Читать книгу Married by Mistake - Abby Gaines - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

THAT TOUCH OF HIS THUMB seemed to wipe away Casey’s mirth. Her gray eyes widened and her teeth caught her bottom lip. After the tiniest of hesitations she swayed against him.

This time, there was no tentative overture on his part—and no audience to inhibit the eager parting of her lips to admit him.

Kissing her, Adam told himself as he claimed her mouth, was a reaction to the stress of the past twenty-four hours.

Then her tongue met his with a fervor that matched his own, she wound her arms around his neck and he gave up trying to justify his actions. Gave himself up to the sensual pleasure of kissing Casey, to the press of her body against his, to his own undeniable physical reaction. He cupped her firm derriere, pulling her closer. With a murmur of surprise, she arched into him.

If he didn’t stop now, they’d be in danger of complicating this disaster beyond repair.

Tearing his mouth from hers took a degree of willpower he didn’t ever recall needing with a woman. When at last they stood apart, Adam ran a hand through his hair as if that might erase the memory of her touch there. He made a conscious effort to slow his breathing. Casey’s cheeks were flushed, her lips still parted in what looked to him like invitation.

“Adam.” Breathlessness made her breasts rise and fall, her voice husky. “You have got to stop doing that.”

Okay, maybe not invitation.

She turned away, gazed with studied casualness at a framed photograph on the wall, a shot of downtown Memphis at night. “Not that it wasn’t nice,” she said. “But…you know.”

Yes, he knew it was a dumb idea to get distracted from fixing this catastrophe. But she’d enjoyed that kiss as much as he had, so he was damned if he was going to apologize.

At the sound of rustling, they turned to the door. A piece of paper had been slid underneath.

Adam picked it up and scanned it. “It’s a message from Sam. He’s at home and ready to take my call.” He’d instructed the hotel reception not to put any calls through to their suite. He reached for the phone on the sideboard next to the dining table and started dialing.

Casey took the opportunity to move as far away from him as she could. She plunked herself on the blue-and-gold-striped couch, grabbed up the room service menu from the coffee table and held it open so Adam couldn’t see her face. Her red face.

Good grief, she’d acted like a sex-starved wanton, wrapping herself around him that way. She’d be the first to admit that her sex life with Joe had been rather lackluster the past few years—and nonexistent for nearly a year—but that was no excuse to throw herself at the first man she met. Even if he was her husband.

From behind the menu, she listened shamelessly to Adam’s side of the conversation with Sam. Which didn’t tell her much; he was a man of few words. When he’d finished, he dropped the receiver back into its cradle. He muttered something under his breath that Casey didn’t quite hear, but it didn’t sound like, “Yippee, we got our annulment.”

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

He came to the couch, stood over her with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, his eyebrows drawn together. “Getting an annulment will be difficult.”

Casey gulped. “How difficult?”

“They’re something of a rarity in Tennessee. There’s no statutory basis for annulment here. Each case has to be argued on common law principles.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he said, “there’s no official annulment process. My lawyer will put a case together and argue it before a judge. If the judge agrees, we get our annulment.”

“And if the judge doesn’t agree?”

“We get a divorce.”

“But I don’t want to be divorced,” Casey protested.

“Right now, I’d rather be divorced than married,” he said, with a flat finality that prickled the back of her neck. He sat down on the couch opposite, saving her the strain of looking up at him. “Sam tells me he can make a good case for annulment. Nonconsummation of the marriage is a definite plus. Even stronger is the fact we didn’t know it was a real wedding. Still, some of those old judges take marriage pretty seriously.” Cynicism twisted his mouth. “Sam wants to make sure he gets a sympathetic judge, and that might take up to a month.”

“So we’ll be married for a month,” Casey said, “and then it’ll be as if it never happened.”

“Exactly.”

“Everything will be just the same as before.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nothing will have changed. Nothing.”

“Yes,” Adam said impatiently. Didn’t she understand plain English?

“No,” she said.

Adam’s head hurt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not going back to Parkvale. I’m done with that place.”

“You can go wherever you like,” he said. The sooner the better.

“They’ll make me go back.” Her eyes flickered toward the door.

He’d married a paranoiac.

She stood and paced to the window. There was something hunted about the way she put her palms against the glass. Staring out into the distance, she said desperately, “Can’t we—can’t we just stay married?”

A delusional paranoiac.

Keep her calm, Adam told himself. Talk up the joys of a future on her own, then get Sam here fast with some kind of agreement for her to sign, relinquishing all claim on me.

She turned around, perched that derriere he’d enjoyed caressing—that was before I knew she was nuts—on the windowsill. “Stop looking like I’m about to jump you.” She folded her arms under her breasts. “I didn’t mean it about staying married. Even if the past twenty-four hours hadn’t totally turned me off wedded bliss, you’re not my type.”

He didn’t believe that for a second, not after the way she’d kissed him. He started in on the keep-her-calm stuff. “No one can make you go anywhere,” he soothed. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“You don’t know my family,” she said gloomily. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Adam. “Your in-laws.”

His instantaneous recoil made her giggle.

“They’re not that bad,” she said. “I’ve just kind of overdosed on them. I’ve looked after Dad—and Karen and Mike, my sister and brother—since Mom died when I was twelve. I’m the oldest, so I ended up taking care of the house, the cooking, everything.”

“Very commendable,” Adam said politely.

She looked dubious. “It wasn’t like I had a choice. They needed me. Not that I minded,” she said hastily. “I love them to bits.”

“You don’t have to go back just because you didn’t marry Joe.”

“I’m a pushover,” she said with the confessional air of someone about to embark on a twelve-step program. “When I tried to leave home and go to college, Dad convinced me the others needed me while they were still in high school. Then I was all set to leave after Mike graduated, but Dad got injured in an accident at work. He was in the hospital for six months, in a wheelchair for a year. He’s better now, but he needed a lot of help, and I was the logical candidate.”

“You could have left once he was better.”

She leaned her head back against the window. “Like I said, I’m a pushover. Dad’s become dependent on me. For his sake, he needs to learn to look after himself again. If I’d married Joe and moved away like we planned, Dad wouldn’t have a choice. Now he’ll insist I go back, and Karen will be right there with him, putting in her two cents’ worth.”

“Does she still live at home?”

Casey shook her head. “She was a lawyer in Dallas until she had a baby a few months ago. But she just separated from her husband, and she’s moving home to Parkvale. She wants to go back to work and leave Rosie with me. She says she wouldn’t trust a nanny.”

Casey didn’t tell Adam how Karen’s letter had filled her with equal parts longing and dread. Dread because once again her plan to leave home would be thwarted. But even greater, and unexpected, had been Casey’s longing to lavish all her maternal love on her sister’s baby—love that might otherwise go unused.

Adam walked over to the window. He stood so close to her she could have reached out and touched him. “Just tell them no.”

“Haven’t you ever said yes to someone when you didn’t want to?” she demanded.

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to do,” he said starkly.

She blinked. “Well, that’s nice for you. But I just can’t say no to all that…that—”

“Emotional blackmail?” he suggested.

Casey nodded. Maybe, despite his uncompromising claim, he did understand. Back when Mom died, Casey had been the only one who could do what had to be done. She’d done so without knowing it would become a trap of her own making, a mutual dependence none of them could escape. Because being needed had a seductive appeal all its own. Which made not being needed tantamount to a withdrawal of love.

It was screwy, but somehow she’d fallen into that way of thinking.

Even her relationship with Joe had been built on need and dependence. Joe’s mom had left him when he was a kid. He needed a woman who would stick with him forever. He didn’t mind that Casey might never have a baby of her own, if the doctors were right; Joe would’ve been happy not to share her with a child. Or so she had thought.

“A couple of months ago, I won a writing contest with part of a young adult novel I’m writing,” she told Adam. “The editor who judged it wants to see the whole book. She’s speaking at a conference in Dallas in August. I arranged to meet her there and give her my manuscript.” She sighed. “If I go home, I’ll never finish it. My family sees my writing as a hobby, and every volunteer organization in Parkvale has me down as a soft touch.”

To Adam, writing a book sounded like another girlish fantasy. It ranked right up there with being adored. She needed to stop dreaming and start doing something that would halt the emotional blackmail. Like Adam was. Though in his case, the blackmail was as physical as it was emotional.

And in his case, blackmail wouldn’t work. He’d meant it when he told Casey he didn’t do anything he didn’t want to. That was why his dad had gone to such extreme lengths when he’d made his will, a last-ditch attempt to make Adam do what his father wanted.

It was ironic that despite the differences between them, he and Casey were both struggling with pressure from their families. Ironic that if their marriage had been real, it would have solved both their problems….

The idea burst into blazing, clamoring life.

“You’re right,” he said. “We should stay married.”

“What?” She slipped off the windowsill, grabbing for the curtain tieback to steady herself. “I’m sure you’re very nice—” she didn’t sound at all sure, he noticed “—but I’m not desperate enough to stay married to a stranger.”

His eyes narrowed. “You were desperate enough to lie to your fiancé and marry him on a reality-TV show.”

“I was bringing the wedding forward,” she said. “We were engaged.”

“And we—” with a wave of his hand he indicated the two of them “—are married.” He paced between the window and the couch as he thought about how they could make this work. “I don’t mean we’d be married for real. We’d just stay together until the annulment comes through. For a month, we pretend we’re truly husband and wife. In public,” he added hastily.

“I can see that might help me,” she admitted. “But how does it help you?”

Adam figured he’d have to tell her enough to convince her. “When my father died, he left me his majority share of Carmichael Broadcasting. His will stipulated that if I’m not married—or as he put it, in a marriage of a lasting and committed nature—when I’m thirty, my share passes to my cousin Henry.”

“Is that legal, demanding that someone be married in order to inherit?”

Adam shrugged as he leaned against the back of the couch. “No. At least Sam says it’s not. But the will stands until we make a case in court to prove it’s invalid. Sam and I are working on that now. But Henry and his mother, my aunt Anna May, have their lawyers working to prove the will is legal. They’re hoping Henry will inherit. They know I’d never get married just to please my father.”

“Sounds like your dad was a real romantic,” Casey said. She caught a glint of irritation in Adam’s eyes.

“Dad had reason to believe I was anti-marriage. I admit that when he died, getting married was the last thing on my mind. But I assumed I’d find someone suitable over the next few years.”

Someone suitable? Did he mean someone he loved? “But you didn’t,” she guessed.

“I was wrong.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I turn thirty next month. If the will’s ruled legal, I’ll have until I turn thirty-one to find a wife. My stepmother’s not so confident we can have it overturned. She’d like me to get married, so that I win either way. She’s spent the past few months arranging accidental introductions to the daughters of her friends. She’s organizing a party for my birthday, and I know she’s planning on inviting practically every woman in Memphis. I don’t have time for this crap—I have a business to run and a lawsuit to fight. But with Eloise, my life is turning into one long bridefest.” He poured loathing into the word.

“Hey,” Casey protested. “This sounds just like my family. If you don’t do anything you don’t want to, how come you don’t just tell Eloise to take a hike?”

“I wish I could,” Adam said with feeling. “Before Dad died, he asked me to take care of her. I want to honor his memory, to keep my promise. But she makes it damn hard.”

“Were she and your father close?”

Anger flickered in his eyes, then vanished. “You could say my father died for her.” The look he gave Casey said, Don’t ask.

Briefly, she considered asking anyway. But that might be pushing her luck—and she still didn’t understand why Adam wanted to pretend their marriage was genuine. She abandoned her position at the window to return to the couch. “So you want to beat your aunt’s lawsuit and you want to escape Eloise’s bridefest.” She spoke the word with relish, and he glared.

“If I’m married, she’ll have to back off. No more introductions, no birthday party. Anna May and Henry will think they’ve lost the battle because I’ve already met the will’s conditions. By the time the annulment comes through and they realize they were wrong, Sam and I will have built a compelling case against the will.”

Adam spread his hands, palms up, as if to say this was unarguable logic. “So what say we buy ourselves some time? A month is long enough for me to deter Eloise and get my legal battle under control. Is it enough for your sister and your father to sort out their problems? You can use the computer at my place to work on your book, since you’ll have nothing else to do.”

He smiled and Casey’s danger sensors went on alert. This man was used to getting what he wanted, and she suspected he might ride roughshod over others to get it.