Married by Mistake Page 10

  “Good,” he said with feeling.

  Casey set the swing in motion again. Then Adam said, “How was your lunch with Brodie-Ann?”

  “Interesting.” She took a long swallow of wine. “She brought Joe along.”

  Adam stiffened. “The Joe who dumped you on TV?”

  “Ouch,” she said in mild protest. “Yes, that Joe.”

  Adam stopped the swing once more and put his glass on the table. He’d figured this would happen, just not so soon. A guy wouldn’t let Casey go and not regret it. “I suppose he asked you to go back to him.” Adam kept his voice controlled, though he wanted to shout. Dammit, he never shouted.

  “How did you know?” Casey ran a finger down the condensation on the outside of her wineglass. She wouldn’t meet his eyes; she must have decided to go back to Joe.

  “It’s obvious,” he said contemptuously. “It was only a matter of time before Joe finally realized life was a lot harder without you to look after him.”

  “You think he can’t love me for who I am?” She’d taken his words as an insult, but Adam was too riled to pander to her hurt feelings.

  “You mean, he loves you so much he was happy to humiliate you in front of millions of people?”

  Casey put her glass down. She made a face, as if her wine suddenly tasted sour. “Don’t be horrible.”

  Since that abortive lunch at the Peabody, Adam had worked late at the office to stay out of Casey’s way. He’d felt closer to her that Sunday than he was comfortable with, and it made sense to put some space between them. But even knowing she was at home and that he would see her in the evening made a difference to his days. That he would lose that before he was ready to, and that Joe would have her back, sent a surge of fury through him.

  “I’ll bet he knew just the right words to have you running back into his arms,” Adam sneered. “Did he tell you he adores you?”

  “More or less,” Casey admitted. “He was very sweet.”

  “I don’t believe this.” The swing rocked violently as he stood up. “I shouldn’t have let you see Brodie-Ann on your own. I knew something like this would—”

  Casey was on her feet now, too. “You don’t get to let me or not let me do anything, you jerk. I’ll decide who I see, I’ll decide who my friends are, and I’ll decide if I should go back to Joe or not.” She was pale with anger, and it made her lips look redder, softer. Had she kissed Joe when she told him she was going back to him?

  “You don’t make decisions!” Adam roared. So much for never shouting. “You’re a pushover, remember? You let people manipulate you with their neediness and their sweet-talking and their adoring. Just don’t blame me when you’re back in that rut you used to call a life.”

  Her cheeks flamed with anger, and she clenched her fists at her sides. “I told Joe it was over!” she shouted back. “I told him I wanted more than he could offer. I told him no.”

  She took the wind out of Adam’s sails. He gripped the railing, breathing hard. “Why the hell didn’t you say so?”

  “You didn’t ask, you just assumed.” She flounced past him, and he reached out and grabbed her by the elbow.

  “What else would I think when you’re such a pushover? You’d still be in Parkvale with your sister if I hadn’t dragged you out of there the other week.”

  “I learned something that day,” she said. “You showed me how to say no, and today I did it for myself.”

  He grinned at the pride in her voice—and deliberately shut out the relief that made him almost light-headed. “That’s my girl.”

  “I did it for me, not for you,” she said, annoyed.

  “Of course.” His grin widened. “Sorry I yelled.”

  She smiled back. “One good thing about you, there’s no chance of you manipulating me with sweet talk and neediness and adoring.” She sat back down on the swing, and Adam did the same.

  “Do you realize we just had our first fight?” Casey turned to look at him and found him closer than she’d thought, his face just inches from hers.

  “Do you realize,” he parroted, “that your new friend next door probably heard every word of it?”

  Casey clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “You see,” Adam said in a superior tone, “if you’d never met him, it wouldn’t bother you. Now you’ve opened a can of worms, and it’s your problem, darling.”

  “Likening Bob Harvey to a can of worms is very rude.”

  Adam slung an arm over her shoulders. It was casual but nice. “So how do you feel about Joe? It can’t have been easy.”

  She leaned into him, just the tiniest bit. “It was pretty awful. But now I feel...free.”

  “You’re a married woman,” he teased. His hand tightened on her shoulder, and a tingling warmth spread down her arm. She looked away from him.

  “Joe’s the only guy I’ve ever dated,” she said, partly to explain to herself why she reacted so strongly to the unfamiliar excitement of Adam’s touch. “I need to learn how to build healthy relationships without getting sucked into that need thing. I guess I should start dating. After our annulment, of course.” She patted his knee in reassurance, and left her hand there a moment longer than she should just because it felt good.

  Adam’s heart stopped. He’d only just gotten over the shock of believing she was going back to Joe, and now she was talking about dating other men.

  His reaction to that news, on top of his overreaction to her lunch with Joe, confirmed that his attraction to Casey was more than physical. He didn’t want her thinking about dating other men while she was still living with him. Which meant he had to decide what he did want.

  Keep her close...but not too close.

  He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger. “You don’t have to wait for the annulment.”

  Her eyes widened. “Our fake marriage won’t be very convincing if I start dating other guys.”

  “You could date me.”

  Casey’s stomach flipped. “Date...you?”

  “I was Memphis’s most eligible bachelor,” he pointed out. “I’m considered quite a catch.”

  She looked at him, at his tall, graceful physique, the strong planes of his face, his intense blue eyes. “I don’t doubt it. So how come you don’t have a girlfriend?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t met anyone suitable in a while.”

  There was that word again. “Suitable?”

  “Someone who wants to make the most of it when we’re together, but doesn’t demand a lot in between times. And who’s happy to say goodbye when it’s over.”

  It sounded as if he dated the way he did everything else. Logically, with decisive intent.

  He smiled, a flash of white teeth. “Like you said, I’m not about to manipulate you or need you.”

  “When we were staying at the Peabody, you warned me there was no chance of a relationship between us.”

  “I said a permanent relationship,” he corrected. “We still have a time limit.”

  “I want to learn how to date,” she said. “What do you want?”

  He ran a finger along her jaw. “Do you need to ask? You’re a beautiful, sexy—” his voice turned husky “—desirable woman.”

  Adam wanted her.

  “What exactly would dating you involve?”

  Her practical question made him smile. “We go out together,” he said. “Out for meals. Sometimes, we stay in together. It’s not much different from what we do already, except there’ll be more of this.” He moved closer, so his lips were an inch from hers. “It won’t hurt a bit,” he promised.

  This kiss was more tender than the others. He started at one corner of her mouth, worked his way to the center, then his tongue teased her lips until she parted them. At his slow, stroking entry she found her whole body clenching, and it didn’t relax until he hauled her against him and deepened the kiss.

  By the time he released her, Casey was shaking. He didn’t look a hundred percent steady himself. He raked a hand through his hair, g
ave her a smile that was part triumphant, part perplexed.

  But his voice was calm when he said, “There’s one other great thing about dating me.”

  She raised an eyebrow and, despite the roiling of her insides, said equally calmly, “Only one?”

  “If we’re trying to convince people we’re happily married, this might just do it.”

  Casey stared straight ahead. As she watched, the sun slipped below the horizon, leaving a glowing pink swath across the sky.

  “So, are we dating?” he asked impatiently. “I like you, you like me. And I don’t believe you would have kissed just anyone like that.”

  “Well, maybe not a guy with bad breath and warts on his nose.”

  “I’m flattered,” Adam said dryly. “I had no idea you were so picky.”

  “I guess,” she said, striving for a casual tone though her stomach tied in knots, “we’re dating.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  ADAM LOOKED ACROSS his desk at the cluster of people filling his office at ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning. They’d arranged themselves in battle lines—Anna May and Henry to his right, Sam and Eloise to the left.

  A faint curl of steam rose from a dish on Adam’s desk. Eloise had brought him some of what she called her famous, fresh-baked cornbread. Famous for its ability to drown any man stupid enough to swim after eating it. The stuff weighed a ton. But it was Eloise’s mama’s secret recipe, and although she had a cook to prepare her meals, Eloise insisted cornbread was her domain. Years ago, Adam had set himself a personal challenge of never eating a bite of the stuff.

  He didn’t plan to deviate from that this morning, despite being warmly disposed to the world in general, thanks to his newly elevated status as Casey’s date.

  Anna May glared at Sam as they waited for Adam to speak. She’d said no lawyers for the meeting, a stipulation that suited Adam. But as always, the minute his stepmother entered the building, Sam found a reason to visit Adam’s office.

  “Well?” Anna May snapped, losing patience.

  “Let me get this straight,” Adam said. “You’re saying that if I promote Henry to joint CEO, give him a bonus equivalent to his first year’s salary and agree to pay out a regular dividend to stockholders, backdated for the past three years, you’ll drop your legal action to prove Dad was mentally incompetent when he made that will.”

  From the encouraging nods Sam was sending his way, Adam gathered he was supposed to see Anna May’s offer as a good sign. An indication that she feared she might lose and was therefore willing to negotiate. But how good could it be, when his aunt’s demands would undermine the financial stability of the business?

  Anna May made a dipping, birdlike movement of her head. Vulture-like, Adam thought. He quashed the uncharitable impulse. Somewhere in his aunt’s psyche lay the key to her attitude, but he was damned if he knew what it was. It was the sort of thing Casey liked to ponder. The sort of thing Adam didn’t have time for.

  Maybe he should try doing it Casey’s way.

  “What made you decide on those particular terms?” he asked Henry.

  “We don’t want to be unreasonable, Adam,” his cousin said apologetically, “but Mom feels—we feel—”

  “It’s the least Henry’s entitled to, according to your father’s original will,” Anna May interrupted.

  Adam and Sam hadn’t known about the earlier will before this morning—Adam’s father hadn’t used Sam for his personal legal work. Anna May had made the most of that, flourishing a copy of the document under their noses. But there was no denying its contents: it divided James Carmichael’s stock holdings in Carmichael Broadcasting equally between Adam and Henry.

  “But is it what you want?” Adam asked Henry. He’d never seen any sign that his cousin had the same kind of passion for the business that he did. He rephrased the question in Casey-speak. “What are your dreams?”

  Henry swallowed nervously. “Actually, I always thought I’d like to—”

  “I don’t know what this new tactic of yours is, Adam, but it won’t work,” Anna May said. “We’ll be asking the court to overturn your father’s will on the grounds that he was mentally unstable when he signed it.”

  So much for the friendly approach. Adam slipped back into his more familiar, driven mode. “The court will find my father was in his right mind when he wrote his last will,” he said, aware of the absurdity of defending a document that he himself planned to challenge, on the basis that his dad couldn’t legally insist Adam get married in order to inherit.

  He saw Eloise watching him, biting her lip, blinking. He wished she wasn’t here, so he could tell Anna May to do her worst. But he figured his aunt had invited Eloise for that very reason. Emotional blackmail. His family was so good at it. Even Dad... When Anna May revealed the contents of the earlier will, Eloise had suggested James had changed it because he’d realized how important his son was to him. Adam would have liked to believe it. But more likely, Dad had seen how much effort Adam was putting into the company, and he’d wanted to be sure that continued.

  Adam wished, as he often did, that his dad hadn’t asked him to take care of Eloise. It meant he couldn’t ignore that his stepmother would be heartbroken to hear her beloved husband labeled crazy in public. But Adam was damned if he was going to cave in a moment before he had to. He turned to his stepmother. “What do you think, Eloise?”

  She swallowed, looked over at Anna May, then back at him. “I never give in to blackmail, Adam dear, and nor should you.”

  What? Adam stared at her, and she inclined her head. He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. “You heard Eloise.”

  Not the least bit flustered, Anna May got to her feet, and Henry did the same. “We’ll see you in court,” she said over her shoulder as she stalked out.

  Eloise left a minute later. Sam watched her go with a kind of hopeless despair. “Such a brave woman,” he murmured.

  For once, Adam had no argument. He pushed the dish of cornbread toward Sam. “Why don’t you take this?”

  “She made it for you.” But the lawyer looked at it hungrily.

  “Take it,” Adam insisted, and Sam didn’t need any further encouragement to drag the dish to his side of the desk.

  “How do you rate Anna May’s chances with the insanity thing?” Adam asked.

  “Less than fifty percent.”

  Not as low as Adam would have liked. “Surely she can’t win on the basis of a couple of stupid remarks I made?”

  “I’m betting she’ll make a big deal out of your father’s failure to notice his accountant stealing money from under his nose,” Sam said. “She’ll try to link that to a loss of mental competence.”

  Which would be even more upsetting for Eloise. Adam rubbed his temples.

  “This marriage of yours...” Sam said thoughtfully.

  “What about it?”

  “Is it going well?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one working on the annulment.”

  Sam waved that away. “I’m asking if you and Casey get along. It seems to me that you do.”

  Adam shifted in his seat. If burning up every time he touched his wife, if craving the feel of her lips under his and being aware of every movement of her legs, her hips, counted as getting along, then Sam was right. Adam suspected dating her definitely counted as getting along.

  “I’m thinking,” Sam said, “that once we beat this insanity thing, the simplest way to deal with Anna May and Henry might be to remove the grounds for their complaint, and drop your challenge to the will.”

  “How do I do that?” Adam asked.

  “You make this marriage for real.”

  He dropped his pen. “You can’t be serious.”

  Sam nodded, every bit as somber as he always was. “I’m saying this as your friend, not as your lawyer. In the strictly legal sense, I think we’ll probably win the battle to have that clause struck out of your father’s will. But if you want to do this the easy way...the fact is, you are marrie
d, and as the will stands you need to be married to inherit. There’s a certain synergy.”

  “There’s a certain craziness,” Adam retorted. He winced. He’d sworn never to use the words crazy or insane lightly again.

  “Think about it,” Sam advised. “If there’s any way you and Casey can make a go of it...”

  “Not a chance.” Adam had to quash the thought before it could take root. So what if he and Casey were dating? He’d dated dozens of women without ever wanting to marry them. He and Casey were poles apart on the things that mattered, with the exception of their mutual exasperation with demanding families. Even if he was interested in making this marriage real—which he wasn’t—there was one major obstacle. Casey wanted a man who adored her.

  He realized Sam was still talking. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “I asked how Eloise is after that fiasco at the Peabody on Sunday. She seemed jumpy this morning.”

  “I think she’s forgiven me,” Adam said. He’d phoned his stepmother that night, as Casey suggested. Eloise had still sounded hurt, but also grateful for Adam’s call. By the time he hung up, she’d managed a couple of attempts at the lighthearted interference that usually bugged him. This time, he was surprised how relieved he was to know she’d forgiven his indiscretion.

  “She’s a fine woman.” It was a variation on a theme Sam played often.

  Adam made a noncommittal sound and added, “She’s very loyal to my father’s memory.”

  He didn’t intend to warn Sam off. But the attorney had to stop pining for Eloise. He was getting nowhere.

  Sam was either in too deep to get the message, or he ignored it. “Time I got going.” He stood. “Think about what I said, Adam. Think about how you might convince Casey to stick around.”

  * * *

  THE PHONE RANG at eleven o’clock, interrupting Casey just as she neared the end of a chapter.

  “Come and join me for lunch.” There was no question as to whether she had the time or the inclination. Just a command, delivered in Adam’s deep, sexy voice.

  “Today?”

  “We’re dating,” he reminded her. “This is what people who date do.”

  It wasn’t something she’d ever done with Joe. Spontaneous lunch dates had never featured in their relationship.