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Separate Bedrooms...?
Carole Halston
HE HAD MARRIED FOR CONVENIENCE…Widower Neil Griffen thought he'd never marry again. But when lovely Cara LaCroix told him her plan to find herself a temporary husband to fulfill her beloved grandmother's dearest wish, Neil knew he'd trust her to no one else. Not only was she his best employee, Cara was his best friend–what difference could a few months of pretend marital bliss make?SHE HAD MARRIED FOR LOVE…Cara had loved her handsome boss forever, and marrying Neil in name only would be sweet torment. Neil treated her as a kid sister–but behind the wall of his carefully guarded emotions, she sensed something more. Suddenly Cara knew she'd risk their friendship, on the chance that something might be love….
“What I need is a bridegroom and temporary husband.”
Cara leaned into Neil, burrowing her cheek against his shoulder. “It wouldn’t be a bad deal for a man who liked Italian food,” she said with an attempt at humor. “You’ve eaten my lasagna.”
“I sure have, and you’re tempting me to volunteer.”
“I wish.” She kissed him on the cheek and stepped away, gazing at him searchingly. “You wouldn’t really consider a pretend marriage, would you, Neil?”
“No, because you’re not serious about it,” he chided her.
But the look on Cara’s face said she was very serious.
And he was seriously tempted!
Dear Reader,
While every romance holds the promise of sweeping readers away with a rugged alpha male or a charismatic cowboy, this month we want to take a closer look at the women who fall in love with our favorite heroes.
“Heroines need to be strong,” says Sherryl Woods, author of more than fifty novels. “Readers look for a woman who can stand up to the hero—and stand up to life.” Sherryl’s book A Love Beyond Words features a special heroine who lost her hearing but became stronger because of it. “A heroine needs to triumph over fear or adversity.”
Kate Stockwell faces the fear of knowing she cannot bear her own child in Allison Leigh’s Her Unforgettable Fiancé, the next installment in the STOCKWELLS OF TEXAS miniseries. And an accident forces Josie Scott, Susan Mallery’s LONE STAR CANYON heroine in Wife in Disguise, to take stock of her life and find a second chance….
In Peggy Webb’s Standing Bear’s Surrender, Sarah Sloan must choose between loyalty and true love! In Separate Bedrooms…? by Carole Halston, Cara LaCroix is faced with fulfilling her grandmother’s final wish—marriage! And Kirsten Laurence needs the help of the man who broke her heart years ago in Laurie Campbell’s Home at Last.
“A heroine is a real role model,” Sherryl says. And in Special Edition, we aim for every heroine to be a woman we can all admire. Here’s to strong women and many more emotionally satisfying reads from Silhouette Special Edition!
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
Separate Bedrooms…?
Carole Halston
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CAROLE HALSTON
is a native of south Louisiana, where she lives with her sea-faring husband, Monty, in a rural area on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans.
Fans can write Carole at P.O. Box 1095, Madisonville, LA 70447. For a free autographed bookmark, they should send a self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope. Romance readers can visit Carole’s Web site by first accessing http://www.eHarlequin.com.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
“Who’s next, please?” Neil asked as his customer turned to leave with a newly purchased set of brake pads. Half a dozen people were milling about near the long counter of the auto parts store Neil managed and would eventually own after he’d finished buying out his father’s interest.
Why hadn’t Cara come out of the office to help out? he wondered, looking over his shoulder. It wasn’t her job to wait on customers, but Cara was the type of loyal employee who pitched in and did whatever needed to be done without being asked. She knew the whole operation of the business about as well as he did. After all, she’d worked at Griffin Auto Parts either part-time or full-time since she was fifteen, and she’d celebrated her twenty-ninth birthday a couple of months ago.
Through the plate-glass wall, Neil spotted Cara’s glossy black curls and frowned, instantly concerned. Seated at her desk and gazing at a computer screen, she was blotting tears from pink cheeks with a tissue. As though sensing his scrutiny, she turned her head and saw him.
Hey, what’s wrong? he telegraphed.
She managed a brave smile and waggled her hand, mouthing the words, I’m okay.
“I guess I’m next,” a woman said, repeating herself with a hint of impatience. Reluctantly Neil returned his attention to his customer, who fished around in her purse for a full minute before she finally pulled out a receipt. “My husband sent me to pick up this part he ordered a couple of days ago. Someone called and said it had come in.”
“That was me who called.” Cara spoke from beside him, her voice slightly husky. She took the receipt from Neil’s hand. “Let me take care of this. You can help someone else who might need some automotive expertise.”
“Thanks, Cara,” Neil said. He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze that not only spoke his gratitude, but offered comfort for whatever was troubling her.
It was old habit to feel protective and brotherly toward Cara LaCroix, whose name gave clues to her mixed Italian and Cajun French ancestry. He’d known her since she was born. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood right here in Hammond, Louisiana. An only child, Neil was five years older than Cara, the youngest of eight. For some reason, she’d always seemed to idolize him, and he’d thought she was cute as could be with her plump little body, big brown eyes and tangle of black curls.
Neil had picked her up off the sidewalk on any number of occasions when she’d toppled her tricycle. He’d brushed away her tears with awkward tenderness and given her a pep talk. When she’d graduated to a bicycle, he’d done repairs—tightening the chain when it came loose or adjusting the seat. He was enrolled in college by the time she’d become a teenager and begun dating. Instead of turning to her brothers for advice about boys, she’d come to Neil. He’d always listened and tried to be wise.
Before the day was over, Neil figured he would learn what was bothering Cara. He hoped it was nothing serious. If there was a problem he could help solve, well, he wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever was in his power to bring a happy smile back to her pretty face. One of his main pleasures in life now was being around Cara and enjoying her full-fledged love of life.
Customers continued to arrive in a steady stream right through the noon hour. Finally about two-thirty, business slacked off to a more normal flow that Neil’s two sales clerks, Jimmy Boudreaux and Peewee Oliver, could easily handle.
“You eat lunch yet, Boss?” asked Peewee, an African-American man in his late twenties whose nickname certainly didn’t describe his muscular build.
Cara had just come out of the office. She answered for Neil. “No, he hasn’t eaten.” She spoke to Neil, “I ordered you a roast beef po’boy earlier. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“Thanks,” Neil said, smiling his appreciation. “That was sweet of you.”
“Somebody has to see that you don’t go hungry now that your mom and dad have moved away to Florida. I’ll bet you skip at least one meal a day,” she chided him.
Neil couldn’t honestly deny her accusation. If eating wasn’t convenient, he could easily skip a meal. He’d regained some enjoyment of food during the last three years since he’d lost his wife and small son and his whole world had disintegrated, but food would never taste as good as it had when he’d been a happily married man with a family. None of life’s rewards would ever be the same again. That was something he accepted.
At least the terrible grief had softened with time into sadness. The key to surviving tragedy, he’d discovered, was keeping busy and not thinking a lot about himself.
“Hey, skipping a few meals doesn’t hurt me,” he declared, gesturing toward his tall, lanky frame. “It’s my diet plan.”
Cara made a batting motion with her hand. “Diet plan. You could eat a million calories a day and not gain a pound. All I have to do is take one bite of a rich dessert and the scales jump five pounds.”
“You worry too much about your weight.”
“If I don’t, I’ll end up wearing the same large sizes as my three sisters.”
“Their husbands don’t complain, do they?” Neil draped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a brotherly hug. “Come and share my po’boy. You probably had a salad for lunch that didn’t even satisfy your hunger pains.”
She sighed, walking along with him toward the small room that served as an employees’ lounge. “I did. And I’m starving. The salad had that nasty nonfat so-called Italian dressing on it.” She shuddered. “No self-respecting Italian that I know would make a dressing without real olive oil.”
Neil grinned at her expressiveness.
At the door of the lounge, Cara came to a standstill. “I’d better get back to work.”
“Take a break and keep me company,” Neil urged. “We haven’t had a chance to chat today.” He hadn’t forgotten that she’d been crying earlier, and he was still concerned about the reason.
“Okay, but I can’t promise I’ll be very cheerful,” she said, relenting.
“Why not? Are you feeling depressed about your grandmother’s health?”
Cara nodded, blinking hard to hold back tears that suddenly welled up in her eyes. Neil gently drew her inside the lounge and pulled out a chair at the table while he lectured in a sympathetic tone, “We’ve already talked about this. Sophia is a very religious woman. She’s not afraid of death. She’s even looking forward to being reunited with deceased loved ones in Heaven.”
“I know all that.”
Cara resisted letting him seat her. “You sit down,” she said. “I’ll get your po’boy for you. What would you like to drink?”
“I can wait on myself. You don’t need to serve me.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Sit.”
Neil was already on his way to the refrigerator. He was more interested in getting to the bottom of her unhappiness than he was in having his lunch, but he figured he might as well humor her. After retrieving the sandwich loaf, he unwrapped it on the counter and used a kitchen knife to cut each half loaf into quarters. Then he transferred the po’boy over to the table, the white butcher paper doubling as a plate. Before he sat down across from Cara, he got each of them a canned drink from the refrigerator, a diet cola for her and an iced tea for himself.
“Help yourself,” he offered and bit into crusty French bread.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Sure tastes good. If you take the edge off your appetite, you can eat a light supper.”
“That’s true. And, darn it, I’m starving.” She picked up a sandwich section and began to eat it, obviously relishing the taste of roast beef and provolone cheese. Still, her expression remained downcast, Neil noticed with compassion.
“Back to our conversation about Sophia,” he said when she’d dusted the crumbs off her fingers and sat back. Going on past experience, he knew that pouring out her thoughts and feelings to him would be therapeutic. “Is she going downhill faster than the doctor told the family she would?” Several months ago, the oncologist in charge of Sophia’s care had given a life-expectancy range of eight months to a year. Sophia had opted not to subject herself to chemotherapy when she was diagnosed with lymphoma.
“No.” Cara’s voice broke, and tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away impatiently.
“Something happened since yesterday. Tell me about it. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t help.” She sniffled and pointed a forefinger toward the uneaten half of his po’boy as a reminder that he should keep eating. Neil dutifully picked up another sandwich quarter to pacify her. Cara filled him in without any more prodding. “This morning I stopped off at my parents’ house on the way here to spend a few minutes with Nonna, like I do several mornings a week.” Neil nodded, familiar with her routine. He didn’t need her to explain that nonna was Italian for grandmother.
Cara went on, “I let myself in through the back door and went straight to Nonna’s bedroom, figuring I’d poke my head in the kitchen and say hi to Mamma on my way out. The door to Nonna’s bedroom was open and I heard Mamma’s voice and Nonna’s voice. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but before I could call out, I started listening to their conversation. Nonna was telling Mamma that she’d dreamed I’d gotten married. She described my wedding gown and the dresses my attendants wore. She described the flowers in the church. Neil, you should have heard Nonna’s voice. She sounded so happy, recalling every detail of her dream.” Cara bit into her quivering bottom lip and wiped away two more huge tears.
“Go on,” he prompted gently, getting the picture now, but wanting to let her finish out her explanation.
“Then she and my mom talked about the fact that I’m twenty-nine years old and not even engaged to be married. Nonna said if only her dream had been real, she could die without a single regret. Her main reason for trying to hang on was wishing she could see me settled down with a good husband.”
“You poor kid. What a guilt trip.” Neil’s warm sympathy was mixed with exasperation. “That family of yours mean well, but they’ve been putting pressure on you to find a husband since you were twenty years old.”
“It’s because they all love me. They can’t conceive of anyone, man or woman, staying single and being really fulfilled and content.” Cara sighed, slumping forward and resting folded arms on the table. “I agree with them. That’s the hard part. I’d give anything to be planning a wedding for Nonna to attend while she’s still strong enough. Not just for her sake but because I’d like nothing better than to be getting married. I always planned to be a wife and mother, but it just hasn’t happened.”
“The right guy will come along. You have to be patient.” Neil had pushed aside the remains of his lunch. He reached over and clasped her forearms, giving them a reassuring squeeze.
“I’ve been patient! What if I keep waiting for Mr. Right and he doesn’t come along? What if he’s already come and gone, and I didn’t recognize him? Neil, how will I know a certain guy is the one?”
“Your instincts will tell you he’s the one. When you imagine living the rest of your life without him, you won’t be able to stand the thought.”
“Is that the way you felt when you proposed to Lisa?”
“Yes.” Neil quickly shoved the memory back behind a closed door of his past, but not before he’d been flooded with painful remembrance.
“I’m sorry.” Cara took one of his hands between hers, their roles quickly reversed with her offering him support. “That question just slipped out. I know you can’t bear reminiscing because you’re still grieving over Lisa and little Chris.”
“I’m okay,” Neil assured her. He stood up. “Don’t brood over what you overheard this morning, Cara. I’m sure you’re doing a lot to make Sophia’s remaining time on earth happy, just by being yourself.”
She sat there instead of rising to her feet. Neil looked at her questioningly.
“Do you have another minute?” she asked. “There’s more.”
He waited for her to elaborate, suddenly uneasy for reasons he didn’t quite fathom.
“Last night Roy asked me to marry him.”
