Anna Adams - The Marriage Contract

He’d like to know more about how Clair’s father had lost their house. He hardly remembered David Atherton. Older than Sylvie by more than twenty years, his very existence had been an insult to Jeff Dylan. Jeff saw him as a less-virile man who’d stolen the one woman Jeff truly loved. Jeff liked to forget he’d told Sylvie she wasn’t good enough to marry.

After she’d moved on, Jeff’s second thoughts had nearly destroyed two families. Jeff had searched for revenge against David and Sylvie, who’d truly loved each other, until he wound up with the Atherton mortgage. And then he’d foreclosed.

Twenty at the time, preoccupied with premed, Nick had never asked for details. To Nick, Jeff’s anger at the woman he’d thrown away had been an insult to Leota and an emotional counterbalance to Jeff’s disappointment with the son he’d fathered on the rebound.

Clair had found the healthier response—contempt for his father’s “love.” But the past still held her as tightly as it did Nick. Like sought like when pain struck this deep, and he’d recognized how hurt she must still feel.

He pictured her, lithe muscles straining as she’d planted those flowers at her house. Humming a song as she reclaimed a small piece of her past.

Maybe he was crazy, but he thought Clair might be the perfect wife. She certainly wouldn’t want the position permanently, but she longed for the house only he could give her.

At a knock on his door he shoved the letter, report and envelope into a drawer before he opened the door to Hunter.

“Dr. Dylan, I’m just on my way to tell Mrs. Dylan dinner is ready. I was concerned you might forget to come down again.”

Nick felt a surge of warmth for the man who still treated him as the neglected child in a rich man’s house. “Making sure I eat isn’t your job.” Gratitude roughened his voice.

“I’m concerned about your mother, as well.” Hunter shrugged uneasily and pointed at the door. “May I come in?”

Nick stood aside. Frightened for Leota, he’d flushed the pills, poured out the brandy and told his mother he’d invite a therapist to live with them if she renewed her supplies. “What else has happened?”

“I don’t know whether I should talk to you about Mrs. Dylan. Telling you what I think is going on with her might be inappropriate, but you know my loyalty.”

“What is wrong, Hunter?”

“She stays in her rooms until lunch. She’s never hungry. I find this most difficult to say, but her maid suspects she’s begun to cry herself to sleep at night. Mrs. Dylan’s pillowcase is still damp when she makes the bed.”

Cold dread grabbed Nick low in the gut. He’d been reason enough for his parents to marry. He hadn’t made Jeff love Leota, and Leota always seemed to wish her son would try a little harder to make Jeff’s love possible.

But Hunter had been family to him when his own mother and father couldn’t help reminding him he’d failed as a son. Time he took the load off Hunter’s shoulders. And time he found out if he could be the son his mother needed.

“Thank you, Hunter, for telling me. I’ll bring Leota down for dinner.” But doubt hounded him as he went to his mother’s room. He could talk her into dinner, but could he persuade her to get help? Maybe—if he managed to keep their home.

ALONE IN THE OFFICE, Clair was working on her design when Paul came in to lock the company’s cell phones away. “You still here?” he asked. “Don’t stay any longer. Your idea’s almost ready to present.”

“I want to finish it tonight before I go.”

“What are you trying to prove? I know you can do the work.”

“I need to polish.” She pointed her pen toward the dark outside the windows. “It’s too late to work in Selina’s garden tonight and—” A tall, dark-suited man walked into the light shining through the windows onto the sidewalk, and Clair’s throat dried out instantly. “What’s he doing here?”

“Who cares? Whatever he wants, we’ll do it for him.” Paul hurried to open the door for Nick. “Dr. Dylan, come in.”

“I’d like to speak to Clair, if she has time.”

Both men looked at her. No sprang to mind. She’d avoided Nick since he’d offered to let her tour her house. Tending her pansies later, she’d thought hard about him and his family. She didn’t want to owe him for even the smallest pleasure, but Paul’s pleading gaze told her he didn’t share her lack of enthusiasm for Dylan business.

Paul, she owed.

“Go ahead.” She shooed her employer toward the door. “I’ll lock up.”

“Don’t stay too much longer.” He slipped out. He’d “Velasco’d” her again.

“Can I offer you coffee, Dr. Dylan?”

Nick tugged at his tie. “I’d rather have a Scotch. Want to join me?”

Not even for Paul. “As you can see, I’m working. What can we do for you?”

He shook his head, his dark blue eyes serious. “I didn’t come to ask you to work for me.”

She declined to feel alarmed. “Then why are you here?”

“After we talked the other night, I expected you’d come ask for the key to your old house.”

“Why look at decay I can’t clean out?” An unaccustomed blush warmed her skin. She sounded melodramatic, but it was the truth.

“How would you change the house if you could?”

“Paint.” Plans she’d never consciously made spilled out of her without warning. “After twelve years, I’d probably have to rehang doors, take down wallpaper, redo the floors—” She interrupted herself, appalled. “But I don’t think about it.”

One corner of his wide mouth tilted, and he looked human. “Maybe you should think.”

“Want to explain what you mean?”

“What if I could make the house yours?”

Pain streaked through her body. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Are you saying you’d sell my family’s house back to me? I can’t afford to make an offer you wouldn’t laugh at.”

“I’m not asking for money.”

“What do you mean?” Either money or power fed the Dylans.

“Let’s get a drink and talk seriously.” He opened the door and reached for the light switch, but stopped. “Think how you’d feel if I could give your house back to you.”

She didn’t know she’d backed away from him until she bumped into the table. “Why would you?”

“Have you heard the terms of my father’s will?”

She shook her head. His words, “give your house back,” repeated over and over in her head, the rasp of his tone burrowing deeper into her mind.

“Jeff left everything to me,” he said absently, as if he’d forgotten she was listening. “Land, investments, bank accounts, your house.” He switched off the light. “But he made stipulations.”

“Please turn the light back on.”

“He said I have to marry. Fall in love and marry within twelve months, and stay married for a year.”

Only Jeff Dylan would be arrogant enough to believe he could regulate love. She shook her head to chase the thought away, feeling too close to Nick in the darkness. They both knew too much about the effects of his father’s illogical resentment. A sense of intimacy with Nick Dylan was the last thing she wanted. “Turn on the light.”

“Every time you look at me I know you despise me, but your voice—when I can’t see your face—your voice hates me more.”

“What do you want?”

“Clair, I want you to marry me. If you pretend to be my loving wife for twelve months, I’ll sign your house over to you, and no one will ever take it from you again.”

A gust of wind rattled the glass behind him.

“Do you think you’re funny? I’m not laughing.”

“I saw that as a good sign. I’m serious. Give me what I need, and I’ll give you your house.”