Christine Rimmer - The Marriage Agreement

He chuckled. “Hard to believe, huh? Me, a college graduate. But I have to confess. It’s not from any college you would have heard of. You went to OU, I suppose.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Figured you would. Dean’s honor list, right?”

She nodded. “And…how is your business doing now?”

He brought his glass to that sensual mouth again, sipped, shrugged once more. “Revenues this year should top five million. I have 250 employees and a fleet of 85 limousines.”

Tory could hardly believe what she was hearing.

I’m no good, he had written. You can do better….

Eight years ago, he’d said. Eight years ago, in Chicago, he had started his business. And since then, he must have been making a living at least, must have been doing all right.

Yet he had never called. Never written. Never made the slightest effort to see her, until now.

That hurt. That hurt way too much.

She couldn’t afford that—to start hurting for this man all over again. Couldn’t. And wouldn’t.

She had to remember. This meeting was not about her. It was about Kim. For Kim. Kim was the one who mattered now. And if Kim’s long-lost daddy owned a fleet of limousines, well, that was all to the good.

Marsh looked into his glass, and then back up at Tory. “What about you?”

She stared at him blankly, still trying to accept the fact that the poor boy she had so passionately, utterly loved, the poor boy who had turned his back on her because he had nothing to offer her, had spent the past decade becoming a rich man.

At last, his question registered. He wanted to know what she did for a living. “I’m a florist. I have my own shop. The Posy Peddler. On Gray.”

“A florist.” He smiled.

Did he find florists amusing? She pulled her shoulders back. “That’s right.”

He gave her a long, nerve-racking look. Then he spoke gently. “You said on the phone that you weren’t married. Is there…someone special, then?”

Someone special? Why did he ask that? What difference could it make to him, now, after all this time?

It was too much. She stood, then didn’t know what to do next. She started to sit again, but changed her mind about that. She stayed upright, and wrapped her arms around her stomach, which felt as if someone had tied it into a ball of hard knots. “I don’t— Marsh. Why are you here? Why now?”

Marsh looked up at her, wondering what he’d said that had made her so angry all of a sudden, recalling how crushed she had looked at the sight of him down in the lobby, how he’d wanted to grab her and hold her close and plead with her to forgive him for not coming back—to swear to protect her, to never hurt her again.

But he hadn’t grabbed her. And she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms.

And since then, things seemed to have gone seriously south. This pretty stranger glaring at him now was not the same innocent girl he had once loved so much. Once, when he looked at her, he could feel his whole heart opening up, reaching out to her.

He didn’t feel that way now. He felt—interest. She was a good-looking woman. And he liked the way she carried herself, liked the sound of her voice, the cute smattering of freckles across her slim nose.

It was…attraction. Yes. That was the word for it. But he didn’t think it was love. Not anymore.

Could it grow into love again?

As if he would ever find out the answer. The woman glaring down at him now didn’t look especially eager to try again.

But then, what had he expected? He was, after all, the one who broke it off, even if he had done it for her own good, even if he had known, deep down, that it could never have worked out for them.

And probably even more damning in her eyes than his breaking it off, were those letters she had sent him. The ones that had taken months to reach him, he’d moved around so much there in that first year. The letters he’d returned unopened, though it nearly killed him to do it. He’d spent a lot of nights wondering what she might have written in those letters.

“Why are you here?” she demanded again, openly angry now.

“I told you. My father—”

“Oh, you stop that. I’m not talking about your father right now and you know it. I want to know why you called me.”

“I just…” Damn. He wasn’t even sure he knew the answer to that himself. Curiosity, maybe. About what had happened to the girl he left behind. Curiosity—and a kind of longing. A longing not so much for the girl he had loved as for the heat and tenderness he’d known with her. A longing that had faded over the years, but that had never completely left him.

And then there had been the old man. Prodding. Taunting him to look Tory up.

“You just what?” she demanded.

“I wanted to see if—”

“Look,” she said, cutting him off, apparently deciding she didn’t want to hear what he had to say, after all. “This is a…well, it’s a shock for me.” Those beautiful blue eyes had taken on a panicked gleam. “I don’t seem to be handling it real well. I didn’t know…I didn’t expect—”

She looked pale again, as she had in the lobby. Worse than she had in the lobby—as if she might be sick.

Sick at the sight of him.

Hell. He deserved the Biggest Heel on the Planet Award, to have hurt her all over again this way.

It had been a stupid idea, to call her. He should have had sense enough to consider the source when the old man started in on him about her. Even on his deathbed, Blake Bravo wouldn’t give up his petty mind games.

And now, for your other surprise…

Right.

The surprise wasn’t much of a surprise, after all. Tory couldn’t forgive him and wanted nothing to do with him.

Big news.

“I don’t…I’m sorry,” Tory stammered, her stomach still churning, all her senses on overload.

She kept thinking, He doesn’t know. But he is Kimmy’s father. And she wants to know him. And he has a right to know her. I will have to tell him, somehow….

But it was all just too much, right then. Seeing him. Remembering things that were better forgotten.

She couldn’t do it. Not tonight.

She needed…a little time. To pull herself together, to get her stunned mind around the fact that he really had come back.

“I don’t…I’m sorry.” She sucked in a breath, swallowed. “I have to go now. Later, I can…”

He was watching her as if she was mentally deranged—and maybe she was at that moment. She sure did feel like it, like a woman who had gone clean out of her mind.

She edged out from behind the coffee table, between his chair and the sofa. “I’ll talk to you later…” She was already halfway to the door. He stood, took a couple of steps toward her. She flung out a hand in a warding-off gesture. “I’ll call you. I will. Tomorrow, all right?”

She fled—there was no other word for it—leaving Marsh staring at the door she had shut in his face.

Marsh’s instinctive reaction was to follow her.

But he held instinct in check. She clearly wanted out of that room—and away from him.

Who was he to try to hold her there?

He went back to the bar and poured himself another drink—a double that time. He sipped it slowly, thinking that he should probably get over to the hospital. He should check on his father one more time tonight, as he’d planned to do.

But no. He felt a little too edgy for a visit with the old man right now. What had just happened had been too unsettling.

Tory had acted so strangely.

If she hadn’t wanted to see him, couldn’t she have just said so, on the phone, right up front?

Why even agree to meet him? Why come up to his room with him? Why put herself through that? It didn’t make any damn sense.