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“Now that you’re here, you’ll take Margie to represent the family,” Simon said.
“I’ll what?” Hunter looked at his grandfather and out of the corner of his eye noted that Margie looked just as surprised as he felt.
“Escort your wife to the town dance. People will expect it. After all, you and Margie are the ones who made it all possible.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Hunter reminded the older man.
Simon bristled, narrowed his eyes on him and said, “As far as people in town are convinced, you did.”
“He doesn’t have to go with me,” Margie said quickly, apparently as eager as Hunter was to avoid any extra amount of togetherness. Now why did that bother him?
“I’ll just tell everyone he hasn’t recovered from his injuries,” she added.
Now it was Hunter’s turn to scowl. Not that he wanted to go to the damned dance, but he didn’t want someone else, especially her, making up excuses for him. The day he needed help—which would be never—he’d ask for it.
“Damn good at lying, aren’t you?” he asked.
She turned her head to spear him with a long look. Then giving him a mocking smile, she admitted, “Actually, since I’ve had to come up with dozens of reasons why you never bother to come home to see your grandfather, yes, I have gotten good at lying. Thank you so much for noticing.”
“No one asked you to—”
“Who would if I hadn’t?”
“There was no reason to lie,” he countered, slamming his fork down onto the tabletop. “Everyone in town knows what my job is.”
She set her fork down, too. Calmly. Quietly. Which only angered him more.
“And everyone in town knows you could have gotten compassionate leave—isn’t that what they call it in the military?—to come home when Simon was so sick.”
Guilt poked at him again. And he didn’t appreciate it.
“I wasn’t even in the country,” he reminded her, grinding each word out through gritted teeth.
She only looked at him, but he knew exactly what she was thinking, because he’d been telling himself the same damn thing for hours. Yes, he’d been out of the country when Simon had his heart attack. But when he’d returned, he could have come home to check on the older man. He could have taken a week’s leave before the next mission—but he’d settled instead for a phone call.
If Hunter had made the effort, he would have been here to talk his grandfather out of this ridiculous fake marriage scheme and he wouldn’t now be in this mess.
With that realization ringing in his mind, he met Margie’s gaze and noted the gleam of victory shining in those green eyes of hers.
“Fine. You win this one,” he said, acknowledging that she’d taken that round. “I’ll take you to the damned dance.”
“I don’t want—”
“Excellent,” Simon crowed and reached for Hunter’s wine glass.
“You can’t have wine, Simon,” Margie said with a sigh and the old man’s hand halted in midreach.
“What’s the point of living forever if you can’t have a glass of wine with dinner like a civilized man?”
“Water is perfectly civilized.” Apparently, Margie had already forgotten about her little war with Hunter and was focused now on the old man pouting in his chair.
“Dogs drink water,” Simon reminded her.
“So do you.”
“Now.”
“Simon,” Margie’s voice took on a patient tone and was enough to tell Hunter she’d been through all this many times before. “You know what Dr. Harris said. No wine and no cigars.”
“Damn doctors always ruining a man’s life for his own good. And you,” he accused, giving Margie a dirty look, “you’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am on your side, Simon. I want you to live forever.”
“Without having any damn fun at all, I suppose,” he groused.
Hunter watched the back-and-forth and felt the oddest sense of envy. His grandfather and Margie had obviously had this same discussion many times. The two of them were a unit. A team. And their closeness was hard to ignore.
He was the odd man out here. He was the one who didn’t belong. In the house where he’d grown up. With his grandfather. This woman…his “wife,” had neatly carved Hunter out of the equation entirely.
Or, had he done that himself?
It had been a hellish day, and all Hunter wanted at the moment was a little peace and quiet. Interrupting the two people completely ignoring him, he said, “You know what? I’m beat. Think I’ll head up to bed.”
“That’s a good idea,” Simon agreed, shifting his attention to his grandson. “Why don’t both of you go on up to your room? Get some rest?”
Silence.
Several seconds ticked past before one of them managed to finally speak.
“Our room?” Margie whispered.
Hunter glared at his grandfather.
Simon smiled.
Chapter Four
“I’m not sleeping on the floor,” Hunter told Margie.
“Well,” Margie said from inside the closet, where she was changing into her nightgown, “you’re not sleeping with me.”
Good heavens, how could she possibly share a bed with the man who’d kissed her senseless only hours ago? If he kissed her again, she might just give into the fiery feelings he engendered in her and then where would she be?
“Don’t flatter yourself, babe,” he said, loud enough to carry through the heavy wooden door separating them. “It’s not your body I’m after. It’s the mattress. Damned if I’m sleeping on the floor in my own damn room.”
She frowned at the closed door and the man beyond it. Apparently, she didn’t have anything to worry about. He had clearly not felt anything that she had during that kiss. Was she insulted? Or pleased? “Fine. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Help yourself,” he countered.
Margie stopped in the process of tugging her night-gown over her head. “You’d let me, wouldn’t you? You’d let me sleep on the floor rather than do it yourself like a gentleman.”
“Never said I was a gentleman,” he told her.
“Well, I’m not sleeping on the floor.” This was her room now. Had been for over a year. Why should she be the one to be uncomfortable? And if he wasn’t interested in her sexually, she should be perfectly safe. Right?
“Up to you.”
“Just don’t you try anything,” she warned, telling herself to pay attention.
He actually laughed. “Trust me when I say you’re safe.”
Bastard. How easily he dismissed her. That kiss he’d given her clearly hadn’t touched him at all. Even though her own lips were still humming with remnants of sensation. Of course it hadn’t meant anything to him. Why would it? She’d known most of her life that she simply wasn’t the kind of woman men like him noticed.
She was too short, too…round. He probably went for the six-foot-tall, ninety-pound type who thought a single M&M was a party. His kind of woman never had the last cookie in the box; she didn’t buy cookies. His kind of woman didn’t wear T-shirts; she wore silk. And her clothes hung on her as if she were a coat hanger. No bulges, no curves, no lines. His kind of woman didn’t have to marry a man by proxy; she had men lining up at her door. And his kind of woman wouldn’t have melted at a simple kiss.
“Oh God, how did I get myself into this?”
Being married to Hunter when he wasn’t there had been so easy. So perfect. She’d made him into the ideal husband. Thoughtful, caring, loving. How was she supposed to have known that the real man was light-years away from the image in her mind?
And yet, this Hunter stirred something inside her that made her yearn for things to be different. Which was just a one-way ticket to misery and she knew it. The only way she would ever have a husband like Hunter was this way. A lie.
Still grumbling to herself, she stepped out of the closet to find her “husband” already ensconced in the bed. On her side.
“Move over,” she commanded, waving one hand for emphasis.
“It’s a king-size bed,” he reminded her. “Plenty of room for both of us.”
Oh, she thought, there probably wouldn’t be enough room for her to lie down comfortably beside him if the bed were the size of the county. But she wouldn’t let him know that she was feeling decidedly uneasy about this situation. Besides, she was going to have enough trouble falling asleep tonight, let alone having to sleep on the wrong side of the bed.
“You’re on my side.”
He looked around, then shrugged broad, bare shoulders. “Since I’m the only one lying on it, I figure it’s my side.”
His eyes shone with amusement in the pale wash of light from the bedside lamp. His bare chest gleamed like old gold, and when he shifted higher onto the pillows, the quilt covering him dipped, pooling at his hips.
Margie sucked in a gulp of air but couldn’t quite stop herself from admiring the view. The soft, dark hair on his chest narrowed into a strip that snaked across his abdomen, then disappeared beneath the quilt.
He was naked.
Oh, God. She was never going to get to sleep tonight. Her stomach did a slow roll and pitch, and her mouth went dry. “Don’t you have pajamas?”
He chuckled and she couldn’t help noticing the dimple in his left cheek. Why did he have to have a dimple?
“No,” he said, “I don’t.” Then his gaze swept over her, taking in her knee-length, long-sleeved cotton gown decorated with pale blue flowers. His eyes widened as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Don’t you have something less…”
Margie felt his disapproval plainly, plopped both hands on her hips and dared him to finish that sentence. “Less what?”
“Less…Little House on the Prairie?”
She smoothed one hand over her comfy nightgown. Didn’t she feel pretty? He couldn’t make it any clearer that he wasn’t experiencing the slightest bit of attraction for her. “There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing. It’s very cute.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “If you say so.”
“And comfortable.”
“Okay.”
Margie huffed out a breath, finished doing up the buttons on the front of her perfectly sweet nightgown, then glared at him again. No doubt he was used to going to bed with women who were either naked or wearing bits of lace and silk. “Are you going to move over or not?”
“Not.”
“You are the most insensitive, arrogant—”
He deliberately closed his eyes and snuggled his head into her pillow. “We’ve been over this already. How about we just put off the insult exchange until morning?”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Now get into bed and go to sleep.”
Muttering darkly under her breath, Margie walked around the wide bed to the absolute wrong side. It didn’t bother him at all to share the bed with her. He’d already closed his eyes to dismiss her. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that he was in no way interested in her. So why was she shaking and nervous? This was so not fair.
He’d tossed all of her decorative throw pillows to the floor, and she had to kick them out of her way as she moved. Before she could get into bed, Hunter reached over and flung the quilt back for her, incidentally providing her with yet another look at his long, tanned form just barely hidden by the strategically placed quilt.
And when she was finished admiring his leanly muscled body, she finally noticed the stark white bandage affixed to his left side, just above the hip. Somehow, she’d managed to forget during their argument that he’d been wounded recently, and for some reason she felt bad for harassing him in his condition.
“Are you—do you—” She stopped, blew out a breath and looked into his eyes. “Is your wound all right? I mean, are you all right?”
“I’m touched by your concern,” he said, clearly untouched. “Yes, I’m fine, though not quite up to sexcapades just yet. So like I said, you’re safe.” His gaze dropped over her nightgown again and he shook his head. “Though even if I wasn’t laid up, I’d have to say that your choice of nightgown is the best male-repellant I’ve ever seen.”
Instantly, Margie regretted worrying about him at all. He was insulting, rude and arrogant, and she hoped his side ached like an abscessed tooth. And if she ever again felt those stirrings inside her, she’d squash them like a bug. “You’re—”
“Insults in the morning, remember?”
“Fine.” She swallowed back everything she wanted to say to the completely irritating, totally sexy man in her bed and turned instead to pick up the pillows he’d so carelessly tossed to the floor.
“What’re you doing now?”
She didn’t even look at him, just continued picking up the pillows and stacking them in a line down the center of the bed. When they were all in place, she smiled at a job well done. “I’m building a wall between us,” she said. “As you pointed out, it’s a king-size bed. Plenty of room for us and a wall.”
“You don’t need a wall, babe; you’ve got the night-gown.”
“Maybe you need it,” she told him, sliding onto the sheets and drawing the quilt up to her chin.
“Yeah?” he asked as he turned out the light and plunged the room into darkness. “Afraid you’ll ravish me in your sleep?”
She closed her eyes and turned onto her side, giving him her back. “Afraid I’ll murder you. Sleep tight.”
The next morning Margie was back in the closet getting dressed when Hunter stepped out of the shower. Rummaging through his duffle bag, he pulled out a worn, faded pair of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt with the words Navy SEAL emblazoned across the front.
