The Millionaire Claims His Wife

by Sandra Marton

  Take a deep breath. Hold it. One. Two. Three. Four.

  Annie let out her breath. It wasn’t working. All she could see was the bed. All she could think about was Chase, standing next to her with a look of bland innocence on his face.

  “Damn,” she said, and when that clearly wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to relieve her anger, she gave up Zen for reality, swung around and punched her ex-husband in the belly. It was a hard belly—he’d always had a great body, and apparently that hadn’t changed, which somehow only made her more furious—and she felt the jolt of the blow shoot straight up her arm and into her shoulder. But it was worth it to see the look of shock that spread across his face.

  “Hey,” he said, dancing back a step. Not that Annie’s reaction entirely surprised him. She looked as if she could have happily murdered him. Well, hell, he understood that. He’d have happily murdered good old Kichiro Tanaka, given the opportunity. “Hey, take it easy, will you?”

  “Take it easy?” Annie slapped her hands on her hips and glared at him, her chest rising and falling with each quick, huffy breath. “Take it easy?” she repeated, her voice shooting out of its normal range into a ragged soprano.

  “Yeah.” Chase rubbed his midsection. “There’s no need to get violent over what’s obviously a mistake.”

  “Oh, it’s a mistake, all right.” She blew a breath that lifted the curls dangling over her eyes. “A big mistake, Cooper, because if you think, even for one minute, that I—that you and I—that the two of us are going to share that—that bed, that we’re going to relive old times—”

  “Babe...”

  “Don’t ‘babe’ me!”

  “Annie, you don’t think...”

  “But I do. I think. I always have, even though you never credited me for having a brain in my head when we were married.”

  Chase almost groaned. Here they went again, plunging right into deep water.

  “Listen,” he said carefully, “I know you’re upset. But—”

  “That’s it. Tell me I’m upset. That way, I’ll shut my mouth and you won’t have to listen to the truth.”

  “Annie...”

  “Let me tell you something, Chase Cooper. That might have worked years ago, but not now. I am not the dumb little thing you always thought I was.”

  “Annie, I never thought—”

  “Yes, you did, but it doesn’t matter a damn anymore.”

  “I swear, I didn’t.”

  ‘“Oh, Ba-aabe,”’ she said, cruelly mimicking his voice, “‘I’m so sorry, but you don’t mind if I go out, do you? I’ve got to attend a meeting of the—the Sacred Sons of the Saxophones tonight.”’

  Despite himself, Chase laughed. “The what?”

  “Don’t try and joke your way out of this, Cooper!” Annie took a step forward, her index finger uplifted and wagging an inch off his nose. “You can’t change the facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “I’m talking about our so-called marriage, that’s what! And how you used to treat me as if I never had a thought in my head.”

  “I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “Well, let me refresh your memory. Think back to the good old days, when you used to drag me to all those horrible dinners and charity things.”

  “Like the Sacred Sons of the Saxophones?”

  “I just said, don’t try and laugh your way out of this, Chase. I am dead serious.”

  “About what?”

  She had to give him credit; he’d managed to put on an expression of total bewilderment. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he meant it.

  “I know how you worried that your poor little wifey wouldn’t be able to hold her own.”

  “What?”

  “And then, when it turned out I could, you just—just left me, dumped me into a—a seaful of sharks and took off by yourself.”

  “Annie, you’re crazy. I never—”

  “Was that when you looked around and decided you could have lots more fun if you left me at home?”

  Chase’s expression went from bewilderment to confusion. “One of us is losing her mind,” he said, very calmly. “And it sure as hell isn’t me.”

  Annie’s chin rose pugnaciously. “Hah,” she said, and folded her arms.

  “You think I was glad when you stopped going to those dinners and things with me, so I could go by myself and have a wild old time?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Damn, but your spin on ancient history is truly amazing!”

  “What’s the matter, Chase? Can’t you stand the truth?”

  “Am I supposed to have forgotten that I stopped taking you with me because you made it clear how much you hated going?”

  Annie flushed. “Don’t try and twist things. Okay, maybe I didn’t care for those stuffy evenings—”

  “Finally, the woman speaks the truth!”

  “Why would I have enjoyed them? We were only there so you could grab yourself another headline in the business section of the newspaper!”

  Chase’s eyes narrowed. “We were there so I could land myself jobs, Annie. Jobs, remember? The stuff that put bread on the table?”

  “Give me a break, Chase! We had plenty of money by then. You were just—just getting your ego stroked.”

  A muscle knotted in his cheek.

  “Go on,” he said softly. “What else have you saved up, all these years?”

  “Only that when I finally said I didn’t want to go anymore, instead of trying to change my mind, which any intelligent man would have done, which you would have done, at one time—”

  Chase gave a short, desperate laugh. “Are we both speaking the same language here, or what?”

  “Instead of doing that,” Annie said, ignoring the interruption, “you simply shrugged your shoulders and agreed. And that was that.”

  “You’re telling me that I should have tried to talk you into doing something you obviously hated?”

  “Don’t make it sound as if you don’t understand a word I’m saying, Chase. I won’t buy it.”

  “And I won’t buy you making me into some kind of Neanderthal who cheered when my wife signed off and let me go play with the rest of the boys,” Chase said grimly. “No way, babe, because that’s not how it was, no matter what you say!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s your story and you’re stuck with it.”

  “No!” Chase grabbed her wrist as she started past him. “No, it damn well is not ‘my story.’ It’s fact. Did you expect me to get down on my knees and beg you to spend your evenings with me, instead of with one dumb textbook after another?”

  “Right. Lay everything off on me, even my wanting to better myself. That’s typical. Everything was my fault, never yours.”

  “Better yourself? Better yourself?” he said, bending toward her, his eyes dark and dangerous. “So that you could do what, huh? Tell me that you knew more about haiku than I knew about building houses?”

  “That’s not the way it was and you know it,” Annie said angrily, as she tried to pull her arm from his grasp. “You couldn’t bear to see me turning into a whole person instead of just being Mrs. Chase Cooper.”

  “Wasn’t being my wife enough to make you happy?”

  “Being the woman who cooked your meals and cleaned your house and raised your child, you mean,” Annie said, her voice trembling. “Who waited up nights while you built your empire. Who got told to buy fancy dresses and jewelry so she could be dragged to Chamber of Commerce meetings as a reflection of her husband’s importance!”

  Chase could feel a humming in his ears. He let go of Annie’s wrist and took a step back.

  “If that’s what you believe,” he said, his voice so low and dangerous that it made the hair lift on the back of Annie’s neck, “if you really think that’s what you meant to me, my once-upon-a-time-wife, then it’s a damn good thing our marriage ended when it did.”

  Annie stared at his white face and pinched lips
. “Chase,” she said, and held out her hand, but it was too late. He’d already whirled away from her and disappeared down the hall.

  * * *

  Unbelievable!

  Chase walked along the gravel path that led from the lodge into the trees.

  It was more than unbelievable. It was incredible, that Annie should have hated him so. Hated being married to him, and for so many years.

  He tucked his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace, scowling at a squirrel that scolded him from beneath the branches of a cedar.

  He knew a lot of guys who’d been divorced. They were everywhere: at his health club, at the board meetings he sat in on...it seemed as if you couldn’t throw a stick in New York or San Francisco or any city in the whole U.S.A. without hitting some poor bastard who’d gone from being a family man to being a guy who thought a microwave meal was gourmet dining.

  The happy bachelor image, the divorced stud with a little black book full of names and addresses, was the stuff of movies. It wasn’t reality or if it was, then he’d missed something. The divorced men he met were almost invariably just like him, guys who’d once had it all and now had nothing but questions.

  When had it all started to go wrong? And why? And then there was the biggest question of all.

  What could they have done to change it?

  Most of them had answers, even if they didn’t much like them. Chase never had. Try as he would, he’d never really been able to pinpoint when things had started going downhill, or why. As for changing it... how could you change something when you didn’t know what it was that needed changing?

  He’d been the best kind of husband he’d known how to be, working his butt off to give Annie a better life. A life she deserved, and now it turned out she’d not only hated all the years of hard work, but she’d also resented them.

  A bitter taste filled his mouth.

  “What does she think?” he muttered, kicking a pinecone out of the way. “Does she think I enjoyed working like a slave? Does she think I had a good time, busting my backside all day and cracking books half the night?”

  Maybe. Annie had just proved that she was capable of thinking damn near anything, when it came to him.

  The land was sloping upward. The trees were pressing in from either side, and a cool, salt-scented breeze was blowing into his face. Chase drew it deep into his lungs, lowered his head and trudged on.

  At least it was all out in the open, now. Annie had been as remote about their split-up as the sphinx. He couldn’t even remember which of them had said the words first, he or she; he only knew that except for that one awful scene at the end, when Annie had come bursting into his office and seen poor Peggy embarrassing them both—except for that, their separation had been the most civilized thing on record.

  No harsh words. No screaming matches. No accusations. Nothing. They had both been polite and proper about the whole thing. His attorney had even joked about it.

  “I had a law prof used to say that the only man who never raises his voice during divorce proceedings is a man whose almost-ex-wife’s already slit his throat,” David had said, and Chase had grinned and said that David, with his own strikeout, certainly ought to know.

  Chase shook his head. No, Annie hadn’t killed him when she’d thought she’d caught him being unfaithful. She’d waited, and let him suffer for five long years, and now she’d plunged a dagger right into his heart.

  It shouldn’t have hurt, not when she wasn’t his wife anymore. Not when she didn’t mean a damn thing to him anymore.

  Chase stepped out of the woods. He was standing on a high, rocky cliff overlooking the dark green Pacific.

  Who was he kidding? Annie meant everything to him. She always had, and she always would.

  * * *

  Annie sat on the edge of the circular bed, her hands folded in her lap.

  Well, she’d finally gotten everything out of her system. She’d let it all hang out; wasn’t that what the kids used to say? She’d dredged up all the anger and pain she’d thought was long gone and dumped it right into Chase’s lap.

  She sighed, fell back against the pillows and put her arm over her eyes.

  Who was she kidding? Neither the hurt nor the rage was long gone. They weren’t gone at all. Hardly a week went by that something didn’t make her remember how miserable her marriage had been, how much she’d despised Chase.

  It was just a good thing she’d finally gotten it out in the open.

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  It wasn’t true. Her marriage hadn’t been miserable. Not the first years, anyway. She’d been so crazy in love, so happy, that sometimes she’d had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

  And she’d never despised Chase. Heaven knew, that would have made things a lot easier. Then, when she’d finally acknowledged the truth, that he’d outgrown her and that he didn’t love her anymore, it wouldn’t have hurt so badly.

  Annie sighed, stood up, and walked to the window wall. The view was spectacular: the deep green water in one direction, and a stand of windblown cypresses stretching off in the other. The ancient trees looked as if they’d been there forever, protecting the house and keeping it safe.

  A smile moved across her lips.

  That was how she’d always felt about Chase. They’d met so young that there were moments she’d felt as if she’d known him all her life. And her safe haven had always been within his arms.

  It had come as a shock to her to learn that other women didn’t feel that way about their husbands. She could still recall sitting on a bench at a little playground years ago. Dawn must have been two, maybe three; she was playing with a bunch of kids and the mothers sat around watching, keeping an eye on things while they chatted about this and that.

  Eventually the talk had turned to husbands.

  “He drives me nuts,” one woman said, “coming in the door at night like some kind of conquering hero, and I’m supposed to hum a couple of bars of Hail to the Chief while I pull off his shoes, stoke the fire and serve him a meal straight out of Gourmet magazine.”

  There’d been some laughter, some groans and lots of general agreement. Annie had been too flustered to do much of anything except sit there and think how sad it was that all those women didn’t feel as she did, waiting for the sound of her husband’s key in the lock so that she could fly into his arms.

  Her throat tightened. She leaned her head forward and pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

  When had it all started to change? When had eager anticipation turned to annoyance? When had the clock on the wall become not a way to count off the minutes and hours until Chase’s arrival but an infuriating reminder of his lateness?

  All the things she’d just said to him...how long had they been waiting to come out?

  She’d hurt him, she knew. But he’d hurt her, too. Dragging her to those business affairs, with her all gussied up to prove his success.

  That was the way it had been, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  And he’d said such awful things just now. Implying that she’d studied stuff just so she could show him his ignorance of the fine arts...

  Annie snorted and turned her back to the window. What a lie! She’d never done that. How could she? Chase was the one with the college degrees; she was the meek little wife with nothing but a high school diploma. It wasn’t her fault if she’d taken an interest in obscure poetry and Indonesian art and things that were beyond his comprehension...

  Things that were beyond his comprehension.

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  No. Never. She wouldn’t have studied anything for such a shabby reason. She’d enjoyed the poetry, the art; she’d improved herself with the vocabulary courses and the Great Books series, and if Chase just happened to be overwhelmed by the books she left open on the kitchen table, it wasn’t anything deliberate on her part.

  A muffled sob burst from Annie’s throat.

  “I never meant to
hurt you, Chase,” she whispered.

  Never.

  She’d loved him, with all her heart. She loved him still. That was the awful truth of it, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it now because he didn’t love her, not anymore.

  Their marriage was over. Chase was engaged to another woman, and she—she was going to have to go on without him.

  It was just that it was going to be harder, now.

  It was always harder, once you knew the truth.

  Chase knocked on the open bedroom door.

  “Come in,” Annie said politely.

  He stepped into the room.

  She was sitting in the rocker, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her face was pale but her features were composed, and she smiled when she saw him.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Did you go for a walk?”

  “Yeah, I did.” He hesitated. “Listen, about all that stuff we said before. I’m really sorry—”

  “Me, too. There’s no reason to quarrel over the past.”

  Chase nodded. “No reason at all.”

  They smiled at each other, and then Annie cleared her throat. “So,” she said briskly, “I’ll bet the island’s beautiful.”

  “It is. I was here before. Tanaka bought the place from some computer megamillionaire. He flew me out to see it after he’d signed the papers. He wanted to know what I thought of his plan.”

  “What plan?” Annie asked politely.

  “He’s going to tear this place down, build a kind of retreat.”

  “Ah.” She looked down, and plucked a bit of thread off her jeans-clad leg. “Buddhist?”

  Chase smiled. “Top-class hotel, would be closer to the mark. What he’s got in mind is a kind of hideaway for his executive staff. You know the sort of thing—elegant but rustic. Simple food, prepared by a Cordon Bleu chef. Simple suites, with a Jacuzzi in every bathroom and a wet bar in every sitting room. Simple pleasures, starting with a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts and an Olympic-size swimming pool.”

  “A bigger, even more elaborate version of this, you mean.”

  “Yeah.” Chase grinned. “Incredible, isn’t it?”