Читать книгу Hired Husband - Rebecca Brandewyne - Страница 13

I t was after dark when Nick Valkov pulled into the driveway of his large, elegant house situated on one of the beautiful lakes beyond Minneapolis’s city limits. Pressing the button of the remote control to open one of the three doors, he parked his Mercedes-Benz in the garage. Then he went inside, taking his attaché with him. It contained paperwork from the office, along with his mail, which he had retrieved a few moments ago from his mailbox.

In the great room, whose floor-to-ceiling windows provided a panoramic view of the lake beyond, Nick stripped off his heavy wool topcoat, leather gloves, suit jacket and tie, carelessly tossing them over a chair. Then he loosened his collar and poured himself a shot of Stolichnaya vodka from the Waterford crystal decanter on the bar. Sipping the drink, he settled into one of the comfortable overstuffed chairs and flipped open his briefcase. Withdrawing his mail, he began to sort through it, pitching to one side what was obviously junk and placing the rest into a pile.

It was when he came to an envelope bearing the return address of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he paused, tearing it open to read the tersely worded letter inside. He was so stunned by its contents that at first he couldn’t believe his eyes. He swore softly, stricken.

“No, this just can’t be right! There must be some mistake somewhere!” he insisted to himself. Both anger and fear roiled inside him as he mentally watched all his hopes, dreams and plans for the future going up in smoke, vanishing as though they had never been.

He had been declared an undesirable alien and was going to be deported from the United States! Sent back to Russia! He was to surrender himself to the nearest INS office, bringing his passport and green card with him. These instructions were followed by stern warnings of the legal measures that would be taken against him if he disobeyed.

Nick was devastated. Although the letter did not precisely come right out and say so, it hinted that he had been identified as a former KGB agent—which wasn’t true in the least. The very idea was ridiculous! He was a chemist—and a damned good one—not a spy! Still, if he were to remain in the United States, he had no doubt that he was, at the very least, facing a protracted, expensive legal battle to prove himself innocent of whatever accusations had been made against him.

The notion of returning to his own country held no appeal whatsoever. Ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia had been in a state of political turmoil. Nick did miss his homeland—which was why Minnesota, with all its wintry frozen lakes and snowy countryside—had drawn him to settle in the Twin Cities area. But he did not in the least long for the constant upheaval born of the ideological struggles of Russia’s government officials.

Reaching for the telephone, Nick picked up the receiver and punched in the number of Kate Fortune’s private line at the office. He let the telephone ring endlessly, but there was no response, so he finally tried her at home. When she answered, he spoke, relieved to have caught her.

“Kate? It’s Nick Valkov. I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but something important has come up, which I thought you would want to know about right away. Is this a good time to talk—or do you have plans for the evening?”

“Actually, Sterling and I were just about to have a quiet dinner here at home, but if necessary, I can have the housekeeper set it back for a while.

“Hold on a minute, Nick,” she continued briskly, “while I let Sterling know, so he can give instructions to Mrs. Brant.” She placed her hand over the receiver to muffle the sound of her calling out to Sterling. Then she spoke to Nick again. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s up?”

He explained about the letter from the INS, finishing with, “Needless to say, I’m very upset about all this, Kate—not to mention just utterly baffled. I simply can’t imagine where the INS might have got the idea that I was a former KGB agent, for heaven’s sake! Of course, I did do chemical research and development for the government—but it was never anything of a sensitive nature. I was then and still am staunchly against chemical warfare, and I have never assisted nor would I ever assist any government in developing anything of that sort. Even so, I suppose it’s possible somebody’s got the mistaken notion that I aided and abetted my homeland in that capacity and somehow confused my work with some secretive KGB operation.

“At any rate, because of my involvement with Fabulous Face and its importance to you, I thought I’d better let you know about all this immediately, Kate.” Nick sighed heavily as, reaching for his discarded suit jacket, he withdrew a pack of Player’s cigarettes from the inside pocket. Shaking one out, he lit up, inhaling deeply, then blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.

“I thought you were going to quit smoking,” Kate scolded like a mother hen as she heard the sound of his exhaled breath.

“Well, I was. I mean…I am. But damn it, Kate! This news from the INS has put me under a real strain. I don’t want to go back to Russia—and I certainly don’t want to lose my position at Fortune Cosmetics because I’m so involved in a legal battle that I can’t do my job!”

“You don’t need to worry about that, Nick. We’re so close now to completing my secret youth formula that you can be assured I don’t intend to let you escape from Fortune Cosmetics. We’ll just have to find some way of circumventing the INS, that’s all.

“Sterling!” Kate called, one hand muffling the receiver again. “Pick up the extension, so you can get in on this discussion. The INS thinks Nick’s a former KGB agent, and they’re attempting to deport him—and I’m not going to lose my foremost chemist. Not only is he too valuable to the company, but I just can’t let him get away with all that knowledge he’s got in his head about Fabulous Face,” Kate declared, chuckling, removing her hand from the receiver. “Some foreign government might grab him and steal my secret youth formula, turn it into an aging cream instead. Then women everywhere would find their skin wrinkling up rather than smoothing out—and that would start World War Three!”

Despite himself, Nick couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s right, Kate,” he agreed. “It’s all a fiendish master plot. That’s why I don’t have a wife or even a steady girlfriend. I plan to be one of the lucky men who survives, who isn’t done in by a thoroughly enraged woman.”

“But of course, that’s precisely what you need, Nick.” Sterling spoke from the extension he had picked up to join in the conversation. “Not an enraged woman, but a wife, I mean. That would be the solution to all your problems.”

“A wife?” Nick exclaimed, dismayed. “Now, why would I want one of those, Sterling?”

“Because even if you were a former KGB agent, if you were married to an American citizen, the INS couldn’t do anything to you. You’d be in this country legally, and you wouldn’t need a green card, so they couldn’t deport you. That’s the law,” the attorney elucidated.

“So…what? I’m supposed to just pick some woman off the street and ask her to marry me?” Nick gibed. “Sterling, you surely can’t imagine that the INS is going to believe that upon receipt of their letter, I just suddenly fell in love and found a wife. They’ll know it’s a setup.”

“I agree,” Kate said, the wheels of her sharp mind churning furiously. “That’s why we’ll need to go about this very carefully and keep it as quiet as possible—keep it all in the family, so to speak.”

“Kate, what are you thinking?” Sterling queried suspiciously. He had known her for so many years that he was well aware of how her mind worked, so even as he asked the question, he had some inkling of where she was headed.

“I’m thinking that I have several beautiful granddaughters, many of whom are single—and that at least two of them, Caroline and Allison, work for Fortune Cosmetics, besides. Now, Allison is extremely high profile, so she isn’t a good choice at all. But Caroline…Caroline has always been very publicity shy. She is, as you both know, one of the movers and shakers behind the scenes of the Fortune empire, vice president of marketing at Fortune Cosmetics—and intimately involved in the development of Fabulous Face. She’s not married. And it didn’t seem to me this morning that you were too averse to her, Nick.”

Nick didn’t know what to say. He felt as though he were dreaming. But shaking his head to clear it didn’t cause him suddenly to wake up in his bed. The idea that he might marry Caroline Fortune—with Kate’s blessing—seemed so fantastic as to be unreal.

Today was by no means the first time he had ever noticed Caroline. But just as she had this morning, she had always rejected the tentative overtures he had made to her in the past, shutting him down cold.

In the corridors of the Fortune Cosmetics building, she was known behind her back as the Ice Queen. She represented a challenge to every man at the company. But since her disastrous affair with Paul Andersen, she had let no man get close to her.

“Nick.” Kate’s voice startled him from his reverie. “You’re not saying anything. Do you find the idea of marrying my granddaughter Caroline so objectionable, then, that you can’t bring yourself to tell me, for fear of offending me?”

He cleared his throat, took another long drag from his cigarette. “No, it’s…ah…not that at all, Kate. Among other things, Caroline is quite lovely, creative and intelligent—and most men would consider themselves lucky to have her. But…well, her past relationship with Paul Andersen is pretty common knowledge at Fortune Cosmetics, as is the fact that ever since then, she’s held men at arm’s length. So I just simply can’t imagine that she would agree to this wild scheme of yours.”

“Well, we won’t know until we ask her. What’s important at the moment is whether you’re willing to consider it, Nick. To paraphrase your own words about Caroline, you’re a handsome, creative, intelligent man—and most women would consider themselves lucky to have you. But from what I hear, you pretty much play the field. And of course, that will no longer be an option for you if you marry my granddaughter.” Kate’s pleasant but firm tone made it plain that she would expect Nick to treat Caroline with every respect and consideration due her as his wife, even though theirs would be a marriage of convenience rather than one born of love.

“Of course, if I agreed to marry Caroline, I would do so with every intention of settling down and doing all that’s right and expected, Kate.” Nick was indignant that his employer might have thought otherwise. “I just don’t know if this is such a good idea, that’s all. Caroline and I hardly even know each other, for pity’s sake.”

“Well, why don’t you give it some thought, Nick. Sleep on it, and let me know your decision tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I’ll have Sterling start checking into the various legalities of the matter. After all, there’s no point in even considering the idea if the INS is going to be able to declare the marriage a sham and deport you, anyway. I’ll also speak to Jake, let him know what’s happening. The first thing I want you to do when you get into the office tomorrow morning, Nick, is to clear your calendar, so you can meet with Sterling and me, and possibly Jake and Caroline, as well.”

“Fine. That sounds good. I’ll plan on that, then,” Nick replied—although, inwardly, he groaned, thinking that this whole thing had “harebrained scheme” stamped all over it. How could he possibly ask Caroline Fortune to marry him, just to save his life here in the United States? He remembered how frostily she had stared at him this morning, how coolly she had attempted to put him in his place. She would never say yes.

Not in a million years.