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Authors: Sandra Marton

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BOOK: The Millionaire Claims His Wife
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He was right, and she knew it. Her accusation had been dumb. He couldn't have arranged this fiasco if he'd wanted to.
And he was right about all the rest, as well. Chase wouldn't have to resort to subterfuge, to get a woman into his bed. He was—what had Deb called him, the day of the wedding? Hunky, that was it. He was hunky and he always had been, especially now that he was in his prime. Chase was a man who'd turn women's heads without even trying.
No wonder she spotted his photo in the paper so often, with some smiling bimbo on his arm.
Except they weren't bimbos. She might as well admit that, too, while she was going for the truth. She liked to tell herself they were, but the women in the photos with her ex-husband were invariably beautiful and elegant.
Like Janet Pendleton, who was going to become his wife.
Annie's throat felt raspy. It was silly, but she felt like crying.
“You're right.” she said.
“You're damned right I am.”
“This entire thing—our getting on that plane in the first place, and now our getting stuck here is—just, what's the word? Karnna.”
Chase could hardly believe it. Annie, holding out an olive branch? It seemed inconceivable but hell, most of what had happened during the past forty-eight hours fell into that very same category. If it was an olive branch, what did he have to lose if he accepted it? If he was going to spend the night in that rocker—and he was—it would be a lot better for the both of them if they weren't at each other's throats.
“Karma,” he said, as he lifted his hands from her shoulders. “Don't tell me. You're taking a course in Eastern religions.”
Annie smiled and shook her head. “I bought a computer. That's what the guy who installed it said. It's karma if you can get a computer to work right, and karma if you can't.”
“You bought yourself a computer?”
“For business. But it's turned out to be fun, too. The Internet, that kind of thing.”
“Uh-huh. Who showed you how to use it? The pan...Hoffman?”
“I taught myself. Well, with a little help from Dawn.”
“Really.” Chase smiled. “Maybe you'll give me some pointers, sometime. I'm still all thumbs at anything more complicated than punching up a spreadsheet.”
“Sure.”
Their eyes met and held, and then Chase made a show of looking around at the room. “I'm really sorry about this. The accommodations, I mean. I never dreamed Tanaka would dump us out here.”
“It's a bit much, I admit.” Annie smiled. “But it's beautiful, too. Maybe this is what hotels are like, wherever it is he comes from.”
Chase grinned. “He's from Dallas, babe—I mean, Annie. No, I suspect he figured we wanted to spend some private time together.”
Annie laughed. “Cupid Tanaka, huh?”
“So it would seem.”
Again, silence closed around them. Annie sat down on the edge of the rocker.
“So,” she said briskly, “what're you going to do? Tear this place down, then build the retreat he wants from scratch?”
“Something like that.”
“I'll bet the final result will be spectacular.”
“Livable, anyway,” Chase said, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms.
Annie smiled. “Don't be modest, Chase. I know your work is well thought of. I see your name—the company's name—in the papers all the time. You've made it to the top.”
“So they tell me.” His tone was flat, and so was his smile. “To tell you the truth, the only thing I've noticed is that if that's where I am, it's not all it's cracked up to be.”
“Aren't you happy?”
“Are you?”
She stared at him. Why was she hesitating? Of course, she was happy. She had her house. Her business. Friends. Interests. A life that was comfortable, not one in which she was expected to play a role.
“Annie?”
She looked up. Chase had moved closer. She had only to reach out her hand, if she wanted to touch him.
“Are you happy?” he asked softly.
She wanted to say that she was. To tell him what she'd just told herself, how her life had taken on shape and meaning.
Instead she found herself thinking how wonderful it had felt when they'd kissed. She wanted to tell him that though she'd made a good life for herself, there was an emptiness to it that she hadn't even been aware of until she'd gone into his arms on the dance floor.
But to say any of that would have been stupid. Chase was out of her life; she was out of his. That was the way they both wanted it. Hadn't they proved that a few hours ago, when they'd gone at each other, hammer and tong? Whatever she thought she'd felt since the wedding was an aberration.
“Yes,” she said, with a smile that felt as if it were stretching her lips grotesquely, “certainly, I'm happy. I've never been more content in my life.”
A curtain seemed to drop over Chase's eyes.
“Of course,” he said politely. “You're happy, with your business and your fiancé.”
Annie nodded. “And so are you.”
“Yeah. And so am I.”
They looked at each other and then Chase walked to the door.
“Well,” he said briskly, “I think I'll go check out the refrigerator. There's bound to be enough food for a couple of meals there, or in the freezer.”
“All the conveniences, hmm? Even way out here.”
“Everybody's got a different definition of roughing it, I guess.”
“So I see. If you'd told me we'd end up in a cabin on an island a million miles from civilization, I'd have imagined a one-room shack with a propane stove on the porch and an outhouse in the back.”
Chase smiled. “Like the place we rented that summer after we got married. Remember? The outdoor sun-shower, the one-hole, no-flush John...”
Annie laughed. “How could I forget? We bought that funny set of pots and pans that were supposed to fit inside each other, and those sleeping bags...”
“Boy, we were dumb,” Chase said, laughing, too. “We must have spent, what, an hour or more trying to figure out how to zip the bags together because we sure as hell weren't going to sleep apart...” His words trailed off. “Damn,” he said softly, “I haven't thought of that weekend in years.”
Neither had Annie. Just remembering made her throat constrict.
“I—I think I'll go freshen up,” she said. “And then—and then, maybe I'll take a walk, too. Just to clear my head. The flight was so long, and—and everything's been so hurried...”
“Yeah. Sure.” Chase swallowed dryly. “You go on. Wash up, walk around, whatever. I'll check out the supplies.”
“I'll come give you a hand in a few minutes.” She gave a quick, brittle laugh. “I wish I had a hairbrush with me, or even some lipstick. I feel like a complete mess.”
Chase thought of telling her the truth, that she didn't need a brush or cosmetics because she was already more beautiful than any woman he'd ever known.
Hell, he thought, and he pulled open the door, stepped out into the hall and strode away from temptation as fast as he could without breaking into a run.
CHAPTER EIGHT
C
HASE GLANCED at his watch.
The Tanaka Hotel wasn't as perfect as it looked, he thought wryly. The freezer and the refrigerator had turned out to be surprisingly empty. Someone must have emptied things out, in preparation for the day the cabin would be demolished.
Still, there'd been some usable stuff in the pantry and he'd been able to come up with the makings for an improvised meal. Now, he was peeling potatoes and onions but his thoughts were elsewhere. Fifteen minutes had gone by since he'd heard the front door open, then shut as Annie had gone off on her walk.
Maybe he ought to go look for her.
Not that there was anything to worry about on this island. It was wild and isolated, but nothing here could harm her. There were no predatory animals, not of a size to be a problem. No bears, or coyotes...
Well, he supposed there probably were snakes, though the odds of Annie meeting up with one on the neatly kept gravel path that traversed the island were remote.
Spiders, though. There were definitely spiders—he'd seen some Class A specimens the first time Tanaka had brought him out here. They'd been the size of a child's fist but they were harmless.
It was just that Annie had a thing about creepy craw-lies.
He'd learned that the winter he'd scored his first really big contract. On his way home after he'd landed the deal, he'd stopped to buy Annie a box of chocolates. There was a kid on the corner near the subway, selling single red roses; Chase had selected the prettiest one he could find and just then, he'd spied a travel agency across the street. There was a big, bright poster in the window.
Come To The Virgin Islands, it said.
Under the words was a picture of a smiling couple, holding hands under a fiery tropic sun and gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.
Chase hadn't hesitated. He'd trotted across the street and straight into the travel agency. A bored clerk had looked up from a scarred wooden desk.
“We're just about to close,” she'd said. “Why don't you come back tomorrow and—”
“That poster. The one in the window.” He'd been too young, and too flushed with excitement, to phrase his question with any subtlety. “How much would it cost for me to take my wife to the Virgin Islands?”
The clerk had looked at the rose in his hand and the chocolates under his arm, and maybe at him, too, all youthful, eager anticipation, cleaned up but wearing, as he had in those years, the chambray shirt, jeans and work boots he felt most comfortable in. She'd sighed, but something that might have been a smile had lit her tired face.
“Come and sit down,” she'd told him. “I have a couple of packages here that just might interest you.”
So he'd gone home to Annie with one perfect red rose, a box of candy, a contract that made all his, and her, sacrifices worthwhile—and reservations at a resort on Saint John Island.
Neither the poster nor the travel agent had exaggerated the beauty of the islands. To this moment, he remembered the shock of first seeing the pale sky, white sand and crystal-clear blue water.
“It's the color of your eyes,” he'd whispered to Annie, as he held her in his arms that first night, in their wonderful hideaway overlooking the sea. Compared to this, the place had been a shack—but oh, how happy they'd been there!
Chase smiled to himself. That night had been what he'd come to think of as the Night of the Spider.
He and Annie had made love on the secluded terrace of their little house, cocooned in a black velvet bowl of night sky.
“I love you,” he'd whispered, after she'd cried out in his arms and he'd spent himself in her silken heat. Annie had sighed and kissed him, and then they must have fallen asleep, there in the darkness with the soft whisper of the surf seeming to echo the beats of their hearts.
Sometime during the night, he'd awakened to a shriek.
“Annie?” he'd shouted, and though it had taken only a couple of seconds to race through the little house and find her in the bathroom, his adrenaline must have been pumping a mile a minute by the time he got there.
Annie, white-faced, was standing on the closed toilet, trembling with terror.
“Annie? Babe,” he'd said, pulling her into his arms. “What is it? What happened?”
“There,” she'd said, in a shaky whisper, and she'd pointed an equally shaky hand toward the tub.
“Where?” Chase had responded. All he saw was the porcelain tub, the bath mat, the gleaming white tile...
And the spider.
It was big, as spiders went. Definitely the large, economy size. And it was hairy. But it was only a spider, for God's sake, and in the time it had taken him to get from the bedroom to Annie, he'd died a thousand deaths, imagining what might have happened to her.
So he'd reacted the only way he could, scooping the spider up with a towel, marching to the back door, dumping the thing into the sandy grass and then returning to his wife, slapping his hands on his hips and asking her what in hell was wrong with her, to shriek like a banshee because she saw some little spider that was probably more afraid of her than she was of it.
Annie had slapped her hands on her hips, too, and matched his angry glower with one of her own.
“That's it,” she'd said, “take the spider's side instead of mine!”
“Are you nuts? I'm not taking—”
“You just think how you'd feel, if you'd come in here, turned on the light and found that—that thing waiting for you!”
“It wasn't ‘waiting' for you. It was minding its own business.”
“It was waiting for me,” Annie had insisted, “tapping its eight trillion feet and waiting for—”
Chase had snorted. “Eight trillion feet?” he'd said, choking back his laughter, and suddenly Annie had started to laugh, too, and the next thing he'd known, his wife was in his arms.
“I know it's dumb,” she'd said, laughing and crying at the same time, “but I'm scared of spiders. Especially big ones.”
“Big?” Chase had said, cupping her face in his hands and smiling into her eyes. “Hey, that thing was big enough to eat Chicago.” He'd stopped smiling then, and told her what was in his heart, that his anger had only been a cover-up for the fear he'd felt when he'd heard her scream, that if he ever lost her—that if he ever lost her, his life would have no meaning...
“Hi.”
He swung around. Annie was standing in the doorway, smiling, and only force of will kept him from going to her, taking her in his arms, and telling her that—telling her that...
“Sorry I took so long, but I lost track of the time.”
Chase expelled his breath and looked away from her.
“Were you gone long?” he said, with a casualness he didn't feel. “I hadn't noticed.”
“I walked through the woods.” Annie came closer, peered over his shoulder at the potatoes and onions and picked up a paring knife. “This is some beautiful place. I hate to think of it overrun with guys in three-piece suits.”
Chase forced a smile to his lips. “They won't wear three-piece suits when they come here. They'll wear plaid Bermudas, black socks and wing tips.”
Annie laughed, picked up a potato and began peeling it. “Same difference.” They worked in silence for a few minutes, and then she spoke again. “I saw an interesting spider on the deck.”
Chase looked up. “That's strange. I was just thinking about... Did you say, ‘interesting'?”
“Uh-huh. It was...” She hesitated. “It was big. You know. Impressive.”
“Impressive, huh? And you didn't scream? Seems to me I can remember the days when creepy crawlies weren't exactly your favorite creatures.”
Annie blew an errant curl off her forehead. “They still aren't. But I took this course last year...”
“Why doesn't that surprise me?”
“It was about insects,” she said with dignity.
That
did
surprise him. “You? Taking a course about bugs?”
Annie flushed. “Well, why not? I figured it was stupid to be scared of things with more than four legs. I decided, maybe if I understood them better, I might not jump at the sight of an ant.”
“And?”
She shot him a sideways look and an embarrassed smile. “And, I learned to respect creepy crawlies like crazy. There are a heck of a lot more of them than there are of us, and they've been here longer.”
Chase nodded. “I can almost hear the ‘but' that's coming.”
She laughed and reached for another potato. “But, I'm still not in the mood for a one-to-one relationship with anything that needs eight legs to cross a room.”
Chase grinned. “It's nice to know that some things never change.”
Annie's smile dimmed. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
They worked in silence for a couple of minutes, Annie peeling potatoes, Chase slicing onions, and then Chase spoke.
“Annie?”
“Mmm?”
“I, ah, I wanted to tell you... I just hope you know...” He swallowed. “I didn't mean what I said before. About you taking all those courses to take digs at me, I mean.”
Annie felt her cheeks redden. “That's okay.”
“No. It's not okay. I know you enjoy learning all that stuff. The poetry, the art... It's just not my thing. Heck, if I'd had to take anything but the minimum liberal arts stuff to get my engineering degree, I'd never have managed. I'd probably still be digging ditches for a living.”
Annie smiled and shook her head. “You know that's not true.” She glanced at him, then put all her concentration on the potato she was peeling. “Anyway, maybe—maybe there was some truth to what you said. I mean, I didn't pick those things to study because I thought they'd, you know, be about stuff you wouldn't enjoy. I do like poetry, and art, and all the rest.” She bent her head so that her hair fell around her face, shielding it from his view. “But I have to admit, when you looked puzzled about some eighteenth century poet, well, it made me feel good.” She looked up suddenly, her eyes bright and shiny. “Not because I felt smarter or anything but because—because it was a way of proving that I could hold my own, you know? That even though I was only a housewife, that didn't mean I was—”
“Only
a housewife?”
Annie shrugged as she dumped the potato on the counter and reached for another.
“That's what I was.”
“Only a housewife,” he said, and laughed. “That's a hell of a description for the woman who kept our home running smoothly, who raised our child, who entertained all the clowns I had to butter up while I was trying to get Cooper Construction moving.”
“I guess I wasted an awful lot of time in self-pity.”
“That's not what I meant. If anybody wasted time, babe, it was me. I should have told you how proud I was of all the things you did. But I was too busy patting myself on the back, congratulating myself for building Cooper Construction into something bigger than my father had ever dreamed. Something that would...”
Something that would make you proud of me,
he'd almost said, but he stopped himself just in time. It was too late to talk about that now.
“Well, what's the difference?” he said briskly. “It's all water under the bridge.” He concentrated on slicing the onions, and then he cleared his throat. “At least now I know that you didn't take all those classes just to get away from me.”
“You weren't home often enough for me to worry about getting away from you,” Annie said, a little stiffly.
“You could have had your degree by now,” he said, wisely deciding it was the better part of valor to avoid a minefield than to attempt to cross it. “If you'd taken a concentration in one area, I mean.”
“I don't need it.” Annie peeled the last potato, put down her knife and wiped her hands on a towel. “All those horticulture courses paid off.” A note of pride crept into her voice. “Flowers by Annie is a success, Chase. I've had to hire more people, and I'm thinking of maybe trying my hand at landscape design.”
“That's wonderful.”
“The truth is, I don't think I ever really wanted a degree. The thought of taking a bunch of formal classes didn't have any appeal. I just figured, well, I'd improve myself a little. Learn some stuff. You know.”
“You didn't need improving,” Chase said. He knew he sounded angry, but he couldn't help it. The only thing he didn't know was whether he was angry at Annie or himself. Improve herself? His Annie?
“I did. I just had this high school education...”
BOOK: The Millionaire Claims His Wife
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