All because she’d taken him at his word. Foolish girl.
Three days after the dinner at her mom’s house, Addy had left a message on Spencer’s voice mail at work. She’d called after midnight, hoping that even an obvious workaholic like him would have left the office by then. Keeping it brief, she’d simply told him that she’d made arrangements with one of her brother’s co-workers for a marriage that would end amicably in divorce, after the appropriate time stipulated in her great-aunt’s will.
The part she came to regret was that she’d mentioned the man’s name.
At quarter to five the next evening, a messenger had arrived at her office bearing a slim envelope with two sheets of paper. The first was a note from Spencer.
The second page was a rap sheet.
Maybe you’d better think twice about this guy. I don’t think Susannah would approve of you marrying someone with a record, even temporarily.
Spencer
After calling up her brother to read him the riot act and probably getting the guy fired to boot, she’d reluctantly decided to look elsewhere. Although the temptation to go ahead just to spite her self-appointed guardian angel was strong.
She wasn’t that stubborn, though, so she’d rejoined the search. At that point, she’d even felt a little gratitude toward Spencer. He obviously cared what happened to her.
But when she left her next message, she was careful to be deliberately vague about her new choice. No sense letting the man think she wanted him to vet every prospective groom.
She should have known better. Who knew what a busy-body a guy with a law degree could be? It turned out that he called up her mother and pried the name of the latest man out of her.
This time, his note arrived with a videocassette wrapped in brown paper.
Moving from ex-convicts to former stars of pornographic films is not necessarily a step in the right direction. Are you sure you’re a good judge of character? Although the movie did get four stars in Adult Video Monthly.
Spencer
Drat the man. She didn’t need an angel. Just someone willing to share a house and a marriage license for a while in exchange for some cash. On the other hand, the porn-star thing was a little creepy.
At this point, she stopped leaving him messages. The damage, however, had been done. After hearing about her first two unbelievably poor choices, her family conspired behind her back to work with Spencer. Despite her stern commands to the contrary, she found out that they’d started calling him up and asking him to run background checks.
Two weeks of this madness was enough.
She banged with a fist on his office door, a crumpled slip of paper sticking out between her clenched fingers, and hollered his name.
“Reed! Get your butt out here!”
She heard his measured tread approaching the door and waited for him, one foot tapping like a jackhammer on the cement stoop. As the door swung open, she held the latest note between both hands and snapped it open with a crinkling of wrinkled paper.
“What is this supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Good evening to you, too, Addy,” he said and gestured for her to enter. When she ignored him, he glanced at the note. “I believe it says, ‘You’re kidding, right? Spencer.’”
“Don’t avoid the question.” She poked him in the chest with one finger. “What’s wrong with Steve Henderson?”
“Not a thing,” he said. The moment she let her smirk show, he opened his mouth again and she knew she’d triumphed too soon. “If you’re into bigamy, that is.”
“He’s married?” Like a balloon popped by a pin, her shoulders slumped and her head sank. “Since when did it get so hard to find a good man to marry you for cash?”
“I couldn’t tell you, but do you think we could continue this inside? I’m freezing here.”
She looked him up and down and realized that he was standing in front of her in jeans, a casual white button-down shirt and bare feet. His hair was rumpled and his glasses dangled by a stem from his shirt pocket. She raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Friday is casual day around here, even for me. In, please?”
Stepping across the threshold, she gave him a wide berth as she passed. He closed the door behind her and the light in the hall dimmed further. Light shone from a door down the hall—his office, she presumed—but the rest of the building looked battened down for the weekend.
“I’d offer you coffee, but my assistant’s gone for the night and she locks up everything except the decaf when she leaves. Claims I’m too irritable in the morning if I drink the real stuff all night long.”
He strode off toward the light, assuming she’d follow. She considered staying put and just yelling but decided that wouldn’t be dignified. She stalked after him.
In his office, she sank into the chair opposite his desk, swung both legs over one arm and dropped her head back over the other. She groaned aloud.
He said nothing.
“How am I supposed to pull this off if you shoot down every guy I dig up? You and my family. Traitors.” She stared at the ceiling.
“We just want to make sure you don’t end up hitched to a serial killer, or worse.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Besides, there’s always another option, you know.”
She rolled her head around and up to face him with great effort. With his head bent over a document, a too-long lock of blond hair falling in his eyes, Spencer studiously ignored her.
“I’m not marrying you.”
“Whatever you say.”
“And you need a haircut.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Minutes ticked by. In the comfortable silence, she heard the clock on the wall tick off the time and the rustle of flipping pages as he read. Addy realized she was vaguely hungry and wondered when she’d last eaten.
After a while, she worked up the energy to leave. The process was quick, since she hadn’t even removed her coat. She stood up, wincing at the puddle of dirty water her boots had dripped onto the linoleum floor.
“I’m outta here. I need to eat something. It’s been about three days since my last meal.” When he looked up at her, she could see the strain of overwork in the faint blue shadows beneath his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not giving up. Maybe there’s a gas station attendant taking a break from his career as a bank robber I can go propose to.”
“If you wait a bit, I’ll join you.” He smiled and her heart tumbled a little bit. “In the meal, not the proposal.”
“No, thanks.” It felt as if she were kicking a puppy. But she was drawing a line here. “You’re involved enough in my life as it is, right now, without us arguing over who picks up the check.”
“Suit yourself.”
At the door to the hall she paused, accustomed by now to his parting shots.
Sure enough.
“Don’t do anything rash, Addy. We’ll be watching.”
“I bet,” she muttered under her breath and left the building.
Valiantly resisting the temptation to head to a bar and start hitting up men for marital prospects, she drove home instead, stopping to pick up takeout at her local Chinese restaurant.
Sitting awake in bed at two in the morning, empty white cartons stacked high on her nightstand, she tried to focus on reading Pride and Prejudice. Her brain insisted on tumbling options one over the other like semiprecious stones in a gem polisher. There had to be a way around this problem. She was a smart woman. She’d passed four years of advanced math by the time she finished her graduate degree, for God’s sake. She could figure out a way to fix this problem without Spencer Reed’s help.
She woke up at dawn the next morning, still tired and with an MSG hangover. Even her dreams were conspiring against her, filled as they had been with erotic images of Spencer’s hands racing over her body, strong caresses gentling in an instant to featherlight brushes against her skin. She was flushed and irritated, and rose with just one though
t in her mind. The inescapable conclusion.
No time like the present. Sun’s up and the day was wasting.
Banging on a door and calling Reed’s name for the second time in twelve hours, she clenched her jaw and prepared to dig in.
He opened it, stained-glass panels shooting off rainbows in the early morning sun. He was barefoot again, but this time wearing only a pair of faded gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. Keeping her eyes off his bare torso, she shoved a box at him and watched him stumble with the unexpected weight.
His eyes were barely open. His mouth moved but no words managed to make their way from his sleep-befuddled brain into vocalization. So much the better. She’d start this off on her terms.
“We’re going to lay down some ground rules here. But first, there’s more where that came from in the truck.”
She pushed past his still-silent form and headed up the staircase to her room.
Five
Coffee.
He needed coffee.
Pots of coffee. Gallons of cappuccino. Aquariums of espresso. Swimming pools of double café lattes. Or maybe just an intravenous needle hooked up to a bag of one hundred percent pure Colombian bliss.
Maybe he was still sleeping. He’d caught a glimpse of his alarm clock as he’d stumbled out of his bedroom to answer the incessant doorbell and simultaneous loud pounding on the door. If he wasn’t hallucinating, which remained to be seen, it was six forty-five.
In the morning.
Saturday morning.
Coming to a vague consciousness, he found himself standing in his foyer. The chill air gusting through the open front door woke him up enough to kick it shut. Focus, Reed, he instructed his sleep-befuddled brain. Kitchen’s thataway.
In the kitchen, he stood in the middle of the room wondering what he was supposed to be doing with this box, this very heavy box, in his arms. Finally, he dropped it. It landed with a solid thunk on the floor. Good. Didn’t sound as if anything broke.
His feet were cold. He turned the oven up as far as it would go and opened the broiler door, letting hot air drift across the floor. Coffee. The damn machine was around here somewhere.
The coffeepot squatted on the counter, exactly where it had been since the first day he’d set foot in this house. He fumbled through the motions, grinding beans, filter, water, on button at last.
The thickening aroma of French roast was enough to start resuscitating his brain. At least enough for him to realize that heating the house via the oven was probably not the most efficient plan. Socks would maybe be a better idea. And a shirt; it was chilly down here.
He stumbled back upstairs and into his room, spotting his unmade bed with the pleasure of a treasure hunter finding the lost diamond. “Ahh, mine.” He stopped to pull on socks and a sweatshirt even older and more frayed than the pants and then tumbled back into bed, winding a sheet around his shoulders and pushing his head under a pillow.
Two seconds later, something sharp poked him in the shoulder. He might have said ouch as he rolled over. Then something patted him on the butt and the mattress dipped as a huge weight landed on it and a cold, wet nose shoved itself into his armpit.
He threw one arm around the furry monster and wrestled it under control. “Elwood! Get down! Oof!”
Spencer sucked in air after his hundred-and-twenty-pound pooch used his stomach as a launching pad to jump to the floor. He coughed twice.
“Up and at ’em, lawyer boy.” A viciously cheerful voice rang out from beside him. Memory started to filter in. Now he knew who’d lured the dog onto the bed. Pinching fingers grabbed one of his toes where they stuck out from under the covers, and yanked on them.
“Go ’way,” he mumbled, renewing his grasp on the pillow over his head. Unable to fall asleep last night, he’d sat up over papers until his eyes had burned. By his best guess, he’d been asleep for about an hour and a half when this waking nightmare began.
She ripped the covers off him. Why he’d ever thought he was attracted to this woman was a complete mystery. She was the root of all evil.
And he was waking up. Dammit.
He cracked open one eye and was treated to the sight of Addy’s butt sashaying out of his room. That was enough to bring him to full consciousness. If she wasn’t a bad dream, then maybe he’d actually made that coffee.
Back in her new bedroom—for the next six months, at least—Addy closed the door and collapsed against it, the knob digging into the small of her back. Even fully dressed, the sight of him in bed was enough to spark visions of her crawling under the covers. Talk about rash. This was going to be harder than she’d imagined.
Taking a deep breath, she faced the door and squared her shoulders. Faint hearts and all that. She stepped back out into the hall.
“Where’d you put my files, Reed?” she started to shout before spotting him shuffling out of his room. His socks rasped faintly against the short pile of the faded runner on the floor. He headed down the stairs without glancing at her.
“Kitchen.” He waved a hand toward the back of the house. “Box. Coffee.”
“Not a morning person, huh?” she said, thumping down the stairs behind him in her heavy boots. At the bottom, she headed out the door to grab another load from her truck. When she came back in, Spencer was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her box in his arms and a coffee mug the size of a soup pot clutched precariously in two fingers.
“Great. Bring that up, will you?” At the door to her room, she dropped her own load and relieved him of his. Coffee mug lifted immediately and blue eyes blinked and peered at her over the rim as he gulped without stopping. She carried and kicked both boxes over to what she assumed was a closet door, and stacked them one on top of the other.
“Put your shoes on. There’s more in the truck.”
His eyes tracked her as she strode out of the room. Sleep-rough and slow, his voice called from behind her.
“Tell me Spike isn’t waiting in the truck with the boxes. Please.”
“Would I be asking for your help if he was?” Her words floated up to him from the foyer. “This was your idea, Reed. The least you can do is give me a hand.”
This was how she asked for help? No wonder he felt like a Volkswagen flattened by a steamroller.
Although she lost him once midtask, only to find him re-caffeinating in the kitchen, she hadn’t brought enough stuff to make the work last more than a half hour or so. Catching him paused at the bottom of the stairs, a box under one arm and his knee bracing another against the baluster while he sucked down more java, she scoffed.
“Why don’t you just put a nipple on that thing and call it a pacifier?”
His eyes narrowed at her and he swigged back the dregs. “I’ve seen you swigging from your own cup all morning. I bet you twenty dollars that’s not mountain spring water.”
She flushed. “It’s Diet Coke,” she admitted, and then rushed to continue, “but I mix it half-and-half with caffeine-free. I’m trying to cut back.”
“Me, too. Just not today.”
After the last load was hauled up the stairs and deposited in her room, Spencer flung himself on her queen-size bed and groaned. Two seconds later, Elwood raced into the room and leapt up beside his master, turning in circles until he settled himself against Spencer’s side. Addy wriggled out of her puffy down coat and slung it on a doorknob.
“I believe I mentioned some ground rules a while back,” she said as she started yanking clothes from boxes and shoving them in dresser drawers. She’d reorganize later. “Rule number one—neither you nor your dog is welcome in my bed.”
“Have a heart, Addy. We’re exhausted.” He didn’t move from his sprawl across the quilt. The dog just looked at her and drooled a little.
“You should get more exercise.” Now wasn’t the time for sympathy.
“She is a cruel, cruel woman, Elwood,” he said, and dropped a consoling hand on the dog’s head for a quick rub. Elwood grinned in agreement and drooled some more.
He rolled over onto his side and propped himself up on one elbow. His hair, mussed and sticking up in all directions from sleep, shone a deeper, darker gold in the rich, early morning light.
“You can list all the rules and regulations you want. That’s not going to change the fact that every time we’re in the same room for more than five minutes we want each other.”
“Well, we’re just going to have to be adults about it then, aren’t we?” She snapped the wrinkles out of a sweater and re-folded it, adding it to a growing stack on the dresser. “Want whatever you like. Just don’t act on it.” She slammed a drawer shut and reached for another box. “We’ll be married on paper, but that’s it. We do our own laundry, cook our own meals and stay out of each other’s way as much as possible. And maybe we’ll make it through this farce without killing each other.”
He leaned over to stage-whisper in the dog’s ear. “She’s strict, too.”
“This isn’t a joke, Reed.” She turned to face him and stopped short, seeing the three of them in this room for the first time and letting herself picture the next six months. The vision in her head had her sitting down suddenly on a box.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. This is never going to work.”
In a second, he’d bounced up off her bed and whistled for the dog to follow him.
“Sure it will. Don’t quit now, when you’ve finally done the right thing.” He ruffled her hair as an older brother would as he walked past her. “All kidding aside, I’m glad you’re here. Just let me grab a quick shower and we can get going.”
She held her head in her hands, unconvinced. Going?
“Where are we going?”
“To get married, of course.” He stopped in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame, to throw her a quick grin. “Unless you want to drag this whole thing out, in which case I’d just as soon go back to bed for another three or four hours.”
No, she didn’t want to drag anything out. But, still—today? She’d be married to this man by the time the sun set? The vague twitches of nervousness in her stomach erupted into full-blown nausea at the thought. She was out of her ever-loving mind.
Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) Page 8
