Contract Bridegroom

by Sandra Field

  It was Celia’s turn to miss a step. “So where do you fit in the picture?”

  “Oh, I helped him out here and there.”

  “How?”

  “Persistent, aren’t you?”

  “I’m married to Jethro, Dave,” she said drily.

  “Then I think you should ask Jethro.”

  “Is that what you call male solidarity?”

  “You’ve got a lifetime ahead of you, Celia,” Dave said mildly.

  Not with Jethro, she didn’t. As the foxtrot ended, Dave added, “Jethro might not be the easiest man to live with, but he’s true to the core. Now, how about we find something to eat?”

  So Celia ate and drank, accepting congratulations as her due, the wishes for happiness as an already accomplished fact. The noise level increased; the party was a success. Time to repair her lipstick, she thought, and left the main ballroom with its baroque ceiling and expanse of gleaming floor for the nearest washroom. As she walked behind a gorgeous array of tropical plants, she came face-to-face with Darryl Coates.

  Her father must have invited him despite Darryl’s messy divorce; Darryl’s father and Ellis were old business partners. Darryl had been drinking, his cheeks were mottled and his tie askew. “Saw you coming this way and thought I’d wait for you…clever little Celia,” he sneered. “You’ve done very well for yourself—no wonder you weren’t interested in me.”

  “You know why I’m not interested in you.”

  “Come off it.” Darryl made a rough grab for her; as she pulled back, he lurched on his feet, his kiss missing her mouth and smearing her cheek.

  “Don’t!” she choked.

  In a voice like ice, Jethro said, “Leave my wife alone.”

  Darryl swayed sideways, pushing against the wall for support. “She only wanted a little kiss for old times’ sake. Money’s what she’s after…expensive tastes, Celia has. Too expensive for the likes of me.”

  “I love Jethro for himself,” Celia said clearly, “not for his money,” and thought what a huge relief it was to speak the truth for once.

  His fists clenched at his sides, Jethro said in a voice Celia hadn’t heard before, “Coates, I never want to see you near Celia again. Because if I do, I won’t be responsible for the consequences…do you understand?”

  Darryl backed away. “Hey, man, you’re overreacting. After all, it’s not as if she’s any great lay—”

  In a blur of movement Jethro picked Darryl up and thrust him hard against the wall. “One more word and it’ll be the end of you,” he snarled. “I know what you did to Celia four years ago. One phone call and you’d be finished in this town.”

  Then, as if the contact had sullied him, Jethro let go of Darryl, wiped his hands on his jacket and turned to Celia. “I came looking for you because your father wants to make a speech. He’s waiting for us.”

  His arm around her waist felt like a steel bar. As Darryl staggered off toward the men’s room, she said urgently, “Jethro, I didn’t instigate that kiss.”

  “I never thought you did. Not your style.”

  “You mean you believe me?”

  “For God’s sake, Celia—you promised you wouldn’t have an affair for the duration of this marriage and there’s not an underhanded bone in your body. Of course I believe you.”

  “I don’t think I’ll understand you if I live to be a hundred!”

  “Non-issue—we’ll be divorced long before that,” Jethro snapped, tugging at her arm. “Come on, your father’s waiting by the podium.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry! This is important. You trust me—that’s what you’re saying.”

  Jethro stopped dead in his tracks. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. So what?”

  “That’s the best compliment you could possibly have paid me.”

  “This marriage is about acting,” he said with brutal exactitude. “Not about reality.”

  His words were like a slap in the face. For you it’s about acting, she thought, a cold fist squeezing her heart. But not for me. She could never tell Jethro she was in love with him. He’d laugh all the way to the divorce court. “You don’t know how glad I’ll be when this party’s over,” she said.

  “No more than me. Let’s go.”

  They’d reached the end of the row of hibiscus and canna lilies. She pasted a smile to her lips and made her way across the dance floor toward her father. His speech was mercifully brief, though undoubtedly sincere; Jethro, in his reply, sounded equally sincere. He sounded like a man who was deeply in love.

  He should be on Broadway too, Celia thought miserably. The joy she’d felt at the top of the stairs had entirely dissipated; all she felt now was a vast emptiness. Pain, she knew, would come later. She couldn’t afford to feel it now.

  Her father was looking pale and drawn. When the orchestra had started up again and Jethro was dancing with Lindy on the far side of the floor, she took Ellis aside. “Dad, I think you should call it quits, you look really tired.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  The man who had spoken was a stranger to her. Ellis said, with an awkwardness rare to him, “I don’t believe you two have met. Dr. Michael Stansey…my daughter, Celia. Michael’s the one who put me on the new drug, Celia—he’s the research scientist who came up with it in the first place.”

  The doctor shook her hand. “I’m delighted with your father’s progress. As I’m sure you are, Mrs. Lathem.” He gave her a boyish grin. “I must say, I never figured Jethro for anything but a confirmed bachelor.”

  “You know Jethro?” she said, puzzled.

  The doctor looked surprised. “We’ve been colleagues for several years—he owns the pharmaceutical company that’s been testing this new drug for the market. He’s the one who phoned me to come and see your father…I thought you knew that.”

  “He must have forgotten to mention it,” Ellis said heartily. “Early indications suggest my recovery will be complete, Celia. Good news, eh?”

  “Marvellous news,” she said, her brain whirling. “And we have you to thank, Dr. Stansey.”

  “The way your father’s responded is all the thanks I need—far beyond my expectations. Well, I must find my wife, I have a conference in California tomorrow so we’ll have to be leaving. All the best, Ellis, and I’ll see you in a week for another check-up. Congratulations, Mrs. Lathem, Jethro’s a fine man.”

  As he moved out of earshot, Ellis said with a touch of bravado, “Jethro asked me to keep the connection quiet. At least until after the wedding.”

  “I see,” she said noncommittally, and walked with her father to his wing of the house. At his door she asked as casually as she could, “So Jethro set this up before the wedding?”

  “That’s right. The Tuesday before.”

  The day Jethro had engineered her lunch with Lindy. “That’s why you kept to your room so much that week.”

  “The drug made me dizzy and nauseated at first. And Jethro didn’t want to get your hopes up for nothing…hence the secrecy.”

  “Of course,” she said. Then she added with true warmth, “I’m just so glad it’s working, Dad. And thanks for the lovely party, it was sweet of you to make all the arrangments.”

  “You’re a good daughter, Celia,” Ellis mumbled, and yawned widely. “I may not see you in the morning. Jethro mentioned he has to go to Atlanta, even though it’s the weekend—I know you’ll want to go with him.”

  “Of course,” she said again. “Good night, Dad.”

  The door closed behind him. Her heels tapping on the marble flooring, Celia went back to the party. The fight with Jethro could wait. It would keep, she thought bitterly.

  Jethro might trust her. It was horribly obvious she shouldn’t have trusted him.

  Celia’s last dance was with Jethro. Fueled by rage, she gyrated and swayed, her body a blatant invitation, her eyes glittering like the diamonds round her throat. As the final chord throbbed through the air, Jethro muttered for her ears alone, “Time to take you to bed,
wife.”

  We’ll see about that, she thought. They made their farewells to the last of the guests and went upstairs. As Jethro pulled the door shut, she leaned against it, her fists bunched behind her back. “I met Dr. Stansey this evening.”

  Jethro’s mouth thinned. “Your father invited him—I didn’t.”

  “Why wouldn’t he invite the man who’s saved his life?”

  “I’d asked him not to.”

  “I’m sure you did.” Her nostrils flared. “You’ve really made a fool of me from the beginning, haven’t you, Jethro? First you let me offer you sixty thousand dollars. And then you marry me knowing there won’t be a divorce in three months because of this wonder drug.”

  His eyes were watchful on her face. “The drug looked very promising—but Stansey couldn’t give any guarantees. I didn’t want to get your hopes up for nothing.”

  Just what her father had said. “I feel so…so humiliated, so stupid,” she said in a low voice. “This is about my father. Not yours. Why didn’t I find out about this drug myself? I trusted the specialists, that’s why, the ones Dad had called in.”

  “They’re good men, Celia. Just not the best. Not the ones on the cutting edge.”

  “I should have gotten more opinions!”

  Jethro tugged at his tie. “If it hadn’t been for the pharmaceutical connection, I wouldn’t have known about the drug myself—stop beating up on yourself.”

  “All right,” she said with deadly precision, “I will. How about I beat up on you instead? If you’d told me about Dr. Stansey and the new drug, we wouldn’t have had to get married. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to marry me.”

  Her voice had risen. Jethro exploded, “Why don’t you try looking at it my way, Celia? There were no guarantees for the drug. It’s worked—but it might not have.”

  “Why did you marry me, Jethro?”

  Ignoring her, he said furiously, “Would you rather I hadn’t called Mike Stansey? Left your father to die? You think I could have lived with myself if I’d done that—just to save your precious feelings?”

  “At least I’ve got feelings!”

  “So have I,” he snarled, raking his fingers through his hair. “I couldn’t have looked myself in the mirror if I hadn’t made every effort to save your father’s life. Anyway, by then the marriage was set in motion, Ellis wouldn’t have understood if you’d suddenly cried off.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you? But don’t you see? We’re trapped, Jethro. Trapped in an empty marriage, deceiving the families we love—my father, your sister. I hate it, I just hate it!”

  “You hate me—that’s what you mean.”

  Her voice shook. “I feel like I’m being torn apart. You’ve saved my father’s life, don’t think I don’t see that. So on the one hand I’m so grateful—”

  “We’re even,” he said flatly. “You saved my life, I saved your father’s.”

  She blurted, “Did you love your father, Jethro?”

  His face closed. “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Is it? You never talk about your childhood—about your mother, or what it was like growing up with a man who used his fists on you and drank himself into an early grave. You even had to protect your sister from him.”

  “Lindy talks too much,” Jethro said curtly.

  “Maybe you don’t talk enough.” Celia’s brow furrowed. “Maybe that’s one thing marriages are for, a safe place where two people can be real and talk about the stuff that really matters… Because they trust each other. You said you trusted me, Jethro.”

  “It’s all in the past, there’s no point talking about it!”

  “Yes, there is,” she persisted, her heart beating like a trip-hammer. “That’s what I’ve learned the last few days with my father, that the past can be redeemed.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “But, Jethro—”

  “Leave it, Celia! How do you redeem a man who within ten feet of a bottle of gin turned into a foulmouthed brute? He dragged the Lathem name into the gutter and the family business along with it. And yeah, you’re right—I never left Lindy alone with him.”

  “How old were you when you started looking after her?”

  “Nine, ten—I don’t remember. He died when I was nineteen. You know why Dave’s still my best friend? Because he was the only one who’d loan me money to get the business back on its feet. Everyone else laughed in my face.” He jammed his fists into his pockets. “Just leave it, will you? It’s nothing to do with you.”

  Her nails were digging into her palms. She meant nothing to him, that’s what Jethro was really saying. She was someone he’d made a temporary alliance with, not someone with whom he’d share his feelings. As exhaustion overwhelmed her, Celia whispered, “I’m so grateful to you for my father’s sake, and yet I loathe what you’ve done to me. Deceived me, humiliated me, used me for ends I can’t begin to fathom. You don’t want to be married to me, I know you don’t.”

  Jethro threw his jacket on the nearest chair and walked over to her, running his palm from her bare shoulder over the firm rise of her breast under the midnight-blue fabric. “There are benefits, Celia—or are you forgetting them?”

  She shrank back against the door. “For you, marriage is only about sex.”

  “Only?”

  She said with real anguish, “You’re not bored in bed with me, are you, Jethro? So you’ve achieved your aim in marrying me.”

  His gaze was fastened on her face. “You love what we do in bed together, admit it.”

  He was still stroking her breast, slowly and hypnotically; she felt the deep ache of desire blossom in her belly. Useless to fight it. The power of his body over hers, and her own body’s instinctive response to him were unconquerable. Yet how could she go to bed with him, knowing he was only assuaging boredom? Now that she loved him, such knowledge was unbearable.

  But she couldn’t leave him. Not yet. Ellis’s health was still too fragile for that. Maybe, just maybe, in a month or two she could tell her father the true story of her marriage. Explain the whole sorry mess, and trust he’d understand that she’d acted for the best. With his interests at heart.

  In the meantime, she had to hide her feelings from Jethro. How he’d laugh if he knew she’d fallen in love with him! One more woman lying at his feet for him to trample.

  But hiding her feelings meant more acting, she realized in despair.

  Jethro slid his hands round her waist, smoothing the curves of her hips. As the hard wall of his chest rubbed against her breasts, her pulse quickened and the color rose in her cheeks. She said fiercely, “If you think you can make me beg you to stop, you’re quite wrong.”

  His steel-blue eyes clashed with her brown ones. “That’s one of the reasons I’m not bored with you, my darling Celia—you’ll never beg me for anything, will you? Not if it kills you.”

  “You’ve got brains, Jethro, I’ll give you that—you’re not just a great body,” she said, and saw anger flicker across his face.

  Like a hawk to its prey, his head dropped to kiss her. It was a searing kiss, compounded of rage and desire, to which she more than responded. With all her newfound knowledge, she rubbed her hips into his erection, her blood racing through her veins. He found the zipper on the back of her dress and hauled on it; as the taffeta slithered down her body, she tugged at his shirt, burying her fingers in his body hair, the heat of his skin tripping her into needs only he could meet.

  He picked her up, leaving her dress crumpled on the floor, and carried her over to the bed, where he flung her down and rid himself of his clothes. His naked body, as always, enthralled her. Her movements imbued with infinite sensuality, Celia took off her lacy black underwear, sliding her stockings down her legs, her eyes glittering with pagan invitation. Jethro said roughly, “I can’t get enough of you.”

  For a moment, agony stabbed her to the heart. Sex, she thought. That’s all he wants of me. Sex. Not love.
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br />   “What’s wrong?” he said sharply.

  She reached for him, pulling him on top of her, his weight crushing her into the bed. Then she kissed him with all her pent-up emotion, laving his lips with her tongue. He rolled over, pulling her with him, her hair tumbling over the pillow; and all the while their mouths were locked together in a kiss that neither asked for nor gave any quarter. Then Jethro raised his head, taking her breasts in his hands, watching all the changing expressions on her face with the total concentration that she knew so well and was helpless to resist.

  Waves of feeling rippled through her. She threw back her head, moaning with pleasure, arching her hips against him. His fingers sought out the juncture of her thighs, so sleek and warm and ready. As she writhed beneath him, he thrust into her. She dug her nails into his shoulders, his back, frantic for him, beyond pride or restraint.

  “Now, Jethro, now,” she begged, and from a long way away remembered she’d said she wouldn’t beg him for anything.

  His powerful strokes, deeper and deeper, ignited every nerve in Celia’s body. She felt her own throbbing and his as one, heard him cry out as he emptied within her, and surrendered herself to her own tumultuous release.

  Then, very slowly, she came back to herself. To a man’s skin slick with sweat, a man’s face buried in her shoulder; his heart pounding against her rib cage. To intimacy without emotion and to the briefest of unions. A love-making that had never mentioned the word love.

  Had they made love? Or had it been more primitive than that? Had it been yet another stage in the battle between her and Jethro? Perhaps, she thought, they’d made war, not love. There’d been no tenderness, no subtlety in that fierce coupling.

  She lay very still and closed her eyes, knowing she couldn’t bear to talk to him; there was nothing more to say. She forced her breathing to slow and deepen, her limbs to relax, and after a few minutes felt Jethro lift his weight from her. “Celia?” he whispered.

  Her arm was lying across her face, her hair like a silken shield. She felt him cover her with the sheet; then he rolled over, away from her.