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Authors: Sandra Marton

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BOOK: The Millionaire Claims His Wife
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“I can tuck my legs up under me and I'll be perfectly comfortable, Chase. You'll see. Come on. Switch places with me.”
Switch places? Climb into the bed, still warm from her body? Put his head on the pillow, still fragrant with her scent? He shook his head and moved back, until the seat of the rocker dug into the backs of his legs.
“No.”
“Honestly, you're such a chauvinist! This is hardly a time to worry about being a gentleman.”
He had to fight hard to keep from laughing. Or groaning. One or the other, or maybe both. Is that what she thought this was all about? Him trying to be a gentleman? He wondered what she'd think if she knew the real direction of his thoughts, that it was all he could do to keep from picking her up, tossing her onto the bed and tearing away that blanket so he could see if she was wearing anything under it.
“That's it,” he said.
“What's it?”
Chase cupped Annie's shoulders, trying not to think about the feel of her under his hands, and moved her gently but firmly out of his way.
“Chase?” Her voice rang with bewilderment as he opened the door. “Where are you going?”
To hell in a handbasket, he thought.
“To heat up some coffee,” he said. “Go back to sleep, Annie. I'll see you in the morning.”
He slipped out of the room, shut the door after him and leaned back against it.
The torture of the chair was one thing. A man could deal with that But the torture of being so close to Annie was something else.
Saints willingly martyred themselves, not men.
 
 
Annie stared at the door as it swung shut. Then she sighed and sank down on the edge of the bed.
“Stupid man,” she muttered. “Let him suffer, if he wants.”
It was ridiculous of him to have turned down her offer.
“Brrr,” she said, and burrowed under the covers.
Of course, he'd been uncomfortable in that chair. Chase was six foot two; he'd weighed 190 pounds for as long as she could remember, all of it muscle. Hard muscle.
There was no denying that he'd always been a handsome man.
Beautiful, she'd called him once, after they were first married. They'd been lying in each other's arms after a long, lazy afternoon of love, and suddenly she'd risen up on her elbows, gazed down at him and smiled.
“What?” he'd said, and she'd said she'd never thought about it before, but he was beautiful.
“Goofball,” Chase had said, laughing. “Men can't be ‘beautiful.'”
“Why can't they?” she'd said, in a perfectly reasonable tone, and then, in that same tone, she'd gone on to list all his attributes, and to kiss them all, too. His nose. His mouth. His chin. His broad shoulders. His lightly furred chest. His flat abdomen and belly...
“Annie,” he'd said, in a choked whisper, and seconds later he'd hauled her up his body, into his arms and taken her into the star-shot darkness with him again.
“Dammit!”
Annie flung out her arms and stared up at the skylight, where the light rain danced gently against the glass. What was wrong with her tonight? First the dream that had left her aching and unfulfilled. And now this ridiculous, pointless memory.
“You're being a ninny,” she said out loud.
She wasn't in love with Chase; hadn't she already admitted that? As for the sex... Okay. So sex with him had always been good.
Until he'd ruined it, by never coming home to her.
Until she'd ruined it, by treating him so coldly.
Annie threw her arm across her eyes.
All right. So she wasn't as blameless as she liked to think. But Chase had hurt her so badly. Nothing had prepared her for the pain of watching him grow out of her life, or of finding him with his secretary...
Or for the pain of losing him.
The truth was that she'd never stopped wanting him. Her throat tightened. Never. Not then. Not all the years since. If he'd taken her in his arms again tonight, if he'd kissed her, stroked his hand over her skin...
The door banged open. Annie grabbed for the blanket and sat up, clutching it to her chin. Chase stood framed in the doorway. Light streamed down the hall, illuminating his face and body with shimmering rays of gold.
“Annie.”
His voice was soft and husky. The sound of it sent her heartbeat racing. Say something, she told herself, but her throat felt paralyzed.
“Annie.” He stepped into the room, his eyes locked on hers. “I lied,” he said. “It isn't the chair that kept me from sleeping. It's you.”
It was a moment for a flippant remark. A little humor, a little sarcasm; something along the lines of, “Really? Well, it's good to know I'm giving you a bad time.”
But she didn't want to toss him a fast one-liner.
She wanted what he wanted. Why keep up the pretense any longer?
They were two adults, alone on an island that might just as easily have been spinning in the dark reaches of space instead of being just off the Washington coast. Going into Chase's arms, loving him just for tonight, would hurt no one.
He has a fiancée,
a voice inside her whispered.
He belongs to another woman now.
“Annie? I want to make love to you. I
need
to make love to you. Tell me to go away, babe, and I will, if that's what you really want, but I don't think it is. I think you want to come into my arms and taste my kisses. I think you want us to hold each other, the way we used to.”
The blanket fell from Annie's hands. She gave a little sob and her arms opened wide.
Chase whispered her name, pulled off his clothes and went to her.
He kissed her mouth, and her throat. He kissed the soft skin behind her ear and buried his face in that sweet curve of neck and shoulder that felt like warm silk.
She'd been wearing something under the blanket, after all. A bra and panties, just plain white cotton, but he thought he'd never seen anything as sexy in his life. His hands had never trembled more than they did as he unfastened the bra and slid the panties down Annie's long legs.
“My beautiful Annie,” he murmured, when she lay naked in his arms.
“I'm not,” she said, with a little catch in her throat. “I'm older. Everything's starting to sag.”
Her breath caught as Chase bent and kissed the slope of her breast.
“You're perfect,” he whispered, his breath warm against her flesh. “More beautiful than before.”
His hands cupped her breasts; he bent his head and licked her nipples. It was the truth. She'd gone from being a lovely girl to being a beautiful woman. Her body was classic in its femininity, lushly curved and warm with desire beneath his hands and his mouth. Annie smelled like rosebuds and warm honey, and she tasted like the nectar of the gods.
She was a feast for a man who'd been starving for five long, lonely years.
“Chase,” she whispered, when he kissed his way down her belly. Her voice broke as he parted her thighs. “Chase,” she said again.
He looked up at her, his eyes dark and fierce. “I never forgot,” he said. “The smell of you. The heat.” His hands clasped her thighs. Slowly he lowered his head. “The taste.”
Annie cried out as his mouth found her. It had been so long. Five years of lonely nights and empty days, of wanting Chase and never admitting it, of dreaming of him, of this, and then denying the dreams in the morning.
I love you, she thought fiercely, Chase, my husband, my beloved, I adore you. How could I have ever forgotten that?
He kissed her again and she shattered against the kiss, tumbling through the darkness of the night, and just before she fell to earth he rose up over her and thrust into her body with one deep, hard stroke.
“Chase,” she cried, and this time, when she came, he was with her, holding her tightly in his arms as they made the breathless free fall through space together.
The last thing she saw, just before she fell asleep in his arms, was the crescent moon, framed overhead in the skylight, as the clouds parted and the gentle rain ceased.
* * *
She awakened during the night, to the soft brush of Chase's mouth against her nape.
It was as if the years had fallen away. How many times bad she come awake to his kisses, and to his touch?
“I never stopped thinking about you,” he whispered.
I never stopped loving you, was what he wanted to say, but he wanted to look into her eyes when he did, to read her answer there.
So he spoke to her with his body instead, burying himself in her heat, one hand on her breast and the other low across her belly, moving within her, matching his rhythm to hers, until he groaned and she cried out. Then he turned her into his embrace, kissed her and slipped inside her again, still hard, still wanting her, and this time when she came, she wept.
“Did I hurt you?” he said softly, and for an instant she almost told him that the pain would come in the morning, when the sun rose and the night ended, and all of this would be nothing more substantial than a dream.
But that would be wrong. This
was
a dream, and she knew it. So she smiled against his mouth and said no, he hadn't hurt her, and then she sighed and put her head on his shoulder.
“Annie?”
“Mmm?”
“I've been thinking.” He kissed her, and she could feel the smile on his lips. “We ought to try out that tub.”
“Mmm,” she said again. She yawned lazily. “First thing in the morning...”
And she drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Sunlight woke them—sunlight, and the hornet buzz of the motorboat.
Annie jumped up in bed, heart pounding.
“What...?”
Chase was already pulling on his chinos and zipping up his fly.
“It's okay, babe,” he said. “I'll take care of things.” She nodded, put her hands to her face and pushed back her hair. Chase started for the door, hesitated, and came back.
“Annie,” he said, and when she looked up, he bent to her and kissed her. “It was a wonderful night,” he said softly.
She nodded. “Yes. It was.”
For a minute, she thought he was going to say something more but then he turned away and snagged his shirt from the chair just as a knock sounded at the front door.
“Okay, okay,” he yelled, “hold your horses. I'm coming.” He swung back one last time, just before he opened the door. “Wonderful,” he said. “And I'm never going to forget it.”
Annie smiled, even though she could feel tears stinging her eyes.
Chase's message had been gallant, to the point and painfully clear.
It had been a wonderful night. But it was morning now, and what they'd shared was over.
CHAPTER TEN
A
NNIE STARTED DOWN the steps of her sister's apartment building just as the skies opened up.
It had been raining, on and off, for most of the sultry August afternoon but half an hour ago the sky had cleared and so the cloudburst took her by surprise. She gave a startled yelp and darted back into the vestibule of the converted brownstone.
Wonderful, she thought, as fat raindrops pounded the hot pavement. Just what she needed. A steamy day, and now a hard rain. By the time she got to the subway entrance, she'd be not only drenched but boiled.
Annie looked over her shoulder. Should she ring the intercom bell? She could ask Laurel to buzz her in, go back upstairs and keep her sister company a while longer.
No, she thought, and sighed. That wouldn't be such a good idea. Laurel might have fallen asleep by now. She'd promised she was going to lie down and take a nap, right after Annie left. Heaven knew she looked as if she needed the rest.
Laurel was going through a bad time.
Hell. A bad time was putting it mildly.
Annie hadn't wanted to leave her, not even when it began to get late and it looked as if she might miss the last train for Stratham.
“You're sure you're okay?” she'd said to Laurel.
“I'm fine,” Laurel had replied.
The sisters both knew it was a lie.
Laurel was not fine. She was pregnant and alone and desperately in love with a husband who'd maybe two-timed her or maybe hadn't, depending on whose story you believed. Either way, it broke Annie's heart to see her little sister looking so beautiful and feeling so sad.
“Men,” Annie muttered with disgust.
Not a one of them was worth a penny. Well, her son-in-law was an exception. Annie's features softened. Nick was a sweetheart. But the rest of the male species was impossible.
She blew her curls away from her forehead. The vestibule was turning into a sauna. She'd have to make a run for it soon, even though she could still hear the rain beating down as if the heavenly floodgates had opened and Noah was giving the last call for the Ark.
Boy, it was really coming down. People always said it rained hard in the Pacific northwest, but the night she'd been there, the rain had been as soft as a lover's caress.
Annie frowned. What nonsense! She hadn't wasted a minute thinking about that awful night, and now it had popped into her head, wrapped in a bit of purple prose that would make any levelheaded female retch.
It was the rain that had done it. And spending the day with Laurel. What was the matter with the two of them? Were the Bennett sisters doomed to go through life behaving like idiots?
No way. Laurel would pull herself together, the same as she'd always done. As for her... Annie straightened her shoulders. She was not going to think about that night, or Chase. Why would she? She wasn't a masochist, and only a masochist would want to remember making a fool of herself, because that was what she'd done on that island.
Falling for her ex's lying, sexy charm, tumbling into his arms, inviting him into her bed and making it embarrassingly clear that she'd enjoyed having him there...so clear that he'd figured she'd be only too happy to offer a repeat performance.
Chase had phoned with that in mind several times since.
She'd talked with him the first time, because she knew they'd had to agree on what to tell Dawn when she and Nick returned from Hawaii.
“What do you want to tell her?” Chase had asked, neatly dumping the problem into her lap.
“The truth,” Annie had answered, “that you lied and I was dumb enough to go along with it—but that would probably be a mistake. So why don't we settle for something simple. Like, we spent the weekend together and it just didn't work out.”
“We didn't spend the weekend together,” Chase had said. “It was only one night. But it doesn't have to end there.”
Apparently behaving like an idiot once didn't keep you from behaving like one all over again. Annie's heart had done those silly flip-flops that she hated and she'd waited, barely breathing, for him to say he loved her.
But he hadn't.
“I know you don't want to get involved again,” he'd said in the same, reasonable tone a TV pitchman might have used selling used cars, “but you have to admit, that night was—it was memorable.”
“Memorable,” Annie had repeated calmly.
“Yes. And I'd like to see you again.”
She could still remember how she'd felt, the pain and the rage twisting inside her so she hadn't been sure which she wanted to do first, cry her eyes out or kill him.
“I'll just bet you would,” she'd said, with dignity, and then she'd hung up the phone, poured herself a double sherry and toasted the brilliance she'd shown on having removed Mr. Chase Cooper from her life five long years ago.
At least he'd been up-front about what he wanted. And talkative, especially compared to the silent act he'd put on that morning on the island. He hadn't said more than half a dozen words to her, after the guy had come to fetch them with the motorboat.
Not that she'd given him the chance to say much of anything. She'd done something foolish by sleeping with Chase but she wasn't stupid: that remark about what a wonderful night it had been wasn't anything but code for “Thanks for the roll in the hay, babe,” and she knew it. The quick brush-off had almost broken her heart, but she'd sooner have died than let Chase know it. So she'd put on what she'd figured was a look of morning-after sophistication, as if one-night stands were part of her life, and ignored him until they reached the airport, where she'd smiled brightly, shaken his hand and said it had been a delightful evening and she hoped his meeting with Mr. Tanaka went well.
Then she'd marched off, bought herself a ticket back to Connecticut, and done her weeping alone in the back of a nearly empty jet throughout the long flight home.
Sex, that was all Chase had wanted. But that was okay. Sex was all she'd wanted from him, too. She understood that now. Five years was a long time for a healthy woman to go without a man. And, she thought coldly, Chase was good in bed. It was just too bad that even in this era of female liberation, she'd had to delude herself into thinking she loved him before she could sleep with him.
Well, it wouldn't happen again, despite his eager hopes for a repeat performance. Let him wrestle between the sheets with his fiancée—not that being engaged had stopped him that night. Why would it? Fidelity wasn't his strong suit. He'd certainly proved that, five and a half years ago.
“Sex-crazed idiot,” Annie muttered, just as the door swung open and an elderly gentleman shuffled in.
“I
beg
your pardon,” he said, while water dripped from his bushy white eyebrows.
Annie's face turned bright pink. “Not you,” she said hastily. “I didn't mean... I was talking about...”
Oh, what was the use. She took a deep breath, yanked open the door and plunged out into the deluge.
* * *
The train to Stratham was half an hour late, thanks to the weather, and a good thing, too, because it took her twice as long as it should have to get to Penn Station.
She snagged a seat, even though the train was crowded, but her luck ran out after that. The guy who sat down next to her was portly enough to overflow his seat and part of hers, too. And he was in a chatty mood. He started with the weather, went on to the current political scene without stopping for breath. He was coming up fast on the problems of raising teenagers in today's troubled world when Annie made a grab for somebody's discarded newspaper, mumbled “Excuse me,” and buried her nose in what turned out to be the business section.
It was rude, perhaps, but she just didn't feel like small talk with a stranger. Her visit with Laurel had upset her, on more than one level. She and Laurel and Susie, Laurel's neighbor, had sat around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking, and of the three, only Susie had a husband who'd lived up to his marriage vows.
Annie stared blindly at the newspaper. What was it with men? And with women, for that matter? Didn't they learn? How much grief did it take before you finally figured out that men were just no...
Her breath caught.
Was that a photo of Chase? It certainly was. It was Chase, all right, smiling at the camera and looking pleased with himself and with the world, and why shouldn't he? Standing right beside him, looking gorgeous and as perfect as a paper doll, was Janet Pendleton.
Annie's eyes filled with tears, although she couldn't imagine why. Chase certainly didn't mean anything to her.
“Damn you,” she said, in a quavering whisper.
The man beside her stiffened.
“Were you speaking to me, madam?”
She looked up. The guy was looking at her as if she'd just escaped from the asylum.
Annie blinked back her tears.
“You're a man, aren't you?” she said.
Then she crumpled the newspaper, dumped it on the floor, rose from her seat and made her way through the train, to the door.
* * *
It was raining in Stratham, too.
Well, why not? The perfect ending to a perfect day, Annie thought grimly, as she made her way through the parking lot to her car. It didn't even pay to run, not when she was wet through and through. What could another soaking possibly matter?
By the time she pulled into her driveway, she was shivering, sniffing, and as close to feeling sorry for herself as she'd ever come. A hot shower and getting into her old terry-cloth robe and a pair of slippers helped. Supper seemed like a good idea, too, but banging open cabinet doors and peering into the fridge didn't spur any creative juices. Finally she gave up, took a diet meal from the freezer and popped it into the microwave.
She was just putting it on the kitchen counter when the doorbell rang.
Annie looked at the clock. It was after seven. Who'd be dropping by at this hour? Unless it was Dawn. A smile lit her face. Dawn and Nick lived only half an hour away and sometimes they dropped in for a quick visit. Everything was fine on that front, thank goodness. Dawn had returned from her honeymoon glowing with happiness, and she'd taken the news that her parents' supposed reconciliation had failed in her stride.
“I'm so sorry. Mom,” she'd said, hugging Annie, “but at least you guys tried.”
But the visitor at the door wasn't Dawn. It was Deborah Kent, standing in the rain, clutching an enormous box from Angie's Pizza Palace.
“Well?” Deb demanded. “Do I get asked in, or do I have to sit in my car and pig out on all ninety billion calories of an Angie's Deluxe without any help?”
Annie's bleak mood lifted a little. “What kind of friend would I be if I let you suffer such a fate?” she said, taking the box from Deb's hands. “Come on in.”
“The kind who ignores repeated phone calls,” Deb grumbled as she peeled off her raincoat. “This thing is soaked. You want me to hang it in the laundry room, or what?”
“Just drape it over the back of that chair,” Annie said as she headed for the kitchen.
“It'll drip on the floor.”
“Trust me, Deb. The floor won't mind. Come and make yourself comfortable while I grab a couple of plates and some napkins.”
Deb's eyebrows lifted when she saw the sad little box that had just come out of the microwave oven.
“I see I interrupted an evening of gourmet dining,” she said, moving the thing aside with a manicured fingertip.
“Mmm.” Annie took two diet Cokes out of the refrigerator and put them on the counter. “You can't imagine what a sacrifice it's going to be to eat a slice of Angie's Deluxe instead.”
“A slice?” Deb opened the box, dug out a huge triangle of pizza and deposited it on Annie's plate. “A half of an Angie's Deluxe, is what I'm figuring on.” She dug in again and lifted out a piece for herself. “So what's new in your life, anyway?”
“Oh, nothing much.” Annie hitched a hip onto a stool. “How've you been?”
“And well you might ask,” Deb said indignantly. “For someone's who's supposed to be my best
amiga,
you sure haven't paid much attention to me lately. Don't you ever return phone calls?”
“Of course I do. I've just been busy, that's all. Mmm, this pizza is to die for. And to think I was going to make a meal out of two hundred calories of fat-free, flavor-free yuck. So what if I'll have to give up eating for the rest of the week? This is definitely worth the sacrifice.”
“Don't try and pull my leg, Annie Cooper. I can tell a fib from the truth.”
“Cross my heart and hope to gain two inches around my hips,” Annie said, “this is delicious.”
BOOK: The Millionaire Claims His Wife
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