Suddenly...Marriage!

by Marie Ferrarella

  “No,” Cheyenne assured her, knowing that the woman was probably looking at the tear stains on her cheeks. She turned toward the window again, and then thought of someone she hadn’t thought of in a long time. Cheyenne called after the attendant, “Wait. Do you have a phone on the plane?”

  The woman nodded. “Yes, there’s one in the back, next to the rear restroom facility. Would you like me to show you?”

  Cheyenne nodded, unbuckling her seat belt. “Please.”

  “We were supposed to get one for first class, but there’s been a delay,” the attendant apologized. “It’s right there. Just use it like a regular telephone.”

  The woman backed away, giving Cheyenne privacy. The first flight of the morning to L.A. was only half filled. The closest passenger was five rows away from her. Cheyenne felt a little better. This was a hard enough call to make as it was, without having someone eavesdropping.

  Sitting down, Cheyenne mentally pulled herself together before she finally began to tap out the numbers on the keypad. Her courage failed her when she was only halfway through, and she hung up.

  What had happened to all the strides she’d made, she demanded silently. She’d come a long way these last ten years. She couldn’t allow a few days, and a man with a heart of stone, to undo all that—to make her into a coward all over again.

  But she suddenly felt so lost. So very lost.

  Wasn’t that why she was making the phone call in the first place? she asked herself.

  Cheyenne stared at the receiver for a long moment. She saw the attendant looking in her direction from across the aisle. Catching her eye, the woman smiled.

  Cheyenne picked up the receiver again. This time, she dialed the complete number, her suddenly damp fingers slipping from the keys.

  The telephone on the other end rang several times before she heard the receiver being picked up. She almost lost her nerve again. It was only the dread of having to think of herself as a coward that kept her from hanging up. Holding her breath, she listened to see if an answering machine had switched on.

  It hadn’t. “Hello?” She recognized the woman’s voice.

  “Hello, Mamma? Mamma, it’s Cheyenne.” She released the breath she was holding. “Mamma, I need to talk to you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Stan Keller shuffled noiselessly over to the tidy, claustrophobia-generating cubicle where Cheyenne parked her overly energized body whenever she was in the office. Over time, she’d earned a larger space to call her own—one with a door and window—but she’d told him that she was content with the cubicle. Since everyone else at the magazine was always clamoring for an upgrade, he saw Cheyenne, even apart from her talent, as a very rare individual indeed.

  That was why he’d sent her to O’Hara in the first place. He figured the man was bright enough to pick up on her qualities and go from there.

  He’d had his doubts, though, these last few days about just how bright his former college roommate was.

  Looking in the cubicle, Stan saw that Cheyenne was inside. Her computer was on, but the photograph she’d been editing had long since disappeared, giving way to colorful, dancing fish that looked as if they were engaged in some sort of updated version of the Charleston.

  She’d drifted off again, Stan thought with a shake of his head. Since she’d returned from her assignment with Grant last week, she seemed to be doing that quite a bit.

  Just what had gone wrong? It wasn’t often he took it upon himself to manipulate people instead of pages, but when he did, he expected results. Positive results.

  Stan cleared his throat to get her attention. The last time he’d just walked up behind her without any preamble, she’d jumped high enough to make an Olympic contender envious.

  Blinking, Cheyenne looked over her shoulder at him. She looked, he thought, as if she were coming out of a trance.

  “Oh, hi, Stan,” she murmured. “I was just—” she realized that there were fish on her screen instead of a view of the Mardi Gras parade and pressed a button at random, making them disappear “—working.”

  “So I see.” Stan leaned his short, bony frame against a corner of her desk, crossing his rail-thin arms before him as he studied her. There was something seriously wrong with this picture. “Tarantino, I make it a practice not to butt into other people’s lives. I don’t want them butting into my life, so I don’t butt into theirs. Having said that—” he leaned forward “—what the hell is going on with you?”

  So much for believing she’d managed to fool everyone into thinking that it was business as usual for her, Cheyenne thought. Damn O’Hara, anyway. Why couldn’t she just forget about him and go on with her life as if nothing had happened?

  Because it had happened. And whether she liked it or not, she was operating—temporarily she hoped—without a very vital organ. She was going through the paces without her heart, which was under reconstruction. How long did it take to put together a thousand-piece puzzle, anyway?

  “Something wrong with my work?” She tried not to sound as defensive as she felt.

  “Your work is fine, top-notch as ever. You, however, look like a funeral waiting to unfold.” And he was worried about her, although he couldn’t bring himself to actually say it. Worried, not just because he’d been the one to send her off to O’Hara in the first place, but because he genuinely liked Cheyenne and didn’t like to see her this way.

  She shrugged, forcing herself to concentrate on the photograph on the screen. What was it she had wanted to do with it, anyway? That’s right, she was going to crop it, then enhance the images in the background.

  “I’m a little under the weather,” she tossed off.

  He peered more closely at her, knowing it was a lie. “For over a week?”

  She raised her eyes, her temper snapping like dried kindling beneath a hiker’s boot. “It’s a spate of lousy weather, okay?” Cheyenne struggled to get herself under control. Lately, it seemed as if she were ready to pounce down everyone’s throats for the slightest little thing. “Look,” she ground out, “if you have a complaint about my work, tell me. If it’s about me personally—don’t tell me.”

  Stan looked surprised. “Tarantino, don’t you know you can’t talk to your boss that way?” The flippant question barely managed to mask his concern. Now he was determined to make her talk.

  “Sorry.” And she was. Truly sorry. She’d never been moody before and this was no time to start. “But it has been a bad week.”

  “Why?” he demanded. He saw the same defensive look in her eyes again. “Talk to me. My best photographer looks like she’s coming apart at the seams. I’ve got a right to know why.” When she just sat there, silent, he added, “We go back a ways, Tarantino.” If he couldn’t do it with a direct question, he’d do it with guilt. “I gave you your first real job.”

  She retracted the editing screen and sighed, looking up at Stan. He had a reputation for being tenacious. “You’re going to keep at me until I tell you, aren’t you?”

  The satisfied smile on his face answered her. “Now that we understand each other, spill it. What’s eating you?”

  She sighed again. Stan was more than her editor, more than her boss. In a funny, offbeat way, he was her friend as well. Maybe her friend, her editor and her boss all had a right to know what was going on.

  And even if they didn’t, she felt that she had to get it off her chest. Her conversation with her mother on the flight home had only skimmed the tip of the iceberg.

  Closing her eyes, Cheyenne rocked back in the swivel chair. She tried not to dwell on the fact that Stan was a man, and a single one at that, and so probably wouldn’t understand a thing she said or felt. Instead, she’d regard him as a wall with ears. Opening her eyes again, she looked at him.

  “I don’t expect you to understand this, but all my life I tried not to be like my mother. Not to do what she did because I didn’t want to wind up where she was.” The smile that quirked her lips was so sad that it hurt Stan to see it. “
And I still wound up in the same place, anyway.”

  To his credit, Stan was trying very hard to make sense out of what she was saying. “And that is—?”

  “Dumped by a man.” That was it: the unvarnished truth. She’d been dumped—dumped before she’d ever even been had. Grant hadn’t wanted her very much. He hadn’t even been interested in the one perfect gift she had to offer: her virginity. “And it hurts so bad, I feel like I’ve got shards of glass in my chest instead of a heart.”

  Maybe they weren’t talking about O‘Hara after all. O’Hara had sense. He would have appreciated Cheyenne for what she was. She must have met someone else while she was in New Orleans. A line about best-laid plans skittered through his brain.

  “What jerk would have dumped you?” He saw the look of surprise on her face and read it correctly. “Look, just because I go home with a wad of magazines under my arm doesn’t mean I don’t notice things. I notice plenty and you are—as they used to say in my vernacular before it became politically incorrect—a babe. Plus you’re a decent person and intelligent on top of that. So, I repeat, who dumped you?”

  Stan was O’Hara’s friend. She didn’t want to come between them. This was her affair—or lack of one, she thought dryly.

  “It’s too complicated to explain.” She stored the photograph she’d finally finished editing, then shut off the computer with a finality that caught Stan’s attention. “I’m going on vacation this afternoon.”

  This was the first he’d heard of it. He would have remembered if she’d told him. “Aren’t you supposed to clear that sort of thing with me first?”

  Yes, she was, but it was a spur-of-the-minute thing, decided last night. And she needed this time away. Desperately. Too much time had been wasted already. A whole lifetime.

  “I am,” she told him, with only a touch of her normal spark. But it gave him hope. “Now. I’m going up to San Francisco to see my mother.”

  She hardly talked about her family, but he’d gleaned that she and her mother weren’t on the best of terms. “This is news.”

  Feeling self-conscious, she shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’ve got some fences to mend. I talked to her last week and found out we could be friends now. At least, I intend to take a crack at it.” She nodded at the computer, feeling more comfortable talking about work than about herself. “Everything’s current. Malone’s been brought up to speed. He can take over while I’m gone.” Stan frowned. “It’ll only be until Monday.”

  He wasn’t worried about the time. Stan was more concerned about Cheyenne and her state of mind. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with being dumped, would it?”

  “It might.” That was as much as she was willing to say. Cheyenne pushed herself away from her desk. “So, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll—”

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  Cheyenne jerked around like a marionette, her eyes wide as she looked toward the doorway. People were always commenting on how Stan Keller drifted through the office, seemingly oblivious to everything, but he was rarely oblivious—just extremely focused. In Cheyenne’s reaction to Grant O’Hara’s arrival Stan had the answer to a great many of his questions.

  The rest he was just going to have to hold off asking, and hope that they worked themselves out. If O’Hara and Cheyenne were half the people he thought they were, they would.

  “I was just leaving.” Stan nodded at Grant as he passed him in the doorway. “See you at the poker table Sunday?”

  “Maybe.”

  Grant didn’t bother looking at Stan as he left the cubicle. His attention was completely focused on Cheyenne. Even tired, she looked better to him than he remembered. He wanted to catch her up in his arms, to hold her close and assure himself that it was really her. He scowled, glancing at the open space behind him. An office boy hurried by.

  “Why don’t you have a door?”

  “I don’t know, maybe for the same reason you don’t have manners,” she countered. What was he doing here? Why wouldn’t he just leave her alone? “It never occurred to me.”

  He’d swallowed his pride and come to her, and now she was treating him like a pariah. He felt that same tickle of edgy anger threatening to erupt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You figure it out.” She pulled her purse out of her bottom desk drawer and then kicked the drawer closed. “I have a plane to catch.”

  Now she was lying to him. Maybe this was a mistake, coming here, he thought. “I thought you hated to fly.”

  She lifted her chin, ready to go a couple of rounds with him. “I’ve decided not to let fear rule me.”

  When she lifted her chin like that, all he could think of was nibbling on it. On her. Sanity returned, cooling his temper and reminding him why he had come in the first place. “Same here.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. All she knew was that she wanted to get out of here and away from Grant. She hadn’t even gotten close to conquering the pain she felt every time she thought of him, and seeing him here only destroyed the tiny bit of headway she’d fooled herself into thinking she’d made.

  Back to square one with a vengeance.

  When she began to push past him, he caught her wrist, holding her in place. “We have some unfinished business to take care of.”

  Oh, no, he wasn’t going to start that again, she thought, wasn’t going to start dangling her on a string and making her crazy. She might not be over him, but she was over being stupid.

  Her voice was so frosty that it could have frozen migrating birds in mid-flight. “I think everything is finished between us.”

  “There’s a little matter of a marriage certificate,” he reminded her.

  The color drained from her face and she stopped struggling. Grant released her wrist.

  She’d forgotten all about that. Of course, that was why he was here. Not to see her, but to rid himself of an inconvenience.

  “All right—” she put out her hand “—give me the annulment papers, I’ll sign them right now.”

  But he shook his head. “I don’t have them with me.”

  She didn’t understand. If he wanted them signed, why hadn’t he brought them? “Well, where are they?”

  “Nowhere.” He watched her eyebrows draw together in confusion. “I haven’t had them drawn up yet.”

  “You haven’t...” Cheyenne stared at him incredulously. This couldn’t be right. Could it? “We’re still married?”

  He nodded, then took a chance, knowing he was pushing the envelope. If she said the wrong thing, everything would be lost. “And judging by that look of revulsion on your face, you could probably do a lot of damage to me before you agree to the annulment.”

  Money. He was thinking about money. It figured. “I don’t want to do any ‘damage’ to you, O’Hara, other than maybe run you over with a truck. Just what is it you expect me to do?”

  “The usual.” He watched her eyes as he spoke slowly. “A woman in your position could try to make me pay through the nose.”

  Anger sizzled in her veins. “You can keep your money—and your nose—all I want is the annulment.”

  She meant it, he thought, relieved. Maybe it wasn’t fair of him, but he had to know, had to know that his feelings for her weren’t coloring his vision. That she was the person he thought her to be.

  “No money?” he probed. “No compensation for your ‘pain and suffering’?”

  Her eyes became narrow blue slits. “You couldn’t begin to pay compensation for my pain and suffering.”

  Slowly, the smile emerged—relieved, confident and hopelessly sexy. “Try me.”

  Her senses were getting scrambled. Why couldn’t he just go back to where he came from?

  “What do you want from me, O’Hara?” she demanded in frustration.

  “Nothing much.” Because he couldn’t resist any longer, he touched her. Touched her face ever so lightly with just the tips of his fingers. He saw the sprig of desire bloom in her eyes. “Everything.” It
was going to be all right, he thought. All of it was going to be all right. “Just the rest of your life.”

  “What?”

  Grant looked off into space, trying to find the right words, but they didn’t come. He threw himself on her mercy and hoped that she’d take pity on him and fill in the gaps. “Despite what the tabloids might have said, I have never proposed to a woman before. I’m not sure how it’s done.”

  Staring at him, afraid to believe what she was hearing, she could still feel a smile quirking her lips. “And why would you want to know how it’s done?”

  He slipped one hand around her waist. “Because I want to propose to you.”

  She could feel her heart leap, but she wanted to hear more. What had happened to bring him here like this? “way?”

  Grant did what any good poker player would do. If she wanted everything, he would give her everything. His reasons, his self-respect, everything. “Because I can’t seem to think about anything else but you. Because I can’t concentrate since you left. Because I want to be with you more than I have ever, ever wanted anything else.” He looked into her eyes. “Because I love you.”

  She bit her lip, suddenly afraid. “Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that,” he contradicted. “I’ve given it a lot of thought—even when I didn’t want to.” That didn’t sound right. Damn it, he wasn’t any good at this—at baring his feelings, his soul. He began again. “You’re different—”

  “That’s just because no one has ever said ‘no’ to you before.”

  There, he had her. “You didn’t say ‘no,’ not at the end.” Over and over again he’d relived those last minutes with her in his mind, torturing himself. “You were saying ‘yes.’”

  Her expression hardened “And you walked away from that.”

  “Yes, I did.” His eyes pinned her. “That’s just the point. Do you think I’ve ever walked away from that kind of an open invitation before?” She had to see, he thought, to understand how much that had cost him. And why it had cost him. Why he had done it in the first place. For her. Just for her.