The Last-Minute Marriage

by Marion Lennox

  ‘You agreed to do this.’

  ‘I was stupid. I must have hit my head on the way down the stairs. So now, somehow, I’m standing in a swish store with a guy who has more money than I’ll ever dream about-and he’s offering to spend enough money on a suit to feed my family for a year.’

  ‘Your family?’

  Her face shuttered even more, and the pain intensified. ‘I don’t need to talk about my family. I’m out of my depth. I need to leave. I’m sorry.’ She backed a bit more until she was balancing in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you very much for all you’ve done.’

  ‘Peta…’

  ‘I can’t do this. I can’t.’

  He caught her three doors down. She’d tried to move fast but she was on crutches.

  He’d followed. Of course he’d followed, even though he was unsure why he was still intent on helping. But he let her have a little space until she cooled down.

  She was forced to cool down. Her anger could only carry her so far before the pain in her ankle caught up with her. He watched her slow. He saw her steps falter as if she was unsure where to go from here.

  He saw her shoulders slump. Saw the despair catch up.

  And when he caught her… As he put a hand on her shoulder and turned her around to face him, he wasn’t surprised to see tears welling behind those lovely eyes.

  The tears stopped the moment he touched her. She swiped her cheek and pulled back. Swaying dangerously. He put out his hands to steady her but she backed some more.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be sorry. You were trying to be nice.’

  He carefully pushed away the urge to play fairy godfather some more. He tried to put himself in her place. It was hard, but maybe he could manage it.

  Once upon a time he’d been dependant, too, and he knew how much harder it was to take than give. It was just… In the last few years there had been so many takers.

  Peta was a novelty. But he could adjust.

  ‘I was a bit insensitive,’ he managed. ‘I had this idea that I could help. And I’d like to.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I can, you know,’ he said softly. ‘It would be my privilege. If you let me.’

  ‘Yeah, toss money.’ Another angry swipe at tears she clearly despised and an angry sniff. ‘It’s all you know how to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was stymied. He didn’t have a clue what was happening. How had he got himself in this situation?

  He could just stop. He had no reason to persist.

  Why did he?

  He had no idea what this woman wanted with Charles Higgins. He had no idea whether he could help her.

  All he knew was that he wanted to know more.

  ‘Can we start again, please?’ he asked, and she sniffed once more and stared up at him, her face loaded with suspicion.

  ‘Start again?’

  ‘I’ve driven into this like a blunderbuss,’ he admitted. ‘I have no idea what’s going on. I want to help. I don’t even know why I want to help but I do.’ He reached out and touched her hand. He didn’t hold. He simply touched.

  He knew that she still had the urge to run. He had it himself.

  ‘Tell me what you need,’ he told her. ‘What can I do to help? Right now.’

  She took a deep breath. Regrouped. Around them were a bustle of Fifth Avenue shoppers-smartly dressed women, suited businessmen. Marcus fitted right in.

  Peta didn’t fit in at all. But she obviously wasn’t thinking of her appearance. She stared at him for a while longer and then made a confession-as if she was forced to admit something she was ashamed of.

  ‘I need something to eat,’ she told him.

  ‘You’re hungry?’

  ‘I lost my bagel-remember? I didn’t have breakfast and that was my lunch. And then I need a ticket on the subway to the backpacker’s where I have my things. I need to stay until tomorrow-for Aunt Hattie’s funeral. But that’s it. I was stupid to try to see Charles. I just want… I think now that I just want to go home.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded, aware all the time that she was poised for flight. ‘Okay. I’ll organise you transport. But let me feed you first. No.’ He shook his head as she backed again and he gave a rueful smile. He knew what she was thinking. At long last he was getting the idea. Money didn’t impress this woman. Money made her want to run. ‘There’s a great deli nearby and it’s not expensive. It’s simple food but it’s good. Concede at least that I owe you a meal. Can you cope with me for a little while longer?’

  She stared up at him, seemingly bemused. She balanced on her crutches while she surveyed him. Her green eyes were suddenly thoughtful.

  It wasn’t the sort of look he was accustomed to receiving from the women he moved with. To say it disconcerted him was putting it mildly.

  ‘You must think I’m really ungrateful,’ she said at last, and it was so far from what he was really thinking that he blinked.

  ‘I don’t. Let me feed you.’

  ‘Like something in a cage at the zoo?’

  He smiled. ‘I’m sorry. That was badly phrased. Share a meal with me. Please.’

  ‘Out of charity?’

  ‘Out of my need to give you recompense.’

  She stared at him for a long moment-and in that moment something shifted. The Cinderella image receded still further. There was a strength here, he realised. A latent force.

  She was out of her depth. She wasn’t sure what was happening to her right now, but this was a woman who would normally be in charge of her world.

  Things were out of control but she was still fighting.

  He’d be lucky if she’d agree to have a meal with him.

  But she did, and he was aware of an absurd surge of gratitude as she did the thanking. ‘Thank you,’ she told him. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘So would I.’ And he meant it.

  The deli he took her to was one he hadn’t eaten at for years, but still he knew it. The proprietor, a big man in his late sixties, greeted him with pleasure.

  ‘Well. If it isn’t the great Marcus come to patronise this humble establishment…’

  ‘Cut it out, Sam,’ Marcus growled and Sam grinned.

  ‘Yeah, right. To what do we owe this honour?’ He glanced at Peta and his wide smile was a welcome all by itself. ‘A lady. Of course. And a lady of taste. I can sense that already. I bet you could wrap yourself around one of my specials and not even think about counting calories.’

  ‘I bet I could.’ In the face of Sam’s friendliness she seemed to finally relax-just a smidgeon. ‘Tell me what’s good.’

  ‘What’s good? In this establishment everything’s good. Tell you what…’ He cast a sideways glance at Marcus and got an almost imperceptible nod for his pains. Sam’s deli was famous in this city and his reputation was richly deserved. He sensed what people needed and he provided it. You came to Sam’s for comfort food and friendliness and good humour. Sam provided it in bucketloads. ‘Why don’t I bring you my specials?’ he told them. ‘My lunch works. You sit back, think of nothing except what you need to talk about and let me worry about your meal. It’s what I do best.’

  Think of nothing except what they needed to talk about…

  It seemed there was nothing to talk about. Or Peta didn’t seem to think there was. The food that Sam brought them was wonderful: a vast, steaming bowl of clam chowder- Sam’s speciality, handed down from his grandma, who’d invented clams herself, he told them-and some sort of corn flapjacks that were truly spectacular.

  It was good food. No. It was great food, Marcus conceded, and he found himself wondering why it had been so long since he’d been here. He sat back, enjoying the food but also enjoying the buzz. The place was full of students and young mothers and academics and artists who looked as if they didn’t have a buck to their name. All of them were attacking their food the same way Peta was. This was food to be relished at every mouthful.

  An
d while she ate, he found himself thinking of the date he’d been on last night. Elizabeth was a corporate lawyer-a good one. She was smart and sophisticated and beautiful. But she’d toyed with her salad, she’d drunk half a glass of wine and refused dessert.

  Her beautiful waistline came at a cost, Marcus had thought, and though she’d invited him up to her magnificent apartment afterwards for coffee, coffee was all they’d had. He’d felt no desire to take things further.

  But now…sitting on the far side of the table and watching Peta devour her chowder and relish every mouthful of her flapjacks, he thought he’d rather have this contented silence than smart conversation. Genuine enjoyment.

  ‘What?’ she demanded suddenly, and he looked a question.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You’re looking at me like I’m an interesting kind of bug. I don’t like it.’

  ‘You’re Australian,’ he told her. ‘What do you expect?’

  ‘You’ve never met an Australian?’

  ‘Not one who likes clam chowder as much as you do.’

  ‘It’s the best.’ She smiled up at him and he blinked. Whew! That smile was enough to knock a man sideways.

  Where had it come from? It was a killer smile. Wide and white and there was a dimple right at the corner of her mouth…

  Yeah, right. Get a grip, Benson, he told himself. You need involvement here like a hole in the head.

  He needed any involvement like a hole in the head.

  ‘You want to tell me why you need to see Charles Higgins?’ he asked and her smile faded. He was aware of a sharp stab of regret. Damn, he shouldn’t have mentioned it.

  But it was why they were here. It was important. And, to tell the truth, he was intrigued.

  This girl had just knocked back a gift of a three-thousand dollar suit. Just like that. Would any other woman he knew do that? It wasn’t as if it had come with strings. It would have been a gift, pure and simple.

  ‘You might have knocked me down, but it was partly my fault,’ she told him, and it was as if she’d read his thoughts. ‘I don’t want to be beholden. To anyone. You spend three thousand bucks on a suit for me and I’ll feel sick about it for the rest of my life. And Charles will know it’s a front.’

  ‘Charles knows you?’

  ‘I told you. He’s my cousin.’

  ‘Then why…?’

  She could see where his thoughts were heading and she was way ahead of him.

  ‘You think because I’m family I should have an entrée with him.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I’m over here because my aunt died,’ she told him. ‘Charles’s mother. I spent the last few days sitting by Aunt Hattie’s bedside. I haven’t seen Charles. Hattie is due to be buried tomorrow. Charles may or may not come to the funeral. He’s certainly not paying for it.’

  ‘So…’ He took a wild guess. ‘You’re not a close family?’

  ‘I’m a very close family,’ she told him, and took another mouthful of her flapjack. Difficult conversation or not, she wasn’t forgetting that she was truly enjoying this food. But her voice, when she spoke again, held more than a trace of bitterness. ‘I’m so close I’m practically glue,’ she added. ‘Good old Peta. She’ll do the right thing. The family thing. But not Charles.’

  ‘So why do you need to see him?’

  She took a deep breath. She seemed to brace herself. Her fork was set down and her chin tilted in a gesture he was starting to recognise.

  ‘Aunt Hattie and my father owned half our family farm each,’ she told him. ‘My father left us his half when he died ten years back, and the agreement was always that Hattie would do the same. She hasn’t. She’s left her half to Charles. So I need him…’ Her voice faltered then, as if accepting the sheer impossibility of what she was about to suggest. ‘I need him to agree not to sell it. To let me farm it until…until I’m free.’

  ‘Free?’

  She looked up at him and her eyes were blind with a pain he couldn’t begin to understand. ‘The farm is all I have,’ she told him. ‘It can’t mean anything to Charles. It’s just money. He must see that to do anything but let me live there would be desperately unfair.’ She bit her lip and then picked up her soda, trying desperately to move past a pain that seemed well nigh unbearable. ‘But that’s nothing to do with you. Charles is my cousin. My problem. You’ve given me a feed. Now I’ll clean myself as best I can, go back and try to face him one more time-and if I can’t I’ll go home. But at least I’ll have tried.’

  He couldn’t bear it. The look of pain. The defiance. David and Goliath, and Goliath was Charles Higgins… She had to let him take the next step with her. ‘You can’t face him alone,’ he told her.

  ‘Of course I can.’

  ‘There’s no of course about it,’ he growled. ‘Charles is a slime-ball. Maybe he’s different with family but he’s still a slime-ball. Okay, I might be off the track with my offer of three-thousand-dollar suits but my instincts are right. We’ll get you something neat to wear and I’m coming in with you. I might not get you more than an interview but I can get you that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘For a start, I own the building he rents office space in.’

  She stared. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I’m not. Regrettably. I’ve already decided not to renew his lease when it expires but he doesn’t know that. I can apply pressure.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Finish your soda,’ he told her, aware at the back of his mind of his total amazement that he was doing this. That he was getting more and more involved. ‘We mustn’t keep Charles waiting now, must we?’

  They did the dress thing again, but this time Marcus had the sense to keep it simple. They headed to a moderately priced department store and Marcus stood back while Peta chose a neat skirt and blouse and strappy sandals. She looked great, Marcus decided, and then wondered: Why do women wear three-thousand-dollar suits when they can look just as good in far cheaper clothes?

  But maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe Peta wasn’t any woman. She’d look great in anything, he thought, as Robert drove them back to Higgins’s office.

  The only problem was that she was a bit pale. Her hands were clenched so tightly that he could see the white in her knuckles. But she was still determinedly keeping up conversation as they made their way past Central Park.

  ‘It’s Central Park I most wanted to see,’ she told him. ‘Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of riding around Central Park.’

  ‘You’re a country girl?’

  ‘I told you-we live on a farm. I milk cows for a living.’

  We? Who?

  It didn’t matter. Did it?

  She was expecting a courteous, impersonal reply. He had to fight to find one. Somehow. ‘So…you live on a farm yet you dream of coming to New York to ride a horse?’

  ‘It’s a different kind of riding.’ She gave a hesitant smile and he saw that her hands were still clenched. He had to fight back the urge to lift them-to forcibly unclench them. ‘John Lennon loved this park,’ she was saying. ‘Jackie Kennedy loved this park. All these people that I’ve only read about.’

  ‘You admired Jackie O?’

  ‘The lady had class.’

  ‘And John Lennon?’

  ‘Oooh, those glasses were sexy.’

  ‘Really?’ he said faintly and was rewarded by a chuckle. Her hands, he noticed with satisfaction, were finally starting to relax. ‘So who else do you think of as sexy?’ he asked. ‘Just John? Paul? George? How about Ringo?’

  ‘Ringo was sexy,’ she agreed. ‘Really sexy. When I see the old clips I think he’s cuteness personified. But now every time I hear him I think of Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s a bit disconcerting.’

  ‘I imagine it might be.’

  She was so different. How had his day been hijacked? he wondered. How had this happened? Instead of making plans and signing million-dollar deals, he was discussing the sexiness of Thomas the Tank Engine
.

  And enjoying it.

  But then they were pulling up outside the offices where Charles presumably lay waiting, and her hands clenched white again.

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ Marcus told her and he surprised himself by placing a hand over her much smaller one. The touch surprised them both. It was as if a frisson of electricity ran between them, warm, intimate and somehow immeasurably comforting. ‘I’m right behind you,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Every step of the way.’

  Miss Pritchard-alias Attila the Hun, Charles’s secretary-was her normal appalling self. Peta stepped out of the lift and she saw her coming and sighed. She didn’t even pretend to be courteous.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m here for my appointment,’ Peta said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘It was for ten this morning.’

  ‘Mr Higgins had a moment free at two,’ the woman said, her disdain obvious in her intonation. ‘But you weren’t here. He has no more appointments available until late next week.’

  ‘Then could you ask Mr Higgins if he’ll make an appointment free for me,’ Marcus said, his lazy drawl making the woman’s face jerk from Peta to the man following behind. The man who, until now, had stood in the background and had not been noticed. Marcus. ‘I believe the lease for this office space is soon up for renegotiation,’ Marcus drawled. ‘As landlord I expect a certain professional standard of my tenants. Peta had an appointment at ten this morning and she’s still waiting. To have disgruntled clients hanging around my office space is not what I wish in my buildings.’

  He motioned to a chair. ‘Peta, if you’d like to sit down…’ He gave the secretary a glimmer of a mockery of his smile-the sort of smile that had made many a business opponent come close to bursting a blood vessel in entirely appropriate anxiety. ‘We’ll wait,’ he told the woman. ‘Tell Mr Higgins that we’re here and we’ll wait for as long as it takes.’

  Attila’s eyes had been flat and cold before. Now, suddenly, they looked like those of a goldfish. A goldfish that was swimming over an unplugged hole. There were very few people in this city who weren’t aware of Marcus’s power. It was legendary. ‘But…’