The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

Six

Garrett hurried through the hospital doors, past desks, past people, past carts, past anything and everything. Because the elevator was too slow, he took the stairs. He stumbled on the top step. Hell, a man could hardly run in the slick-soled dress shoes he was stuck wearing with a tux.

His tie still wasn’t tied-he never could do tux ties. But he’d been dressed and grabbing the car keys to drive to the Eastwick Country Club dance when he got the call from the hospital.

At the head nurse’s desk he barked, “Where is she?”

His sister’s room had been changed. She wasn’t back in Critical Care, thank God, but they’d moved her to the small psychiatric unit, where they could keep her monitored full-time. Caroline’s recovery had seemed on a clear upswing until an event that afternoon, when the doctor feared she was a suicide risk again.

Just outside her room he slowed his step so he didn’t barrel in there like a noisy elephant. But his stomach tightened when he saw his sister. She was lying on the bed, all curled up like a wounded baby, facing the wall. Straps on her wrists prevented her from removing the IVs or getting up on her own.

The same thought kept echoing in his mind-that he wished Emma were with him. She’d know what to say, what to do. He knew how to work, how to make money but not how to deal with people. He never had.

His sister must have sensed his presence, because she suddenly turned her head. “Hey, big brother,” she murmured.

“Hey back.”

She noticed his tux. “Whew. You’re looking so hot that I want to whistle, but my throat seems to be mighty dry. They gave me something awfully strong.” She wasn’t completely lucid. Her eyes kept sluggishly opening and closing. “You all dressed up to take me out for a night on the town?”

“I’d take you out in two seconds if you’d go.” He yanked a chair closer, parked on it. “Who phoned you, Caro?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. You were doing fine. We all thought you were coming home in another day or so. Then the nurse said you got a call this afternoon-”

“That day nurse is such a tattletale.”

Garrett ignored that. “And the next thing, she found you in the bathroom with a piece of broken glass in your hand.”

“It was an accident. I broke the water glass-”

“Quit it, Caro. It wasn’t an accident. Who called you?” he repeated, and when she didn’t answer he said, “I know it was a local call, so it had to be someone from Eastwick. What in God’s name is going on that’s got you so terrorized? Tell me.”

She smiled. “Aw, Garrett, you were always my white knight. You always got between me and Dad when I was in trouble. Or between me and a wrong date.” She closed her eyes. “Do you remember when I had a sleepover that one time? Think we were all twelve. Raided the liquor cabinet after Mom and Dad went to bed, all got drunk as skunks, then decided to go swimming. Then you showed up, remember?”

“I remember. All six girls hurled all over me, as I recall. Not counting the messes all over the house.”

“But you saved us all, Garrett.” She smiled at him again. “You’ve got everybody fooled that you’re a coldhearted workaholic. Through thick and thin, I could always count on you. You’re the only one in the whole family with integrity. Real integrity.”

“Obviously they’re giving you some kind of hallucinatory drug. And all this being nice isn’t getting you off the hook. It’s time you told me what’s going on.”

“What’s going on,” she said thickly, slowly, “is that I made a mistake I can’t live with.”

Again he wished desperately that Emma was here. Emma wasn’t judgmental and she had a way of calming people down, making them believe things would be all right. Instead his sister was stuck with just him. “There’s no mistake you can’t live with, Caroline. Nothing I couldn’t forgive you for. Nothing I wouldn’t help you get through. But I can’t prove that to you if you won’t talk to me.”

“You want to help? Then get the hospital to release me so I can go home,” she said.

Yeah, sure. And have her get another call at home from the person who’d been terrorizing her? Hell, he didn’t know what to do. But when his sister fell asleep, he stumbled out of the hospital and aimed straight for the country club.

He wasn’t remotely in a party mood, but this summer shindig was one of the year’s biggest galas. Someone there knew what was going on with Caroline. They had to. And Emma might have some ideas about who to question that he hadn’t thought of.

From a half mile away he started seeing the lights. The place was lit up like a miniature galaxy. The multiple French doors of the formal ballroom gaped open onto the patio. People were dancing both inside and out. Fountains sparkled with rainbow-hued water. Formally attired waiters carried sterling trays. The guys were all in tuxes, but the women wore every color in the universe-bridal whites and sassy reds, sea-greens and shimmery yellows, the glitter nearly blinding even from the distance where he parked. Jewels twinkled and shimmered on every neck, every ear, every wrist.

Garrett walked around to the back entrance, away from the crush, hoping to slip into the crowd without being noticed. In the old days, the club would have hired an orchestra. These days, club members tolerated a traditional waltz now and then, but they also wanted spice for their money-rock and roll, fandangos, music with a beat and some sex to it. Still, some traditions never changed. Flowers spilled over onto wrists, in women’s hair, scenting the centers of the tables.

He suddenly hesitated. He wasn’t afraid of such gatherings.

He’d grown up in this echelon of Eastwick society. He’d rather be working than stuck making small talk, but that wasn’t what suddenly made him pause.

From a distance, the scene looked like a dream, with beautiful people laughing, dancing, enjoying each other. That was what it had always been about, Garrett suddenly realized. Belonging. People didn’t hunger to join the country club for the prestige of it.

They hungered to belong. To something. To someone.

When push came to shove, he figured that had to be the core of his sister’s problem. He didn’t know the how, the when, why or who. But the only threat worth the kind of despair Caroline was enduring had to emanate from that kind of source-the threat of losing someone who mattered.

Or maybe he was imposing his own hunger to belong on his sis’s situation, he thought wryly. Until coming back home-until meeting up with Emma again-he’d never thought of himself as lonely. He’d never thought he needed anyone. Yet now that desire to be with her, to belong with her, was as fierce as-

And then he saw her. Emma was weaving through the dancers, then past them and outside, past the spill of lights and music on the patio. She’d surely have seen him-he was just standing in the tree shadows by the walk-if she hadn’t been so obviously intent. She headed straight for the black iron gates of the club pool.

The pool was closed for swimming tonight, but the underwater lights had been left on for atmosphere. He watched Emma unlatch the gate, step inside and out of sight of the partyers. Her gown looked luminescent in the aquamarine light. The style made him think of a Roman toga, nothing fancy, just a swath of sapphire-blue fabric that draped over one shoulder and fell to her ankles. Slim gold ropes twisted around her waist and under the bodice.

The simplicity and classiness of the gown suited her perfectly.

She liked her jewels-what woman didn’t?-yet she was wearing none tonight, unlike all the other women there. Her bare throat gleamed, her skin its own adornment. Her eyes had more shine and emotion than any gem. His heart surged just to see her, just for the chance of being near her.

But she wasn’t alone.

She was talking to the one man Garrett kept conveniently trying to forget. Her fiancé. And it looked as if they were having a damn serious private talk, because Reed Kelly had the posture of a man who was furious enough to snap.

Emma thought she’d go out of her mind. Naturally she couldn’t talk seriously to Reed in the middle of the club dance, but she had hoped they could take off halfway through the evening, and then she’d have a chance to talk with him privately.

That was her goal, but she just couldn’t seem to make it happen. She’d barely seen Reed for two seconds since they’d arrived, much less had a prayer of escaping. Being in charge of the club’s fund-raising committee didn’t help, because everyone and his mother stopped to chat.

The social craziness started when frail, slender Frank Forrester cornered her. Frank had been so generous to the club and community that she couldn’t avoid speaking with him. Besides, he was a darling-although Delia, his current wife, was quite an experience. Lots of women visited a plastic surgeon for one reason or another, but Delia’s boobs were so fake they looked like mighty ball bearings. She’d gone for a tight sheath in a glitzy lamé and covered every finger in rings. To each his own, Emma always thought, but Delia was so, so unlike the quietly generous Frank.

After that, Emma had to spend a few minutes with the Debs Club-all the girls were there, with either their mates or appropriate rail meat. Felicity, of course, kept shooting her meaningful looks, as if determined to remind her of their earlier conversation. And then Mary Duvall showed up, covered modestly from her throat to her ankles, very quietly making her way through the crowd, looking as if she needed a friend and someone to reintroduce her to Eastwick again, so obviously Emma had to step in there.

Abby Talbot swung her away from Mary for a while after that. Gossip was still buzzing about her mother’s death-and who was going to take on writing the Eastwick Social Diary. It was the gossip and mudslinging everyone missed most. Abby was using the dance as a means to ask questions. She looked gorgeous, as always, but her mother’s death seemed to have changed her from a quiet, gently understanding kind of woman into a steamroller. She wanted answers.

And if she wanted justice, she had lost all faith she was going to get it through the police investigation.

After that, Emma was corralled by Jack and Lily Cartright. Emma had gotten involved in the Eastwick Cares organization-where Lily had been a social worker-several years before, so they’d become friends. Heaven knew Emma loved working with the teenagers. This time, though, Lily tracked her down, looking radiant and blooming, to ask if she had any free time the following week for a special kids’ project.

Emma said yes. Darn it, her schedule was too packed to add any more to it, but she’d never been good at saying no to anything involving kids, and by then she’d been too frazzled to even try.

Reed found her and swirled her into a waltz, but almost immediately they were separated again. Someone claimed Reed’s attention at the same time Garrett’s parents descended on her. Barbara and Merritt Keating were using every public opportunity to say that their daughter, Caroline, was all right. She’d just accidentally taken “the wrong pill” and had “a chemical reaction.”

“You know so many people in Eastwick, Emma,” Barbara said. “It would help so much if you’d help set the record straight.”

“Garrett’s around here somewhere,” his father boomed. “He’ll tell everyone, too. We’re very concerned about some of the hurtful rumors we’ve heard spread about Caroline.”

Immediately Emma searched the crowd for Garrett yet couldn’t spot him. Her mother grabbed her arm before she had another chance to even try. Her mom was dressed in ivory-her favorite color-and looked slim and elegant. Only the slightest slur in her speech would give anyone the impression that she’d started partying much earlier that day. Her drinking was one of the best-kept secrets in Eastwick, but tonight her mom was on a happy buzz for a different reason.

“I heard from Felicity that you were likely going to announce the wedding date for sure. Like tonight, dear? I admit, I’ve been passing a little hint around our friends…”

Emma’s pulse picked up a frantic beat. She’d meant to talk to Reed tonight-but now she knew she had to talk to him immediately, before her mother started spreading the wedding gossip even further. All these dutiful conversations had been necessary, and truthfully she loved all these people, had all her life. But now she had to find Reed and drag him to a private spot somewhere, somehow.

She found him talking to a wannabe senator and snagged his wrist. He was happy to be dragged off, but not for the reasons she had in mind. Long before she’d gotten them out to the private spot by the pool, she’d known this talk was going to be hard. But she started out saying honestly, “Reed, I’m not sure either of us really wants this marriage,” and he just didn’t seem to believe her.

He went back to fetch her a drink, a pinot noir-her favorite-and then walked around the pool to a spot where they were completely cut off from any view of the partyers. He seemed determined to believe she had bridal nerves or that she was fussing over the stress of putting on the wedding.

Finally, though, he seemed to pick up that the tears in her eyes weren’t from a minor case of stress. “All right, Emma. Just say it straight. What is all this really about?”

She desperately wanted that wine to soothe her nerves, yet she put it down, afraid she’d choke on it. She’d never deliberately, willingly, hurt anyone. “Reed, you don’t really want me. You have to know it.”

“Huh? Of course I want you. Why on earth would I have asked you to be my wife if I didn’t want you to be part of my life?”

She pressed her hand to her stomach. “I mean sex, Reed. You don’t feel any big attraction for me.”

Reed never lost his temper. He had more patience than Job. But she could see he was stretching to keep it together by then. “You’re the one who didn’t want to sleep together until we were married.”

“I know.”

“You felt strongly about it. As you put it, people sleep together like it’s automatically on their to do list after they’ve been together a while, rather than it being something unique or special for the two of them. That’s why you wanted to do it the old-fashioned way-waiting. Because you wanted intimacy to be something more.”

“I know I said that. And I meant it.”

“You said you were tired of casual values. And so am I. As far as I know, we weren’t waiting because of not wanting each other.”

“But you don’t,” she said quietly. “Want me.”

“Of course I do. For Pete’s sake, Emma. This is a ridiculous conversation. You’re a gorgeous woman. You can’t possibly believe that desire wasn’t part of the equation.”

She persisted. “If you wanted me-the right way, the way I’d like to be wanted-you wouldn’t have waited. And it’s the same for me. I love you. You’re a wonderful, wonderful man. And for a long time I believed that kind of love would make a good marriage-”

“But now you suddenly don’t,” he said with exasperation.

She nodded. “I think we’d…manage. But in the long run, I think we’d both be miserable. Lonely. That we would never have the kind of marriage your parents have, but more my parents’ kind of arrangement, because the chemistry just isn’t there.”

He fell silent, looking at her, clearly considering what she said. “I could argue with you, keep trying to talk. But I can see your mind’s made up. You want to call it off,” he said.

She pulled the sapphire off her finger, offered it to him. When he didn’t take it, she gently tucked it in his chest pocket. But he still wouldn’t look at it.

“I’ll tell everyone it’s my fault. Because it is,” she said.

He immediately dismissed that idea. “You’re going to get a ton more backlash out of this than I will. I’ll take the blame. But right now…” He shook his head, then spun around. “Right now I think I’ll just take off. Disappear for a few days. If you don’t mind, I really don’t want to talk to you for a while.”

He walked away from her, past the pool gate, yanking off his tux jacket as he headed straight for his car.

Emma couldn’t remember the last time she felt lower than a skunk.

She’d never have chosen to hurt as good a friend, as good a man, as Reed.

Yet no matter how badly she felt about hurting him, deep in her heart she felt the steady beat of relief. For the first time in months she felt as if she could breathe.

Tomorrow there’d undoubtedly be gossip hell to pay when Eastwick caught wind of the broken engagement. But for right now she was free-and that included the freedom to be as upset as she needed to be. She whirled around, thinking that she needed to return to the ballroom to retrieve her bag and wrap before she could get out of there. For just an instant she thought she glimpsed the shadow of movement in the shady trees beyond the wrought iron gate. Someone there?

Whether there was or there wasn’t, she headed back into the ballroom. She seemed to be shaking from the tension of the whole emotional scene. She wanted to go home-or back to the gallery-as quickly as she could get her things. Escape was the only thing on her mind.

At four-thirty in the morning, Emma had given up pretending she could sleep. Sipping a cup of tea, she sat on the screened back porch at the gallery, still dressed in her evening gown but barefoot now, and when the evening temperature had dipped, she’d scared up an old sweater from the shop to drape over her shoulders.

She had to look pretty ridiculous, but there was no one around to see. The sun wasn’t due up for at least another hour. And although lack of sleep was undoubtedly going to catch up with her, she was trying to bolster some peace into her system before facing the day ahead. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

Before leaving the country club, she’d cornered her mother to let her know the engagement was off-it was the only way to stop her mom from talking up the wedding for the rest of the evening. By the time Emma arrived back at the gallery, though, her phone had rung nonstop.

Her mother had called several times. Then Felicity and other friends.

Then her father.

Even between phone calls, she’d thrown up, which struck her as darn near funny. Everyone in Eastwick always thought of her as calm, cool and collected. She was the diplomat of the Debs, not the instigator-the peacemaker, never the confronter. And this, of course, was why. Whenever she had to do confrontations, she heaved.

Her stomach had settled down hours before, and she’d turned off her cell phone and all the landlines inside Color. It was so late the crickets and frogs had stopped chirping. So late the baby moon had started dipping low in the sky. So late there hadn’t been the sound of a car passing in hours.

Still, she leaned her head back against the rough porch wall and couldn’t seem to find an ounce of peace.

In the darkness she heard the backyard gate latch, saw a tall, dark shadow-and probably should have responded with fear. Yet she didn’t.

By the time Garrett climbed the step and rapped softly on the screen door, she already knew it was him.

Unlike her, he was dressed in comfortable old chinos and a shirt, the kind of clothes someone intelligent would wear at this time of the morning. But at the moment she didn’t feel intelligent. She felt vulnerable and shaken. Too vulnerable to want to see a man who’d come to mean way, way too much to her.

“I told myself to leave you alone, but I saw the light in the gallery when I first got home. I never saw it turned off. Started worrying that you were still up, even this late. And I can see you are.” He stepped in, quickly closed the screen against mosquitoes. But instead of approaching her, he went to the far side of the screened porch and hunkered down on the Japanese mat. “See me? I’m staying on the other side of the porch. Not causing any trouble. Not planning to. But…I saw you. With your fiancé. At the pool.”

“I thought someone was there.” Her pulse started that dancing thing again, just from being with him. “There was no reason for you to worry about me, Garrett.”

“Worry is what I do. What good would it be to be a hardcase obsessive workaholic if I didn’t know how to worry constantly? And it kept bugging me…You had to have had a mighty rough night.”

“Yeah, well…I think a woman’s supposed to have a miserable night when she’s been a creep.”

“After you left, the gossip swooped over the club like a tidal wave. The talk was that the marriage was off. But no one had a clue who called off the engagement. Or why. You two were supposed to be the perfect couple.”

“The one who called it off-that’d be me. The creep in the story.”

“Feeling pretty low, are you?”

“It hurts like the devil. I hate hurting people. I hate hurting someone who’s been nothing but good to me even more. The whole thing…”

“Sucks?”

“A perfect word for it,” she agreed miserably.

“Anything you want to vent?”

She didn’t. Not to anyone. And maybe not to Garrett especially. Yet the silence had been beating inside her for hours now. Silence that wasn’t as simple as guilt. “Reed’s been a good friend for years. So I didn’t just lose a fiancé. I lost a friend.”

Garrett said nothing. Just leaned his head against the far porch wall the way she leaned her head in the shadows at her end.

“For a long time…for years…I was determined not to marry, didn’t want anything to do with marriage. I remember all that wild, lusty heat I felt with you…”

“So do I.”

“But when you went off to college, broke it off, you know what? Once I was through suffering from a crushed heart, I started feeling relieved. Even as a girl, even that young, I was afraid of that chemistry.” He didn’t prod her, didn’t push-which, damn him, made it all that much easier to spill her guts. “My parents have possibly one of the sickest marriages around. Not the sickest. But one of the true terrible-for-each-other relationships.”

“My parents’ marriage might be able to compete at that level.”

“That’s the thing. The money in this community, the power, is fabulous. There’s so much potential to do so much good. And we do. I love this area. But when money and sex get together…” She shook her head expressively.

“I’m not sure I get it…how that relates to why you never wanted to marry.”

“Because that’s always how it is. Marriages here are mergers. A woman antes up on her side of the deal with sex, using her sexual skills to attract and keep the most powerful man. And I just…”

“What?”

“I just never wanted to live my life that way.”

“Come on, Em. There was never any rule you had to play life by those conditions.”

“A rule, no. But the pressure never let up. My parents, my grandmother, ardently wanted me to be married-to the right man, in the right family-to start having kids and adding to the Dearborn dynasty. And it seemed like Reed was an answer because he was such a good friend. Until you came home.”

“Hey, how’d I enter this equation?”

“Because, you horrible man, I’d talked myself into believing for years that chemistry wasn’t important. Didn’t have to be important. I wasn’t remotely afraid of a sexual relationship with Reed or worried it wouldn’t be all right. I didn’t want more. It never occurred to me that I was cheating him of more.”

She leaned forward, shooting Garrett a harsh, stern glare in the darkness-even if she couldn’t quite see his face.

“But you kissed me,” she said softly. “And I was back remembering what it was like to be seventeen again. Hot and hungry. Full of yearning. And suddenly it wasn’t enough to spend a whole lifetime of all right.”

“I’ve been held responsible for a fair number of things in my lifetime. Being cold-blooded in business deals. Being clueless in relationships. Being tough in negotiations. But I don’t think anyone ever suggested my kissing technique had any power before.”

“You’re joking. I’m not. Darn it, Garrett, you’ve ruined my life,” she said. And stood.