Christine Rimmer - The Millionaire She Married

Jenna couldn’t sit still for this. She shot to her feet. “This is just like you, Mack,” she said. “You appear out of nowhere after all these years and you immediately tell me how to live my life. Well, I want those papers you promised me, Mack. And I want them now.”

Mack answered quietly. “You’ll get those papers. But not right this minute.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean I want a little time with you first.”

Oh, sweet Lord, she did not like the sound of this. She strove mightily for calm. “Time for what?”

Mack studied her before he spoke. “We had something good once. And I admit it was mostly my fault that we lost it. I want some time to try to understand what went wrong.” He paused and looked her in the eyes. “You’ll have your papers. After you spend two weeks alone with me.”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my dear friend Georgia Bockoven.

Thank you for the times you listened, the useful advice and the beautiful books you write.

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been an actress, a sales clerk, a janitor, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Those who know her best withhold comment when she makes such claims; they are grateful that she’s at last found steady work. Christine is grateful, too—not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves who loves her right back and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

The shop, like the steep, rather narrow street it stood on, had a feel of times past about it. The oyster-white sign over the door read Linen and Lace in flowing script. Vines and morning glories twined and trailed in and out of the lettering.

Mack McGarrity stood beneath a striped awning, his hands fisted in his pockets, staring in the window to the left of the shop’s entrance. Beyond the glass was a brass canopy bed. The bed was draped with lacy white curtains, covered in filmy white linens and piled with embroidered white pillows.

Next to the bed, on the left, stood a white dresser bearing a white pitcher and bowl. On the right, a white nightstand, with a vase of white roses and a white-shaded lamp. White lacy nightgowns, each one a little different from the next, had been tossed in an artful tangle across the pillows and the filmy bedcovers, as if the lady who owned them all couldn’t make up her mind which to wear.

Mack smiled to himself. The fists stuck in his pockets relaxed a little.

On their wedding night Jenna had worn a nightgown like one of those thrown across that white bed—an almost transparent gown, with lace at the collar and down the front. And roses, little pink ones, embroidered around the tiny pearly buttons.

Those buttons had given him trouble. They were so damn small. And he had been nervous, though he’d tried not to show it.

But Jenna had known.

And she’d laughed, that soft, teasing laugh of hers. “It’s not as if it’s our first time,” she’d whispered.

“It is the first time. My first time…with my wife.” His voice had been gruff, he remembered, gruff with emotions he’d never allowed anyone but Jenna to see….

Mack turned from the window. He stared across the street, at a store that sold hand-painted furniture. A man and a woman stood at the display window there, admiring a tall bureau decorated with a woodland scene. Mack watched them, not really seeing them, until they disappeared inside.

Then, rather abruptly, he turned back to the shop called Linen and Lace. Two determined steps later, he reached the glass-fronted door. He took the handle and pulled it open.

The scent of the place hit him first—floral, sweet but not too sweet. An undertone of tartness. And something spicy, too. Like cinnamon. It didn’t smell like Jenna, exactly. But it reminded him of her. Sweet and just a little spicy.

He’d barely started to smile at the thought when he realized he’d tripped the buzzer that would warn her she had another customer. She turned and saw him just as he spotted her.

When the buzzer rang, Jenna glanced toward the door out of habit, ready to send her new customer a swift, be-right-with-you smile.

The smile died unborn on her lips.

It was Mack.

Mack.

Her ex-husband. Here. In her shop.

After all these years.

It couldn’t be.

But it was. Definitely.

Mack.

Her throat closed up on itself. She gulped to keep from gasping.

He looked…terrific. Older, yes. And somehow more relaxed. But in a deep and fundamental way, the same.

He was staring straight at her through those eyes she remembered much too well. Not quite blue and not quite gray, like a sky caught between sunshine and cloudiness.

He smiled at her—that beautiful, half ironic, half shy smile, the one that had dropped her in her tracks nine years before.

He’d lived in an apartment down the hall from her. And she had knocked on his door to tell him that she knew very well he’d been feeding her cat.

When he answered, he actually held Byron in his arms. That sleek midnight-black traitor had the nerve to purr as if he belonged there.

“I’ll have you know, that’s my cat,” she’d informed him, doing her best to sound bold.

He had smiled, just the way he was smiling at her now—like the sun coming out on a gray, chilly day. She’d felt the warmth, a warmth that reached down inside her and then started to spread.

“Come on in,” he had suggested as he stroked her cat. “We’ll talk about it.”

It had never even occurred to her to say no.

And now, all these years later, just the sight of him made her feel as if something inside her was melting. Her knees wanted to wobble; her pulse knocked in her ears.

Along with the weakness, the unconscionable excitement, she also knew dread.

Why had he come here?

When she had called him three days before, she’d asked one thing of him—made one simple, very clear request. He had said that he would take care of it.

Did his sudden appearance in her shop mean that he had changed his mind?

“Er…miss? Are you all right?”

Jenna snapped her head around and forced a brilliant smile for her customer. “I am fine. Where were we?” She glanced down at the stack of brightly colored linens she clutched in her arms. “Ah, of course. I remember. And I do understand. Not everyone loves white. That’s why I wanted you to see these. They’re by an English designer I especially like. Summer Garden is the name of this pattern. Beautiful, isn’t it? The colors are so vivid, different intensities of green and blue, with the flowers like splashes of pink and yellow and red.” She held out the neatly folded pile of sheets. “Feel.”