly old devil,” he said. “But you’re wrong about Devon. I didn’t love her.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” James took the glass of cognac Ryan held out to him. “I was afraid you might go storming off to Chicago and make a fool of yourself when you found out she was seeing somebody.”

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  “I heard what you said, dammit! How can she be seeing somebody? She’s still married to me.”