by Sharon Sala
“It won’t take long.”
She was honest enough to know that what she’d done by marrying Ryder had probably ended a lifetime of plans Lash must have had. Everyone knew that Lash’s father had gone through the Marlow money as if it had been water and that his mother had run off with a trucker soon afterward. Everyone also knew that while Lash was a lawyer of the courts, his only ambitions leaned toward the restoration of his family name and the family home. And, if she’d married him as Delaney had planned, it could have happened. He would have had unlimited money at his disposal.
She shuddered. It was a wonder he didn’t hate her guts. She thought of the wedding gift he’d sent that was still in her desk drawer at the office. In spite of his own disappointment, Lash had found it within himself to do the right thing and wish her well. She sighed. Guilty conscience won out.
“I suppose so,” she said. “If it won’t take long.”
“Certainly not, my dear. I can promise that what I need won’t take long at all.”
“Then I’ll be waiting.”
She hung up the phone as Ryder walked in the room carrying a bright yellow, happy face balloon. The frown on her face disappeared.
“Oh, how sweet! Who sent me the balloon? I haven’t had a balloon since I was little.”
He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, then handed it to her.
“It’s kind of pitiful compared to all these elegant flowers, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Although the kiss was as harmless as if it had come from a child, Casey felt her face flush. After last night, the word harmless did not mesh with the man who’d walked out of the apartment and into the rain.
“Is this from you?”
He stood at the end of the couch, absorbing the aftermath of yesterday’s wreck on her face. Finally, he nodded, and then he grinned and Casey thought she would forever remember the way he looked, smiling down at her with the sunlight coming through the window behind him.
“With no strings attached.” Then he laughed aloud when she dangled the one tied to the balloon. “Except the obvious, of course.”
Casey grinned and handed him the balloon. “Will you tie it on the back of that chair for me?”
He did as she asked, then gave the balloon a final thump and set it to bobbing as he moved away. The big yellow happy face smiled down at her from across the room. Casey smiled back, then noticed that Ryder was leaving.
“Can’t you sit down and talk to me?”
Ryder stopped at the doorway. When he turned, there was an odd, almost childlike hurt on his face.
“You don’t need to pretend with me, Casey.”
Suddenly, last night was out in the open. All the tension that had sent him out in the rain was back between them and there was nothing to say that would change what had happened.
Angry, she threw off the afghan and stood, unwilling to say this lying down. “The last time I played pretend, I was six years old. I pretended my mother and father weren’t dead. When it didn’t come true, I never tried again.”
Ryder absorbed her anger as well as the passion with which she spoke, letting it flow over and then around him. Just when he thought she was finished, she came at him again. It would seem she wasn’t through.
“There are things that need to be said between us. I would think that saying them in the bright light of day would be a hell of a lot smarter than waiting for dark. The world closes in when the sun goes down. Even with the absence of light, I’ve found it a difficult place in which to hide.”
Stunned by the truth in her words, he couldn’t find it in himself to walk away.
“So… is this our first fight?” he asked, and was rewarded by the red flush he saw staining her cheeks.
“Can’t you be serious?” she muttered.
“Well, yes, ma’am, I can be serious as hell. However, I don’t think you’re one bit ready for that.”
Casey paled. Just when she told herself he was a comfortable man to be around, that stranger came back.
“I thought you’d like to know that carpenters will be arriving tomorrow. I’m adding on a room to the garage apartment. Since we won’t be sharing a… I mean we can’t… We aren’t going to…” She took a deep breath and started over, ignoring the heat on her face and neck. “You won’t have to sleep on the floor much longer.”
He thought about waking to find her wrapped in his arms. “That’s real thoughtful of you, Casey.”
“It is only fair.”
His voice softened. “And you’re always fair, aren’t you, girl?”
Before she could answer, Joshua entered the room with Lash Marlow at his heels.
“Mr. Marlow is here. Says he has an appointment.”
Willing herself not to flinch at what she perceived as accusation in Lash Marlow’s expression, Casey eased herself back to the couch.
“Lash, it’s good to see you. Ryder and I were just about to have coffee. Won’t you join us?”
Lash pivoted, surprised that he and Casey would not be alone.
“That’s all right,” Ryder said. “I’ll just leave you two alone to—”
“No!” Casey took a deep breath and made herself relax when she really wanted to scream. “There’s no need,” she said, softening her words with a smile. “It’s nothing confidential. Only some papers to sign.”
“She’s right. Please don’t leave on my account,” Lash said and then smiled, and the sight made Casey shudder. It was the least happy expression she’d ever seen on anyone’s face.
“Besides, I believe there should be no secrets between a man and his wife,” he added.
Casey couldn’t look Ryder in the face, and Ryder refused to sit down. Even after Joshua returned with the tray of coffee and Ryder had accepted his cup, the words kept ringing in his ears. No secrets. No secrets. Hell, there hadn’t been more than ten minutes of honesty between them since he’d said “I do.”
She thought he was a footloose drifter who’d wasted his life on the road. He didn’t have it in him to tell her the truth because he was still trying to come to terms with some truths of his own.
There was a little matter of being responsible for his father’s death and still finding the courage to live with it.
Every breath Ryder took was a reminder to him that Micah could no longer do the same. Every sunset he saw, every morning that came, came with the knowledge that, for his father, those simple pleasures had ceased. He carried his guilt with the ease of a man who’s lived long with the shroud. Close to his heart. Selfish with the pain that shoved at him day after day.
Casey handed back the last of the papers. Lash took them from her, letting his fingertips accidentally brush the palm of her hand.
When she flinched, he had an urge to lean over and slap her face. How dare she have judged him and found him lacking? His family could trace their lineage back to the Mayflower.
Then he glanced at Ryder, careful to hide his thoughts. He would bet a lot—if he had it to bet—that this one didn’t have two nickels to call his own. At least I have my education—and several generations of a fine and noble name. In Lash’s opinion, Ryder Justice was nothing more than a stray, an alley cat of a man who’d been in the right place at the right time. That’s what he was. That and nothing more.
Lash slid the papers into his briefcase and stood. “I’d better be going—let you get some rest and let your husband get on with his work.”
The sarcasm was there. It wasn’t obvious, but that wasn’t Lash Marlow’s way. Casey chose to ignore the dig, and then she remembered the gift that he’d sent.
“Lash. I haven’t had time to send a card, but I want to thank you in person for the lovely wedding gift you had sent to the office. It’s stunning, truly stunning.”
Lash turned, and there was an odd, satisfied smile on his face. “It’s an heirloom, you know. It belonged to my grandfather, Aaron Marlow.”
Casey looked startled. She’d had no idea. “Why, Lash, that’s g
enerous of you, but you really shouldn’t have.”
His gaze turned flat, almost expressionless. “Oh, it was nothing,” he said. “After all, if things had been different, it would have been yours anyway. I thought you should have something to remember me by.” He ventured a look at Ryder who had remained silent throughout their entire conversation. “I don’t want you to think I’m treading on your territory,” he said. “It’s just that Casey and I have known each other for years.”
Ryder set down his cup and then glanced at Casey before looking back at Lash. “I’m not worried. Casey is a woman of her word. Besides, I’m not a man who believes in boundaries.”
Lash was more than mildly interested in the concept of what Ryder had to say. “So by that are you hinting at the fact that you believe in open marriages?”
Ryder took one step forward, but it was enough to back Lash up two.
“Not only no, but hell, no,” Ryder said. “A man and woman stay together out of a commitment, not because there’s a fence they can’t climb.”
Feeling slightly threatened by something he didn’t quite understand, Lash started for the door. “At any rate, I hope you both get what you deserve.”
Ryder thought about what the lawyer had said long after he was gone. There was something about him that didn’t quite mesh.
CHAPTER 9
A month to the day from their wedding, the extra room over the garage was finished, and it was none too soon. There had been far too many times when Casey had seen Ryder’s brown, bare body, and Ryder had spent way too many nights alone on a floor when he had a wife who slept alone in their bed. After thirty days of marriage, they were no longer strangers, but the strangeness of their situation was about to make them enemies.
* * *
“Just put the bed over here,” Casey said, pointing at the wall opposite the sliding glass doors. “And the dresser here, the easy chair there…. No, there I think, nearer the corner lamp. Yes, that’s perfect.”
A small, birdlike woman wearing a stiff blue uniform and high-top tennis shoes scurried into the room with an armload of Ryder’s clothes, bypassing the deliverymen from the furniture store.
Her graying blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail reminiscent of the sixties. Her eyebrows were thick and black with a permanent arch, compliments of a number seven jet eyebrow pencil. The look was topped off with sky blue eyeshadow and frosted pink lipstick. Bea Bonnaducci’s appearance hadn’t changed since 1961, the year she’d graduated high school. The way Bea had it figured, if it had worked for her then, it should work for her now.
“Where would you be wantin’ me to put the mister’s things?” she asked.
“Put that stuff in the dresser and hang those in the closet. At last he has plenty of space.”
Bea did as Casey directed and then scooted out of the room for a second load, leaving her to deal with the last of the furniture being carried in.
And in the midst of it all, Ryder strode into the bedroom, his nostrils flaring with indignation. He glared at the men who were setting the last pieces of the furniture in place, and when they left, he exploded.
“Damn it to hell, Casey! You waited until Dora sent me on some wild-goose chase and then you set Bea to digging in my stuff. I know you want me out of your hair, but you could have waited for me to get back.”
Stunned, Casey stood mute beneath his attack, unable to find a single thing to say that would calm the fire in Ryder’s eyes. She watched as he paced from one side of the room to the other. When he stepped inside the brand-new bathroom, he gave it no more than ten seconds of consideration before coming back out again.
“I thought you would be glad to have your own space,” she finally said.
He spun, his posture stiff, looking for a fight that just wasn’t there. “I didn’t say I wasn’t,” he muttered. “What I said was…” He sighed, then thrust his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “Oh hell, forget what I said.” He stomped out of the room as suddenly as he’d appeared.
Casey plopped down on the side of the bed and knew she was going to cry. It wasn’t so much the fact that he had yelled at her. It was the disappointment that did her in. He’d done so much for her over the past four weeks. All she had wanted to do was return the favor.
She doubled her fists in her lap, staring intently at a pattern on the carpet and telling herself that if she concentrated enough, the tears wouldn’t come. In the midst of memorizing the number of paisley swirls in a square, a teardrop rolled down her cheek and into her lap. She drew a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. It didn’t stop the pain or the tears. They rolled in silent succession.
Ryder walked back into the room carrying the last of his clothes that were on hangers and jammed them onto the rod.
“I sent Bea back to the house,” he said, and then the bottom fell out of his world. Casey was crying, and it was all his fault.
“Oh, hell, Casey, please don’t cry.”
“I am not crying,” she said, and hiccuped on a sob.
He stood, frozen to the spot by the pain in her voice and wondered when it had happened. When had she gotten under his skin? And there was no mistaking the fact that she was there. Why else did he feel as if he were about to explode?
“I am a total bastard.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. She looked up. He groaned beneath his breath. Those big green eyes, the ones he’d come to know so well, were swimming in tears.
“I am the lowest form of a heel.”
She sniffed and he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and laid it in her hands.
“I do not deserve to see another day.”
She blew her nose and then handed the handkerchief back. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “I suspect you were just being a man.”
He stuffed the handkerchief, snot, tears, and all into his pocket and tried not to be offended by what she said. “Exactly what does that mean?”
Casey shrugged. “Tilly says when men don’t want to show their emotions, they either curse or yell. You did both, which leads me to believe you were severely upset in a way I did not expect.”
He frowned. Damn, but that woman knew way too much about men for his peace of mind. “At any rate, I am truly sorry. I’m sorry I yelled. I’m sorry I cursed. I will try not to let it happen again.”
She tried to glare. When angry, he was a force to behold, but when penitent, there was something about him that made her want to throw her arms around him and…
Her face turned red as she jumped up from the bed. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said, and stomped from the room.
Ryder groaned and followed her into the living room. She was fiddling with a stack of magazines. It made him nervous. He had a hunch she wasn’t through yanking his chain, and when she spoke, he knew he’d been right.
“Ryder?”
If he was smart, he’d walk out right now before she dug in her heels, but where Casey was concerned, he wasn’t smart, he was caught, and had been since that day in the bar down in the flatlands.
“What?”
“I don’t understand. Why did you get so angry?”
“I wasn’t really…”
“Truth.”
He sighed. Damn. Delaney Ruban had done a real good job on her. When she got a notion, she stuck to it with fierce intensity, and it wasn’t in him to lie.
“I don’t know. I walked in the apartment. Bea was going through my stuff. Too much was changing too fast.” His voice lowered and Casey had to concentrate to hear what he said. “I guess I’m uncomfortable with change.”
“But nothing has changed,” she said.
“No, Casey, you’re wrong. We’re married.” He held up his hand. “And before you tie yourself into a little knot, I know it’s not a real marriage, but dammit, I was just getting used to, to…things.”
He took a deep breath. What he was about to say was going to reveal more than he wanted, but she’d asked for the truth, and
truth she was going to get.
“Even if we don’t share anything but a name, there is a certain rhythm to our relationship that I was learning to accept.” Then he thrust a hand through his hair and lifted his chin. She didn’t have to like this, but it had to be said. “Dammit, I guess I wasn’t ready to lose what little of you that I had.”
Casey knew she was standing on solid ground, but for the life of her she couldn’t feel it. Something inside of her kept getting lighter and lighter and she wondered if she was going to pass out…or fly.
“I didn’t throw you away, Ryder. I only bought you a bed.”
He took the magazines out of her hands and tossed them on the table, then pulled her into his arms. His chin rested at the crown of her head. His arms locked easily across her shoulders, holding her in place.
“I’m sorry I made you cry. I like my room. I promise to like the bed.”
Casey closed her eyes and tried not to think of trying it out together just to test it for bounce. “And I’m sorry I keep bulldozing my way through your life.”
His fingers itched to take down her hair, lay her across that bed and show her what bulldozing was all about. Instead, he counted to ten, pasted a smile on his face, and kissed the top of her head before letting her go.
“I suppose we should celebrate tonight,” he said.
“Celebrate how?”
“You know, a room-warming. Maybe I should take you back to Smoky Joe’s for some more barbecue.” He grinned. “It’s Saturday. That means it’s alligator night, remember?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Well, then, maybe we could make it a christen-the-bed party, so to speak.”
Casey’s voice rose an octave. “Christen the bed?”
“Yeah, I always heard it was bad luck to sleep in a bed without breaking it in.”
“Breaking?” She winced. She’d never heard herself squeak before.
“Yeah, come here, honey. I’ll show you.”
He dragged her across the room before she could argue and all the while she was moving she kept telling herself to do something—say something—anything except follow him across the room! But she didn’t. She went where she was led as if she didn’t have a brain in her head. When he leaned over the bed and picked up a pillow, adrenaline shot through her body like a bullet out of a gun.
