The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

Five

Garrett knew he’d see Emma again-that was a guarantee in Eastwick-but he’d counted on some warning. Some time to prepare. Some space to remember that he was a mature, successful adult instead of a teenager wired on hormones and lust.

Well, he did have a couple of seconds, because he spotted her before she spotted him.

She was at the top of the outside back stairs. He’d started using that back entrance because it was private and he didn’t have to go through his landlady’s house. But whyever and whatever Emma was doing there initially eluded him. When he climbed halfway up the stairs, he saw that she’d apparently been piling boxes and sacks against his back door. And then she turned.

“Well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes after a mighty long day. But what is all this?” He motioned to the boxes.

She’d heard him. He knew she’d heard him. But for that instant when their eyes met, she went totally still, as if her heart had stopped beating. And damned if his didn’t stop, too.

Her face looked sun-kissed, her mouth bare, her eyes so vulnerable. The T-shirt made her breasts look soft and round and touchable. The pale summer skirt looked as if it’d strip off fast. Evocatively fast. Seductively fast. One look, and all he could think about was claiming her.

“I…” Quickly her expression changed. She smiled, found her poise again. “It’s been bugging me, about your being stuck camping out in this bald apartment. I always have spare things sitting around the gallery. And it’s June right now, so I’m getting ready for a particularly big show in July, which means I’m even more crowded. So I just figured you might be able to use a few things to make the place more comfortable.”

She lifted some items so he could see the nature of the stuff she’d brought over. A pair of Walter Farndon prints of sailboats-as if she could have known he was nuts for sailboats. A stone sculpture in lapis. A bright woven mola. A couple giant-size blue bath towels. A woven basket with some basic kitchenware-a few white plates, white bowls, silverware, mugs with bulls and elephants on them.

Some of the items were undoubtedly from her gallery. But not all.

He looked at her.

Emma rarely showed nerves, yet she suddenly tugged on an earring. “You don’t have to take a thing. If something’s not to your taste, don’t sweat it in any way…”

He kept looking at her.

“But I’m just two doors down, so it was kind of silly not to offer you the use of some things that might perk up the place, make you feel more comfortable away from home…”

He kept looking at her.

And finally the puff seemed to go out of her sails. She sank down on the top step, which left just enough room for him to hunker down next to her. The air was humid enough to wear. Even though the rain had finally stopped, leaves and branches hung heavy with moisture, dripping, catching the late-afternoon sunlight. A pair of rowdy peony bushes clustered under the fence, untended and out of control, yet the scent of the flowers wafted up, so delicate they’d catch your breath.

Or else, she was the one catching his breath.

“This was really nice of you,” he said quietly. “But you didn’t take time out of a workday just to make this apartment more livable.”

She hesitated, then lifted her hands in a humorous gesture of defeat. “Darn it, I can fib to most people without getting caught. How come you’re so hard to fool? But you’re right. I admit it. I needed to do this.”

“You needed to do exactly what? Bring this stuff?” He motioned. “Which really is appreciated by the way. I’ve been camping out with no problem. But damn, it is pretty bald in there.”

She nodded. “Honestly, I thought a few additions would help. But that was just my excuse for coming over. The truth is that I needed to see you.”

“Needed.” He repeated the word, unsure why she’d chosen it or what it meant.

She pulled up her knees, tugged her skirt down, tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. And suddenly she no longer looked like the coolly elegant, poised gallery owner, but the predebutante girl he’d once been so head over heels for.

“It’s been on my mind. The way I ran off the other day,” she admitted. “Darn it, I haven’t done anything that cowardly since I can remember.”

He wasn’t going to haul off and kiss her. Maybe he couldn’t stop thinking about it, but that didn’t mean he was going to do it. “That’s funny. I didn’t see anything that looked like cowardice. What I saw was a woman who seemed pretty shook up. But then, so was I. Lady, can you ever kiss.”

Her cheeks suddenly bloomed with color brighter than all those peonies. “Well, that was exactly the problem. Not how I kissed. But how you kissed, buster.”

“Yeah, I like your version of the story better. It’s just too tough on my male ego to admit that a woman knocked my socks off, especially with nothing more than a few kisses. Much easier to swallow that my expertise and sex appeal threw you. Although, I have to say, I’ve never scared a woman into galloping out of sight at the speed of sound before.”

A sound escaped her throat. A tickle of a chuckle. “Quit it. You’re making me feel better. And I know perfectly well I behaved like a goose.”

“You know what? I’m almost positive we can both survive an awkward moment.”

“I know we can. We’re not kids anymore. It’s just…it would have been awkward.” She lifted a hand in a universally female gesture. “So I wanted it out in the open. A chance to say I’m sorry that happened, it won’t happen again. So you wouldn’t have to worry about running into me again, either.”

“Okay. Got that off both our chests,” he said.

“Right.”

“Neither of us is worried about it anymore,” he said.

“Right.”

And cats danced, he thought. His pulse was pounding like a lonesome stallion near the prettiest filly. He wasn’t a nice man. He knew that. Being nice had never been on his most-wanted-attributes list, but all the same, he was usually a more decent guy than this. The problem was sitting so close to her. Seeing the late sunlight catch in the little swoop of hair that brushed her forehead. Seeing her arms wrapped around her knees like a girl’s. Seeing those sensual violet-blue eyes trying so hard-too hard-not to look at him.

“Tell me about this guy you’re engaged to,” he said.

“Reed? Reed Kelly-you know, Rosedale Farms.”

“Yeah, of course. He was ahead of me by a year in school. But I just didn’t know him well. Seemed like a good guy.”

“He is. Couldn’t be better. He’s got a big, wonderful, gregarious family. He’s terrific with kids, with horses. He’s kind. Patient…”

“How’d you get together?”

She chuckled, but it wasn’t a humorous sound. Suddenly she was pulling at her earlobe again. “My parents have been on my case to marry for years. Produce grandchildren. You know how that goes-”

“Yeah, I do.”

“And I was so sick of being the extra woman at dinner parties and gatherings. Felt like meat being paraded in front of butchers for them to choose the prime cut. Eastwick can be wonderful, but it’s not easy to be single in this town. And Reed was getting it from the other end-he was the extra man every time a hostess needed one. Hated it as much as I did. And then at a dinner party, we found ourselves together-the token singles. It was funny, really. We started going to different functions just to save ourselves being set up.”

“And you found you clicked.”

“I don’t know about clicked. But he was so easy to be with.”

“Easy to be with,” Garrett echoed and stood. Huge holes seemed missing in this picture. For one thing, he couldn’t fathom how a woman as warm and vibrant as Emma hadn’t been tempted by marriage long before this. And granted, he would have been prejudiced against her fiancé if she’d claimed Kelly was a hero ten times over. But easy to be with? What kind of a definition for a relationship was that?

Emma immediately stood, too, as if realizing how long they’d been talking. “I’ll help you take this all in if you’d like. But then I’d better be getting back to the gallery-”

He snagged her wrist. Just lightly. Just to see what touching her did-to her, to him. All he actually did was wrap his fingers around her wrist, his thumb on her pulse, for a few bare seconds. Yet that instantly her eyes shot to his like a light beam. The pulse caught in her throat where he could see it, beating, beating. Her lips suddenly parted.

“He sounds like a saint, Emma,” Garrett said.

“Not a saint. But a really good man-”

“Yeah. So you keep saying. And I believe you. But if you don’t love him, why are you marrying him?”

She didn’t answer him. Maybe she couldn’t answer him. That close, she looked at his mouth, at his eyes. She didn’t move away or try to evade his touch. A mourning dove called from somewhere in the yard.

The scent of peonies again drifted up on the hot, humid breeze, so teasing, so evocative.

It was all he could do not to kiss her-partly because that’s how she looked at him, as if it were all she could do not to kiss him.

Facts kept flashing in his mind: that she was engaged, that he wasn’t a poacher. But even when they were kids he’d never felt a tug this strong. At the vast age of thirty-five, it seemed crazy to discover there was a huge need inside him, a need from the heart, an unbearable hole of loneliness that he hadn’t even known he was suffering from, a hole that only she could feel or fill.

“Don’t, Garrett,” she whispered softly, a plea.

He heard the tremor in her voice. Immediately he released her wrist and stepped back. “I didn’t scare you, did I? I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, Emma-”

“I never thought you would.”

“But I won’t lie. I do want you.”

“Damn, you were always hopelessly honest. But didn’t anyone ever tell you that you don’t have to be quite this blunt?”

She obviously wanted him to smile, wanted to say something that would ease the tension between them. Just then, though, he couldn’t seem to conjure up a smile, even for her. Instead he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, just the mildest-nakedest-of caresses. “Maybe you don’t feel the same thing I’m feeling.”

She sucked in a breath. “I feel it.”

“Do you feel it with him, too, then? When you’re making love with him?” He really had tried to drill some of the blunt honesty from his character, and God knows he didn’t want to make Emma uncomfortable. But he had to ask. He just couldn’t imagine loving someone and feeling this for someone else. Sure, you could be attracted to more than one person. But this yank on his heart as if he’d die if he couldn’t have her, no. He couldn’t imagine another woman in his life if he could have what he was feeling right now for Emma.

She shifted her gaze away from his. “I don’t exactly know, Garrett. Reed and I haven’t…gotten that close.”

“Pardon?” He must have misheard her. She and Reed were engaged. How could they not have slept together?

She sighed heavily and noisily, glanced up at the sky as if begging for strength and then aimed straight for the stairs. As if they’d been discussing the weather, she said cheerfully, “If I find more goodies in the gallery I can spare, I’ll bring them over. And if anything I brought is in your way or you don’t like it, just give a shout and I’ll come get it.”

He leaned over the railing, watching her slim fanny swish as she climbed down the stairs. “Does that mean you’re not too annoyed with me for asking a few awkward questions?”

“Of course I’m annoyed. You’re being a royal pain. Unsettling and upsetting.” She glanced back at him one more time. “No different than you always were. But thank God I’m not seventeen anymore.”

“Damn straight. You’re a hell of a lot more beautiful. And more confounding.”

“And you always did like putting your hand in the fire. But we’re going to get along famously while you’re in town,” she informed him cheerfully. “Partly because we’re two doors down from each other. and because I care about your sister and want to help with Caroline if I can. And partly because you were my first love, which I really don’t want to forget-even though you’re being bad. Bad to the bone. Bad all the way down to the-”

“I get the picture.”

“So the point is that I’m not going to let a little awkwardness make it impossible to be together now and then.”

“Be together…how exactly do you mean that?”

She flipped him the finger. Emma. Emma Dearborn. Emma D-the silk-and-pearls debutante of Eastwick, the never-do-anything-wrong-in-public, never-offend-anyone Emma. Flipped him the finger.

He was downright charmed. And captivated.

“Damn, you’re fun,” he said.

“I am not.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, you are. And I may just have to make another pass at you, Em.”

“You try it and I’ll have to slap you silly,” she warned him…and then seemed to realize she was calling out that information to the entire neighborhood. He heard her sigh. Again. And then finally she disappeared from his sight.

He hung over the porch rail after that for a while, though. He could feel the silly grin on his face, when, hell, he didn’t do grins. Come to think of it, he hadn’t smiled in a long time.

He waited for the guilt to hit him again. And of course, it did. It wasn’t comfortable or right, this huge, building thing he felt for a woman who was taken, even though she sounded less taken than he’d originally believed.

Garrett told himself to back off. But when he pivoted around and headed into his apartment, he couldn’t swear that he was going to obey that inner conscience.

He couldn’t swear to anything. Not where Emma was concerned.

Except that he wished he hadn’t been crazy enough to lose her the first time.

Emma twisted and turned until she could see the middle of her back in the bathroom mirror at Color. There it was. The reason for the itch that had been driving her crazy on and off for days now.

A brand new hive.

Just one, but now she had a fresh excuse for being a nervous wreck. Sure, that last conversation with Garrett had preyed on her mind like a cat on a mouse. She’d been making love with Garrett in her dreams. She’d been driving in traffic and suddenly feeling herself flush when thoughts of him swam to the surface. She’d been dressing in the morning, picking out slips of satin and lace and suddenly thinking of taking them off. For Garrett. With Garrett.

But now at least she could claim a physical reason for feeling as if she’d lost control of her life. Impatiently she scratched the sucker-hive on her back, washed her hands and hiked down the hall. The country club June dance was coming up tomorrow. She’d been thinking of it as D-night. Reed had had his hands full all week. Tomorrow she simply had to find a way to corner him alone, to say the things she’d failed to the last time.

And right now what she needed was work. Mind-numbing plain old hard work.

In one of the first-floor display rooms, Emma was finishing up an exhibit. Through July, she was calling it the Red Room. She’d combined textures and textiles with only the color in common. A headdress from Cameroon was juxtaposed with a marble sculpture of a young woman covered in rose petals. A Schweitzer linen wall hanging contrasted with an Afghani rug. A perfectly ghastly lamp from the 1950s-with a woman’s leg in fishnet stockings for a base-echoed the shock and sensuality of a globe painted with the glossy red paint used by Jaguar.

The wall hanging wasn’t right, though, so she took it down and tried again. No matter how hard she concentrated, a question kept staining the back of her mind. Exactly what did she owe Reed?

She stepped back and knew immediately she’d hung it too high.

How could she possibly make a major life decision based on feelings for a man who’d only been back in her life for a couple of weeks? And darn it, why did Garrett ever have to come back into her life? She’d known there were issues in her marriage with Reed. But she might have been able to make Reed happy-might have been able to settle herself-if Garrett had just never come home.

She stepped back from the linen wall hanging and gritted her teeth. Now she’d hung it too low.

“Hey, Emma.” Josh poked his head in the doorway. He was working in the front with a group of volunteer kids-they’d battled over who got to do that job because they both loved working with the teenagers, but Josh had won. This time. “Your mother’s on the phone in the office.”

“Thanks.” Could this day get more frustrating? But it could, she discovered, when she picked up the phone in the office and heard her mother’s slurred voice.

“Emma?”

“Mom. It’s only three in the afternoon!”

“Couldn’t help.” Emma heard the chink-chink of ice cubes. “Your father…” The phone dropped or something else made a heavy thump. “…so mean. Nothing I do is right. Come home tonight? You have to. I need you.”

After that cheery call, Emma returned to the wall-hanging project, thinking, okay, okay, what did she owe her parents? And how come she couldn’t seem to escape any of the hairy life questions today, no matter how hard she tried?

To add insult to injury, she still hadn’t conquered the wall-hanging problem before noticing a silver van with Weddings By Felicity for a logo. Seconds later a platinum blonde flew into the room, wearing heels too tall to walk on and a short, sassy haircut that matched her short, sassy print dress. “Oh, good, you’re not busy!”

Emma glanced at the boxes heaped all over the room. “Felicity-”

Her old friend motioned with her head toward the door-since both her hands were filled, one with a long bottle of wine, the other with two crystal glasses. “You and I are going to talk. Right now. Don’t even try arguing with me.”

“I’m not arguing. I’m always glad to see you. But-”

“Uh-uh. No buts. Move the tush, cookie. We’re drinking and talking behind closed doors for at least the next half hour, and that’s that.”

Felicity looked a lot like a young Meg Ryan, except that Meg used to play such nice roles in movies, and Felicity shared more in personality with an army tank. She set up behind Emma’s steamed-cherry desk, burrowed in her purse for a corkscrew and, predictably, found one. She poured one glass to the brim and shoved papers aside to push it toward Emma.

“If you weren’t one of my dearest friends, I’d have mopped the floor with you long before this.”

“Me?” The sign over Emma’s desk said Our Lives Are Reflected in the Things We Choose. Ironic, she thought, because the gallery was brimful of elegance and style in all forms, yet her office walls were wallpapered with children’s work. Finger painting. Shaving-cream art. Pictures made from macaroni and spangles and beads and buttons. Of course, no one ever hung out in the gallery office but her. And bossy, nosy, intrusive friends, it seemed.

“Look,” Felicity said firmly. “I know that Reed’s already made the honeymoon plans. Which means you both have to know when the wedding’s going to be, yet somehow you still aren’t calling me to pin down the date.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. It’s wrong…” She looked down at the wineglass. “Felicity, honestly, I can’t drink in the middle of the day.”

“Of course you can. Because we need to talk, and right now you’re way too buttoned-up. Now listen to me.” Felicity leveled herself into the wraparound red velvet chair and cocked her very long leg with its very tall heel on Emma’s priceless desk. “I’ve been through this a million times. I know brides like no one knows brides. Brides get cold feet. It’s nothing new, nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, you’re likely to get colder feet than most.”

“Why do you think that? That I’d get colder feet than most?”

“Because you’re the kind to take marriage more seriously than the rest of us,” Felicity said as if that should have been obvious. “Admit it. You think marriage is for keeps, don’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“I rest my case. You’re hopelessly naive. But that’s not the point, Em. The point is that nerves like yours are why Weddings By Felicity exists. So I can take the stress off your back. And because this one’s about you, and I love you, I don’t care if it all has to be done at the last minute. I’ll make it happen. It’s also a lot easier to make it happen because it’s at your mom’s place. And when there’s no limit on money, obviously that’s a major help, as well.” Felicity downed another sip of wine. “Although, I have to say, your mother is driving me batty. She wants everything her way.”

Emma was listening. It was just…All right, she wasn’t listening. She hadn’t been listening to anyone or anything in days now. Ever since that afternoon with Garrett, she seemed to have suffered a complete brain meltdown. She just couldn’t seem to stop replaying those moments. When he’d tugged her wrist and they’d been inches apart. When desire had risen in her like a fierce wildfire. She’d wanted to be kissed at that moment more than she’d wanted life or air. Wanted to kiss him. Wanted to be kissed by him. There’d been nothing else in her head, her heart, nothing. It was like being swooshed under by a tidal wave.

A tidal wave named Garrett.

And damn it, it was one thing to settle when you thought pale was all there was. But now she knew she hadn’t come close to the possibilities before.

“Hey.” Felicity snapped her fingers. “Wake up, you. Remember, I’m the one who paid for the great wine?”

“Yes. And that was really nice of you. And I’m sorry my mother’s being a pain.”

Felicity waved a hand. “Brides’ moms and grooms’ moms come with the territory. It’s like having to eat your spinach when you’re a kid. I can deal with it. And I can deal with your nerves, too, if you’ll just let me. So either start talking to me or I’ll have to slap you.”

Emma understood she was supposed to laugh. But somehow what came out of her mouth was a question. “Do you think I’m a cold fish?”

“Huh? I was talking about cold feet, as in being nervous. Not cold fish, as in being frigid.”

“But do you think I am? I mean…do I come across as less…sexual…than the rest of the group?”

“Oh, boy, this is getting good.” Felicity dipped the wine bottle into her glass again, then squirmed her fanny back in the chair. “Honey, no one we grew up with is likely to wear a white dress at her wedding, if you know what I mean. Although…” She suddenly squinted at Emma. “Holy horseradish. You couldn’t still be a virgin, could you? I didn’t think it was possible.”

“At my age? Come on,” Emma scoffed and for the first time reached for her wineglass and took a gulp.

“You couldn’t be,” Felicity repeated, but she was still squinting at her. Squinting hard.

“I’m not. I’m not.”

“Well…” Finally Felicity let it go. “Let’s go back to the original question. What was the cold-fish remark all about?”

Emma couldn’t sit. She walked over to the window, rubbed her itchy back against the frame. “There are a lot of reasons…why I’m no longer sure I’m the right person for Reed,” she said quietly.

“Okay. Since you bought up the cold-fish thing, I assume sex is the real issue we’re not talking about, right? And if that’s all you’re worried about, chill.” Felicity relaxed again, as if relieved to discover nothing important was the problem. “Come on, you know it’s the same for everyone. Sex is always great in the beginning. Then the first lust fades like the bloom on the rose. Then the couple both have to work at it-and good lovers do just that, so they tend to end up just fine. You know how it goes.”

“Yes, of course I do,” Emma said and this time filled the wineglass herself, keeping her expression averted.

“My theory, though, is that if it isn’t great in the beginning, then the relationship just isn’t worth going for. I mean, a guy who’s selfish from the get-go never improves. That’s not about sex, it’s about a character flaw, you know?” Felicity suddenly looked startled. “Reed isn’t that kind of selfish, is he? I mean, I barely know him. But he seems like such-”

Josh suddenly rapped on the open door. He rarely interrupted when she had someone in the office-partly because he rarely needed to. He was more than capable of handling most problems himself, but this time he clomped in with a frown, dropped something in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “You gotta quit putting that in the bathroom. I’m scared it’s going down the drain,” he said and then clomped right back out of the room again.

Emma knew what it was without looking…but she did look. There, in her palm, was the breathtaking sapphire Reed had given her.

She just couldn’t seem to keep the engagement ring on her finger lately. Couldn’t even try to pretend.

Felicity didn’t seem to notice the exchange, just kept on chatting. Eventually she stood up to leave-although not until the bottle was nearly leveled. She carried the two crystal glasses and the corkscrew as far as the doorway, but then stalled there, clearly in no hurry to leave…not once they started on everyone else’s gossip.

“Did you hear the police talked to Abby again? Apparently she got them to take fingerprints of her mother’s safe-and they found a thumb and forefinger-and the prints weren’t of any family members! So they’re questioning Edith Carter again. You know, Bunny’s housekeeper-”

“I just don’t get it,” Emma said, closing her hands around the ring again, feeling the stone pinch. “When it comes down to it, Abby’s mom only told a bunch of gossip. Sure, people wouldn’t want it in print if they were discovered sleeping in the wrong bed. But to kill her?”

“I know, I know. But then if someone had the cojones to blackmail Jack Cartright, you have to believe some people get pretty shook up over their secrets being told.”

“Yeah,” Emma said thoughtfully, again feeling the weight and shape of the sapphire in her palm.

“And another secret thing…I ran into Mary Duvall again. I know you used to be good friends with her.”

“Yeah, we were really close back in high school.”

“I think she’s great. But she just looks so different than when we were in school. Suddenly turned into a Pendleton-and-pearls type. No more wild cookie. I think there’s another mystery there.”

“Maybe she just grew up,” Emma said drily.

“And maybe she has a deep, dark secret that made her want to come hide out at home again…Hey, I heard maybe they were going to let Caroline out of the hospital in another day or two. Maybe, anyway. You haven’t heard what her secret is, have you?”

“No.”

“Well, it has to be something big. A girl doesn’t swallow a bucket of pills if she’s got nothing going on behind locked doors. God, this town. Big money makes for big secrets, eh?”

When Felicity finally left, Emma set the engagement ring on her desk and let out a sigh softer than a southern wind. Her family had secrets, too. But right now her own private heartache of a secret weighed so heavily on her conscience that she could barely think.

There was going to be hell to pay if she ducked out of a marriage this far along in the planning stages. But the more she worried about what she owed Reed-and what she owed her parents-the more she slowly realized that in her entire life she’d never asked the buffalo side of that nickel question.

Wasn’t there some point in a woman’s life when she got to ask, what did she owe herself?