Marriage by Mistake (36 page)

Dean released a laughing sigh. For a crazy
little while there, he'd actually imagined it could be different.
Permanent.

Well yes, he
had
been crazy.

A banging, clunking sound in the hall caught
Dean's attention. The sound moved toward the front door.

"What the    ?" Dean got up, strode
to the study door, and opened it.

Kelly was struggling toward the front entry,
pushing one beat-up suitcase ahead of her and dragging two other,
mismatched suitcases behind her.

"What the    ?" Dean repeated. He
stalked out of the study and down the hall. "What are you
doing?"

Kelly paused in her travail and turned. "No
problem. My taxi should be here any minute."

Dean halted. "Your taxi?"

Kelly drew herself up. "You made yourself
clear, Dean, crystal clear."

"Oh?" He felt stiff as ice.
Her
taxi
?

She adjusted her purse strap over her
shoulder. "This marriage isn't going to last. In point of fact, it
shouldn't."

Dean tried, but couldn't, incline his head to
agree. Of course it wasn't going to last. That was a given.

But he hadn't meant she should leave
now
.

"The trial period is over, for all intents
and purposes." Kelly laughed. "I think we know each other as well
as we're ever going to."

Again, Dean couldn't move, couldn't utter a
word in reply. She was talking about leaving
now
. When he'd
thought he had until September.

But he heard the sound of tires, a car
pulling up in the front driveway. The taxi? There was a peremptory
honk.

"I, uh    " Kelly looked away from
Dean, toward the front door. "I meant what I said earlier, in the
morning room."

Dean's head was spinning. Her suitcases were
in the hallway. There was a taxi outside. And she was asking him to
remember what she'd said in the morning room? For the love of
  

There was another honk from the taxi outside.
Kelly turned to look at Dean. For a moment the defensive defiance
in her eyes fell away. She seemed to open toward him, waiting. Dean
felt a spike of hope. He could prevent this, stop her exit
   if he only knew what she was waiting for.

Kelly's lashes fell over her eyes. She gave a
short shake of her head. "No," she said. "I didn't think you
would."

I will
, Dean wanted to roar. Whatever
she wanted. But he didn't. How could he? There were her suitcases
and a taxi was waiting outside. How was
he
supposed to stop
this progress of events?

Kelly sighed, then opened the front door. She
shouted out to the cabdriver, "I have some things. Could you lend a
hand?"

Yes, Dean thought, ice inside. She was
leaving. There was nothing a man could do to stop a woman who
wanted to leave. He'd learned that long ago. He could only watch
numbly as the burly cab driver shuffled into the house and began
gathering Kelly's bags.

Kelly turned to Dean. "Goodbye," she said.
She smiled, she waved, and then she went out the door.

Dean's ears were ringing. He felt dizzy. The
cabdriver managed to gather all of Kelly's bags at once. Grunting,
the man followed Kelly. A wide slice of sunlight spilled into the
entry. The driver had left the door open.

Dean could only stand there like a fence
post. He heard the trunk slam, then a car door, followed by the
sound of spitting gravel as the cab pulled away. Still he stood
there, staring at the swathe of sunlight. Of course he'd known this
day was coming. He'd just this morning told Kelly all about it,
enunciated the truth she hadn't wanted to face. But still, he felt
as if his legs had just been cut from under him.

She'd left him, gone. It was over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kelly was in a daze during most of the flight
to Las Vegas. She could hardly believe her own actions. She'd
walked out. She'd really and truly done it.

For once in her life she'd taken charge in a
relationship.

Kelly got off the plane at McCarran airport
in Las Vegas and wondered why her self-assertiveness wasn't making
her feel any better. As she trudged through the bustling airport,
she wondered if she felt bad because in fact she'd done the wrong
thing.

God, maybe she had. Surely it was a mistake
to walk away from the most loyal, most honest    and
incidentally wealthiest    man she'd ever been involved
with. And only because he hadn't believed their marriage would
last, when it would have. If left alone, it would have.

Perhaps she was crazy.

Out on the smog-scented concourse, Kelly got
a cab. She gazed dully out the car's window on the drive home. No,
she concluded. She wasn't crazy. The marriage would not have
lasted. Dean didn't trust her. He couldn't believe that
she
loved
him
.

She couldn't have lived with that. If she'd
tried, she would have ended up desperately unhappy. And Dean would
have been unhappy, too.

The cab pulled up outside Kelly's apartment
building. She looked at the familiar faded lemon siding. It was a
far cry from Dean's mansion outside of Boston but it was home. Yes,
home, where she belonged.

###

The morning after Kelly left him, Dean went
to work the same as any other day. Why not? He was fine. Nothing
unusual or unexpected had occurred, after all. At work, he even
paid attention and accomplished something. At the end of the day he
came home. No one jogged along the winding entrance drive in her
sweat suit. No one played video games in the entertainment room.
And no one to came down to the dining room for dinner.

Dean took his usual seat at the head of the
table and waited for Roberto to bring in the soup. Not even Troy
showed up. Dean's cousin was probably off having a good time with
one of his thousand friends.

Alone then, Dean looked down at his soup. He
was fine, he had to be fine. Nothing unusual or unexpected had
occurred. But that soup wasn't going to go down his throat. His
stomach rebelled at the very idea. Dean pushed his chair back from
the table. All right, then, no soup. No food at all. But he was
fine, perfectly fine. He was simply...on a diet. In fact, instead
of eating, he'd go work out.

But in the basement gym, Dean realized
working out wasn't such a good idea, either. While lifting weights,
he was left to stare at the treadmill, which had been Kelly's
favorite. How many times had they come here to work out together
and he'd lasciviously watched her trotting nowhere? Too many times,
clearly. Dean got up from the bench seat.

In fact, he left the gym entirely and went
upstairs. It was no surprise Kelly had left him, he reminded
himself. There was no reason to have a big emotional response here.
Wives left their husbands every day of the week. And Dean had known
from the beginning his wife was more likely than most to be a
leaver. Lord, she hadn't even married him, really. Not
him
.

In his bedroom again, Dean stripped and
turned on the shower. He pressed his lips together because after he
and Kelly had worked out together, they'd often taken a shower
together, too. Those shared showers, not just sex, but fun...

Never mind. Forget it. Gone now
. Dean
stepped under the spray and washed quickly. He'd be fine. Sex and
fun were all well and good, but they weren't necessary. A man could
live without them.

He put on a sweat suit and went down to his
study. The twenty-six inch television screen loomed at him as he
sat behind his desk; Kelly's television, where she'd sat so many
hours just wanting to keep him company. Dean drew in a deep breath,
then another one. He told himself he was going to be all right.
Suddenly he heard a loud, booming noise. The papers on his desk
jumped and he felt a thudding pain in his hand. He looked down to
find he'd slammed his fist onto the desk.

Dean stood up. He breathed hard. He was not
going to break down. He was not.

The next second he was in his chair again and
his head was in his hands. She'd left him. God, she'd left him,
just as he'd always known she would. They all did, they all left,
every last one of them, but Kelly, Kelly...

He lowered his head until the back of his
hands hit the desk top. It seemed the pain was going to come,
whether he wanted it to or not. He was crumbling inside, just
disintegrating. Oh, God, it hurt.

He closed his eyes and wondered how he could
have let this happen, when it was exactly what he'd been trying to
avoid from the very beginning.

###

When Felicia got the second big check for the
Boston Family Aid shelter, she knew she was going to have to bite
the bullet and thank Troy. Emery Hunsington wasn't as much of a
penny-pincher as Joe Esterley, but it was still an achievement, and
brought her ten thousand dollars closer to a down payment for the
expansion of the Family Aid shelter.

The easiest way to accomplish the thank-you
gesture was to run into Troy at the Club. That way her
acknowledgment could seem casual, spontaneous, and without any
personal nature. Felicia was determined this not become a romantic
interlude. Troy was still who he was.

So on Saturday night Felicia, dressed in a
deceptively simple green Versace, ambled with seeming aimlessness
through the rooms of the refined country club. All the while she
kept watch for a dark-haired, gypsy-eyed male.

It only took her about ten minutes to find
him. He was sitting by himself, oddly enough, in a far corner of
the bar lounge. His ankles were crossed on a hassock and a full
martini glass was on an end table beside him. He held a copy of
The Economist
.

Felicia came to a frowning halt. She'd never
imagined Troy reading anything so serious. Was this another aspect
of his transformation, the transformation she didn't really believe
was happening?

Then Troy closed the magazine and threw it to
one side with a gesture that revealed he'd simply found it sitting
on the chair and had picked it up out of idle curiosity.

Felicia took in a deep breath. Troy wasn't
serious about anything. He was a devil-may-care man-about-town. He
was not for her.

She took another deep breath and started
toward him. With no magazine to hold his attention, he saw her
immediately. He clearly tensed. Something brief passed over his
face.

Fear? No. Felicia shook the idea aside. Troy
had nothing to be afraid of. Oh, well, yes, he'd claimed he was in
love with her, but surely that was an over-dramatization of some
far more mundane emotions. He'd probably gotten over it by now.

So she smiled her best cool, elegant smile as
she walked up to him. "Good evening, Troy."

With his gaze close on her, he dropped his
feet from the hassock. "Hello, Felicia." Slowly, he stood.

Their eyes met and Felicia felt all the old
prickliness crackling through the air between them. She now
understood the prickles to be sexual electricity, and that it
wasn't all manufactured by Troy. It was both of them. An
unfortunate chemistry.

"How have you been?" she asked.

"Okay." His eyes narrowed. "And you?"

"Oh, great. Just marvelous." Her lashes
lowered. She couldn't hold his gaze while she said what she had to
say. "I've been remiss. I should have thanked you by now for the
check you got out of Joe Esterley. And now for the one from Emery
Hunsington."

"Me?" Troy sounded surprised. When Felicia
looked up, his expression was all bafflement. "What is this about
me, and checks from Esterley and Hunsington? I have no idea what
you're talking about."

If she'd had any lingering doubts, Troy's
little act just now erased them. He had, indeed, been the one to
arrange for those checks to be sent. He'd taken her advice and
exerted himself for a cause.

But he didn't want to admit it.

Felicia's polite smile quirked. "Fine.
Whatever. You still have my thanks, and that of everyone who needs
that shelter."

But Troy was hanging on to his baffled look.
"Please don't thank me. I didn't do a thing."

Felicia could feel her smile freeze. This was
beyond modesty. He was adamant she not acknowledge what he'd done
for the shelter. With a blow that was almost physical, she realized
why. He didn't want her to imagine he'd done it for her. He didn't
want her to imagine he'd been trying to impress her or make her
think he could be a better man, one with some ideals.

A man she might consider, romantically.

Or one who was still in love with her.

Struggling not to show her hurt, she showed
anger instead. "In that case," she said crisply. "I take back all
of it. No thanks is given from me to you."

Her icicle tone appeared to relieve Troy.
"Great. I'd hate to think you've been feeling beholden to me, or
anything."

Their eyes met again. Felicia hadn't felt
beholden. She had felt...impressed, though. Even admiring. And now
with Troy watching her so coldly and her stomach shrinking, she
realized she'd been feeling a great deal more. Deep down, she'd
been hoping he was giving her an excuse to like him...an excuse to
allow him to kiss her. She'd been hoping he was changing into the
kind of man with whom she could have a relationship.

"No," she agreed slowly. "I wouldn't want to
feel beholden to you, either."

Troy rocked back on his heels. "Glad we got
that straightened out."

"Yes," Felicia said.

Troy smiled. "Have a nice evening,
Felicia."

Felicia glanced up sharply. Troy was smiling
in his old, careless way, utterly unmoved. For a moment she felt
disoriented. Even suspicious. Was this all some sort of act? He
had
been moved by his tour of the Boston Family Aid shelter.
He
had
gone out and gotten those checks for their
expansion.