Judith Mcwilliams - Did You Say...Wife?

“Hey, babe.” The irritating greeting scraped across her nerves a second before a hand closed around her upper arm. The hand jerked, pulling her against a hard masculine chest, and a man’s arms embraced her.

Jocelyn instinctively tore herself out of them. She didn’t want any man except Lucas hugging her.

“You can’t still be mad at me, babe. Not after all these months,” he said. “Hell, everyone sleeps together these days. I’m the one who should be mad. You ruined a perfectly good weekend. To say nothing of all the time I wasted dating you with nothing to show for it.”

Ignoring him in the hopes he’d go away, Jocelyn pulled her remote opener out of her coat pocket and unlocked her car.

To her extreme annoyance, he hurried around the hood of her car and slipped into the seat beside her.

Jocelyn pushed back a stray tendril of her chestnut hair yanked out of the neat chignon she normally wore to work by the vicious wind, briefly wondering what Bill was doing here. She hadn’t seen him in more than a year.

Deciding she didn’t care enough to even ask, she said, “Get out of my car.”

“Not yet. You and I need to have a talk, babe. I need help, and you’re going to give it to me.”

“Not this side of hell,” Jocelyn said flatly.

“Oh, I think you will.” His gloating expression sent a premonition of disaster through her. “You wouldn’t want old Lucas to find out that his oh-so-efficient administrative assistant and the half brother he hates were lovers, now would you?”

“We weren’t lovers!”

“You could try telling him that, but which of us do you think he’ll believe when I show him this. Mmm?”

Bill handed her a sheet of paper.

Gingerly Jocelyn took it with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach—a feeling that plummeted into nausea as she read. It was the copy of a receipt for a hotel room made out in her name and Bill’s. And unfortunately it was real.

Late last January he’d invited her on a skiing weekend in the Poconos. Thinking it sounded like fun, she’d agreed to go on the condition that they have separate rooms and that she pay all her own expenses. But when they’d arrived at the resort, she’d discovered that Bill had canceled her room earlier in the week and registered her into his.

Since Jocelyn had driven up from Philadelphia with Bill and the only local car rental place was closed for the night, she didn’t have any way to leave. The final straw was when she had tried to get her own room and been told that the lodge was filled to capacity.

Angry and frustrated, as much at her own gullibility as at Bill’s scheming, she had told Bill exactly what she thought of him. Then she had dragged half the blankets off the suite’s one bed and had curled up on the couch in the sitting area to spend a very uncomfortable night. First thing in the morning she left. It had been the last time she’d seen Bill.

“How did you know I was working for Lucas?” she said, trying to give herself time to think.

“Dear cousin Emmy. She was bragging about how she’d helped you find the job as old Lucas’s administrative assistant.”

“But why contact me now? I’ve had this job for six months.”

“Because I’ve suffered a few financial reverses.”

Bill shoved his fingers through his perfectly barbered hair. “To put it bluntly, I’ve spent every penny Dad left me, and if I can’t find a new source of income—”

“You’ll have to go to work like the rest of us?” she said unsympathetically. “Blackmailing me won’t help you. My entire life’s savings wouldn’t keep you for a week.”

“Not you, you stupid witch! Lucas.”

Jocelyn grimaced. “Surely you can’t think I have his power of attorney?”

“You always did think small,” he said coldly. “I don’t want to embezzle from the company. I want to take over the company. I can sell it for a fortune. It should have been mine, anyway.”

“Lucas’s father left it to him.” Jocelyn repeated what Emmy had told her.

“I think Lucas substituted a fake will for the real one. Mom does, too.”

Jocelyn watched as his mouth suddenly compressed, giving him a mean, vicious look, and she shivered, glad they were in an open parking lot in full view of any passersby.

“Has it occurred to either of you that Lucas’s father might not have had any choice but to leave the company to Lucas?” Jocelyn said. “From what Emmy said, the company originally belonged to Lucas’s mother. Maybe it was—” she gestured ineffectively “—whatever the modern-day equivalent of an entail is?”

“Not a chance. Mom was very careful to look up Dad’s first wife’s will before she married him. Lucas’s mother left everything she owned to her husband. No, the only explanation for why Dad didn’t leave the company to me was because Lucas substituted a fake will. And I want you to help me find the real one.”

“Use your head, Bill,” Jocelyn tried to reason with him. “Even if, for the sake of argument, there had been another will, why would Lucas keep the original? He would destroy it the first chance he got.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Bill insisted. “He’d want to be able to gloat over it, thinking about how he’d outsmarted me and Dad. So you’re going to help me find that will or I’ll tell Lucas about us being lovers. And then where will your job be?”

Down the tubes, Jocelyn thought with horror. Just like her life. She stared blindly out the windshield at the wind-whipped snowflakes that had begun to fall.

“Think about it, babe. I’ll be in touch.” He gave her a self-satisfied smirk and got out of the car.

Numbly Jocelyn watched him swagger over to the silver Porsche parked behind her and get in.

What did she do now? she wondered frantically. She didn’t have the slightest doubt that Bill would carry out his threat. Not only carry it out, but take a great deal of pleasure in doing it. There was a sadistic streak in the man a mile wide.

Which meant that she had to do something before he could act. But what? She closed her eyes and tried to think, not even noticing the bitter cold inside the car. Blind panic filled every cell of her consciousness. There was simply no room left for any other sensation.

“It isn’t fair,” she muttered as she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, blinking back the tears that blurred her vision. But then, very little in her life to date had been fair, she thought tiredly.

Jocelyn resisted the impulse to pull her thick winter coat more snugly around her, knowing that the chill she was feeling wasn’t from the weather outside. It was coming from the silent man beside her.

Surreptitiously she studied Lucas Forester, her eyes lingering on the slight cleft in the middle of his square jaw. Longingly her gaze moved upward, searching for some hint of thawing in his formidable reserve, however slight. She couldn’t find one. His lips were compressed, and his brown eyes were staring straight ahead. He could have been alone in the car for all the notice he was taking of her.

In just eight days she would have worked out her notice and she’d have to leave. Leave and never see him again. Panic filled her, but she refused to even acknowledge it. There was no point. One thing her miserable childhood had taught her, and taught her well, was never to rail against the Fates. It did no good. The Fates simply didn’t give a damn. Either that or they had it in for her personally. And after this latest turn of events, she was beginning to wonder.

She chewed on her lip in impotent frustration. It was all so unfair. She hadn’t done anything except to briefly think that Bill Forester might be someone special. It hadn’t taken her very long to realize she was wrong. To figure out that he was an egomaniac who had exactly two interests in life. Himself and the pursuit of pleasure.