The Millionaire Claims His Wife (11 page)

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Authors: Sandra Marton

BOOK: The Millionaire Claims His Wife
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“On top of all the delays, there're two major conventions in town.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “My boss tried everything he knew to get a room for a VIP just a little while ago, and even he couldn't come up with anything.”
Annie had a mental picture of herself joining the rows of exhausted travelers draped over every available seat in the terminal.
“Don't worry,” Chase said quickly. “I'm sure my client's arranged a room somewhere for me. You can have it just as soon as I get in touch with him.”
As if in response, an electronically amplified voice rang out, paging Mr. Chase Cooper.
Chase took Annie's arm, drew her aside and picked up a courtesy phone.
“Yes?” He listened, then sighed and rolled his eyes as if to say this was just one more problem he didn't need. “Mr. Tanaka,” he said politely. “No, no, I didn't see your man holding up my name at the arrivals gate.” He glared at Annie, who glared right back. “I was, ah, preoccupied.”
“Who is it?” Annie hissed.
Chase turned away. “Well, that's very kind of you, Mr. Tanaka. Sending a car for me...thank you.”
“Is it somebody from Seattle?” Annie said, dancing in front of him. “Ask him if he knows of a hotel that might have a room.”
Chase sighed. She was right. Kichiro Tanaka, his new client, was a wealthy and well-connected businessman. He had major investments in the southwest, and now he'd turned his attention to the coast. For all Chase knew, the guy might even own a hotel in this city.
“Mr. Tanaka... Yes, I'll meet your driver at the exit. In just a moment. But first—I wonder if you might be able to help me out with a small problem?”
Annie's mouth thinned. That's what she was, all right. A small problem. It was all she'd ever been, as far as Chase was concerned.
“Well...” Chase rubbed the back of his neck. “My, ah, my wife accompanied me to Seattle.”
“Ex-wife,” Annie snapped.
Chase glared at her and slapped his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Do you really want me to start explaining what you're doing here to a stranger?”
Annie colored. After a second, Chase cleared his throat and spoke again.
“She didn't intend to stay, though. Yes, well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it.”
“What is?” Annie demanded.
“Charming. Yes. Yes, that she'd fly all this distance, just so we could spend a few hours more together.”
Annie opened her mouth, stuck the tip of her finger inside and pretended to gag.
“The problem, Mr. Tanaka, is that all the flights have been delayed. It's probable Annie won't be able to leave until tomorrow and I've been told all the hotels are solidly booked... Really?”
“Really, what?” Annie said.
“That's fine. Yes, of course. At the exit area, in a couple of minutes. Thank you, sir. I'll...we'll see you soon.”
“What?” Annie said again.
Chase hung up the phone and grabbed her hand.
“Come on. We've got to meet the car and driver he sent for me.”
“Hot stuff,” she muttered. “A car and a driver, all for you.”
“And a suite, all for us.” His smile was quick and shiny. “So stop complaining.”
Annie looked at him as they hurried toward the escalator.
“You mean...?”
“I mean, luckily for you, he says there's more than enough room for the both of us.”
“Not in one hotel room, there isn't.”
“Didn't you hear what I said?” They'd reached the lower level, and Annie hurried to keep up with Chase's long stride. “He says we'll have a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom all to ourselves.”
“Well, that's good news,” Annie snapped, as Chase thrust her out the door ahead of him.
“Damn right. The last thing I feel like doing is curling up in a hotel lobby tonight while you take over my bed.”
“Such gallantry. But—”
“But what?” Chase snapped in her ear as a black limousine slid to the curb. The driver got out, executed a perfect salute and opened the rear door. “Just get into the car, Annie. We can endure each other's company a little while longer. As tempting at the thought of leaving you at the airport is, I can't bring myself to do it.”
As tempting as it was, staying at the airport for endless hours didn't appeal to her, either.
“All right,” she snapped back. “But you better hope this suite is the size of Yankee Stadium. Otherwise, you may find yourself sleeping in the lobby anyway!”
* * *
It wasn't the size of Yankee Stadium—although it was close.
But it wasn't a suite, Annie thought an hour later, as she stared around her in shock. And it certainly wasn't a hotel.
The limo had not taken them to one of the high-rise buildings in downtown Seattle. It had whisked them to a pier, where they'd boarded a sleek motorboat.
“Chase,” Annie had said, over the roar of the boat's engines, “where are we going?”
Chase, who'd been starting to think he knew the answer, looked at the pilot.
“Tell me that we aren't going to the island,” he said.
The pilot grinned. “Sure enough, we are.”
Chase groaned.
Annie looked at him as he gripped the railing and stared out over the churning water. She'd read the one, silent word on his lips and the tips of her ears had turned pink.
Now, standing in this room, she half wanted to say the word herself.
The wisps of fog that had drifted across the boat's bow during their journey had lifted as they'd neared their destination. Annie had glimpsed an island, a place of towering green trees sloping down to a rocky shore. High among the trees, as if it were an eagle soaring out over the water, there was a lodge. It was a magnificent sight, a sculpture of redwood and glass. It was a fabulous aerie, commanding a view of the Sound in isolated splendor.
Wooden steps led up the craggy face of the cliff. Annie had climbed them, refusing Chase's outstretched hand and instead clasping the wooden railing, telling herself that when they reached the top, she'd see something more than that one structure. A hotel. A cluster of buildings. A resort...
But there was only the lodge, and when Chase opened the door and went inside, she followed.
The rooms they passed through were spectacular. There was a kitchen, white and shiny and spotless. A bathroom, complete with a deep Jacuzzi and a stall shower built against a glass wall so that it seemed open to the forest. There was a living room and as Annie stepped into it, sunlight suddenly poured through the huge skylight overhead, so that the white walls and pale hardwood floor seemed drenched in gold.
Mr. Tanaka's ancient heritage showed in the room's elegant yet simple lines: the woven tatami mats on the floor, the handsome shoji screen that served as a backdrop for a low, black-lacquered table and the plump, black-and-white silk cushions that were strewn on the floor before the fieldstone fireplace. Sliding glass doors, flanked by tall white vases filled with pussy willows, opened on to the deck.
But it was the bedroom that made Annie gasp, and mentally repeat Chase's muttered profanity. Their absent host's living room had been serenely Japanese—but Mr. Tanaka had very Western tastes when it came to his sleeping quarters.
The floor was covered with white carpet so deep and lush it made Annie's toes curl longingly inside her sneakers. One wall was mirrored; one was all glass and gave out onto the forest and the Sound. The furnishings themselves were spare and handsome. There was a teak dresser. A matching chest. A bentwood rocking chair.
And a bed.
One enormous, circular bed, elevated on a platform beneath a hexagonal skylight, and swathed in yards and yards of black-and-white silk.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A
NNIE TOLD HERSELF to calm down.
Count to ten. To twenty. Concentrate on finding the peaceful center within herself. Wasn't that what she'd spent six weeks trying to learn when she'd taken that Zen philosophy course last winter?
Take a deep breath. Hold it. One. Two. Three. Four.
Annie let out her breath. It wasn't working. All she could see was the bed. All she could think about was Chase, standing next to her with a look of bland innocence on his face.
“Damn,” she said, and when that clearly wasn't going to be anywhere near enough to relieve her anger, she gave up Zen for reality, swung around and punched her ex-husband in the belly. It was a hard belly—he'd always had a great body, and apparently that hadn't changed, which somehow only made her more furious—and she felt the jolt of the blow shoot straight up her arm and into her shoulder. But it was worth it to see the look of shock that spread across his face.
“Hey,” he said, dancing back a step. Not that Annie's reaction entirely surprised him. She looked as if she could have happily murdered him. Well, hell, he understood that. He'd have happily murdered good old Kichiro Tanaka, given the opportunity. “Hey, take it easy, will you?”
“Take it easy?” Annie slapped her hands on her hips and glared at him, her chest rising and falling with each quick, huffy breath. “Take it easy?” she repeated, her voice shooting out of its normal range into a ragged soprano.
“Yeah.” Chase rubbed his midsection. “There's no need to get violent over what's obviously a mistake.”
“Oh, it's a mistake, all right.” She blew a breath that lifted the curls dangling over her eyes. “A big mistake, Cooper, because if you think, even for one minute, that I—that you and I—that the two of us are going to share that—that bed, that we're going to relive old times—”
“Babe...”
“Don't ‘babe' me!”
“Annie, you don't think...”
“But I do. I think. I always have, even though you never credited me for having a brain in my head when we were married.”
Chase almost groaned. Here they went again, plunging right into deep water.
“Listen,” he said carefully, “I know you're upset. But—”
“That's it. Tell me I'm upset. That way, I'll shut my mouth and you won't have to listen to the truth.”
“Annie...”
“Let me tell you something, Chase Cooper. That might have worked years ago, but not now. I am not the dumb little thing you always thought I was.”
“Annie, I never thought—”
“Yes, you did, but it doesn't matter a damn anymore.”
“I swear, I didn't.”
‘“Oh,
Ba-aabe,”'
she said, cruelly mimicking his voice, “‘I'm so sorry, but you don't mind if I go out, do you? I've got to attend a meeting of the—the Sacred Sons of the Saxophones tonight.”'
Despite himself, Chase laughed. “The what?”
“Don't try and joke your way out of this, Cooper!” Annie took a step forward, her index finger uplifted and wagging an inch off his nose. “You can't change the facts.”
“What facts?”
“I'm talking about our so-called marriage, that's what! And how you used to treat me as if I never had a thought in my head.”
“I still don't know what the hell you're talking about!”
“Well, let me refresh your memory. Think back to the good old days, when you used to drag me to all those horrible dinners and charity things.”
“Like the Sacred Sons of the Saxophones?”
“I just said, don't try and laugh your way out of this, Chase. I am dead serious.”
“About what?”
She had to give him credit; he'd managed to put on an expression of total bewilderment. If she hadn't known better, she'd have thought he meant it.
“I know how you worried that your poor little wifey wouldn't be able to hold her own.”
“What?”
“And then, when it turned out I could, you just—just left me, dumped me into a—a seaful of sharks and took off by yourself.”
“Annie, you're crazy. I never—”
“Was that when you looked around and decided you could have lots more fun if you left me at home?”
Chase's expression went from bewilderment to confusion. “One of us is losing her mind,” he said, very calmly. “And it sure as hell isn't me.”
Annie's chin rose pugnaciously. “Hah,” she said, and folded her arms.
“You think I was glad when you stopped going to those dinners and things with me, so I could go by myself and have a wild old time?”
“You said it, not me.”
“Damn, but your spin on ancient history is truly amazing!”
“What's the matter, Chase? Can't you stand the truth?”
“Am I supposed to have forgotten that I stopped taking you with me because you made it clear how much you hated going?”
Annie flushed. “Don't try and twist things. Okay, maybe I didn't care for those stuffy evenings—”
“Finally, the woman speaks the truth!”
“Why would I have enjoyed them? We were only there so you could grab yourself another headline in the business section of the newspaper!”
Chase's eyes narrowed. “We were there so I could land myself jobs, Annie. Jobs, remember? The stuff that put bread on the table?”
“Give me a break, Chase! We had plenty of money by then. You were just—just getting your ego stroked.”
A muscle knotted in his cheek.
“Go on,” he said softly. “What else have you saved up, all these years?”
“Only that when I finally said I didn't want to go anymore, instead of trying to change my mind, which any intelligent man would have done, which you would have done, at one time—”
Chase gave a short, desperate laugh. “Are we both speaking the same language here, or what?”
“Instead of doing that,” Annie said, ignoring the interruption, “you simply shrugged your shoulders and agreed. And that was that.”
“You're telling me that I should have tried to talk you into doing something you obviously hated?”
“Don't make it sound as if you don't understand a word I'm saying, Chase. I won't buy it.”
“And I won't buy you making me into some kind of Neanderthal who cheered when my wife signed off and let me go play with the rest of the boys,” Chase said grimly. “No way, babe, because that's
not
how it was, no matter what you say!”
“Yeah, well, that's your story and you're stuck with it.”
“No!” Chase grabbed her wrist as she started past him. “No, it damn well is not ‘my story.' It's fact. Did you expect me to get down on my knees and beg you to spend your evenings with me, instead of with one dumb textbook after another?”
“Right. Lay everything off on me, even my wanting to better myself. That's typical. Everything was my fault, never yours.”
“Better yourself?
Better
yourself?” he said, bending toward her, his eyes dark and dangerous. “So that you could do what, huh? Tell me that you knew more about haiku than I knew about building houses?”
“That's not the way it was and you know it,” Annie said angrily, as she tried to pull her arm from his grasp. “You couldn't bear to see me turning into a whole person instead of just being Mrs. Chase Cooper.”
“Wasn't being my wife enough to make you happy?”
“Being the woman who cooked your meals and cleaned your house and raised your child, you mean,” Annie said, her voice trembling. “Who waited up nights while you built your empire. Who got told to buy fancy dresses and jewelry so she could be dragged to Chamber of Commerce meetings as a reflection of her husband's importance!”
Chase could feel a humming in his ears. He let go of Annie's wrist and took a step back.
“If that's what you believe,” he said, his voice so low and dangerous that it made the hair lift on the back of Annie's neck, “if you really think that's what you meant to me, my once-upon-a-time-wife, then it's a damn good thing our marriage ended when it did.”
Annie stared at his white face and pinched lips. “Chase,” she said, and held out her hand, but it was too late. He'd already whirled away from her and disappeared down the hall.
* * *
Unbelievable!
Chase walked along the gravel path that led from the lodge into the trees.
It was more than unbelievable. It was incredible, that Annie should have hated him so. Hated being married to him, and for so many years.
He tucked his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace, scowling at a squirrel that scolded him from beneath the branches of a cedar.
He knew a lot of guys who'd been divorced. They were everywhere: at his health club, at the board meetings he sat in on...it seemed as if you couldn't throw a stick in New York or San Francisco or any city in the whole U.S.A. without hitting some poor bastard who'd gone from being a family man to being a guy who thought a microwave meal was gourmet dining.
The happy bachelor image, the divorced stud with a little black book full of names and addresses, was the stuff of movies. It wasn't reality or if it was, then he'd missed something. The divorced men he met were almost invariably just like him, guys who'd once had it all and now had nothing but questions.
When had it all started to go wrong? And why? And then there was the biggest question of all.
What could they have done to change it?
Most of them had answers, even if they didn't much like them. Chase never had. Try as he would, he'd never really been able to pinpoint when things had started going downhill, or why. As for changing it... how could you change something when you didn't know what it was that needed changing?
He'd been the best kind of husband he'd known how to be, working his butt off to give Annie a better life. A life she deserved, and now it turned out she'd not only hated all the years of hard work, but she'd also resented them.
A bitter taste filled his mouth.
“What does she think?” he muttered, kicking a pinecone out of the way. “Does she think I enjoyed working like a slave? Does she think I had a good time, busting my backside all day and cracking books half the night?”
Maybe. Annie had just proved that she was capable of thinking damn near anything, when it came to him.
The land was sloping upward. The trees were pressing in from either side, and a cool, salt-scented breeze was blowing into his face. Chase drew it deep into his lungs, lowered his head and trudged on.
At least it was all out in the open, now. Annie had been as remote about their split-up as the sphinx. He couldn't even remember which of them had said the words first, he or she; he only knew that except for that one awful scene at the end, when Annie had come bursting into his office and seen poor Peggy embarrassing them both—except for that, their separation had been the most civilized thing on record.
No harsh words. No screaming matches. No accusations. Nothing. They had both been polite and proper about the whole thing. His attorney had even joked about it.
“I had a law prof used to say that the only man who never raises his voice during divorce proceedings is a man whose almost-ex-wife's already slit his throat,” David had said, and Chase had grinned and said that David, with his own strikeout, certainly ought to know.
Chase shook his head. No, Annie hadn't killed him when she'd thought she'd caught him being unfaithful. She'd waited, and let him suffer for five long years, and now she'd plunged a dagger right into his heart.
It shouldn't have hurt, not when she wasn't his wife anymore. Not when she didn't mean a damn thing to him anymore.
Chase stepped out of the woods. He was standing on a high, rocky cliff overlooking the dark green Pacific.
Who was he kidding? Annie meant everything to him. She always had, and she always would.
* * *
Annie sat on the edge of the circular bed, her hands folded in her lap.
Well, she'd finally gotten everything out of her system. She'd let it all hang out; wasn't that what the kids used to say? She'd dredged up all the anger and pain she'd thought was long gone and dumped it right into Chase's lap.
She sighed, fell back against the pillows and put her arm over her eyes.
Who was she kidding? Neither the hurt nor the rage was long gone. They weren't gone at all. Hardly a week went by that something didn't make her remember how miserable her marriage had been, how much she'd despised Chase.

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