Susan Fox - Contract Bride

After being married to a near hermit for the past eleven months, it was no wonder she’d informed him that she meant to go to the barbecue, with or without him.

Rachel had told him things about Leah that he hadn’t thought about for years. About her nomadic childhood, the many abandonments by both her father and mother, her eventual ordeal in a series of foster homes. According to Rachel, Leah’s biggest dream had been to someday have a family and a home.

She had a legal son in Bobby and she lived in one of the finest homes in the area. But his preoccupation with Rachel’s loss had cheated her out of the complete family she must have wanted and had probably left her feeling like a slave instead of a marriage partner. Hence her solemn little bombshell tonight.

Yet he felt nothing for her aside from gratitude—gratitude and guilt. The turmoil of that had nettled him for weeks, but he couldn’t seem to help that gratitude and guilt were the only things Leah stirred in him.

Losing Rachel had left him empty. Any woman who wasn’t her was merely female. No one to wonder about, and certainly no one to get excited about. His hormones had come back to life, his lust still fired over the usual sights and thoughts, he still had powerful male urges that craved satisfaction, but the mysterious allure of tenderness and sweet feelings were gone as completely as Rachel.

In his mind and heart, love and sex were associated exclusively with luxurious red hair, freckle-flecked satin skin and exotic emerald eyes that sparkled with passion and a zest for life.

Suddenly the memories were white hot, and he relived the phantom feeling of Rachel’s lush body pressed against his. His palms ached to slide over her soft skin to tenderly cup and caress, and his fingers tingled with the unforgettable sensation of what it had felt like to lavish pleasure on her.

Pain and bitterness welled up at the torment, and Reece forced the powerful memories to stop. He determinedly fixed his thoughts on the living woman—the wife—he was obligated to crave.

But desire didn’t rise very high over long sable hair that was usually pinned up or worn in a French braid; it didn’t crave the touch and warm feel of lightly tanned almost dusky skin. Eyes that were a deep, quiet blue didn’t suggest anything more enticing or arousing for him than somber mysteries and unhappiness, and his heart was already weighted down by those.

Try as he might, he couldn’t picture Leah’s pretty eyes going slumberous with lust, and he couldn’t imagine her losing her very rigid self-control to clutch at him in the high heat of sexual intimacy. It was as unthinkable of Leah as it would have been of an elderly maiden aunt.

The harsh bite of guilt he felt for the unfair comparison made him finish the second Scotch in another punishing rush.

He didn’t want Bobby to be hurt, and divorce would do a masterful job of hurting the boy. Surely his lack of sexual interest in Leah was a remnant of Rachel’s loss. That and the fact that he’d barely paid attention to her as a potential lover, and he’d never been curious enough to find out what she might really be like when she wasn’t being a mommy or teaching Sunday School.

Rachel and Leah had been closer than sisters. So close that he knew Rachel wouldn’t think much of him for cheating Leah out of a loving home. Particularly when Leah had given up her chance of finding a man whose heart could be all hers so she could come to the aid of her best friend’s husband and infant son.

Feeling gut sick over what Leah had sacrificed and how poorly he’d repaid her, Reece set the tumbler down with a soft thud then made himself walk over to his desk. He picked up the silver-framed photo of Rachel and turned it to study her face.

The flatness of the image impacted him. He tilted the frame slightly, as if to get a better look at the thickness of it, but the photo paper behind the glass suddenly looked as thin and unsubstantial as any other photograph.

For the first time Reece felt detached from the color image, and his heart grabbed futilely to recapture the sense of connection. It was as if he’d known this achingly beautiful woman a long time ago, too long ago, and something in him flinched with surprise at the feeling of distance. It had only been fifteen months since the wreck, and yet it suddenly felt like another lifetime, one that had belonged to some other Reece Waverly.

In the space of mere moments, the memory of Rachel had gone from white hot and all but tangible to something more like a dimly remembered dream.

Which reminded him of the worst part of these past weeks. Rachel had been fading from his mind. A little here, a little there, he was starting to forget the things he’d been convinced were burned on his heart forever. Except for the soul rocking flashes of sudden memory, the everyday details of how Rachel had moved, how she’d smiled—even how she’d touched and taken care of their son that handful of days—had begin to cloud over until he could only rarely summon them at will.

Would her memory fade completely away? Was he man enough to face the bleakness of that second loss if she did? The loneliness he already felt was brutal.

Reece stood there for several minutes more, wondering if he was drunk, wondering whether these strange feelings and impressions meant anything, but eventually realizing how weary he was. What he did next wasn’t so much a decision as it was a necessity.

He didn’t want to ever look at a picture of Rachel and feel this disconnected from her. The clarity of the photo was a reminder that the living image in his brain seemed to be growing more fuzzy and indistinct. Better to never see it again than to feel so eerily detached from both the woman and the life they’d had together.

Once he’d switched off the desk lamp, Reece turned and carried the framed picture to the bedroom end of the dark ranch house. He didn’t need a light to walk through the big house he’d lived in since birth. He went into the first guest bedroom he came to, and moved across the carpet to the dresser by memory. He fumbled for a drawer catch and opened the drawer just enough to put the picture inside.

It was best to ignore the hollow rattle of the silver frame against the wood bottom of the empty drawer as he pushed it closed. Nevertheless he hesitated, as if he might think of a rational reason to change his mind and put the picture back on his desk. Eventually, he left the drawer closed and walked out of the room and into the hall.

The soft glow of the light Leah always left on in Bobby’s room spilled into the hall and drew him, particularly tonight, though it was his usual habit to look in on the child.

Bobby was sleeping peacefully, so he lingered a bit before he backed a step away from the bed then paused to glance toward the partially open door between the baby’s room and Leah’s. It was too dark in her room to see more than a wedge of carpet, though from this angle he hadn’t expected to be able to actually catch a glimpse of her.

The mental picture of what she might look like asleep and his quick curiosity about what she wore to bed came so suddenly that he felt a new kind of jolt. He’d never had a single thought about Leah’s preferences or private habits, so this was a new thing.

But then again, he’d either had just enough booze to inspire a faint spark of curiosity about Leah because he’d been trying to summon some kind of desire for her, or he was drunk enough to have lost a few inhibitions so that the idea of sex without love wasn’t such an empty one.

Either way, he couldn’t take the small spark seriously. It would surely be gone by morning, smothered out by the cold reality of another day.

Reece heard Leah’s soft laugh just before he reached the kitchen that next morning.