Suddenly Married (7 page)

There was no mistaking the hitch in his voice. It made her wonder if she had the stuff it took to listen to him anymore. He was facing her now, but his gaze seemed to settle on everything in the room except her eyes.

“I grew up in an orphanage, raised by Franciscan brothers.”

“Is that one of them,” she asked, “in the picture on the mantel?”

He nodded. “That’s Brother Constantine. Closest thing I ever had to a father.”

“You looked like a good, sweet boy.”

“By the time I was fourteen, you might say I was a ‘hard case.’”

“Noah, really,” she said gently, laying a hand on his forearm, “you don’t have to tell me any of this. It’s none of my business anywa—”

“Yes, I
do
have to tell you,” he interrupted. “I made it your business when I asked you…when I…” He cleared his throat. “I was in trouble more than I was out of it. Cops and courtrooms were as familiar to me as my cot in the boys’ barracks.” He chuckled bitterly. “It got so bad for a while there that one particular judge knew me by my first name.”

“I never would have guessed it,” she admitted. “You seem so…so…like such a Goody Two-shoes.”

He sat, silent and blinking for a second or two before a grin slanted his mustache. “You couldn’t come up with something a little more macho than ‘Goody Twoshoes’?”

She returned the smile. “Well, you
do
seem to be the type who goes by the book…a little uptight even.”

“Uptight?” He laughed, but the merriment never quite made it to his eyes. “You make me sound like one of those bow-tie-wearing, pencil-necked nerds in flood pants and Ben Franklin glasses.”

“Flood pants?”

“You know, with cuffs that end about three inches above your shoes?”

“I get it,” she said.

In the privacy of her mind, she’d called him pompous. Arrogant. A single-minded, stubborn man who saw everything as black or white, period. She’d figured him for a self-righteous prig who judged all people by his own narrow belief system, and she hadn’t needed any more proof of that than the way he’d pontificated about her father’s crime. “Why would a man in his right mind do anything so foolish?” he’d asked that day in Jake’s office.

A fussbudget, maybe. Supercilious, possibly. But she absolutely, positively, definitely, did
not
see him as a nerd. “I never meant to imply you’re stuffy and—”

“You think…you think I’m
stuffy?
”

“No. What I meant was—”

He held up a hand to silence her. “Too late to shut the barn door now. Bessie’s out and chompin’ oats.”

“Hay.”

“Huh?”

“Hay.” She smiled slightly. “Horses eat oats. Cows eat grain or hay.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded.

“I didn’t know you were so well acquainted with farming.”

“There’s a lot you don’t about me, Mr. Lucas.”

“You promised to call me ‘Noah,’” he reminded her. “And I know more about you than you realize.”

At least their verbal frolicking had sidetracked them both—Dara from thoughts about her father, Noah from completing his confession. For a reason she couldn’t explain, Dara didn’t want to hear any more about his past, because she had a feeling it led directly to his talking about his love for his wife.

Because on the one hand, it was touching, the way he seemed to miss Francine as much today as the day he’d lost her; on the other hand, it sent a wave of jealousy coursing through her like none she’d experienced before. It made no sense, feeling this way about a man she’d just met. Besides, who was she to begrudge him his memories?

“I imagine life in a place like that could thicken anyone’s hide,” she said. She could almost picture him—young, impressionable, lonely…and angry, very angry.

“What happened to your parents?” she ventured.

Another shrug.

The gesture had been intended, she supposed, to convey that he didn’t know. But she had a feeling he knew, and the pain of knowing caused a muscle to bulge in his jaw, made him clamp his hands together so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“How long did you live at St. Vincent’s?”

“They tell me I was two when…” He shook his head. “And they boot you out of a place like that when you’re eighteen—”

“But that’s so young! How did you support yourself? Where did you live?”

“As I was about to say, they boot you out at eighteen unless you’re a student.”

She sighed with relief. “So you stayed?”

“Much as I hated the lack of privacy, the noise, never having anything to call your own, it was the only home I’d ever known. So I enrolled at Loyola—thanks to some not-so-subtle string pulling by Brother Constantine—signed up for a bunch of nonsense courses—art history, English lit, home economics.” Another bitter chuckle. “Nothing that would take me anywhere near what I wanted to do with my life, but at least I had a place to call home, till they got wise to my scheme.”

He may have had complaints about the place, but he’d loved it. “And what did you want to do with your life?”

He smiled a bit at that. “I wanted to teach. Math, to be exact. So kids like me wouldn’t be afraid of numbers.”

“Kids like you?”

No response.

“So why didn’t you?”

“Teach, you mean?”

Dara nodded.

Another shrug. “Because I met Francine.”

Her brows rose in confusion.

“I knew it’d take more than a teacher’s salary to keep her happy. She’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, and I wasn’t about to risk
her father objecting to our relationship simply because I hadn’t chosen a career with much earning potential.”

“She loved you. What difference could your potential income have made?”

Noah laughed again, genuinely this time. “How old are you?”

“Thirty. What does that have to do with—”

“I’d think that by now, you’d have outgrown your naïveté.” He winked, grinned. “It’s kinda cute, though, the way you still have a kids’-eye view of the world.”

“The way I still…” Dara clamped her teeth together. “How did you end up with a successful business of your own? And a CPA firm, of all things?” she asked, steering the conversation back on course.

“God seems to have blessed me with a talent for numbers. I have a good memory for them, and I know how to make them multiply.”

“Stock market?”

“That, and other investments,” he said, nodding. “I got a job my sophomore year as an intern with a CPA firm in New York—”

“I didn’t know you were from New York.”

“Syracuse, to be exact. Wormed my way into the Big Apple to further my education. That’s where I met her—Francine, I mean. I had just graduated. Went to a fund-raising dinner for my boss. He was running for state senate, and her dad was a big contributor to the campaign.…”

“You must have hit it off, that night at the fundraiser.”

“You could say that. Before I knew it, we were an ‘item.’” He drew quotation marks in the air around the word. “I started saving every penny, almost from that
first night, so I could one day open my own office. I wanted to take care of her in the manner to which she’d grown accustomed, to coin a phrase. She gave me a year to prove myself.” He gave a proud nod of his head. “I did it, too.”

Dara chose to ignore that last comment. If she hadn’t learned anything else in life, she’d learned ‘never speak ill of the dead.’ “Must have paid off, all that scrimping and saving. I mean, look at you now.”

“Yeah,” he said, gaze traveling the room. “Look at me.”

He didn’t seem pleased with his material possessions. Not in the least bit. “She must have been very proud of how hard you worked to gain her father’s approval.”

“I guess.”

“You
guess?
”

“She used to say I pinched pennies so hard I made Lincoln cry.”

But you were doing it for her, Dara told him mentally. “How’d you manage to save enough to open your own business in just a year?”

“I got a promotion at the firm. I was making good money, not spending a cent of it. When the weather was good, I worked for a landscaper, when it wasn’t, I hired on as a painter. Didn’t own a car—took the bus, instead—and lived in a one-room walk-up above an old woman’s house. Cooked all my meals on a one-burner hot plate I bought at a flea market. Once a week, I’d splurge on dinner and a movie for Francine and me. Other than that, I made only deposits at the bank.”

“Must have made her feel like a queen to have someone working that hard to win her heart!” she said, grinning.

“I don’t know about that. But I loved
her
like crazy. Asked her to marry me the minute I hung out my shingle.”

“And she said yes.”

“Reluctantly.”

“But…I thought—”

“She said she couldn’t live in an apartment or a town house. Too much noise. Plus it wasn’t a decent atmosphere to bring up kids, she said.” He scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Noah, why are you putting yourself through this with a total stranger? I’m sure you have friends, lots of them, who’d be willing to—”

Elbows still balanced on knees, he slowly turned his head until their eyes met. “Something you ought to know about me, Dara…I choose my friends carefully. Very carefully.”

But we’re not friends, she thought. We haven’t known each other long enough to—

“I know we’ve spent only a few hours together, but I know what I know.”

A numbers man to the last, she thought.

“If you think I haven’t given this marriage deal much thought, you’re wrong.”

“This ‘marriage deal’?”

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “For starters, I know you have a heart as big as your head, which in my opinion is why you’re so terrific with kids. You can really empathize with them, see things from their point of view—a talent most of us soon leave behind.

“You’re a hard worker, too, and I’ll bet you say things like ‘If you’re going to do a job, do your best or don’t bother.’”

Her father had drummed that very line into her head
more times than she could count. Did you put your life motto to the test when you were stealing the company’s money, Dad?

“You’re as honest as the day is long,” Noah continued, “which is why this whole embezzlement situation surrounding your dad has your emotions in such a tangle.”

This embezzlement situation, she thought, has more than my emotions in a tangle. Her heart, her head, her very soul had been affected by the news.

“You obey the speed limit, most of the time anyway, and you never cheat on your taxes. You have a little money squirreled away for the proverbial rainy day, and it doesn’t take much to make you happy. Three square meals and a cot and you’re content. Am I warm?”

He was right on target. But she was too busy reacting to the fact that she’d never heard anyone but Jake Mackenzie use that phrase to admit it. Two of her father’s platitudes in less than a minute. Birds of a feather? she wondered, citing yet another cliché.

“You’re sensitive,
very
sensitive, which is usually a good thing.”

“When
isn’t
it a good thing?”

“When you put others first and they don’t seem to give a hoot about what you need. It makes you mad, if you’re honest with yourself, real mad. Not because they’re thoughtless…because…” He scooted closer, took her right hand in his left and said with soothing compassion, “It makes you mad because you don’t like that
their
thoughtlessness hurts
your
feelings. You see it as a fault.”

“Well,
it is.
”

There was a tremor in his husky voice, as though
something had touched him deeply. “I haven’t disagreed with anything you’ve said so far, but I draw the line at that one. From what I’ve seen, you don’t
have
any flaws. I could put ads in every newspaper in the country and not find a person better suited to raise kids.
My
kids.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You’re a bargain, even at two hundred thousand—”

Dara snatched her hand away and stood abruptly. “I am
not
for sale, Noah Lucas! Not at
any
price!”

He blanched. “Of course you aren’t I—I didn’t mean…I never meant to imply—”

“My father’s reputation is important to me, very important. You’re one hundred percent right about that. But I won’t marry you just to preserve it. When I marry—
if
I marry—
love
will be the motivator, not money.” She stalked over to the French doors, crossed both arms over her chest and stared out at the relentless snowfall.
Lord,
she prayed,
make it stop. The snow, the proposal, these
feelings…
make it all stop!

She heard Noah leave the room. Had she made him angry? Hurt his feelings? Embarrassed him? Well, his offer to pay her to be his wife had made
her
mad, had downright
humiliated
her, and she didn’t see him feeling all guilty about
that!

Still, compared with Noah, she’d lived a life of comfort and ease from the day she was born. Dara didn’t relish the idea that her “poor little me” attitude had added to his suffering, even a little. She felt the prickle of tears behind her eyelids, felt a sob gnawing in her throat. Guilt? she wondered. Or self-pity? Whichever, she could not give in to it. Not here. Not now. Dara clenched her jaw, girding herself with resolve. She would not cry. She
would not
cry!

She turned when Noah came into the room, arms
overflowing with pillows, blankets, sheets. He dumped his load onto the couch, shoved the coffee table out of the way. “It’s a queen sleeper,” he said, tossing a cushion aside. “I’ve never slept on it, but the salesman said—”

“No need to go to all that trouble,” she said. “I’ll sleep on it just as it is.”

Nodding, he put the cushion back into place. “Okay. If you think you’ll be comfortable,” he said, his mellow baritone edged with control.

“I’ll be fine, really.”

“You know,” he said, pocketing his hands and staring at the couch, “I never gave it a thought before tonight. Most folks would have turned their extra bedroom into a guest room, but I made a home office out of mine so I could bring work home, spend more time around the kids, you know?” He sighed with exasperation, smiled sheepishly. “I wish I could offer more comfortable accommodations, something with more privacy, but—”