Hired Bride

by Jackie Merritt

  After several restless hours of soul-searching, Zane could no longer avoid the truth: he wanted to see Gwen again.

  But just how did a man “see” a woman who didn’t date? He’d never heard of such a thing, he thought in frustration. How could Gwen have dozens of reasons for not dating? It had to be an exaggeration, and there was only one reason why she would overstate her feelings about not dating: She did not want to see him again.

  That conclusion was shocking for Zane. Women always wanted to see him again. How many times had he changed his phone number to avoid some determined woman’s incessant calls? But he knew in his soul that Gwen would not call. And what would she do if he phoned her? Hang up in his ear, or make polite excuses?

  Should he call her and find out? Zane approached the telephone warily, then remembered that he didn’t know her home phone number. For that matter, he didn’t know her business phone number.

  Locating a telephone book, he easily found a G. Hutton with a street address. Sitting back in his chair, he stared at the phone with a knot in his gut. Was he going to call her, or wasn’t he?

  Fifteen minutes later he reached for the phone and punched out her number.

  After dialing Gwen’s number a good dozen times and getting a busy signal, Zane slammed the phone down in frustration. Now, just who would she be talking to for so long? It had to be a man, he decided with a dark scowl. She’d out and out lied about not doing any dating.

  “To hell with it,” he muttered, and got up and went to his bedroom to retire for the night.

  Five

  Zane put in a busy morning at the office on Monday. Heather was back—her mother was doing fine—and she orchestrated Zane’s meetings and phone calls with her usual efficiency.

  Around two in the afternoon he had time to think about Gwen and he dialed her home number. He got her answering machine, and when he dialed her business number, he also got an answering machine. He left no messages.

  Around three, Heather’s voice came over the intercom. “Zane, your sister Vanessa is on line five. Are you able to take the call now, or would you like me to tell her that you will call her back?”

  Zane stiffened. Something told him that Vanessa wanted to discuss Gwen, and he did not want to talk about Gwen with anyone. Especially with his matchmaking sister. But Vanessa was tenacious, and sooner or later he would have to have this conversation. He figured he might as well get it over with.

  “I’ll talk to her, Heather. Thanks.” Hitting the button for line five, Zane picked up the phone. “Hello, Vanessa.”

  “How are you today, Zane?” Vanessa asked warmly.

  “Couldn’t be better. And you?”

  “Just great, thanks. I know you’re busy, so I’ll get right to the point. Devin and I were both quite taken with Gwen over the weekend, and we’d like you to bring her to dinner on Wednesday so we can all get better acquainted.”

  Zane shook his head disgustedly. No matter what he did there was no escaping his family’s determination to marry him off.

  “Vanessa, I can’t accept an invitation for Gwen without talking to her about it.”

  “How about letting me talk to her? I’d love to phone her.”

  Zane’s heart skipped a suddenly nervous beat. “I’d rather do it myself, if you don’t mind. Besides, I’m not sure of my own schedule. Hold on while I check my appointment book.” Zane saw at once that Wednesday night was open, and his mind raced through his options. It irritated him that he hadn’t foreseen Vanessa or another of his female relatives going into matchmaking overdrive if they liked Gwen. It was quite likely that his weekend scheme had backfired on him—in more ways than one.

  For one thing, he liked Gwen, which he certainly hadn’t expected when he’d proposed his plan to her at his house last Friday. He liked her and wanted to see her again, and he’d had no luck at all in reaching her by telephone.

  “Uh, Vanessa, I might be able to make it, but before I make any promises, let me talk to Gwen. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Of course,” Vanessa readily agreed. “Call me as soon as you know for sure, one way or the other.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  After goodbyes, Zane hung up, then sat there pondering the can of worms he’d opened by introducing Gwen to his family and deliberately acting as though she was special to him. It had seemed like a good plan originally. Now, in retrospect, he could see that it had been a damn foolish game to be playing. He had half a notion to call Vanessa back right now and tell her the whole story.

  Instead, he heaved a long sigh and dialed Gwen’s home number again. He got her answering machine. Same with her business number. Frustrated, he jumped up, grabbed his suit jacket and left his office. Striding past Heather’s desk he said brusquely, “I’ll be gone about an hour.”

  He got in his car and drove to Gwen’s house. Pulling into her driveway he saw that the parking space next to the garage was vacant; Gwen’s white van was gone. Damn, he thought impatiently. He knew of no way to find her. Turning off the ignition, he sat there and scowled at the front of her house while wondering what in heck was going on with him. He could have easily concocted a tale for Vanessa. Gwen and I broke up. I won’t be seeing her again. Instead, he’d dug himself into a deeper hole by letting Vanessa continue to believe that he and Gwen were a couple.

  Obviously he hadn’t wanted to “break up” with Gwen.

  Zane rubbed the back of his neck while he tried to find some sense in his own thoughts. He was behaving as though he and Gwen really were a couple. This was getting weird.

  Well, it seemed the only way for him to talk to her was to sit and wait until she got home.

  Gwen was heading for home. Her work schedule for Help-Mate was finished for the day, and she was going to pick up a delightful little spindly-legged table she had refurbished, then deliver it to its new owner. She was thinking of a dozen different things as she approached her driveway, which was blocked from view by her neighbor’s high hedge, and she made the turn on automatic pilot.

  The sight of Zane’s car parked in her driveway came as a shock, and she slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel to the right. But she’d known the second she’d seen the car that she was going to crash into it, and she did. The left front end of her van connected with the right rear section of Zane’s car, bounced off it, then hit it again. The van’s engine died, and Gwen groaned in utter disbelief and laid her head on the steering wheel. Dammit! Why had Zane been parked in her driveway, anyway?

  Zane unhooked his seat belt, leaped out of his car and ran over to the van. Seeing Gwen’s head on the steering wheel made his pulse go wild. She must be injured!

  He couldn’t open the driver’s door because that side of the van was up against the back of his car, so he ran around to the passenger door, yanked it open and climbed in. “Gwen, my God, can you hear me?” he asked frantically.

  She raised her head and gave him a murderous look. “Of course I can hear you. What are you doing here? Dammit, now I have an accident to contend with. Why were you parked in my driveway?”

  Her anger was so completely unfair that Zane felt a rising anger himself. “Do you always turn in to your driveway at fifty miles an hour?”

  “I wasn’t going fifty! Good grief,” she said scornfully, “a professional driver couldn’t make that turn at fifty miles an hour.”

  “All right, so I exaggerated, but didn’t you see my car before you turned?” Silently Gwen pointed, and Zane looked to see what she was pointing at. “Oh, the hedge. Well, since neither of us was injured, I guess no real damage was done.”

  “I can see the damage to your car from here. A few more dents in this old van will hardly be noticed, but I doubt if you’re going to ignore your dents.” There goes your two-thousand. Good thing you didn’t spend it today. “I’ll pay for the repairs, of course,” she added dully.

  “Your auto insurance should cover it.”

  “I don’t have any auto insurance.”

  �
��But you have to carry vehicle insurance. It’s the law.”

  “Is it really?” she drawled.

  “You told me you were bonded and licensed to do business as Help-Mate. Now you’re saying that you drive this uninsured van onto your clients’ property? That’s taking a mighty big chance, Gwen. I recommend that you get some vehicle insurance immediately.”

  “You think you have all the answers and the truth is that you have no idea what you’re even talking about.” Gwen reached for the ignition key and turned it. When the engine started, she breathed a sigh of relief. The van might be a little more bruised than it had been, but as long as it ran she could deal with its disreputable appearance. She backed it into the street and parked at the curb.

  “What do you mean, I don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  “Leave it alone, Zane,” she said wearily. “You couldn’t understand the way I live in a million years.” She opened her door, got out and walked over to Zane’s car. Naturally it was one of the most costly cars on the market, and repairing its back end was not going to be cheap. She heaved a sigh, which she cut short when Zane walked up.

  Her gaze flicked over his custom-made suit, shirt and shoes. But it didn’t matter that the clothes on his back today had probably cost more than every stitch in her closet. She’d run into his car, and the repairs were her responsibility.

  “Get it fixed,” she said flatly. “Send me the bill. Now, if you’ll move your car so I can get into my garage, I have a table to pick up and deliver.”

  Zane narrowed his eyes on her. She had a way of asserting her independence that grated on his nerves. It was almost as though she was daring him to step on her pride. Fine, he thought, he wouldn’t argue about who was going to pay for the repairs to his car. She would never know which body shop had done the work, and therefore she couldn’t pay any part of the bill.

  Signs of her way of life were everywhere he looked—her old beat-up van, her small house, and even the harried look in her eyes. Money was probably a constant worry. No wonder she’d taken him up on his offer of two-thousand dollars for spending the weekend at the ranch and pretending that she was his girlfriend.

  “I’ll move my car in a minute. There’s something I have to ask you first. I would have done this on the phone, but you never answer the phone.”

  “I can’t sit around the house waiting for the phone to ring. I have to earn a living.”

  “I know that.” Zane found himself speaking gently. Any previous anger he’d felt was gone. There was nothing he’d like more than to write Gwen a large check on the spot. She shouldn’t have to struggle to earn a living when he had ten times, twenty times, more money than he could spend in his lifetime. He could well afford to help a friend.

  But something told him that the quickest way to forever end his and Gwen’s relationship was to try to give her money. He would mull it over; there had to be a way to help her out financially.

  “Gwen, my sister Vanessa called and invited you and me to dinner at her house on Wednesday.”

  Gwen gasped. “I couldn’t!”

  “Don’t forget that she believes you’re my special lady friend.”

  “Surely you’re not intending to prolong that charade.” Gwen was shocked and couldn’t help showing it.

  “Actually, it sort of backfired on me,” Zane admitted. “I didn’t think ahead to what could happen if my family liked you.” Or if I liked you. Gwen stirred him in unique ways. She was pretty and sexy, and he never would forget how she’d looked in that wet T-shirt. If only she would invite him into her house so they could talk in private. He really felt that they were on display for the whole neighborhood to see while they talked in her driveway.

  “A rather crucial oversight, don’t you think?” Gwen said dryly.

  “A damn stupid oversight is more like it. Anyhow, I seem to be up the creek without a paddle. Would you go to Vanessa and Devin’s with me on Wednesday?”

  Frowning, Gwen paced a small circle. Then she stopped and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I have to say no. I told you I don’t date, and you really should have believed me because it’s the truth. And I agreed to the charade as a one-time deal only. I’m sure you can come up with some kind of story for your sister about you and me not seeing each other anymore.”

  Zane cleared his throat. “I probably can. Gwen, my throat feels dry as dust. Could I have a drink of water?” Thinking fast, realizing that she could go into the house and bring a glass of water out to him, he added, “And also use your bathroom?”

  Gwen hesitated. Compared to his home, hers was a hovel. And it was never completely clean and picked up. She simply did not have the time to keep an immaculate house. Were there even clean towels in the bathroom? She couldn’t remember.

  But how could she refuse Zane a drink of water and the use of her bathroom? “All right,” she agreed, albeit uneasily. “I’ll get my key ring from the van.”

  While Gwen strode to her van, Zane realized that talking her into going to Vanessa’s dinner party would be a mistake. He wanted to know Gwen better, and at this early stage of what he honestly wanted to be a budding relationship, he shouldn’t be pressuring her into more socializing with his family. He should be furthering his own interests—and, hopefully, hers—by convincing her to change her attitude toward dating. In truth, he had never known a young, beautiful woman who didn’t date at all, and he couldn’t understand why Gwen would live that way.

  She returned with her key ring and walked past him to her front door. He followed, she unlocked the door and they both went in. There was no foyer, Zane noticed. The front door opened directly into a small living room that contained a sofa, two chairs, a couple of end tables with lamps and a television set. There was not enough space in the room for anything else, and he realized that Gwen’s living room wasn’t as big as his personal closet. He also saw evidence of her children scattered around—some stuffed animals, a doll and some tiny toy cars.

  “The bathroom is down that hall,” Gwen said. She spoke rather stiffly, because she’d seen Zane looking around. If he was shocked by her plain little house and mismatched furniture, he had better not say so, she thought with a prideful squaring of her shoulders. She herself might wish for a larger, nicer house and all that went with it, but this was the best she could afford, and Zane Fortune could like it or lump it. She would never apologize for having so little, especially to him, a man who had everything.

  “Thanks.” Zane sauntered down the hall.

  Gwen’s hands weren’t quite steady as she prepared two glasses of ice water in her minuscule kitchen. Having Zane in her house was unnerving, and she actually prayed that she had picked up all the damp towels in her one and only bathroom, and had set out clean towels that morning.

  She thought of the kids’ bath toys in the tub and the shower curtain that she’d been intending to replace, the threadbare bath mat draped over the edge of the tub and the worn little rag rug that was always askew in front of the sink. She sighed heavily, almost despondently. Zane Fortune was definitely getting a firsthand look at how the other half lived.

  But she was letting his presence in her home get her down, and she didn’t like that underdog feeling one little bit. She was staring out the window over the kitchen sink wondering why some people were so lucky with money and others struggled all their lives to scrape by when she felt Zane’s hands on each side of her waist. Obviously she’d been so deep in thought that she hadn’t heard him come up behind her. Either that or he had deliberately snuck up.

  She closed her eyes and savored the moment. He exuded the cleanest, most marvelous scent, and if it wasn’t such a foolish fantasy, she would have liked to stand there for the rest of the day and just breathe.

  But he had a lot more in mind than mere breathing, she realized when she felt his mouth nuzzling the side of her neck.

  Slipping away from both his hands and mouth, she turned and faced him. “Is that the real reason you wanted to come in?” she asked, a
nd was startled by the breathless quality she heard in her own voice. Something inside her groaned. Why did he have to be the most gorgeous human being on the face of the earth?

  But gorgeous or not, she didn’t trust him. And if rumors about his reputation were accurate, she shouldn’t trust him. He was not the kind of man she should even be friends with, because reputations were somewhat contagious, and she certainly didn’t want his rubbing off on her. She wouldn’t want people thinking of her as one more of Zane Fortune’s conquests.

  She gave him a troubled look, just as he said, “I asked to come in because I wasn’t comfortable talking in your driveway. That’s the truth, Gwen.”

  “Is it?” she asked quietly, though her expression remained distraught.

  “I’m not saying I don’t find you enormously attractive,” Zane said, also speaking in a quiet tone. “I do, Gwen. You’re a very beautiful, desirable woman.”

  “Especially when I’m dressed in worn-out jeans and an old shirt,” she said sarcastically.

  “Surely you don’t believe that clothes mean that much. You couldn’t be anything but beautiful, whatever you happened to be wearing.”

  She threw up her hands. “For God’s sake, Zane, I wasn’t born yesterday! If clothes didn’t make a difference, you’d be buying yours off the rack, not having them custom made. So please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me that my beauty and desirability are knocking you out. I know exactly how I look today, and it sure isn’t beautiful!”

  Zane leaned one hip against a counter, folded his arms across his chest and stared at her. “You really don’t know how to take a compliment, do you?”

  “Since I haven’t heard a genuine compliment in a very long time, I wouldn’t know.” She could tell that he was all set to give her an argument, and she took a hurried, impatient breath. “I have to deliver that table before five. Are you ready to leave now?”