Eileen Wilks - The Wrong Wife

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Jaya slid in front of the dresser, slammed the drawer shut and barred Cassie from it with her body. “You are not going to pack until you start making sense, you hear? Even you wouldn’t agree to move in with a man just to help him keep his reputation solid in business. And why did you say annulled instead of divorced?”

“It doesn’t matter, since we aren’t getting either one. At least, not right away.” She tossed the nightgown over her shoulder. Since Jaya was standing in front of the dresser and Mo blocked the closet, and since Cassie didn’t want to tell her friends about Gideon’s one-year trial plan, she turned and headed for the bathroom.

The phone rang. “Get that, will you?” she called, and opened the battered metal tackle box that held her makeup. She could fit in her toothbrush and toothpaste, but not much else. “Damn,” she muttered. She still had to pack her shampoo and conditioner and eye drops and hair spray and first aid cream and curling iron and blow drier and...she put her hand on her stomach. It felt jumpy and unhappy.

“If you’re this nervous,” Mo said from the doorway, “maybe you should rethink what you’re doing.”

“There ’s so much to the business part of marriage,” she said. She’d never before considered the amount of paperwork involved in getting married. “I’ll have to cancel my utilities, change the name on my credit cards and with Social Security.”

He nodded, crossing his arms on his chest and leaning against the door frame. “Then there’s the post office. You’ll need to leave a change of address there, cancel the newspaper and change your magazine subscriptions.”

Cassie bit her lip. She hadn’t even moved in with Gideon, and already she felt as if her life were being swallowed up in his. “It makes sense to move into his place, though,” she told Mo—or maybe herself. “It’s bound to be a lot bigger than mine.”

“Bound to,” he said agreeably.

“It’s probably all black-and-white, though,” she muttered. She did remember Gideon’s fondness for those two noncolors from her one visit to another apartment of his eight years ago. She sighed and turned, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The cherry red nightgown was still draped over her shoulder. Thoughtfully she pulled the bit of silk provocation down and looked at it.

This was one thing, she understood suddenly, that she wouldn’t need. Not yet. She had to keep some part of herself separate while they both adjusted to this marriage. Maybe, she thought with the optimism that was part of her, it wouldn’t have to be for long. Maybe she’d be able to get under his guard, get him to let down his walls quickly once she was actually living with him.

Yes. she needed time. She was desperately vulnerable to him. She needed him to be a bit vulnerable, too, before they made love again.

Or for the first time, as far as he was concerned.

“Hey, Cassie,” Jaya called from the other room. “This guy on the phone wants to know if you want to buy some supplemental accident insurance.”

“Too late,” she called back, flicking the nightgown up over the shower curtain rod. “Fate can’t possibly have another accident in store for me.” Not after yesterday’s head-on collision.

“It’s not too late,” Mo corrected her. “You don’t have to do this, Cassie, if it isn’t what you want.”

She met his eyes and said softly, “Maybe it was too late years ago.”

He held her gaze steadily for a long moment. “Okay,” he said at last, laying his hand on her shoulder. “No more questions, no more pressure. But you know where to come if you need anything, don’t you?”

Her eyes filled. She smiled and nodded.

“Oh, no,” Jaya said as she joined them. “Are you two getting sentimental on me?”

“Cover your eyes,” Mo said equably. “We’re almost finished.” He gave Cassie’s shoulder a last squeeze. “Since you’re determined to do this, I’ll go get that overnight case you always borrow when you visit your mom. You can load some of this stuff in it.” He turned and left.

“You could help me pack, too,” Cassie pointed out to the friend who remained, and started pulling things out of the medicine cabinet. She paused, holding up an odd-looking pile of glued-together seashells that usually sat on the vanity. It somewhat resembled an angel with chunky, gold-tipped wings.

Jaya folded her arms in front of her flat chest. “Help you screw up? I don’t think so.” She noticed what Cassie held and snorted. “I still can’t believe you bought that thing. Artists are supposed to have some sort of standards.”

“Art,” Cassie said loftily, turning the little statue over to inspect it from a different angle, “is about genuine feeling. This is as genuine a piece of cheap tourist kitsch as any I’ve seen.” And the old woman who made and sold the statues had delighted Cassie.

Jaya might have been reading her mind. “That old woman knew a pigeon when she found one.”

“She did, didn’t she?” Cassie smiled, remembering the mixture of shrewdness and humor in eyes cradled in several decades’ worth of wrinkles. But amusement drained out as she considered the present. Wistfully she said, “I can’t quite see this in any place Gideon owns, can you?”

“Cassie.” Jaya’s narrow face was earnest and worried. “Think about what you’re doing, here. Running off and marrying Gideon Wilde is one thing—an impulse, maybe a mistake, but nothing you can’t fix. Moving in with a man who doesn’t want your stuff cluttering up his place is something else entirely.”

Cassie had to smile at Jaya’s unique slant on what was important. “Living together tends to follow marriage. And... I did make promises.”

“Is that why you’re doing this?” Jaya demanded. “Because you said ‘I do’ when some preacher told you to?”

“Maybe,” Cassie admitted. There were other reasons, like the friendship between her brother and Gideon. She didn’t want to see either man lose that, but it would be especially hard on Gideon. Cassie wasn’t sure he had any other friends. “Mostly, though,” she admitted at last, “I’m doing it for me. Because I’ve got a chance at him now, and I’d be a fool to toss that aside just because I’m scared, wouldn’t I?”

“Lord, I don’t know.” Jaya ran an impatient hand through her hair, making the spiky bangs stand up straight. “I don’t—what’s that? It sounds like a truck.”

Oh, Lord. “The movers.” Still carrying the little shell angel, Cassie hurried out of the bathroom and looked out one of the windows.

Sure enough, in the driveway below, a man with a droopy mustache and a cigar was climbing down from the passenger side of a big, orange moving van. Cassie watched, paralyzed, as the door on the driver’s side swung open and a skinny man in a red shirt stepped down.

They were here. They were going to pack up her things and put them away somewhere. Her fingers dug into the edges of the shells hard enough to hurt, but she didn’t notice as she looked wildly around the room. What should she take with her? What had to be left behind?

She felt Jaya’s hand on her shoulder. “You want me to get rid of them?” her friend asked.

Cassie looked down at the awkward angel, biting her lip and thinking about Gideon’s apartment. Not his current apartment. He’d been living at an address not quite as expensive, not quite as exclusive, when she’d humiliated herself so thoroughly on the night of her twentieth birthday. But she remembered very clearly the white carpet, silvery gray couches and black lacquered tables. Just like she remembered the pale blond hair of the woman who’d been in his apartment.

That hair, the subtle shade of ripened wheat, had been the only color in the room.