Wife Wanted

by Christine Rimmer

  The rest was a recap of Kate and Ben Fortune’s accomplishments during their lifetimes, as well as a list of the films Monica Malone had made in her long career. Toby came in as Rick finished reading. He was lugging the potatoes, which he dropped on the floor just inside the door. Then, with a loud sigh, he turned to go back for the detergent.

  Rick grinned at his retreating back. “Hey, wait for me.”

  Toby shot him a put-upon look as Rick hurried to catch up with him.

  Rick was sliding his third and last load of groceries onto the counter and Toby was already outside playing when Natalie appeared. Rick watched from the corner of his eye as she went straight to the table, where the tabloid was waiting, and scooped the thing up. When she turned for the hall, her gaze collided with his.

  Her brows drew together, and he knew that she knew what he’d been doing while she was telling her mother goodbye.

  “You read this,” she said accusingly.

  “Guilty.” He carried the bag of produce he’d bought over to the fridge and knelt to start putting the vegetables away in the crisper drawer.

  Natalie didn’t move. A glance or two over his shoulder showed him that she was rolling the tabloid into a tube. She hit it once against the edge of the table. “My mother brought it over. She’s very upset. She loathes stuff like this.”

  “I can understand why. It’s totally exploitative and, ten to one, a complete fabrication.”

  “You think so?”

  He spared her another glance. She looked so hopeful—and so damned adorable.

  “If I were you, I’d have told your mother not to waste her time worrying about uncorroborated garbage.”

  She chuckled. “I think I said something along those lines.”

  “Good.” He stood to pull a head of lettuce from the grocery bag on the counter, and then paused to give her a smile. She smiled tentatively back. He found he didn’t want to break eye contact with her long enough to bend and put the lettuce away. So he just stood there, with the refrigerator door open, holding the lettuce, looking at her while she looked back at him, both of them smiling like the fools they probably were.

  But then she caught herself. She hit the rolled-up paper against her palm. “Well. I should get on upstairs.”

  Rick said nothing, only bent to put the lettuce where it belonged.

  In the apartment Sterling had found for her when she first went into hiding, Kate sat at a small desk in the skylighted living room, the tabloid paper spread out in front of her.

  Sterling was pacing the room, waiting for her to finish reading the disgusting thing.

  When she looked up from the page, he froze in midstride. Their eyes met.

  “Kate…” Sterling began, and then didn’t seem to know what to say next.

  Kate looked down at her own hands, which she’d folded on top of the ridiculous doctored pictures of her husband and Monica Malone. Over the decades, Kate had suspected that there might be something between Monica and Ben. Especially during the worst years of her marriage, those years when Kate’s first real success with Fortune Cosmetics had left Ben feeling threatened by her growing independence. But their marriage had lasted, and Kate knew Ben had loved her deeply.

  Still, there had been little signs. Tiny things. Things that only a woman who knows a man to his soul would have noticed: a subject avoided, a shifted glance, a knowing look across a crowded room.

  But Kate had never set about finding out for sure whether her husband was betraying her with the woman she herself had chosen to be the first Fortune’s Face. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know.

  It occurred to her that if anyone besides the legendary film star herself might know the truth, it would be Sterling. As Kate trusted him, so had Ben—implicitly.

  She dared to ask, “Do you think it’s true?”

  Sterling’s eyes gave nothing away. “I don’t know.”

  “But you heard the rumors, too, over the years? You saw the…indications?”

  He coughed—and then muttered a low, reluctant “Yes.”

  She spoke crisply. “All right, then. I want to find out who leaked this. Whoever it was might have information about the larger picture.”

  “I know. And I’ll get right on it. The possibilities, unfortunately, are endless. A disgruntled employee of some branch of Fortune Industries. An eager reporter willing to stoop so low as fabricating a story out of whole cloth. Or someone totally unconnected—a waiter or a shop owner—who happened to spot the Malone woman and Ben together.”

  “I get the idea. What about Tracey Ducet, or that boyfriend of hers?”

  “We’ll check into them.”

  “Or even Monica herself.”

  “As I said, we’ll do all we can. I’ll put Gabe Devereax on it right away.”

  “All right, then.” Kate stood from the desk. “Now, I suppose, we should talk about Jake.”

  Sterling’s expression was grim. “I went to see him, as you requested. Yesterday, at nine in the morning, at the estate.”

  “And?”

  “What can I say? It turned out just as I warned you it would. He was distant and polite and got rid of me as quickly as he could without being blatantly rude.”

  “Did you find out anything about his connection with Monica Malone, about what the woman might have on him, that he would turn over so much stock to her?”

  Sterling looked at her patiently. “He didn’t let me get within a hundred miles of that subject.”

  “But…how is he? How does he seem?”

  “Kate…”

  “There’s something. I can see it in those eyes of yours. Tell me.”

  Sterling hesitated another endless few seconds before confessing, “He’d been drinking.”

  “At nine in the morning?”

  “Yes. He looked very bad, Kate.”

  Kate went to the window, which had been specially treated so that no prying eyes could see in, and stood looking out, westward, toward the suburb of Golden Valley. “This thing has to break open soon. I feel it.”

  “You’ve been right about so much, Kate. Let’s hope to God you’re right now.”

  Eight

  Carrying one small bag with a few scandalously revealing scraps of lingerie in it, Natalie let herself in the side door. The day had been hot, and she felt sticky and uncomfortable. And though she’d left for the city early, with plans to shop until the soles of her shoes wore thin, she found her heart wasn’t in it. That was why, after she’d bought the lingerie, she’d frittered away a couple of hours in a window seat at a deli, watching the people go by and nibbling a corned beef on rye. Then she’d wandered into a movie theater and watched a Disney double bill: Pocahontas and Cinderella. That had cheered her a little. Natalie loved Disney movies. She’d walked out of the theater singing “Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo” under her breath.

  However, her spirits didn’t stay lifted for long. Traffic had been a bear coming home. And she’d found herself wondering why she’d left in the first place.

  But, of course, she knew why. Because of her low profile that she had to keep to achieve her two-week goal of staying away from Rick.

  And then it came to her that if there were no Rick, she’d have probably gone shopping today anyway. Because shopping a lot was part of her effort to be frivolous and decadent for a change.

  And that depressed her, for some stupid reason.

  She heard Rick’s voice coming from the front parlor the minute she slipped through the door. It was a deep voice, just a little bit velvety. And very warm.

  She stood still, listening. He was reading a story. She couldn’t help herself. She tiptoed through the dining room and stood in the open arch that led to the parlor.

  Rick and Toby were sitting close together on the sofa, a good-size picture book spread midway between their two sets of knees. Bernie was sprawled at their feet, his head on his paws. Natalie wished she was sitting there with them, listening to Rick read a story in the air-conditioned parlor on a hot afternoon
.

  The boy, the dog and the man all looked up at the same time.

  Natalie put on a bright smile. “Hi there.”

  Bernie dragged himself upright and lumbered over for a few pats of greeting. Toby just grinned.

  “We’re reading Aladdin,” Rick explained.

  She could see the pictures from where she stood. “The Disney version?” She couldn’t quite keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

  “Yep,” Rick said, then frowned as something occurred to him. “Listen. You got a message about an hour ago. It sounded important. Maybe you ought to—”

  She thought of her father, who was so unstable lately. And her perpetually distraught mother. And the thousand other weird things that had been going on with the people she loved in recent months. “Thanks.” Her heartbeat suddenly loud and hollow in her ears, she headed back toward the kitchen.

  As Rick had warned her, the message light was blinking on her answering machine. She tossed the bag of lingerie on the counter, went around the end of it and over to the side where the machine was waiting. She pressed the play button.

  And the soft British voice that she’d heard once before said, “Hello. This is Jessica Holmes again. I called several days ago. And I had sincerely hoped I might hear back from you. As I said then, it concerns a Benjamin Fortune, who would be in his seventies now, and who served in France during the Second World War. Just in case you didn’t receive my first message… Please. If you or anyone you know is a blood relative of this man, it is imperative that you get back to me. I don’t want to be an alarmist, and it’s impossible to explain over the phone, but this truly is a matter of life and death. Thank you.” Once again, before she hung up, she left a London phone number.

  “Well?”

  Natalie looked up to see Rick standing near the entrance to the laundry alcove. He’d followed her through the dining room to see what she was going to do about that “important” call.

  She pressed the reset button.

  Rick swore under his breath. “You’re not even going to call the woman back?”

  Natalie said nothing as the machine whirred and clicked.

  Rick crossed the kitchen, stopping on the other side of the counter from where she stood. “‘Life and death,’ the woman said. ‘A matter of life and death.’”

  Natalie mentally counted to ten. She reminded herself that Rick didn’t come from a wealthy, well-known family. He had no idea of the utter shamelessness of a reporter on the scent of a big story.

  “Natalie. Call her back.”

  “This does not concern you.” With some effort, she kept her tone level.

  “Yes, it does. Any matter of life and death concerns me. As it should concern you.”

  “It isn’t a matter of life and death.”

  “How do you know, unless you call her back and talk to her?”

  “I know. All the signs are there.”

  “What signs?”

  “Oh, Rick…”

  “Don’t roll your eyes at me. What signs?”

  Natalie simply did not feel like going into it. She tried switching subjects. “Where are Toby and Bernie?”

  But Rick wouldn’t be switched. “In the other room. What signs?”

  With a long sigh, she gave in and tried to explain. “You saw that scandal sheet yesterday, with that ridiculous article about Grandpa Ben and Monica Malone.”

  “So?”

  “So, it’s obvious.”

  “What’s obvious?”

  She glared at him, wondering how such a smart man could suddenly have become so dense. Still, she tried again to make him understand.

  “It’s just too much of a coincidence for me. All of a sudden, way too many people are interested in a man who died ten years ago. It’s some reporter, Rick. Some two-bit reporter putting on an act, pulling out all the stops to get me interested enough to call her back. And I’m not going to do that.”

  “If it’s a reporter, you can hang up on her.”

  “You don’t know how it works. Reporters are like sharks— they have your bones picked clean before you even know what hit you. This is nothing but a scam. The woman wants more information about Grandpa Ben so that she can write more lies about him.”

  Rick frowned, and then his expression softened and his voice grew more gentle. “Natalie, I understand that you loved your grandfather very much. And that it must hurt you to see bad things in the press about him.”

  “Of course I loved him. He was a good man. A wonderful, loving man.”

  “I’m sure he was. But I really do believe that you’re letting the hurt you feel over that trashy article about him color your judgment when it comes to this other issue.”

  “I am right about this other issue.”

  “If the woman’s a reporter, she’s a British reporter.”

  “So? Reporters come in all nationalities.”

  “Come on. Don’t you think it’s strange that she’d ask you to call her back in London, for heaven’s sake? Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to at least be here in the country if she wanted to get some big story out of you?”

  “With a reporter, anything is possible.”

  He raised both hands, palms up. “Okay, okay. Maybe you’re right. The woman could be pond scum.” And then he slapped his hands down on the kitchen counter between them. He canted toward her. “But what if you’re wrong?”

  She took a step back, remembering, in spite of herself, the urgency in the woman’s voice.

  “Please. If you—or anyone you know—is a blood relative of the man, it is imperative that you get back to me.”

  And then she thought of her grandpa—long dead, and incapable of fighting the slanders that some heartless reporter had written about him. If she called the woman back, and let drop one tiny fact about her grandfather that she later read in some cheap tabloid newspaper, she would hate herself.

  All her life, Natalie had been an easy touch. In grade school, other girls had made friends with her just for a glance at her gorgeous, famous mother or a chance to meet Kate Fortune face-to-face. And in the private high school she attended, boys had asked her out because she was a Fortune—and then invariably stammered and stared the moment they set eyes on her mother or Allie. When it came time for college, she’d gone to the University of Minnesota instead of choosing a privately funded school. There, it had gotten worse; too many of her “friends” had turned out to need money desperately—or to want an intro to one of the Fortune companies.

  Still, no matter how many times she got burned, Natalie had always been ready to stick her hand in the fire one more time. But lately, she had seen too much ugliness, with all the turmoil and trouble in her family. And then there had been the humiliating way Joel Baines betrayed and then dumped her.

  No, her old, trusting way of doing things just hadn’t worked. It was time to stop looking at the world through the eyes of a hopeless romantic.

  “I’m not wrong,” she said firmly. “I know I’m not.”

  “But, Natalie—”

  “I don’t want to discuss it anymore.” That came out a little harsher than she intended, but she meant it nonetheless. She reached for the bag she’d tossed on the counter. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going upstairs.”

  She turned and started down the hall.

  Rick’s final words made her stop in midstride. “You cut people out without giving them a chance.”

  She looked at him once more, and didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. She knew he was talking about more than the phone message she’d refused to return.

  “I have to grow up someday,” she replied flatly. “Life is not a Walt Disney movie.”

  After the confrontation over the phone call, Natalie found it much easier to keep her distance from Rick—because now Rick was working with her; he was doing everything in his power to stay clear of her.

  She understood that she had disappointed him in some deep and important way. And it bothered her, to realize that he no
longer liked her as much as he had before.

  And yet, it was probably for the best. They had an agreement to be tenant and landlord. And no more. This way, with Rick so cool and aloof toward her, it was reasonably easy to keep that agreement whenever she dealt with him.

  As the days passed, it seemed to Natalie that they fell into a sort of rhythm of avoidance. Natalie’s sitting room upstairs had its own stereo, TV and VCR, so she never needed to use the parlor or the great room; they became Rick’s territory.

  Of course, there was only one kitchen. But they worked that out easily enough. Rick and Toby ate breakfast around seven. Natalie did her exercises and showered and came down to eat after nine. On the days that father and son didn’t take the Lady Kate out on the lake, they were ready for lunch by eleven-thirty. Natalie ate her lunch around one. And she was careful never to try to prepare her own dinner until seven or so, by which time Rick would have long finished feeding himself and Toby.

  The hardest thing for Natalie was seeing how warm and open Rick was with Toby. And with her own mother, who dropped by just about every other day. Or with Aunt Lindsay, who stopped in a couple of times on her way home from the hospital. Or even with Sterling Foster, who came by to take Natalie to lunch one afternoon. Everyone who met Rick remarked on what a great guy he was.

  And they were right. Rick was terrific.

  To everyone but Natalie. To Natalie, he was polite and distant and completely disengaged—until about a week after he and Toby moved in. And then he began to become hostile.

  It was all so subtle at first. He mentioned tightly one afternoon that Natalie’s coffee cup always seemed to be in the sink; she promised to rinse it out and put it away from now on. She left a cookbook on the counter; he reminded her coldly that she really should try to pick up after herself. She said that she would.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said with a sneer.

  And then he got all upset at her for taking his Newsweek, which was a perfectly understandable mistake. Hadn’t she been subscribing to Newsweek for years? How could she have known that he subscribed, as well?