Contract Bridegroom

by Sandra Field

  Ellis said with a tight smile, “You’re a dark horse, Celia. Why didn’t you tell me you knew Mr. Lathem?”

  “I—I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You’ve more than succeeded,” he said drily. “And how did you meet him?”

  “My yacht went aground in a storm the week before last,” Jethro interposed. “Celia was on duty that night. Later, I went to Collings Cove to thank her in person.”

  “So that place finally did you some good, Celia,” Ellis said acerbically, then turned to Jethro. “She’s always refused to go around in society—I was beginning to think she’d never meet an acceptable partner.”

  Jethro’s smile lingered possessively on Celia’s flushed cheeks. “I’m glad she never did. It was love at first sight, wasn’t it, darling? It took me by surprise, I know that. Of course, I can’t speak for Celia.”

  Say something, Celia, she thought frantically. Quit gawping like a stranded fish. “Nothing like it has ever happened to me before,” she said truthfully, forcing an adoring smile to her lips as she gazed with doe eyes at Jethro.

  She’d kill him. Murder him. Slowly. Inch by inch. Reaching up, she kissed him on the cheek, her laugh sounding utterly false. “We want to get married very soon, Father. I know that’ll make you happy.”

  “More than happy,” Ellis said. “You’ve done very well for yourself, Celia. My congratulations.”

  Jethro must be worth a mint for her father to be looking at her with such respect. Container ships. Oil tankers. How dare Jethro deceive her like that? “Thank you, Father,” she said, and sat down. “Can I get Jethro to pour you a drink?”

  Her father sank back into his chair; he’d lost more weight, she noticed with a pang of fear. “Ring for Melcher,” he wheezed. “This deserves champagne.”

  So Jethro’s absolutely filthy rich, thought Celia, and a few minutes later did her best to look like a blushing bride-to-be as Ellis raised his glass to her in a toast. Then he said to Jethro, “How soon can you get a marriage licence?”

  “Why don’t we settle on next Saturday for the wedding?” Jethro suggested. “Would that suit you, sir?”

  “The sooner the better,” Ellis said with a touch of grimness. “Phone your brother tonight, Celia, and make sure they’ll be here. You’ll wear white, of course?”

  “If you’d like me to.”

  “A private ceremony here at the house. Get the best caterer, Melcher will advise you. Not too many guests, I’m not up to it.” He added with a wintry smile, “I’m sure I’ll still fit into my tuxedo.”

  He’d made a joke. A small one, but a joke, nevertheless. Sudden tears wavered in Celia’s vision. Her father never joked; he had no sense of humor. But for once, she’d made him happy. Done the right thing. Been a good daughter instead of a disappointment to him. Ellis said gruffly, “No need to cry, girl.”

  Impulsively, she got up and hugged him, terrified of how frail he felt under his tweed jacket. “I just want you to be happy,” she whispered.

  “You’ve made a fine choice, I’m proud of you.” Ellis put down his glass. “Lathem, you and I must have a chat after dinner. No need for you to be there, Celia, there’ll be some business matters we’ll need to discuss.”

  Her father had always had a feudal outlook; why should he have changed just because she was getting married? And the fact that this whole marriage was a business matter was something Celia had to keep to herself. She gulped down her champagne and refilled all three glasses, talking and laughing like a wind-up toy. Finally she said, “Father, you look tired. Why don’t you have a little rest before dinner? Seven-thirty as usual?”

  “Fine. Put Mr. Lathem in the west wing, Celia. Later on, I’ll send Melcher up to check that everything’s in order.”

  Her father struggled to his feet as she got up. She kissed him on his withered cheek, gave Jethro a dewy-eyed smile and led the way out of her father’s suite. Jethro closed the door behind them. Without looking at him she marched to the west wing and threw open the door. Jethro’s luggage was already sitting on the Indian silk carpet. Whirling to face him, she spat, “How dare you? Deceiving me like that, making a fool of me in front of my father—I’ve never been so humiliated in my life!”

  He raised one brow sardonically. “The money, you mean?”

  “Yes, Jethro,” she said, her voice laden with sarcasm, “the money. Your money. Why didn’t you tell me you were rich?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Exactly how much are you worth?”

  “I could buy your father fifty times over,” he said lazily.

  Although, she noticed, there was nothing lazy about his eyes; they were trained on her face, hard eyes that gave nothing away. She started pacing back and forth on the carpet, her hands thrust into the pockets of her linen trousers. “How you must have been laughing at me the last couple of days! Clever little Celia, hiring you to do her dirty work. Thinking she was doing you a favor. Sixty thousand dollars, a down payment for a new boat.” Viciously she yanked the clip from her ponytail, shaking her hair free. “You could buy a thousand yachts and not even miss the money. A whole goldarn fleet of them!”

  Jethro drawled, “You look magnificent in a rage.”

  She stopped dead. “Watch it, Jethro—don’t push your luck. I’m so angry with you I could…I could—”

  “Words failing you, Celia? You must be angry.”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said with an air of discovery, “I am.”

  “I’m glad someone is!” She began marching up and down again, throwing the words over her shoulder. “I’m surprised you didn’t have a clause in the contract so I can’t get my hands on your money. Your fortune, I should say. You’d better watch out, once we’re married I’m going on the biggest spending spree in history.”

  He laughed. “I could buy a lot of Cessnas, honey-bunch.”

  “Diamonds, race horses, yachts, mansions—”

  “You’re not the type, and that first contract was only temporary. I’ll make sure the second one protects my assets.”

  “I’m sure you—” Again Celia stopped in her tracks, her face stunned, as though she’d been suddenly hit on the head. There was one horribly obvious question. A question she’d been too angry to even think of, let alone ask. Her heart hammering against her rib cage, she stammered, “But why did you agree to marry me? If you don’t need the money.”

  “I wondered when you’d get around to that.”

  Her lips compressed. “Why, Jethro?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?”

  In two swift steps he closed the distance between them and pulled her the length of his body, hip to hip, breast to chest. Then he kissed her with an intensity that to her mingled horror and fury ignited her whole body to a conflagration of desire. The romance novels she used to read had often compared passion to flames, she thought feverishly, and felt herself falling into the very heart of the fire, into heat and light and the hardness of a man’s body.

  Impossible to resist.

  She threw her arms around his neck. His hands were at her waist, her hips, his own hungers sparking her own. Then he was caressing the swell of her breast through the thin silk of her shirt, her nipple tightening in frantic response, her flesh arching to meet him. Forgetting fear or caution, she felt his erection like a throbbing in her own blood, and ached to touch his naked skin. She dragged her palm down his chest, fumbling with the first button on his shirt.

  “Oh…excuse me, sir, miss…I’ll come back later.”

  Gasping for breath, her eyes as startled as a deer’s, Celia looked over her shoulder. Melcher, the butler, was about to close the door. He looked scandalized. Melcher and her great-great-grandfather, she’d often thought, would have been soulmates.

  It’d be all over the house that she and Jethro were lovers.

  The door snapped shut. Jethro said flatly, “He did knock, I realize that now. So, have you got your answer, Celia?”
r />   “Answer?” she repeated blankly.

  “Why I agreed to marry you?”

  She flushed scarlet, pulling away from him. “We’re not going to bed, Jethro! Now or after we’re married. We’re not!”

  “Who are you trying to convince—me or you?”

  She flung discretion to the wind. “You’re rich as Croesus, you’re handsome as all get out and sexier than twenty Hollywood movie stars. So what if my father’s Ellis Scott III—don’t tell me you’re so desperate for sex you’ve got to get it by marrying a Coast Guard operator from Collings Cove. A woman who’s too stupid to recognize you for what you are. You can get sex anytime you want it, Jethro Lathem. So why the hell would you want to get married?”

  “But not sex with you, darling Celia,” he said. “You’re the exception that proves the rule. Other women throw themselves at me like waves on a reef. You don’t do that. You’re different.”

  She crossed her arms over her breast. If passion was a fire, then what Jethro was saying now was a glacier, chilling her to the bone. “You mean the only reason you want me is because I’m not willing?”

  “I’m not Darryl! I’ve told you that.”

  “Then stop behaving like him!”

  He snarled, “Did you ever respond to Darryl the way you responded to me just then?”

  Her mouth a mutinous line, she muttered, “No.”

  Jethro raked his fingers through his hair. Then he said in a strange voice, “It didn’t occur to you to lie, did it?”

  “I told you before, I’m a lousy liar.”

  “Why don’t we drop all this?” he demanded. “You saved my life that night, Celia. Now I’m doing you a favor in return. Your father’s happy you’re getting married. Forget the rest.”

  “Oh sure, just like that.”

  In a silky voice he said, “You’re the one who asked me to marry you…or are you forgetting that?”

  “I’ve done some stupid things in my life but that one takes the cake. My father was always telling me to think before I acted.”

  “Too bad you hadn’t listened.”

  “You’ve got to stop kissing me,” she cried.

  “We’re supposed to be in love, you can’t have it all ways. Anyway,” Jethro finished with an unpleasant smile, “I’m only earning my pay.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I can’t take any more of this,” she said in a low voice.

  “There’s another reason I’m going to marry you,” he said abruptly. “My life was getting in a rut…I was bored a lot of the time. Nothing like almost drowning in the North Atlantic to sharpen your mind, make you see that you need a new challenge.”

  “Bored,” Celia repeated in a stony voice. “So I’m a new challenge, am I? Why don’t you go climb an active volcano instead, Jethro? And when you get to the top, jump in.”

  He had the audacity to laugh. “That’s not very nice of you.”

  “I don’t feel nice! I feel homicidal.”

  “When you’ve climbed K2 and sailed solo round the southern hemisphere, new challenges are kind of scarce on the ground.”

  “Am I supposed to be complimented? Gee whiz, I’m more exciting than a killer mountain?”

  “Oh, you’re that all right. And about as predictable as a Himalayan blizzard.”

  She hated the glint of amusement in his eye. “I’ll wear black at the wedding with a pumpkin on my head.”

  “You’ll look gorgeous whatever you wear.”

  What she really hated about this conversation was how she understood exactly where he was coming from. Hadn’t she refused to get involved with Paul because he didn’t challenge her? Hadn’t she left the Coast Guard job partly because she was bored? Jethro didn’t bore her. Jethro was a challenge. Not that she was going to tell him that. “I wonder how long before I bore you?” she said sweetly. “Three months, do you think? Or three days?”

  “Time will tell, won’t it?” he said. “And now, if I’m going to hold up my end as your fiancé, I’d better go out a buy some decent clothes. Tux for dinner?”

  “Business suit,” she said. “Right up your alley.”

  “You don’t let up, do you?” Jethro said amiably, picked up his jacket and closed the door behind him.

  Celia sank down on the nearest chair. Jethro had agreed to marry her from a mixture of lust and boredom. She didn’t know which word she loathed more. Oh Paul, she thought, I should have listened to you.

  But today she had made her father happy. Her frail, proud father who looked so dreadfully ill. And making Ellis happy was the purpose of this whole exercise.

  Wasn’t it?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JETHRO got back to Fernleigh with twenty minutes to spare before dinner. He showered, shaved and dressed in his new suit, slicking down his wet hair in the mirror. Why was he marrying Celia? When she’d railed at him about sex, she’d been uncomfortably accurate; he’d never had any trouble finding himself a new woman. So why was he embarking on marriage with a redhead who had a temper like a shrew? A fake marriage, yeah. But still marriage.

  All the gossip columns would treat it like a real marriage.

  He winced away from that thought and glanced at his watch. He was late. Not the way to impress his future father-in-law. He hurried downstairs to the formal dining room, where Celia was leaning forward to help her father into the chair at the head of an enormous rosewood table. Her cleavage was exquisite; and Celia herself in a flowered blue dress with her hair in loose curls to her shoulders took his breath away. “Sorry I’m late, darling,” he said, and kissed her on the mouth.

  She smelled delicious; he felt the involuntary hardening of his groin, and hurriedly sat down across from her. There was an expanse of gleaming wood and a great deal of cutlery, crystal, and highly polished silverware between them. Just as well, he thought, and started up a conversation.

  Dinner seemed interminable. But eventually he and Ellis were closeted with brandy in Ellis’s study. Although the man looked exhausted, he’d never admit to it, thought Jethro; Ellis was every bit as stubborn and proud as his daughter. Quickly Jethro ran over his business holdings and his net worth. “I’ll make a very generous settlement on Celia, of course,” he said, not liking himself for the lie. “We’ll see a lawyer first thing this week.”

  “This love affair, it’s all happened very fast,” Ellis said quizzically.

  “Yes, sir. But we’re both old enough to know our own minds.”

  Ellis gave the bark that passed with him for laughter. “Well, at least you’re not marrying her for her money. She got burned more than once that way.” He gave Jethro a level glance. “You’re in love with my daughter, Jethro?”

  “I love Celia, yes,” Jethro said with as much conviction as he could muster. The words sounded odd on his tongue. He’d never told a woman other than his sister that he loved her. Never planned to. He was too much of a loner for that.

  But there was one thing he’d learned today. Celia wasn’t after him for his money. He’d watched her face when Ellis had first mentioned the Lathem Fleet. She’d been shocked, furious and humiliated. But she hadn’t been the slightest bit avaricious. Not like Marliese and Elisabeth.

  She couldn’t have seen that newspaper article in Collings Cove. Although he didn’t understand why.

  He tried to pay attention, listing his various residences around the world, starting with the loft in Manhattan and ending with the Paris flat. But he didn’t tell Ellis about his retreat in the mountains of Vermont. That place was his alone. The place he went to be himself, away from everyone else. He’d never taken a woman there and he wasn’t about to start. No, Ellis didn’t need to know about Vermont any more than Celia did.

  Eventually he said, “Sir, we can continue this tomorrow, it’s been a long day.” He hesitated, knowing he was stepping on thin ice. “Might I ask exactly what’s wrong with you? I’ve hated to bother Celia with too many questions, she’s been so worried about you.”

  “I’m glad she’s home,” Ellis
muttered, “and I’m glad you’ll be looking after her from now on. She’ll need a strong hand, Jethro—she’s far too independent for her own good. Going round the world, buying her own plane—ridiculous! You’ll have your work cut out for you.” He rummaged in the pile of papers on the delicate Javanese table beside him. “It’s all in here, about my illness. Take it with you and don’t let Celia see it. No need for her to be fretting.”

  Wondering how Ellis would react if he knew Celia was embarking on a fake marriage precisely to stop her father from fretting, Jethro took the folded papers and said good night. Then he went to his wing of the house, locked the door and read the report carefully, twice over. The family doctor had called in a couple of specialists. Old timers, good enough men but not on the front line; Jethro recognized the names from his pharmaceutical connections.

  For the space of ten minutes, Jethro then sat very still on his bed, thinking hard.

  He could make a phone call. Ask a favor. After all, Michael Stansey owed him. Much as he himself owed his friend Dave and always would. Even after the sinking of Starspray.

  If he hadn’t gone to dinner in Iceland with the captain of one of his tankers, he wouldn’t have caught the flu. No flu, no Dave at the helm, no going aground. No Celia.

  He grimaced. It was difficult to imagine not knowing her.

  Even more difficult to imagine not wanting her. Here and now, in his bed.

  He had to make the phone call, didn’t he? No matter what the outcome. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t.

  Jethro’s second phone call in the morning was to his Manhattan lawyer. He gave him some very succinct instructions and stressed their absolute confidentiality. There, he thought, putting down the receiver. He could now tell Ellis in good faith that Celia would never want for anything, no matter what happened to Jethro.

  No matter when or how they divorced.

  His third call was to his sister, who lived in the Bedford Hills outside New York with her husband and two children, and was pregnant with her third child. “Jethro,” Lindy exclaimed, “how nice to hear from you.”