Marriage by Mistake (6 page)

He stuffed his papers in his briefcase,
jerked into his jacket, and hoisted his carry-on over his shoulder.
Before he could reach the door, however, there was a knock.

Dean froze. No. It was just...room service,
yes room service, with that coffee they'd never delivered.
Breathing again, he put his hand on the knob and swung the door
wide.

It was not room service. His wife stood in
the hall, her nose in the air and an array of mismatched suitcases
laid around her feet.

Dean's heart did a staggered double-beat.

"Two months," she said crisply. "We'll give
it a two month trial period. I keep my apartment and take a leave
of absence from my job. I can manage that    barely."

Dean could hardly hear her for the blood
rushing through his ears. Black pants hugged her hips like a second
skin. A stretchy top did the same for her ripe, perky breasts. "Two
months," he croaked.

"You were right," she said. "A promise is a
promise." She rolled her shoulders. "At least, it's a promise if
you're the man I made it to."

The words brought Dean's gaze up from her
body. "Who else would I be?"

"I don't know." She shrugged again.
"
That
fellow loved me."

The blood, so hot, went cold in Dean's veins.
"Pardon me?"

"You don't." Her eyes averted. "So I'll give
it two months, two months to figure out who you are, to see if
there could be love."

Dean felt a growl, low in his throat. "I
never said I loved you."

She looked over at him, surprised. "Sure you
did."

"When?" Dean challenged.

She looked down her lashes. "Well, for one
time, right there in our wedding vows."

He stared at her.

"So what do you say?" She hitched her purse
higher over her shoulder. "Two months, that's my offer. Take it or
leave it."

Dean was still staring. She was right. He had
uttered the words. He must have, but    he couldn't have
meant
them.

"So?" She narrowed her eyes. "Are you taking
or leaving?"

Just looking at her, even now, Dean could
feel the lust pull, low down in his gut. Lust, not love. It was
never going to be
love
, not in a million years.

The fierceness of her expression began to
wilt. "You could say something."

He looked at her. Yes, he could say
something.
I lied to you. I would have said anything to get you
into bed. To get what I
wanted.

"I'll call a bellhop." Dean turned. "We'll
need help if we hope to make that flight."

CHAPTER FOUR

As Kelly walked up the jetway, faux
tiger-skin purse clutched in one hand, she reminded herself this
was only going to be two short months of her life. She'd fly to
Boston with the guy, cohabit with him in some safe fashion, and
then be done with the whole moral quagmire. She started down the
aisle of the plane.

A dark voice rumbled behind her. "We're
here."

Kelly suppressed a shiver at the timbre of
that voice, and its false familiarity. "Here? Oh, you mean the
row." She stopped to glance at the number above the seats. "Four?"
They were barely inside the plane.

"That's right," Dean said. "Would you like
the window or the aisle seat?"

Kelly looked down at the spacious upholstered
seats and the little table between them. Oh, she realized, first
class.

"Um, I like to look out the window," she
answered. Hugging her purse to her chest, Kelly shouldered her way
to the seat. She didn't check to see what Dean was doing. So far
she'd managed to get by without looking him square in the face
since their conversation outside his hotel room door. It was all
too bizarre. He shared Dean's name, he owned Dean's body
   but he wasn't really Dean.

She wasn't really married to him.

At least, that's what she planned to prove.
There was no connection between this man and the one to whom she'd
made holy vows. She'd satisfy her conscience, the voice in her head
that had been shouting she was a hypocrite, that she couldn't live
up to her own standards.

A promise was a promise.

Kelly sank into her seat. Dean   
or whoever he was    lowered into the seat beside her.
Little shivers ran up and down Kelly's arms. All right, she
responded to the guy's body, but they weren't properly married. In
fact, she didn't think it would take as long as two whole months to
prove it. That's what she'd told her boss, Rudy, in persuading him
to hire a temp to fill her job on the chorus line. She'd also
reminded Rudy that she'd pulled him out of more than one hole of
his own. Now it was her turn to get pulled out of a hole. And she
would
get out of it. A mere two months and she'd be back in
her own life, no worse for wear.

Kelly sniffed, pretending she didn't notice
every single thing the man beside her was doing. He did not appear
to be at all aware of her. As more passengers filed past them, he
settled his briefcase on his knees and drew from it a thick sheaf
of papers. He immediately began paging through them.

Kelly wished she had something to do, too,
but even if she hauled out her paperback novel it wouldn't have
been polite to read it now, not when she was sitting right next to
her brand new husband. She tapped her fingers on her knee.
Apparently this guy    Dean    didn't realize
what was polite.

She stopped tapping her fingers and cleared
her throat. "Uh, do you think we'll have a nice flight?" She didn't
quite look at him as she smiled pleasantly.

He drew his stapled bundle of papers closer
to his eyes. "I have no idea."

And that was that. He frowned at his papers
while Kelly felt her face burn.

Two months    or less.

Meanwhile the plane bounced gently. They were
leaving the gate. Dean actually looked up from his papers, but only
to shoot Kelly a disapproving glance. "You need to put on your seat
belt."

"What? Oh." Kelly looked down. Her lap was,
indeed, unrestrained. Before she could do anything to correct the
situation, he was leaning over her, reaching for the metal tabs.
Mr. In-Charge.

His knuckles brushed her stomach as he shot
the metal tongue home.

Kelly pressed back in her seat. Dean's breath
drew in sharply. But neither one of them seemed able to avoid it:
their eyes met. A spark arced between them, white-hot electricity,
a moment of stripped-bare awareness.

Dean straightened abruptly and turned,
grabbing up his sheaf of papers. Kelly hissed out slowly and craned
her head to gaze out the window.

All right, so there was a physical thing
between them. No big deal. Physical attraction didn't make the man
her husband. Kelly blinked out the window and struggled to even her
heart rate.

Only love could do that.

###

They arrived in Boston two hours late. That
meant Dean had been sitting beside the woman for seven hours
straight. In that time they'd barely exchanged a dozen words. What
was he going to talk to her about? The stock market, free trade
problems? Or perhaps the number of sequins she could sew on a
single costume?

Meanwhile, he noticed every time she crossed
her legs, every time she shifted in her seat. He did his best to
distract himself, delving deeply into the quarterly report, but it
didn't work. He still noticed. Worse yet, he still responded.

It was embarrassing. Never had Dean
experienced physical desire so unrelenting. His fingers actually
itched. As they deboarded the plane, he decided he had to get away
from her. Oh sure, he'd have to bring her home, settle her in, but
following that duty some office emergency could take him back to
the city. He could get out of her sphere.

Eager to put his plan into motion, Dean
shepherded Kelly through the busy, early morning airport. He was
careful to keep his hands off, though those hands longed to touch
and lay claim. Thank God, Jackson and the car were already waiting
at the curb. The porter was there as well, loading their luggage
into the trunk. Dean only had to spend the time it would take to
drive home with the woman. He could manage that.

"Oh, my word," Kelly muttered.

She was staring. Dean saw nothing but Jackson
and the car, with the porter loading the trunk. "What is it?" he
asked.

She shot him a glance. "That doesn't look
unusual to you?"

"Doesn't what look unusual?"

She merely raised her brows.

Dean didn't get it. Hadn't she seen
limousines in Las Vegas? Indeed, she must have viewed outfits far
more ostentatious than his. Meanwhile, Kelly pulled from the shadow
of his control and approached Jackson, hand outstretched. "Hi! I'm
Kelly. How do you do?"

Jackson flashed a quizzical glance in Dean's
direction, then turned to accept the lady's handshake. "Uh, how do
you do?" He released Kelly's hand to open the back door. "Sir," he
said to Dean.

"Jackson." Dean ushered his wife into the
car, still wondering how she'd expected them to get home.

In the car, Kelly settled onto the seat and
turned to face Dean. He immediately forgot his limo question in
view of her obvious intent to converse. His hand jumped to his
inside jacket pocket. "Excuse me." He withdrew his cell phone. "I
have some calls to make."

The way she stared made him fear she was
going to have the moxie to object. But she only pressed her lips
together and turned to look out the window.

Dean managed to busy himself with the phone
all the way out past the suburbs. But when they arrived at the
wrought iron gates of the family estate, he found himself
perversely curious about her reaction. What would she think of the
home he was providing her? He pocketed his cell phone as they drove
through. Fortunately, she was too intent on the twisting drive to
notice his attention. He could see her strain to see the lines of
the house in the distance.

When the place finally appeared through a
break in the trees, her brows shot way up. She turned to him.
"
This
is your house?"

Dean stared at her. He could swear she was
implying the place was deficient. With fifteen bedrooms, twenty
bathrooms, and thirty thousand square feet of premium interior
decoration, the house was hardly deficient in any way. At least,
that's what Kirk's third wife had said, the one who'd needled
Dean's father into tearing down the ancestral manse to build the
place. "It's supposed to resemble a Roman villa," Dean informed
Kelly stiffly.

"Well, it doesn't."

Dean was at a loss. Every one of his father's
brides had gushed over the house. But Kelly looked at him with a
trace of...pity?

Dean's brows dove. Oh no, he wasn't going to
take
pity
from the likes of her    Then a glance
out the window told him it didn't matter what Kelly thought.
Jackson was pulling into the circular drive before the front
entrance. Dean was about to see the back of her, at least for the
time being. Yes, in just a few minutes, with some well-placed
commands to his staff, he would be quit of her.

Dean was sure he'd regain his customary
equilibrium once out of her presence.

But as soon as he stepped out of the car,
Dean knew it wasn't going to happen the way he'd planned. He
squinted. "Where is everybody?"

Jackson cleared his throat. Dean turned
around, still squinting.

"Ahem," Jackson said. "I was instructed not
to alarm you, sir, before you got back home, but the child is
missing. Again."

Dean said nothing. He was too completely
dismayed. It wasn't that Robby had taken off; the kid did that too
often for panic. But he wasn't going to be able to deliver his set
of well-thought-out orders. He wasn't going to be able to sink back
into the car and depart from the woman now standing by his side,
her hands on her hips.

"Who?" she asked. "Who's missing?"

Dean kept his gaze on Jackson. "Troy," he
snapped. "Where is he?"

Jackson coughed into his fist. "Uh, where you
would expect, sir."

"Who is missing?" Kelly asked again. But Dean
wasn't paying any attention to her. Of course not. He'd barely
addressed a word to her since they'd lifted off from Vegas. He'd
kept his nose buried in his papers or his ear to his cell phone.
Now he turned on his heel and started for the monster double doors
set in the center of the monster house.

Truly, it was the most hideous house Kelly
had ever seen. Big, square, and blocky, it looked like a mausoleum.
She couldn't believe he chose to live in this pile, but there he
was making for the building. It must really be his. She spent half
a second thinking about it, then hustled after him.

What child was missing?

As soon as she stepped in the front door, she
had to stop. Open-mouthed, she turned in a circle. There was marble
from here to everywhere and a rainforest of crystal falling from at
least three stories above. Just like the limo: nice, if you were in
a casino in Vegas, but a bit much for home sweet home. Kelly shook
her head and looked around for Dean. He was moving fast down a
carpeted hallway. She hurried after.

Looking stern, Dean pushed open one of the
many heavily paneled doors lining the hall. Kelly caught the edge
of the door and slipped in after him.

They were in a study, the furnishings heavy
and dark. There was a huge desk at one end of the room, and a bar
at the other. It was at the bar that an athletic-looking young man
lounged. Dark hair fell onto his forehead and a highball rolled
between his palms. To his credit, he didn't appear to have been
drinking. The glass looked more a prop against anxiety.

Dean came to a dead stop. Kelly nearly bumped
into him. The young man looked up. "Ah," he drawled, "I see you've
heard."

Kelly could tell Dean was holding on to his
control with the greatest of difficulty. But he was holding. When
he spoke, his voice was calm.