Hoodwinked (16 page)

“Stop brooding,” he taunted as she picked at her food. “I haven't grown fangs in the past hour.”

“Is that how I look?” she asked, her voice subdued. “I'm sorry. It's just such a shock. I was sure at first that you were the saboteur, and then I was sure you were the detective trying to catch him. I never dreamed that you were Mr. MacFaber himself.”

He took a sip of the excellent wine he'd been served with his fish and stared at her across the top of it. “My family was wealthy,” he said. “But money never made me happy. I had parents who hated each other—and me—and a childhood I wouldn't wish on
my worst enemy. If it hadn't been for a particularly understanding policeman who took me under his wing, my life would have been in such a tangle that money wouldn't have helped me.”

Her shoulders shifted and she sipped her coffee. “It's just that I had a totally different picture of you,” she said. “And of what being married to you would be like.” She smiled shakily. “I don't mix very well with people. I don't know the right utensils to use at fancy dinners. I look like what I am—an ordinary woman with a middle-class background. Your friends would look at us and wonder if you'd lost your mind. I won't fit into your world.”

That was the same thing he'd said to himself at the beginning, and he still had some lingering doubts. But he enjoyed Maureen. She fulfilled him as no other woman ever had, she was good company, and she was healthy enough to give him an heir. He leaned back in his chair and studied her downcast face.

“I have only one real friend,” he remarked. “His name is John Abernathy and he lives in Phoenix. He'll like you.” His sensuous mouth curled into a smile. “As for the rest, you'll learn as you go along. I'm filthy rich, you know. People tend to overlook things when they're currying favor.”

“You sound very cynical,” she said.

“I am cynical,” he affirmed. He tossed down the rest of his wine and put the glass gently on the table. “Life has made me that way. You're the only human being I know, besides John, who looked at me and didn't see a dollar sign.”

“I didn't know you were rich, though,” she said. “Maybe it would have been different if I'd met you as you are now.”

His eyebrows arched. “Trying to run me off?” he asked, seeing right through her fear. “It won't work. What you gave me last night turned me inside out. I can't live without it, and you're obviously not cut out to live with me in sin.”

She colored. “I could move back to Louisiana…”

“Go ahead. I've got a corporate office there. I'll switch headquarters.” He smiled at her irritation. “I like fresh seafood.”

“You aren't being reasonable,” she began.

“It doesn't get me anywhere,” he said. “The steamroller approach always works best in the long run. Have some dessert,” he added as the waiter approached with the dessert trolley.

She chose an éclair and ate it while he munched on a cherry tart. “You see?” She sighed. “We don't even like the same desserts. Marrying you would be a disaster. We'd be divorced—”

“No, we won't. I don't believe in divorce, so if you marry me, you're stuck with me.”

“I'll look silly trying to drive a Rolls-Royce.”

“Honey, you don't drive the Rolls. Harry drives the Rolls. That's why I hired him.” He finished his tart. “I wrapped two of them around a telephone pole and my board of directors surrounded me and threatened to quit en masse if I did it again. So I hired a chauffeur.”

“They must care about you,” she ventured.

“They care about the way I run the corporation,” he corrected. “I've shown a profit every year, and I've made some successful innovations on existing designs.”

“Why not make new ones?” she asked curiously, because she had very little insight into designing. The
corporation was so big that no one employee knew a lot about anything except his own area of expertise.

“Listen. If you design a new airplane, the law leaves you wide open to lawsuits if anything goes wrong with it. It's not so risky to alter an existing design.”

“Oh. I see.”

“It's not my fault the whole country's gone lawsuit crazy,” he said. “Some of them are justified, but a lot of the time, it's just some lazy so-and-so trying to live off someone else.”

“Do you make design changes yourself?” she asked, curious.

He chuckled. “I'm not going to take the credit for that. I have an excellent design staff and some brilliant electronics people. We have bull sessions. The end result comes from all of us, not any one person.”

She could see how his company had grown and why. He was a team player, not an autocrat.

“Why have you stayed away from the corporation so much?”

He sighed. “Did they tell you that my mother was killed in an automobile accident last year, and that I was driving?”

“I heard it,” she said. “I'm very sorry.”

“Up until then, I was sure that I hated both my parents. My mother was a snob. She had no time for ordinary people, and she hated anything less than the best. She wasn't that crazy about me, either. We went to a party together, and she drank a little more than she was used to.” His eyes darkened and narrowed. “We argued about the flight home the next day. She
grabbed the steering wheel. It was dark and we were going around a hairpin curve.” His big shoulders lifted and fell. “I woke up in a French hospital, with three ribs broken and some minor internal injuries. When they told me she was dead, I think I went a little mad. I spent the next year in the most reckless ways I could think of. I couldn't help feeling responsible.”

She slid her hand hesitantly over his big one, tingling at the contact. “You couldn't know she was going to grab the wheel.” His hand curled around her fingers, warm and strong. His dark eyes searched her soft ones. “Maybe not.” He laughed bitterly. “I used to lie awake at night when I was a boy, trying to figure out what I'd done to make my parents hate me so. They never paid me much attention unless I did something terrible or embarrassed them. I wouldn't conform to the image they had of their only child, you see. I always wondered what it would feel like to be loved and wanted.”

“Our children will know,” she said, her voice quiet and serious. “And so will you.”

He had to clamp down hard on his emotions to keep them in check. He hadn't counted on having someone around who loved him openly and wasn't ashamed to admit to that kind of weakness. He still couldn't. Not verbally. He'd been taught by experts that vulnerabilities were easily attacked.

“How many children are we going to have?” he asked dryly, sidestepping the emotional moment.

She smiled shyly. “How many do you want?”

His fingers caressed hers, savoring their silky softness, their elegant length. “Two or three, I guess.
Assorted.” He frowned. “We need to go look at rings.”

She caught her breath. “Rings?”

“An engagement ring and two wedding bands. Are you finished?”

No sooner had she nodded than he held up a hand and the waiter instantly produced the check. It was taken care of and they were in the Rolls—Harry seemed to always be waiting patiently—and on their way to the finest jeweler's in town.

Maureen had her eye on a very small diamond in a Tiffany setting with a simple matching gold band. She could see by Jake's scowl that she wasn't going to get it.

With a long-suffering sigh, he positioned her in front of the case holding the most expensive wedding sets in the store.

“No arguments,” he said. “I'm worth millions. I can afford a good stone, and you're going to have one,” he added doggedly, “if I have to sit on you while Mr. Tyler fits you with it.”

Mr. Tyler, an older, long-married man, beamed with approval. Mr. MacFaber was one of his best customers, although this was certainly the first time the aircraft tycoon had bought anything for a young lady. Not at all a ladies' man was Mr. MacFaber, he thought approvingly.

Maureen still hesitated, but he wore her down. She wound up with a two-karat diamond in a Tiffany setting and a matching wide gold band studded with diamonds. The whole thing cost thousands of dollars, and Jake didn't bat an eyelash as he handed his gold credit card to the delighted jeweler.

Jake's own band was a simple plain gold one.

“I didn't know if you'd want to wear one,” she said hesitantly.

He glanced down at her while Mr. Tyler polished and boxed the wedding set. “Why wouldn't I?” he asked with a faint smile. “It's my first marriage, too.”

She shrugged, hesitating over something she'd wanted to ask him from the minute she'd known who he really was. “It was just a thought.” She looked up and sighed. “Jake, what about the lady in South America?” she blurted out, reddening.

Mr. Tyler came back before he could say anything, offering congratulations along with the sales slip and the merchandise. Jake thanked him, escorted Maureen out and put her in the back seat of the Rolls.

“Back to the office, Mr. MacFaber?” Harry asked, once they were inside.

“No.” MacFaber loosened his tie with a heavy breath. “We've got a half hour before I have to be back. Drive around somewhere.”

“Outside town?” Harry asked hopefully, his dark eyes twinkling under his cap. He was an older man, not over-the-hill, but mature and lean and very capable at the wheel.

“Outside town will do fine, Harry,” MacFaber said. He closed the curtain with a grin. “He hates traffic,” he told Maureen. He lowered his voice. “Back in the fifties, he was a wheelman for a robbery ring.”

Her face brightened. “Was he, really?”

He chuckled. “Any of the people I associate with would be horrified.”

“Oh, I like scalawags,” she said. “I've led such a sheltered life that I've never really known any except Mr. Dunagan back in Louisiana. He spent two years
in jail for forgery. But he was small-time compared to Harry, I guess.”

He leaned back against the leather upholstery, feeling relaxed and very satisfied. He opened the jewelry box and brought out the solitaire. “Give me your hand.”

She slid it into his and watched him put the ring on her engagement finger. It looked elegant and beautiful and out of place there, but he didn't seem to think so. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it gently.

“You're mine, now,” he said, meeting her eyes levelly. “Since yesterday afternoon on that blanket, you belong to me, and I won't ever let you go.”

“I'm glad,” she said breathlessly. “I'll try to be the kind of wife you want.”

“You just be yourself, baby,” he said, smiling. “That'll do.”

He smelled of expensive cologne and she wanted to curl up in his lap and close her eyes and doze, but that would be impractical. Girls didn't just crawl into the laps of aircraft magnates and sleep. Not in the back seats of Rolls-Royces during business hours, anyway.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“That I'd like to lie in your arms and sleep,” she said, and laughed self-consciously. “It's been a long morning.”

“And a short night,” he mused, smiling tenderly at her hot cheeks. He held out his arms. “Come here. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.”

She slid across his lap and pillowed her cheek on his jacket, inhaling the delicious masculine scent of him with her eyes closed while his big hand touched her hair.

“Jake?”

“Hmm?” he murmured.

“What about the lady in South America?”

He laughed softly. “You won't quit, will you?” He tilted her face up to his. “Do you remember what I told you? About how many years it had been since I'd been intimate with a woman?” he asked gently. “I wasn't kidding. If you want the truth, until you came along I had every fear that I was getting impotent. No one could arouse me—not even the lady from South America, although she tried hard enough.”

Her face brightened. “Really?”

He laughed and bent to brush his mouth gently over hers. “Really. And now, I don't want anyone but you,” he breathed. “Because what you do with me in bed is almost sacred. You make me want a family and a house—My God, I don't have one!” he exclaimed and sat up, almost unseating her.

“A house?” she echoed.

“A house! I sold the one I had when I went to Europe. The duplex is the only place we have to live.” He moved her off his lap. “No, that won't do. We can't live in the duplex. Kids need a lot of space to play in.”

“Jake, you won't buy anything terribly expensive?” she asked apprehensively.

“No, of course not,” he said nonchalantly. “I don't like pretentious places any more than you do.”

“We can stay in the duplex for the time being.” He was thinking aloud. “We'll go house hunting tomorrow.”

“Do you mind Bagwell?” she asked.

“Of course not. We'll have an aviary built for him, too, so he can spend the summer months outside. He'll like that.”

She sighed with relief. “Whose apartment are we going to stay in until we're married?”

He looked down at her solemnly. “You in yours, me in mine.” He touched his finger to her tremulous mouth. “I still feel bad about the way things happened, although I don't regret what we gave each other for a second. I think we need to behave ourselves until the vows are spoken.”

“You're very conventional in some ways,” she murmured, secretly relieved, because her conscience had been working overtime despite his proposal and the immediate marriage.

“I always was. In some ways,” he agreed. He checked his watch. “As much as I hate to, I have to get back. I'll be tied up all day and most of the night. Wait up for me, so that I can kiss you good-night when I get home.”

“I'll have a meal waiting, if you like.”