Wife Wanted

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Natalie turned back to Rick again. He smiled at her, deep into her eyes. And for a moment, what they were doing—sitting here, holding hands as the boy and the dog slept so peacefully a few feet away—seemed the most natural, right, thing in the world to be doing.

But then reason reasserted itself.

Natalie Fortune, are you out of your mind? that voice in her head warned. Before you know it, you’ll be doing his laundry and raising that darling little boy for him.

It occurred to her that there were worse fates.

And that was when she knew she was really in trouble here. She’d barely gotten rid of Joel. In fact, Joel still refused to admit he’d been gotten rid of. It was way too soon to be falling for another man—and especially not a man like this. A man who was just too good to be true.

She pulled her hand free. He let it go.

There was an awkward, awful moment when she had no idea what to do next.

She glanced frantically out toward the water again, spotting a blue-and-white patio boat far off to starboard, past the mouth of the cove where they lay at anchor, and focusing on it to keep from looking at Rick. She squinted. The boat seemed to have two people aboard. She wished she was on it.

Anywhere but here, where she was having much too lovely a time for her own good—and where she kept doing and saying things she shouldn’t.

“Natalie?” His voice was so gentle.

“Umm?”

“Are you…all right?”

“Of course,” she lied.

She still didn’t have the nerve to look right at him, so she went on staring at the faraway boat, her entire body tingling with a thoroughly dangerous kind of awareness. And though she still couldn’t meet Rick’s eyes, she knew very well that they were trained on her face.

And it was hot. She shifted around again, because the backs of her legs were damp from the leather seat pad. And she raised her arms and lifted her hair off her neck. The air caressed her damp skin, cooling it a little.

Rick was leaning on the railing.

She dared to give him what she hoped was a very casual kind of smile. “It’s hot.”

He went on watching her. “Very.”

“Funny. When people think of Minnesota, they think of snow. But we have our summers, too.”

“We certainly do.”

She reached into the pocket of her shorts and found an elastic hair band, which she used to quickly tie her damp hair into a high ponytail. Then she straightened her shirt, which had pulled out a little when she lifted her arms. “Better,” she said, and forced herself to smile directly at him.

It was a mistake. In his eyes there was a look—a questioning, hopeful look. And though her mind kept saying, “No” to that look, the rest of her was shouting, “Yes!”

She should say something totally innocuous now, she knew it. But she couldn’t think of what.

So that meant he was the next to speak, and what he said wasn’t innocuous at all. “I’ve been…alone for a long time now.”

And then, with one or two glances at his sleeping son, he quietly began to tell her about his ex-wife, Vanessa Chandler, whom he’d met at a friend’s Christmas party and married a year later. He frankly confessed that he hadn’t put as much time and attention into the marriage as he should. He’d put so much energy into succeeding at work, there wasn’t a lot left over for his marriage. Vanessa had felt neglected.

And then, later, he hadn’t been much of a father to Toby. Vanessa had divorced him when Toby was only a year old, then moved back to Louisville, where her widowed mother lived, taking Toby with her. Visits with Toby had been few and far between. Vanessa would have been perfectly happy never to set eyes on Rick again, as long as he sent the support checks on time. And Rick had been so busy getting ahead that he didn’t pursue his parental responsibilities as he should.

“So now,” he said ruefully, “I’m trying to make it up to my son for all the times I wasn’t there for him.”

“I think you’re making a pretty good start.”

He muttered a thank-you, then asked, “What about you?”

“Was I ever married, you mean?”

“Yeah, for starters.”

She shook her head. “Never married.”

“What about ‘meaningful relationships’?”

And then, there she was, telling him about Joel, how she’d met him when she first started at Travistown School and how they’d been together for five years. That Joel had called it off between them about a month before. That she had been deeply hurt at first, but had gotten past that.

“And now, I’m planning to fully enjoy my freedom.”

“Hence the decadent extended cruise?”

“You got it. The cruise is my attempt to do something purely self-indulgent for once, something that has nothing to do with kids or dogs or other people’s emotional needs.”

Rick listened and nodded and seemed honestly interested in every word she had to say—which was probably why neither of them paid much attention when Toby rolled himself into a ball on the deck and stopped using Bernie for a pillow.

After that, Bernie sat and stretched and padded over to starboard, where he hefted his front paws onto the padded bench and stared at the patio boat that still drifted on the slow currents several hundred yards away.

Four

“The first time was chancy, Kate,” Sterling said. “But this time is pure folly. And would you please put down those binoculars? We’re close enough that the sunlight could reflect off the lenses and tip them off about what you’re up to.”

Kate pointed at the canopy overhead. “I’m in the shade.” She adjusted the focus on the binoculars. She could see Bernie, looking back at her. And when she scanned to the right just a little, she could see the back of Rick Dalton’s head and Natalie’s sweet, gentle face. They were leaning close to each other, apparently deep in conversation.

“Kate.” Sterling reached out and snared the binoculars from her hands.

She glared at him. “Sterling, really.”

In two long strides he was at the stern, stowing the binoculars in the built-in chest there. “That takes care of that,” he said, with way too much satisfaction, as he returned to sit beside Kate.

“Oh, all right. Have it your way.” Kate retied the scarf she wore and adjusted her dark glasses. Then she produced a snowy handkerchief and blotted her brow. “It’s much too hot to argue with you, anyway.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know, I know.” She patted his hand. “But I couldn’t resist. I had to see the man and the boy for myself, that’s all. And now I have. And I feel wonderful about them. They’re going to be much more than just perfect tenants. Wait and see.”

Sterling grunted. “Fine. Let nature take its course with them, then. We have some much more serious problems to deal with than whether Natalie will find herself a new boyfriend or not.”

“Nothing’s more serious than love.”

“Do you know how low the company stock has fallen? Yesterday it closed at—”

“I know where it closed yesterday.”

“The shareholders are screaming. And every employee you’ve got is terrified about what will happen next. Security has been breached. Badly. The Secret Youth Formula…”

Kate waved her hand and Sterling fell silent. “I know, I know.”

The Secret Youth Formula was Kate’s pet project at Fortune Cosmetics, an as-yet-unperfected gel blended of certain herbs and vitamin extracts that could actually reverse the aging process.