Raye Morgan - Wife By Contract

Joe was still pondering the letter, his blue eyes frowning, but his expression changed as he looked up to see Chynna and Rusty coming toward him. His gaze narrowed appreciatively as he watched her neat form walking briskly through the room. No, it still didn’t make sense. If you really could get something like this from a catalog, the mail would be swamped with orders. How did his brother get so lucky?

She stopped before him, tugging on her son’s arm to pull him out from behind her. “Rusty tells me he bit you,” she said, going right to the point. “He wants to apologize.”

“Oh, yeah.” He’d forgotten about that. He held out his hand and looked at it. The bite marks were still quite distinct, though the skin hadn’t broken. Shrugging, he smiled at the freckle-faced boy. “This is nothing. Baby bites. You want to see where my brother bit me when he was about ten?” He pushed back his sleeve and revealed a long, jagged scar on his bicep. “Now, that’s what I call a bite,” he said rather proudly. “It tore flesh open. The traveling nurse had to be flown in to give me stitches.”

Rusty stared at him with wide eyes, but if Joe had been harboring any thoughts of bringing the boy closer with his old war stories, he realized he wasn’t going to win over the kid this way. Instead of laughing or looking impressed, Rusty looked terrified.

Joe looked into those pained eyes and shrugged. What the hell, he was no good with kids. Never had been. And there was hardly any point in getting close to a boy he was never going to see again after...

Now, that was just the point, he thought as he rolled his sleeve back down. After what? How long was he staying and how close a relationship were they going to be forced into? He glanced into Chynna’s lovely face. It didn’t tell him a thing.

“We need to talk,” he said evenly.

She nodded. “Of course,” she said crisply. “But I need to feed my children. They haven’t had anything since midmorning. I’ll fix something for all of us and put them down for a nap, and then we can go over the ground rules.”

His mouth relaxed into a lopsided grin. Her phrasing struck him as amusing. “The ground rules?” he repeated. “I only want a discussion, not a sparring session.”

She tossed her head back and gave him a cocky smile that didn’t quite warm her eyes. “You may just get both,” she told him as she turned away. “Be prepared.”

He gave her a Boy Scout salute, but she didn’t see it. She was already halfway out of the room, Rusty clinging to her and glancing back as though afraid Joe might be following them.

Watching him, seeing the apprehension in his eyes, Joe winced, thinking of how the boy would deal with Greg. His brother wasn’t known for compassion or tact. In fact, he’d always considered him a sort of goofy recluse, sort of a mountain man with no need for real human companionship. To think of him ordering up a woman came as something of a shock. And knowing his brother, to have the woman show up with two kids in tow would not go over awfully well. She would be lucky to get out of here before Greg got back.

But where was Greg, anyway? Why wasn’t he here to greet his bride-to-be?

Joe turned and gave the room another quick examination. The place was surprisingly clean, though there was clutter here and there. He’d noticed dishes in the sink, but the food hadn’t been on them long. Two long strides brought him to the storage-room closet, and opening it, he discovered that his brother had taken camping gear and cooking equipment. If he’d left that morning, it looked as if he wouldn’t be back for a few days.

Joe swore softly and shook his head. “In the meantime, what am I supposed to do with your girlfriend, you idiot?” he murmured.

But there was no reply that made any sense at all.

He heard Chynna’s steps and turned to meet her as she came through the doorway into the hall.

“We’re almost ready,” she told him, looking cool and efficient. “I’d like to put them down for naps right after they eat. Which bedroom may I use?”

“Bedroom?” She was obviously planning to stay, and he was going to have to decide what he was prepared to do to get her back on a plane to wherever it was she’d said she came from. “Uh...let me take a look.”

There were three bedrooms in the house. The large one his parents had used still held a four-poster double bed. Next to it was what his mother had always called the green room, a place set up specifically for guests, with the best bed and nicest furniture. He assumed the bedroom at the end of the hall, which he’d shared with Greg, was still set up with twin beds.

He looked into the master bedroom and gestured toward the old-fashioned bed. “They could sleep here,” he said.

She looked around him and nodded. “That would be fine,” she said quietly. “Now, where do I sleep?”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Looking down, he met her gaze, and something in the spark he saw in her eyes set him back on his heels. After all, she thought he was Greg. She thought they were more or less engaged. Funny. He’d never been this close to matrimony before. It felt spooky, and he wasn’t real clear on just what she expected of him.

There was only one way to find out. He would have to be blunt. “You’re not thinking about doing any sleeping together or anything like that, are you?” he asked, trying for a light, humorous tone, but ending up glancing at her suspiciously.

She grinned at him, and in that moment, he knew he’d fallen in a trap and he’d been sucker punched. “Of course not,” she said primly. “Not until we’re married.” She turned and led the way down the hall. “How about this room?” she asked, nudging open the door to the middle bedroom. “Who sleeps in here?”

“I guess you will,” he told her grudgingly. “At least for tonight. You might as well bring your things in.”

“Great.” She smiled at him. “I’ll unpack as soon as we finish our meal.”

He wanted to point out that unpacking would be premature, but she made her way back toward the kitchen before he got the chance, and he shook his head instead, angry with himself for not making it clear right away.

“You’re not staying here,” he said aloud, but there was no one there to hear him.

Kids were weird. That was the conclusion Joe came to after sitting down to a meal with two of them. The little girl, Kimmie, as they seemed to call her, had a hard time eating, seeing as how she refused to take her thumb out of her mouth. And Rusty ate quickly, glancing up at Joe as though he were afraid the large man would grab his food right off his plate if he didn’t watch him carefully. Chynna tried hard to get a pleasant conversation going, but it was no use. For that, they needed a certain level of comfort and trust that just wasn’t there.

“The countryside around here certainly is beautiful,” Chynna remarked. “Flying in, you could almost see the curve of the earth. The forests look like they could go on forever.”

Joe grunted, but his attention was diverted by the sight of Rusty’s chipmunk cheeks bulging with food. Was he expecting a long, hard winter? Or just making up for lost time? Hard to tell.

“I imagine you’re snowed in here most of the winter,” she went on. “It doesn’t look like snowplows would get out this way.”

“Uh...no,” he muttered, distracted as Kimmie, thumb firmly in place in her mouth, picked up a pea with her spare hand and calmly smashed it against her nose. He grimaced and looked up at Chynna, wondering where she stood on the playing-with-your-food issue and why she wasn’t doing something to stop the child.

“Should she...?” he began.

He gestured toward the little girl, but Chynna was already cleaning the smashed vegetable off her daughter’s nose with a napkin, making the move as though it were something she did every day, and going right on.