Wanted: Husband, Will Train

by Marie Ferrarella

“That’s life, Ms. Tamberlaine. We all lose something.” He shoved in his chair with an air of finality. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  The clod. He wasn’t even hearing her out. Courtney rose quickly to her feet. Her robe caught on the edge of the chair and she tugged it free. “It would be strictly business.”

  Though the smile on his lips widened, it was completely without feeling. “My first marriage turned out to be that way. I’d rather not have to endure a repeat performance.”

  “Don’t you understand? It wouldn’t be a real marriage—”

  He glanced at Katie and lowered his voice. “Neither was my first one, as it turned out.”

  She played her trump card. “Isn’t there something you want for yourself?” She gestured toward Katie. “For your daughter?”

  The expression on his face warned her to keep Katie out of it. “People can’t be bought.”

  Her hands tightened around the back of the chair as she struggled to keep the angry, desperate note out of her voice. “I’m not buying you, I’m renting you. For two years.” Momentarily succeeding in catching his interest, she hurried on. “You’re how old?”

  “Thirty-one.” What did that have to do with anything?

  She inclined her head. “In two years you’ll be thirtythree—and two hundred thousand dollars richer.” She watched his face, expecting to see capitulation as well as surprised pleasure. To her amazement, she saw neither.

  “Why are you so desperate?” It didn’t make any sense to him. “A woman who looks like you could have any one of a number of men.”

  “If that’s a compliment, thank you.” She doubted he meant it that way. He was probably one of those people who resented anyone with more money than he had. “But the men I have met have all been far too dazzled by my father’s money to really see me. I don’t think it would have mattered to any one of them if I looked like Victor Hugo’s bell ringer.” She paused. The reference was probably out of his league. “That’s—”

  She really did know how to talk down to a person, didn’t she? “I know who that is, Ms. Tamberlaine. I minored in literature.”

  Surprise highlighted her features. She looked at his tool belt. “You went to college?”

  Her reaction was almost comical. “Third in my class. UCLA. Engineering.”

  Then why—? Courtney reconnoitered. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  She’d done a damn good job of it, though. “Nice to know.”

  There was no time for damage control. Courtney took a breath and tried again. “Anyway, back to my… problem,” she said, wrapping her tongue around the delicate euphemism. “I don’t want to have to deal with phonies, wondering if that love light I see in their eyes is meant for me or my bank account. And I don’t have the time to search for that one honest man my father seems to think I can find. This way, we both get something we want. I get my inheritance and you get a lot more money than you could earn in two years with that hammer.”

  No matter how she tried to dress it up, she was trying to buy him. Integrity, and his name, just weren’t for sale. “I like honest work, Ms. Tamberlaine, and this—”

  “There’s nothing dishonest about this. Well, maybe from Parsons’s point of view, but—”

  Another character in her little drama? “Parsons?”

  She nodded. “My father’s lawyer. He’s the one insisting on carrying out the terms of the will to the letter.”

  At least someone in her world had some integrity. “And how is he going to be satisfied that this marriage you propose is on the level? Is he going to be there on the honeymoon, taking pictures?”

  “He’ll be there at the wedding, and as for the rest, there isn’t going to be a honeymoon, not in the sense you mean. Nor a consummation, either. Parsons is just going to have to take my word for it. And he will.” She could play the loving wife. She could be very convincing if she had to.

  John pitied Parsons, whoever he was. “Foolish man.”

  Gabriel didn’t seem quite as hardened as before, but she wasn’t cheering just yet. “So, do we have a deal, Gabriel?”

  Is that the impression he had given her? He shook his head. “We do not. I’m not for sale…or rent, Ms. Tamberlaine.”

  He saw what he took to be disappointment enter the woman’s eyes. None of his affair, he told himself. No matter what she said, she’d probably have someone else lined up before he reached his van. Someone who would jump when she pulled the string. That wasn’t him.

  John looked down at his daughter. She’d been nursing that last bit of lemonade for a while now. Katie seemed oblivious to what was going on around her. “Finished, Katie?”

  Even at four, Katie knew what that tone meant. No more fooling around. She sucked on her straw loudly, then retired it. “Finished.”

  “Okay, we have to go, honey.” John looked at his watch. Maybe it would be better all around if he got an early start in the morning. Way early, before Her Highness was up. He could leave Katie with Adrienne. His neighbor was always more than willing to watch Katie. That way, he could try to catch up to his schedule.

  “Thanks for the lemonade, Ms. Tamberlaine.” John began to usher Katie toward the rear exit. “I’ll be back tomorrow. To work on the guest house,” he added pointedly.

  Katie broke away from her father and ran back to Courtney. To Courtney’s surprise, she tugged her down to her level and wrapped warm, childish arms around her neck.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Katie promised in a hot whisper that grazed Courtney’s cheek.

  Precocious, that was the word for her, Courtney thought as she rose back to her feet. She watched the duo leave. As for Katie’s father, she decided, there were many words that could be used to describe him, the most polite of which was jackass.

  Chapter Three

  John tugged on the car seat’s electric blue strap. The left one always seemed to get so tangled. He pulled it over, inserting the metal tab into the slot with a click, then tested it to satisfy himself that it was secure. It was.

  He could tell Katie was trying very hard not to squirm as he buckled her into the car seat. At four, she was both too young and too light to be allowed to sit in the car with only a seat belt holding her in place. He’d explained that to her on a number of occasions and she had taken it all in solemnly, but he knew she didn’t like it. She didn’t like being restrained. Maybe in a way it reminded her of all those tubes she’d had invading her little body while she’d laid in the hospital bed.

  Some people would have said that, at two, she would have been too young to remember, but he knew Katie. She remembered. He’d have taken bets that, somehow, she was able to recall everything from the moment she had first opened her eyes on this world of theirs. Why else would she have seemed so worldly-wise at times?

  He patted her arm. “Just another few months and a few more pounds, honey.”

  Age wasn’t the only requirement California set down in its law governing car seats. She had to weigh more than forty pounds. There were times, late at night, when he laid awake and worried if she ever would.

  Katie sighed patiently. Sometimes he wondered who the adult was in their relationship. His birth certificate ascribed that right to him, but John certainly felt like a lost kid at times. A lost kid just trying to find his way through an ever-twisting maze of doctors and bills. At twenty, when he’d first met Diane, John had thought that he had all the answers. Now, eleven years later, he had only questions and uncertainties filling the voids inside of him.

  But they’d get through it, he thought as he got in behind the wheel of the‘78 van he kept coaxing back to life. They always had before. Just Katie and him against the world.

  What more could a man ask for?

  Starting the van, John listened to it groan in protest. It shuddered twice before it finally had the good grace to turn over. He patted the dashboard for Katie’s amusement.

  “Good old van,” they said together and then laughed. It warmed his heart, taking the bitter
taste from his mouth. The one he’d acquired when the Tamberlaine woman had hit him between the eyes with her bizarre proposition.

  Marriage. The woman had to be a lunatic. Completely certifiable. Or maybe it really was just an elaborate hoax. No, he reconsidered, whatever else it was, it wasn’t a hoax. The look in her eyes when she’d asked had said otherwise. She’d looked serious, uncomfortable. As if she felt her back was to the wall.

  Not his problem, he reminded himself. He had enough to deal with on his own without wondering what was on some spoiled, scatterbrained woman’s mind. His responsibility to her began and ended with the renovations on her guest house. End of story.

  Slowly, John eased the vehicle out of the wide, winding driveway.

  “Did you like her?”

  He hit the brake the second he saw the car in the rearview mirror. A blazing red Mercedes parked almost squarely in his path. It hadn’t been there when he’d arrived this morning. It almost wasn’t there now. If he hadn’t taken a second look, the car’s right fender would have been under his rear wheel.

  John curbed the urge to swear and pulled the steering wheel all the way to the right “Who?”

  Katie wiggled her toes. She didn’t like sitting in the car seat. It was too much like a baby seat Like a high chair. But she didn’t complain. She knew her daddy only wanted to keep her safe. Daddy was always worried about keeping her safe, telling her not to play too long, not to get too tired. Making her eat that yucky food he said was good for her when all she wanted was ice cream. A whole big pile of ice cream. Cherry.

  She bet if that lady were her mommy, she’d let her eat all the cherry ice cream she wanted. “The lady who looks like Mommy.”

  John exhaled as he eased his vehicle past the crookedly parked car. There was a hairbreadth of space between them. He wondered if the Mercedes belonged to the Tamberlaine woman. It seemed like her style. Vivid, in-your-face. Just like her. Parked almost sideways was just about the way he’d expect her to leave her car. With complete disregard for everyone else. People like that really annoyed the hell out of him.

  He glanced at his daughter. Katie had that puckered look on her face, the one she wore when she was concentrating on something with all her might, unwilling to let it go just yet.

  Just like the way she had hung on to life when she was first born. The doctors hadn’t thought she’d make it through the night. She’d proved them all wrong and made it through not one night but more than fifteen hundred nights since then.

  His face softened when he looked at her, even though the topic didn’t please him. “I don’t know her well enough to like her.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. John felt he knew enough to dislike Courtney Tamberlaine, but he didn’t say as much to Katie. If she found it in that big heart of hers to like the woman, he wasn’t going to say anything against her.

  Katie raised her sharp little chin. “Well, I liked her.” She slanted a look at her father. “She hugs nice.”

  John almost laughed out loud, not at what Katie said, but at the way she looked when she said it. Damn, if she wasn’t trying to manipulate him. Four, going on forty, with feminine wiles just aching to burst out. He pitied the man who was going to try to win her. Pity him? Hell, he’d probably cut the first guy who tried to come near his daughter off at the knees at the least sign of interest, he decided. No sweaty, hormonal kid was going to put the moves on his little girl and live.

  There was a light at the end of the street. As they reached it, it turned a bright red.

  “You hug nice,” he corrected. “She just reacted.” John leaned over, bringing his face close to hers. “Who’s the world’s best hugger?”

  Katie beamed at the familiar question and jerked a thumb at her chest. “I am.”

  “You bet your little bottom you are.” John saw the look in her eyes, the one, even at her tender age, he knew she was trying to hide. He felt his heart twist within his chest. She was exhausted and she didn’t want him to know. “Tired, honey?”

  Katie moved her shoulders in a half shrug. There was no use in fibbing. Daddy could always tell if she was. “A little.”

  “We’ll be home soon,” he promised.

  The light was just barely turning green again before he was pressing down on the accelerator. Guilt pricked at him. It was a good thing he’d left when he had. He’d kept Katie out too long as it was, he upbraided himself. Selfish, selfish.

  He hadn’t been thinking of her when he’d brought Katie along with him today, but of himself. Just because he wanted her near him, to absorb as much as he could of her joy and her innocence, storing it in his memory against the day that—

  No, damn it. He wasn’t going to get maudlin. Katie was going to be fine and live long enough to make him a great-grandfather several times over.

  Provided he ever let a guy near her, of course.

  Hands tightening impatiently on the wheel as he stopped at another red light, John looked at his daughter again. Katie was leaning against the black upholstery. She looked so small, so frail.

  Dynamite sticks were small, too, he insisted silently. She was going to be just great. There was no point in worrying, it didn’t accomplish anything.

  But he did, anyway. Especially in the wee hours of the night, when worry ate away at him like a persistent, relentless shrew, until it threatened to leave nothing of him at all.

  And worry had fertile ground. There was almost no money left in his bank account. He couldn’t work at a regular job because he had to take so much time off to be with Katie when she was sick—that meant no health insurance. Private plans wouldn’t take her. Even if they did, the payments would have been prohibitive.

  His mouth curved in a smile with no humor. And that Tamberlaine woman thought her back was to the wall. She had nothing on him.

  By the time John pulled up in the driveway of the tidy, daisy-bordered three-bedroom house where he and Katie lived, Katie had fallen asleep. It wasn’t that long a trip from the Tamberlaine estate to his home, but Katie had suddenly become very tired.

  It hit that way, John thought bitterly, getting out. Coming unannounced, sapping all the energy that ran through her veins, energy that should have been hers to use as she pleased.

  Opening the passenger door, John hesitated a moment, watching Katie sleep. Had there ever been anything created as perfect as his little girl?

  He doubted it.

  John touched her cheek lightly. She stirred a little, holding on to sleep as if it were a blanket covering her. “We’re home, Tiger,” he whispered.

  The small dark lashes that crested the swell of her cheeks fluttered open. She was still drowsy as she rubbed her eyes. “I’m not asleep.”

  “Of course you’re not.” Unstrapping her, he lifted Katie out of the seat. Rather than put her down on the ground, he cradled her against him and turned toward the house.

  This time, Katie did squirm just a little. He could tell just how tired she was by the effort she made. “I can walk, Daddy.”

  He unlocked the front door, then shut it with his elbow. “I know that. I just like carrying you.” He grinned down into her open face as he walked down the hall to the rear of the house. “This way you go where I say.”

  A lower lip stuck out petulantly. “To bed?”

  He nodded, crossing the threshold into her room. Like Katie, it glowed of sunshine. With one hand, he pulled back the covers on her bed. Matching the curtains, they were her favorite color. Pink.

  “Just for a nap.”

  She locked her hands around his neck as he eased her down onto the bed. “But I’m not tired.”

  “Maybe, but I am. Humor me.” He looked around for Mr. Softy, her once plush, once white rabbit. The droopy-eared stuffed animal was sitting on the window seat, listing to one side where his cotton batting had shifted. “You want to make your old dad happy, don’t you?”

  Katie propped herself up on one elbow, even though it made her more tired. “Can’t I make you happy some other way?�
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  “Nope.” He plucked the rabbit from the window seat and brought it over to Katie. Picking up her arm, he tucked it around the treasured rabbit. It was the one thing that Diane had given Katie before leaving. Maybe that was why she loved the ragged toy so much.

  Katie sighed mightily, resigned to her fate. Even now, her eyes were closing. “Okay, but can you make me happy?”

  He sat down on the edge of the juvenile bed he had built for her with his own hands. They had stenciled in the design on the headboard together, which might have explained why it was so crooked, John thought fondly.

  He brushed the wispy bangs away from her eyes. “I try.”

  She curled into Mr. Softy. “Can I go with you to see the lady when you go back to work?”

  He didn’t think that was a very good idea. For either of them. “Katie, I—”

  “Please?”

  She held his soul in those eyes of hers, he thought. When she looked at him like that, he could deny her absolutely nothing. John shook his head, surrendering.

  “Someday, I’m going to learn how to say no to you. Okay, but you have to stay out of her way.” We both do, he added silently.

  Katie was the soul of solemnity. “I promise.”

  Rising, John tucked the sheet around her. Katie’s eyes had fluttered shut again, despite her protests.

  For a moment, John just stood there, watching her sleep. God, what would he ever do without her? Blowing out a deep, long breath, he eased himself slowly from the room.

  He went straight to the telephone in the kitchen. Picking up the receiver, he tapped the first button on his automatic dialer. Katie’s heart specialist.

  As he heard the combination of tones play in the receiver, he could feel his own heart sink within him. A four-year-old shouldn’t have a heart specialist, he thought bitterly. All she should have is a pediatrician, and routine innoculations, not electrocardiograms.

  It wasn’t fair.

  It could have been worse, he reminded himself as he listened to the phone ringing on the other end. He above all people knew just how much worse it could really be.