The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

Four

At first the sky only dribbled down, but in a matter of minutes the rain turned into a flushing downpour. Emma flicked the windshield wipers on high, but they couldn’t keep up. The windows started to steam. Thankfully Reed’s place was only a few more miles, because she could barely see.

Her nerves echoed the snap of lightning as she finally reached the sign for Rosedale Farms.

She had to see her fiancé. Now. This afternoon.

The embrace she’d shared with Garrett was still glued on her mind-and heart. It was wrong in every way to have kissed another man when she was engaged. And worse than that-much, much worse-was realizing she’d responded to Garrett more honestly and passionately than she’d ever responded to Reed.

She’d assumed the old sizzle she’d once felt for Garrett was the stuff of young hormones and first love-the kind of thing a woman outgrew. She honestly didn’t know she had that kind of sexuality or sensuality in her. Didn’t know life even held that possibility for her. And she had no idea what all these feelings for Garrett meant, if anything. But right now wasn’t the time to deal with that.

Right now what she absolutely had to deal with was facing Reed. There was no more denying that something was gravely, fundamentally wrong with their relationship. Maybe she’d realized before that they hardly had a grand passion for each other, but not that they were missing something critically elemental.

Her whole world felt shaken. She kept telling herself that a few kisses from an old love shouldn’t have the power to upend her life. But reality was more that seeing Garrett again had forced open old, carefully locked emotional doors. She’d never meant to lie to herself, but it seemed she had.

Anxiety thrummed in her pulse. She’d never deliberately run from trouble or responsibility. Her mother had taught her that. Her mom, for as long as Emma could remember, had sneaked little nips all through the day “just to take the edge off.” Emma remembered her childhood as nonstop tiptoeing, trying to be quiet for her mother, trying not to give her mom yet another reason to take one of those infernal nips. So no, Emma was a long way from perfect. She did things wrong, made mistakes, sometimes bad mistakes.

But at least she didn’t run.

Yeah, right, she thought wryly as she braked in front of the stables. Her heart was thumping louder than thunder. Everywhere she looked there were tons of vehicles-the big house always had a bunch of cars parked outside, and this afternoon, with the rain, the barns and stables had pickups of all sizes and shapes lined up like a parking lot.

Rosedale had been named after Reed’s grandmother, and although Reed ran the whole kit and caboodle, his entire family was involved. And needed to be. The Kellys did everything related to horses-boarding, foaling, bloodstock management. Reed owned and trained a number of racehorses, as well, and he kept a full roster of pedigreed stallions available for stud service. The place was always packed.

In principle, Emma loved riding. But in reality she’d only done it three times because she’d fallen off all three times-a running joke between her and Reed, given his business. The point, though, was that all those cars and trucks meant he was busy. Still, Reed was always busy at this time of year, so if she wanted to talk to him, she had to track him down here and see if he could steal a few minutes.

There was no way she could break it off with him on the phone-nor would she ever have chosen that coward’s way out.

She climbed out of the car and dashed for the stable office-her first best bet at finding him. Rain soaked through her pale blue shirt and pants, but it was a warm enough rain. She was inside in seconds. Horsey smells immediately rushed her nostrils-hay and horseflesh and leather and liniment and you-know-what. Truthfully she’d always liked the smells-even the you-know-what. Just because horses never liked her didn’t mean she wasn’t fond of them.

Today, though, her stomach roiled the minute she stepped in-not because of the smell, but because she immediately heard the crazed sounds from the far end of the stable. She knew what the sounds were, knew what they meant. A mare was being mounted by a stallion-a force-feed situation that Reed was invariably directly involved in, because an ardent stallion could, and often did, hurt a mare if humans didn’t direct the activity. Harnesses and pulleys and lifts and all kinds of unlikely things were used to aid an advantageous mating. Emma got it. Advantageous marriages were a big deal in high society, no different. But if there was anything unromantic in this life, it was a mare and stallion get-together.

Instantly she realized that she’d been an idiot to come without calling-and a selfish idiot besides. Reed had never minded an impromptu visit from her, but this was different. She wasn’t just visiting. This panicked rush to see him was absurd. It wasn’t as if anything had to be settled that very second. It was guilt driving her, not really need.

Before she could turn around, Reed spotted her and separated himself from the clutch of people near the breeding station.

“Emma!”

Oh, God. His face lit up with a welcoming smile, as if she hadn’t obviously crashed his busy day. “What a great surprise,” he said and swooped down for a hug-then stopped with a sheepish grin. He did smell like horse and man sweat-and eau de stable in general. It was one of the things she loved about Reed, his consideration for her. But right then she didn’t care. She wanted a hug from her fiancé.

She wanted, needed, some kind of proof that she was crazy. If she could just feel something solid for him-with him-maybe she could talk herself out of breaking this off. She forced a warm smile. “I can see I picked the worst moment in the universe to see you. You’re busier than a one-armed bandit.”

“And with one of your favorite things. But His Highness finally decided to perform, so I believe we can sneak away from the unwilling lovebirds-”

Over his shoulder she could see at least two people turn in his direction as if wanting to ask him a question. “Darn it,” she said. “I really did pick a rotten time. I should have called.”

“I’d rather see you than do business anytime. But what’s wrong?” He steered her toward the stable office, which wasn’t far, but at least it was a little distant from all the prying eyes. Reed, being Irish, had a cast of thousands in his family-all of whom she loved a bunch. They were warm, gregarious, effusive people, exactly the opposite of her quiet, ultraprivate family. But they were also nosy. And Reed led his business the same way-like a family, with anyone who came by treated to a cup of joe in the kitchen, no fanfare and no airs.

“Come on, I can see something’s on your mind. Spill it,” he urged her. Typically his stable office resembled the aftermath of a cyclone. The phone had three active lines, the mini fridge was always stocked with pop and bottled water and his desk was heaped with horse bandages, racing schedules, worm shots and every other thing.

She touched her fingers to her temples. He talked so easily. For her, it always took effort. “Reed, I just feel that we should-”

The phone rang. He made a motion begging for patience, hooked the receiver in his ear and served her a pop at the same time. There was a mix-up in some training schedule. He leaned against the desk while motioning her to take the one and only seat-an old leather chair meant for a man to crash for a few minutes with his feet up.

She couldn’t sit. She waited, looking at this man she’d agreed to marry more than a year ago. She’d known him forever. He had those Irish looks-the brown hair, the clean skin, the mischievous smile. As a kid, he’d been good-looking in a fresh, clean-cut way, but at thirty-five, he’d come into his own. There was kindness in his character, an easy way with people. No amount of chaos ever seemed to throw him. His judgment-as far as horses and business both-had turned the family horse farm into a highly prosperous enterprise.

Emma felt the knot tie tighter in her stomach. She loved him. For real. There was really no doubt in her mind of that. No one could not love Reed. He was an absolutely super man. Good to the bone. A man you could trust through thick and thin. A family man.

What was not to love?

“Okay,” he said when he clicked off the phone. “You’ve got my full attention.”

She took a breath. Outside, she heard a rumble of an engine-like an eighteen-wheeler driving in. Voices zoomed past the stable office door. A horse whinnied. It was like trying to think in the middle of a tornado.

She took a breath, then gave up. “Reed, this is no place to talk. I’ll just-”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He pushed the door, which didn’t completely close but at least created a little privacy barrier. Then he lifted his phone. “I’m turning off both the pager and the phone right now-”

But not before the phone rang again. He fielded that call quickly and impatiently. Then did just what he’d said-turned it off and tuned out all the other interruptions, as well. He looked at her intently. “I know what this is about. Your mother called me.”

“My mother-?”

“Apparently she thinks you don’t want to go to some shindig at the country club on Saturday. The formal June dance? So she talked me into promising to go. I know, I know, I should have asked you. Especially if you wanted out of that darn thing. But damn, she’s going to be my mother-in-law, so when she twisted my arm, I couldn’t very well turn her down-”

“I understand. No, no, it’s not about that.”

“All right,” he said curiously and leaned back against the desk, his attitude one of waiting, as if determined to give her all the time she needed to say whatever she needed to.

But she heard another major commotion outside-as if a truck had arrived and was being unloaded. This was going nowhere. Yet Emma tried, blurting out, “Reed…do you realize how many times we’ve postponed setting a date for the wedding?”

“So that’s what this is about. And you’re right. So right. In fact, Weddings By Felicity called me. I don’t mean Felicity-it was one of her assistants, Rita someone…”

Emma tried to open her mouth to interrupt, but he lifted a hand.

“It’s my fault about that, Emma. I know Felicity is your friend and she seems like a great person besides. But she’s justifiably ticked at us for not setting a date, especially this late in the game.”

“The thing is,” Emma tried to interject, “I think there’s a reason we’ve waited so long-”

“I do, too. Your gallery has the July show coming up. And I’m busier than a magpie here. And since we’re doing the ceremony at your parents’ house, it didn’t seem like all that much had to be completely pinned down, you know? I mean, we didn’t have to book a hall, and the photographer and master chef are already in the family, so what difference did it make if it was the second or third Saturday in August?”

“Reed…I think the reason for our procrastinating is more complicated than that.”

He nodded again. “Yeah, I know. Truth is-and I know it’s selfish-but I get antsy anywhere near a big wedding. Call it a guy thing. Hell, it isn’t the party part of it I mind. You know that. With my clan, they’d have a party every Saturday night if we could all survive the hangovers on Sunday morning. But it’s the society part of it that makes me squirm. Now that Bunny’s gone and no one’s stepped up to do that Eastwick Social Diary anymore, maybe people won’t make so much of every wedding, but…”

“Reed, I’ve always agreed with you on that. I never wanted a big wedding, either. But once my parents got involved, it was like budging two elephants.” Somehow she found her hand on her stomach again, pressing hard to quell the sick, sad feeling inside. “I postponed deciding on a wedding date as many times as you have.”

“And that’s the thing. We’ve both been running faster than rats in a maze. If we could just steal a solid blink of time together, we could surely get a date down in ink.”

“Yes, I’m sure we could. But the question is…is that what we want to do? I’m not so positive that it’s just busyness that made us both postpone nailing down a wedding date for so long.”

He didn’t look hurt. He didn’t look concerned. He didn’t look as if he were remotely getting her at all. “Emma, you know I tend to do better if you just say flat out what’s on your mind. I don’t know what you mean-”

A beanpole kid jammed a hand through the doorway. “Mr. Kelly. Pretty Lady, they said she leaped the fence in the east pasture, taking off after Wild Wind.”

“Aw, hell.” Reed startled straight, grabbed his hat from the desk and then looked frantically at Emma.

“No, it’s okay. Go. We’ll talk later-”

“You come first, Emma. You know that. But damn it-”

“I know, I know. We’ll talk on Saturday night if we can’t catch each other before. Go, go, I can see this is important.”

She really could. Yet on the ride home, the sky was still sending down blistering torrents of rain, echoing the moody restlessness in her heart.

She’d handled that all wrong. Barging in on his work day. Trying to talk about something serious with all that chaos going on. And it wasn’t as if she had to hurry into this conversation-she didn’t want to hurt Reed. In fact, she’d hoped terribly, desperately, that seeing him would make Garrett fade from her mind, would make her remember all the reasons she’d agreed to this engagement.

But it seemed that goal had boomeranged on her, because she did remember why she’d accepted his ring. The reasons were still there, still real. They got on as easily as old slippers. They were both tired of people pushing them into marriage. They both had long ties to Eastwick. She adored his family, respected his work and his dreams. He totally respected her gallery, her goals, the things she wanted to do; in fact, she couldn’t imagine Reed interfering with anything she ever said she wanted.

Yet when she catalogued all those reasons in her mind, the problem was still there.

The idea of marrying Reed was increasingly giving her panicked, shooting headaches and itchy hives. Maybe she loved him…but not in the right way. It was Garrett, damn him, who’d made her realize the heart full of emotions she was missing. The longing she yearned for. The desiring and being desired that her woman’s soul whispered for. The feeling of belonging…

She’d never had those feelings in her life. Growing up. Ever. Who knew if it could even happen?

But she knew positively that she didn’t have those feelings with Reed.

Halfway home, she hit a red light at Whitaker. She suddenly started crying. Her. Emma Dearborn. Who hadn’t cried even when she’d broken an ankle in second grade.

But it was damn scary to realize you had your life all planned in tidy little lines, and suddenly someone was making you color with no lines at all.

Garrett pushed open the door to the hospital, wishing he could shake off like a puppy. The rain had turned into a downright soppy deluge. He’d be dripping less if he ever remembered to carry an umbrella, but that was a nonstarter, never going to happen. The afternoon threatened to turn into pure wet steam-which matched his mood all too well.

The last few days had been more frustrating than finding a mosquito in the dark. Setting up a temporary office and living quarters in Eastwick had been easy enough, thanks to Emma. But his sister’s problems relentlessly preyed on his mind.

He’d been interviewing anyone in Eastwick who was willing to talk to him-at least, anyone who knew Caroline. And it seemed as though most of the town did and was willing to talk. Only no one seemed to have a clue about her private life. This morning turned into a total zero.

He’d started out talking with Lily Cartright. She was a sweetheart and a half and a true-blue honest kind of woman. But when he’d asked to have coffee with her, he hadn’t realized she’d be as big as a whale. She’d claimed she was going to have a baby in a few months. He figured she was having three at least. But the point was, like everyone else, Lily was troubled about Caroline-but knew nothing.

Then he’d tried Vanessa Thorpe, another of his sister’s friends. Because she’d married a rich, older man, the scandalmongers tsk-tsked behind her back. Garrett couldn’t care less about gossip or her personal life. He’d just hoped she knew something, anything, about Caroline-but he’d struck out there, too.

After that, he’d tracked down a couple of men. Frank Forrester had to be seventy, not a contemporary of Caroline’s, but because he was such a fixture at Eastwick’s country club, Garrett thought he’d be a great source of information. He was, but not about Caroline.

Harry, the bartender at the Emerald Room, knew everyone’s secrets and then some, but he was genetically related to a clam. Still, he swore he’d have told Garrett something about his sister’s health if he’d known anything.

Bottom line was that lots of people thought the world of Caroline, but no one had the smallest inkling what had provoked her sudden depression. Garrett handled frustration as well as he handled fine china-which was a not. He also knew that fear for his sister wasn’t the only thing riding his mood.

Emma was.

He hadn’t seen her in several days now. Between trying to run his business long-distance and tracking down leads on his sister, he’d had no time to casually run into her. But shame had been riding his conscience, and he hated the feeling.

God knows he had faults, Garrett thought as he loosened his collar in the stifling elevator. He was selfish, singularly directed. He didn’t play life by softball rules, never wasted time playing touch-tackle type of football either. He played to win. A lot of people called him stone-headed, a workaholic-but women always claimed he was just as relentless in the sack, a great lover.

And that was good, he mused, except that he knew he was lousy when it came to remembering to call later. In fact, his name was jut plain absentee in the long-term-relationship column.

The bug in his soup, though, was that he’d never had a woman run away from him-not the way Emma had run out the other day.

Nor had a woman ever come alive, come apart in his arms. Not the way she had.

He didn’t come on to women who were taken. Ever. Poaching wasn’t his thing. Ever. Only, for Pete’s sake, what the hell was Emma doing responding to him as if she were the loneliest, hottest woman ever born, if she was happily in love with some guy?

It didn’t add up.

“Garrett!”

Just in case he needed more trouble today, fate suddenly produced his mother hustling toward him, coming out of Caroline’s hospital room. His mom, typically, looked dressed for tea at the White House, lots of cream and pearls and scented from head to toe with the signature perfume some fancy chemist had created for her.

“I’m so, so glad I caught up with you, dear.” His mother hooked his arm and firmly steered him toward a quiet alcove, away from the rooms and nursing station. “I assume you’re here to see Caroline and I want to talk to you first.”

“How’s she doing?”

His mother looked past his shoulder, ensuring no one was within earshot. “The doctor put her on some kind of antianxiety medicine. Insisted on her seeing another psychiatrist.”

Garrett frowned. “You think that’s wrong?”

“Garrett.” His mother rolled her eyes. “Depression is such a buzzword for your generation. Everyone has tough stretches in life. That’s no excuse to curl up in a bed-or take drugs. I didn’t raise either you or your sister to be weaklings.”

He struggled for patience. He’d realized years ago that his mother wasn’t as cold as she came across. She’d just fought hard to live the good life-as she defined it-and feared anything that was a threat to that. “Mom,” he toned down his voice, “depression isn’t a character weakness. It’s an illness. Being mad at Caroline for this is like being mad at someone for getting cancer.”

“She doesn’t have cancer. She’s healthy as a horse. She’s been through dozens of tests. And that’s the point. There is nothing wrong with that girl, nothing keeping her in bed all this time. Your father and I are at our wits’ end.”

Okay. No way to open doors in that direction, so he tried another. “Has anyone been able to reach Griff yet?”

“Oh, yes. Your father finally connected with him last night-in the middle of the night, in fact. Our embassy, their embassy, on and on, it took forever. We didn’t get him, but he’s been located now. It could take as long as a week before he’s home, but at least we know he’s coming.”

“That’s good-”

“Exactly. I drove straight to the hospital to tell Caroline that Griff was coming home, thinking that would finally perk her up. Instead she started sobbing. Crying so loud, they ended up having to sedate her.” Finally she lost steam on that subject, only to start up another. “Garrett, I want you to come to the club on Saturday night. There’s a dance. The annual June gala-”

“Thanks, Mom. But I’d rather join a chain gang in Siberia.” There. He almost won a smile…but not quite.

“Now don’t be difficult. We need you there. We need to stand together as a united family.”

He scratched his chin. “Honest to Pete, who the hell cares if we’re a united family?”

“Everyone. This entire community will notice if we’re not there. And the thing is, your sister will be the one to suffer if people start to think she’s mentally…unbalanced.”

“Some people are going to judge no matter what we say or do-but nobody I’d want to be around. And no one I’d want Caroline around either. So I can’t imagine why that matters.”

“Garrett, I know you don’t share the same values that your father and I do. But your sister loves the club. She has so many friends there. When she comes to her senses, she’s going to want to go back, to events just like this. So this is for her, not for you-”

“All right, all right, I’ll go.”

His mother was just starting to wind up, but now she squinted at him in surprise. “You’ll go?”

“Yup. Just tell me what time.”

“It’s black-tie,” his mother warned him.

Well, hell and double hell. But somewhere in those massive closets in the mansion, Garrett knew his mom had saved both a white and a black tux. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been roped into those neck-choking functions a zillion times before.

Once his mother left, he sat with Caroline for another hour. She never woke up enough to talk, apparently because of the fresh sedation they’d given her. But she squeezed his hand…which made his heart climb straight into his throat.

No matter how much torture the club dance was, he was more than happy to attend. Hearing that the country club was a nest of Caroline’s friends was the impetus. Someone there was going to know something. He’d asked everyone else he could think of, but obviously he didn’t know all her acquaintances because he hadn’t hung out in Eastwick for years.

As he headed back to his rented apartment, frustration and worry climbed his mood. So far he’d completely failed the course in helping his sister.

He wasn’t used to failure. For damn sure, he wasn’t used to feeling helpless. Maybe getting some work done would at least clear his mind. Only he’d barely parked the car and climbed out before he saw the new crisis waiting for him.

This particular crisis was wearing a silver-blue T-shirt that gloved her breasts like a faithful lover, a white skirt that looked thin as a handkerchief and a glisten of careless sapphires in the bangle on her wrist.

Oh, yeah. And she had eyes softer than violets.

For two days he’d almost-almost-forgotten that.