An Officer And A Millionaire

by Maureen Child

  “Eloped.”

  “Worked out fine. Figured there was no rush in telling you.”

  “Especially since I didn’t want a wedding.”

  Simon frowned at him and Hunter remembered being thirteen years old and standing in this very study, trying to explain why he’d hit a baseball through the study window. The same sense of shame and discomfort he’d felt then washed over him now. The only difference was he was no longer a kid to be put in his place.

  “How’d she talk you into this, Simon?”

  In answer, his grandfather pushed himself out of the chair, drew himself up to his full height and gave Hunter a look that used to chill him to his bones. “You think I’m some old fool taken in by a pretty face and a gold-digging nature? You seriously believe I’m that far gone, boy?”

  “What else am I supposed to believe?” Hunter stood up too and met Simon’s hard stare with one of his own. “I come home for a visit-”

  “After two years,” Simon threw in.

  “-and you tell me you arranged to marry me off to someone I’ve never met just so you can have family close by?”

  “You can watch your tone with me, boy. I’m not senile yet, you know.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “You were thinking it.” Simon turned, walked to his desk and sat down behind his personal power center. From that very chair, Simon had run the Cabot family fortunes for more than five decades. “And I’ll tell you something else. Margie didn’t want any part of this. It was all my idea.”

  “And she went along out of the goodness of her heart.” Sarcasm was so thick in Hunter’s tone that even he heard it.

  “’Course not. This was business, pure and simple. I’m paying her five million dollars.”

  “Five-” Hunter sucked in a gulp of air. “So she is in it for the money. And you said she’s not a gold digger?”

  “She damn well isn’t, and you’ll figure that out for yourself after you spend some time with her.” Simon picked up a pen from the desk and twirled it absentmindedly between his fingers. “Had to browbeat her into taking the money and doing this for me. She’s a good girl and she works hard. She’s done a lot of good for this town, too, and she’s done real well by your name.”

  “How nice for me.” Hunter shook his head at the sensation of a velvet-lined trap snapping shut around him.

  “You should be grateful. I picked you out a wife who’s a hard worker, and she’s got a big heart as well.”

  “Grateful.” Hunter moved in, leaned both hands on his grandfather’s desk and ground out tightly, “What I’ll be grateful for is a damn annulment, Simon. Or even a divorce. As soon as possible.”

  Disgusted, his grandfather muttered, “I should have known you wouldn’t appreciate this.”

  “Yeah, you should’ve.”

  “If you’d open your eyes and see her as I do, you’d change your tune.” Simon looked so damn smug, so self-satisfied that Hunter felt a surge of temper rise up and grab the base of his throat. For his whole damn life, Simon had been the one he could count on. The man who had taught him what duty and honor meant. The one who’d instilled in Hunter a sense of right and wrong. Now, he was blithely explaining how he’d set Hunter up with a marriage he didn’t want all for Simon’s own convenience.

  “My ‘tune’ doesn’t need changing,” Hunter told him. “Just why the hell should I ‘appreciate’ having a wife I didn’t want in the first place? One you’re paying.”

  “I told you. She didn’t want the money. Had to talk her into accepting it.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll bet she was really hard to convince, too. Five million dollars? Damn it, Simon, what were you thinking?”

  “You weren’t here,” the older man said softly. “I’m getting on, Hunter, and you weren’t here. Margie is.”

  Again, he felt that soft, swift stab of guilt-then he buried it. “She’s your secretary.”

  “She’s more than that.”

  “Sure, now,” Hunter allowed.

  “You don’t know her,” Simon said, and his voice was whisper soft. “She came here to build a life for herself and she’s done it. And she’s been a good wife to you-”

  “I haven’t been here!”

  “-and a good granddaughter to me.”

  All right, he could at least admit that much to himself, Hunter thought. Gold digger or not, the curvy redhead had at least apparently been good to Simon. When Hunter had finally heard about his grandfather’s brush with death, guilt had gnawed him for not being there when the old man had needed him. But the nature of his job meant that he couldn’t always be around. He lived and died according to orders.

  So, knowing that Simon hadn’t been alone during that frightening time in his life was good. And for that, he could be grateful. Not that he’d be telling that to the curvy redhead with the quick temper.

  “Margie deserves your respect,” Simon warned, lifting one finger to point at him.

  “For marrying a man she never met to keep her boss happy.” Hunter nodded sagely. “Yeah, that spells respect to me.”

  Simon scowled at him. “You never did know enough to listen to me.”

  “I listen. I’m just not interested in what you’re saying. I don’t want a wife.” All right, he’d been doing some thinking about his future lately. Maybe he’d even considered getting married, for about thirty seconds. But thinking about doing something and actually doing it were two wildly different things. And if he did eventually decide to get married, he’d be the one picking out his own damn wife, thanks.

  “You could do worse,” Simon grumbled.

  “Yeah? I don’t know about that. A woman who has to be paid to marry me pretty much sounds like the bottom of the barrel.”

  “Shows how much you know about anything,” Simon said, and his fingers tapped restlessly again. “Margie’s the cream of the crop.”

  “Not much of a harvest around here, then,” Hunter murmured, then louder, added, “I won’t stay married to her.”

  Simon blew out a breath. “No, I didn’t suppose you would. Though you should know Margie feels the same way you do.”

  Hunter wasn’t so sure. She may have had the old man fooled but not him. With five million dollars at stake, a woman might be willing to do just about anything.

  “She’s been good to me, and I won’t have you embarrassing her.”

  “Oh yeah. Wouldn’t want to embarrass anybody.”

  His grandfather sighed dramatically, then kept talking as if Hunter hadn’t said a word. “She’s planned a big party for my eightieth birthday, and I don’t want anything spoiling that, either.”

  “A hell of a lot of demands flying around here,” Hunter said under his breath.

  “So, until the party’s over, I expect you to act like the husband everyone in town knows you are.”

  “Excuse me?” He hadn’t expected that.

  “You heard me. People in Springville like Margie. They respect her. And I’m not going to stand by and watch you make her a laughingstock. You’ll be leaving again, no doubt-” He paused as if waiting for confirmation.

  Hunter nodded. “I have to report back in about a month.”

  Another frown. “Well, I’ll still be here and so will Margie, hopefully, so I don’t want her life ruined because you were angry.”

  Hunter’s back teeth ground together. “No, wouldn’t want Margie inconvenienced.”

  Simon went on again, ignoring Hunter’s comments completely. “If after the party you still want the annulment-”

  “-I will.”

  “-I won’t stop you and I’m sure Margie won’t. But until then, you’ll do this my way.”

  Hunter looked at his grandfather and recognized the set-in-stone expression on the old man’s face. There wouldn’t be any budging him on this one. Once Simon Cabot made up his mind about something, nothing less than a nuclear strike would change it. Irritation swamped Hunter, and the uncomfortable sensation of being trapped came right along in its wake
.

  But Simon was an old man. And Hunter owed him. So he’d do this his grandfather’s way. He’d be here for the party, and then before he went back to the base, he’d set annulment proceedings into action.

  “Fine.” Hunter tamped down the frustration bubbling within and swallowed back the urge to argue. “When I’m in town, I’ll act married.”

  “You’ll act it here, too.”

  “What?”

  “You hard of hearing all of a sudden? You should get that checked.” A sly smile curved Simon’s mouth briefly before he became all business again. “As long as you’re home, you’re a married man. I won’t have the servants treating Margie badly. Everyone in this household knows you’re married.”

  Hunter was still reeling from that piece of news when a soft knock on the study door sounded out. He turned around as the door opened, and there stood his “wife.”

  Three

  “Simon?” Margie asked, blatantly ignoring Hunter. “Is everything all right?”

  “Fine, fine. I was just explaining the situation to Hunter.”

  “Good.” Though judging from the look on the younger man’s face at the moment, Margie thought he hadn’t been too happy with his grandfather’s explanation. Well, neither was she.

  She hadn’t wanted to marry Hunter, but she’d done it for Simon. And whether Hunter believed it or not, the five million dollars hadn’t swayed her. What had convinced her to go along with Simon’s plan had been the lost, frightened look in the old man’s eyes that had convinced her to take part in what she’d recognized right away as a crazy plan.

  And for the last year, she’d finally felt the sense of belonging she’d always wanted. She’d had a grandfather. A home. A place to call her own. People to care for-people who cared for her.

  To Margie, that was priceless.

  But she had to admit that being married to a Hunter who wasn’t around was far easier than being married to the man in person. Looking at him now, he seemed too…big. His shoulders, his broad chest, his piercing blue eyes.

  His scowl.

  Frowning right back at him, she then shifted her gaze to Simon and said simply, “The doctor’s here.”

  “Blast it.” The older Cabot quickly picked up a sheaf of papers from atop his desk and busily started leafing through them. “Margie, tell him I’m too busy to see him today. Try me next week. Better yet, next month.”

  She smiled, since she was more than accustomed to Simon’s frantic attempts to avoid his doctor. “There’s no getting out of it, Simon.”

  “Is there a problem?” Hunter asked.

  Margie reluctantly looked at him again, met his gaze and felt a bolt of something hot and wicked slice through her. The man had incredible eyes. Which, of course, meant nothing to her. Especially since great eyes did not make up for a crabby, arrogant nature. Still, he looked a little worried for his grandfather, and that was enough to touch Margie, so she hurried to reassure him. “No, it’s just his checkup. The doctor comes here to see Simon every couple of weeks since Simon can’t be trusted to keep an appointment in town.”

  “I’m a busy man. Too busy to go see a damn pill pusher,” Simon muttered.

  Hunter folded his arms over his impressive chest and asked, “Simon’s all right, though? Healthy?”

  Margie nodded and told herself not to look at that wide chest or the muscles so clearly defined beneath the soft fabric of his black T-shirt. “Yes, he’s, uh…” She swallowed hard, cleared her throat nervously, then continued. “He’s recovered completely. The checkups are just routine now.”

  “Routine,” Simon muttered again. “What’s routine about disrupting a man’s life every time he turns around-that’s what I want to know…”

  “Good,” Hunter said. “I’m glad everything’s all right, but I’ll want to talk to the doctor myself, of course.”

  “Why should you talk to him,” Simon questioned. “He’s my doctor and I don’t need another babysitter,” he added with a glare at Margie.

  “Of course you will,” Margie told Hunter as they both ignored the grumbling older man. Weren’t they being polite all of a sudden, she thought. But she wasn’t fooled. There was still something dark and smoldering in Hunter’s eyes.

  “Who’s in charge here, I want to know?” Simon demanded.

  “That would be me,” a new voice announced.

  Margie tore her gaze from Hunter’s to see Dr. Harris striding into the room with a wide smile on his creased face. His wild gray hair was forever sticking up in odd tufts all over his head, and his soft brown eyes looked magnified behind his glasses. He walked straight up to Hunter and shook his hand. “Good to see you back home, Hunter. It’s been too long.”

  “Yeah,” Hunter said, sliding a quick look at Margie, “it has.”

  “Wasted your time coming out here,” Simon said, still shuffling papers. “Too busy for you today and don’t need any more pills, thanks.”

  “Pay no attention to him, doctor,” Margie said smiling.

  “I never do.” The doctor released Hunter’s hand, then pulled Margie in for a quick hug. “Don’t know what we would have done without your wife around here the last year or so, Hunter.”

  She stiffened as Hunter’s gaze locked on her.

  “Is that so?” he asked quietly.

  “It is,” Simon put in.

  “The woman’s a wonder,” Dr. Harris said. “Not only sees that your stubborn old goat of a grandfather does what he’s supposed to, but she also single-handedly helped us raise enough money to add an outpatient surgery annex to the clinic. Of course, she told us all how much you had to do with it.”

  “Did she?” One dark eyebrow lifted as he studied her, and Margie fought to keep from fidgeting under that stare.

  “She did.” Beaming now, the doctor added, “She let us all know that after Simon’s heart attack, you wanted to be sure the clinic had everything it needed so locals didn’t have to go into the city to be taken care of. Meant a lot to folks around here that you still think of Springville as your home.”

  “Glad I could help,” Hunter said, tearing his gaze from Margie’s to look at the doctor.

  “Simon always said how you’d start taking more of an interest in the town one day,” the man said with a clap on Hunter’s shoulder. “Seems he was right. So I just want to thank you personally-and not just for the clinic but for everything else you’ve done-”

  “Everything else?” Hunter asked.

  “Dr. Harris-” Margie spoke up quickly to cut the doctor off before he could say too much. “Didn’t you have other appointments today?”

  “True, true,” the man was saying, still grinning his appreciation. “So I’d better get down to business. Just wanted you to know the whole town appreciates what you’re doing, Hunter. It’s made a difference. All of it.”

  “All of it?” Hunter’s hard, cold gaze locked on Margie. “How much is all?”

  “Aren’t you here to plague me?” Simon snapped. “Or are you going to stand there and talk to Hunter all day?”

  The doctor chuckled. “He’s right. Why don’t you two go off somewhere together while I examine this crotchety patient of mine?” He winked at Hunter. “Lord knows if I had a pretty little wife I hadn’t seen in months, I’d want some alone time with her.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” Hunter said, and Margie inhaled sharply.

  She really didn’t want any more alone time with Hunter at the moment. In fact, she was good. She could have waited days, or maybe forever, to be alone with him again. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as though she’d be getting that wish granted.

  “Come on, honey,” he said, taking her elbow in a hard grip, “let’s go get ‘reacquainted.’”

  She only had time to throw one quick look over her shoulder at Simon before Hunter started propelling her across the room. Simon gave her a thumbs-up signal and a Cheshire cat grin-not much as life preservers went but better than nothing.

  Hunter’s legs were so long tha
t she had to practically run to keep up with him, but Margie managed, barely. They slipped out of the study, and Hunter reached behind her to close the doors before he looked at her again.

  Hard to believe, but there was both fire and ice in his eyes when he said, “You’ve got some explaining to do, babe.”

  “I told you not to call me that.” If he thought she was going to simply curl up in a ball and whimper for mercy, he was sadly mistaken. He’d taken her by surprise when he’d shown up in the bathroom earlier, so she’d babbled too much. But she’d had time now to think. To gather her own sense of outrage along with her self-confidence. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But Hunter Cabot couldn’t say the same.

  She took a quick look around the empty hallway, hardly noting the lavish furnishings that had, the first time she’d stepped into the castlelike Cabot home, completely intimidated her. How far she’d come, she thought idly, that she now felt at home here, with the rose-patterned Oriental rugs dotted on a gleaming wood floor. With the pale washes of color seeping through the stained-glass windows in the foyer. With the crystal vases holding arrangements of flowers that were nearly as tall as she was.

  This castle had become her home, and she refused to let Hunter take that feeling away from her.

  “I don’t owe you anything,” she said, keeping her tone calm and dispassionate, which wasn’t easy.

  His mouth curved in a smile that had nothing to do with humor. “Now see, that’s not the right tack to take.”

  “How about this one, then? You’re hurting me,” she said, with a glance down to where his fingers were clenched around her elbow. Instantly, Hunter’s grip on her elbow loosened. Not that he actually let her go, but the strength in his fingers eased up a bit.

  “Sorry.” He blew out a breath and glanced all around the empty hallway before dipping his head to speak to her again. “But after everything Simon just told me, I think you and I need to talk.”

  “Simon explained everything?” Thank heaven. He was supposed to have had this chat with Hunter before the man came home, and that would have made this situation a lot easier. But if Simon had told his grandson what was going on, what was left to talk about?