The Wrong Wife

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“So what,” Mo asked gently, “are you doing here, if you’re married?”

“Packing.” Cassie bit her lip. Had she really agreed to leave everything she knew for a man who wanted her in his bed for a year? One year...and her brother had had to talk him up from six months.

She moaned and sank down onto the faded candy stripes of her sofa. “And before you ask—no, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m crazy. I’ve got to be crazy. How did I get myself into this?”

Jaya moved a newspaper folded to the Help Wanted section off the couch, and sat beside her. Mo sat on the other side. “Like usual, I imagine,” Jaya said, putting an arm around Cassie’s shoulders and squeezing. “You jumped in with both feet, damn the torpedoes and all that stuff. Just like you always do. Now, you tell me all about it. Who were you rescuing this time?”

“No one.” Cassie frowned. “Really, Jaya, I’m perfectly capable of minding my own business. I like to help people out sometimes, that’s all.”

“Whatever you say. Just tell me how you wound up marrying the man you’ve carried a torch for all these years. And why you’re so unhappy about it.”

“Not all these years,” Cassie protested. “Not continuously, anyway. I got tired of unrequited love when I turned twenty. Remember Randall?”

“Ha!” Jaya waved away the young man responsible for the loss of Cassie’s virginity with one scarlet-tipped hand. “That chipmunk doesn’t rate as even a minor distraction.”

“Randall was cute and sensitive.”

“Randall was a nerd.”

“Even if you don’t count Randall, I haven’t exactly been pining away. What about Max?” she demanded, referring to her only other serious involvement, with a baseball player she’d dated two years ago.

“Max is an idiot. A gorgeous idiot, sure, and even a pretty nice guy, which just made it harder for you to admit how much he bored you. He doesn’t count.”

“Then there’s Sam, or J.T., or any number of other guys I’ve dated—”

“Cassie,” Mo interrupted, “Jaya knows, and I know, that you date so many men because you think there’s safety in numbers. You like to fix the men you go out with—fix them up with a friend of yours or with a new job or just with a listening ear and good advice. You don’t go to bed with them, and you certainly don’t run off to Vegas with them. This Wilde is different.”

“That’s right,” Jaya agreed. “The fact is, you’ve never seriously tried to get Gideon Wilde out of your system. You’ve just played around at it. Now quit changing the subject, and tell us how you wound up married to him.”

So Cassie told them, leaving out a few of the really personal details, like her wedding night and what she’d told Gideon had happened. Or hadn’t happened. She wound up talking mostly about the ceremony itself—conducted in the Weddings-To-Go Chapel of Love.

“The three of us were on our way back from the license place,” she told them. “It’s open until midnight during the week and around the clock on weekends. Anyway, our cab passed this RV with a neon bride on the side, and Gideon flagged it down.”

Jaya laughed, and Cassie told her about the minister’s rhinestone-studded tuxedo, which had far outshone Cassie’s jeans and silk blouse. Mo, she noticed, didn’t say much. Finally, with a sigh, Cassie stood. “I’ve really got to get some things in a suitcase before the movers get here.”

“What do you mean ‘before the movers get here’?” Jaya went over to the tiny breakfast bar and lifted the lid of the pig-shaped cookie jar by one ear. The jar emitted a loud oink as she took out a couple of sandwich cookies.

“She said she was here to pack, Jaya.” Mo’s frown announced his opinion of her plans.

“But I thought—surely you’re not going to stay married, are you?” Jaya looked astounded. “I mean, running off to Vegas is a great adventure, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Moving in with the man—” Jaya stopped suddenly and pointed a cookie at Cassie. “Gideon does know you’re moving in, doesn’t he? You’re not planning to just surprise him?”

Mo laughed.

“Good grief! You do think I’m an idiot, don’t you? He knows. He gave me his key.” She ducked into her walk-in closet and heaved things around until she unearthed her suitcase. It was a huge relic her mother had found at some garage sale years ago. She dropped it on the bed and flicked the catches. “It’s his idea, actually. I wanted to get an annulment, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“An annulment?” Mo asked.

“Well, it might affect his business.” Cassie grimaced when she heard how lame that sounded. She pulled an armload of jeans from her dresser and carried them to the suitcase that lay flat and open, like a gaping maw, on her bed. “A lot of people knew about his engagement to Melissa, and how she ended things between them. He’s going to look foolish enough as it is, running off and marrying someone else on what was supposed to be the day he and the Icicle tied the knot. He’d look even dumber if we split as soon as we got back to Dallas.”

Both her friends just stared at her. She dumped the jeans in the suitcase, which swallowed them with room to spare, and tried to make what she was doing sound more reasonable. “A business reputation can be fragile. Some investors might lose confidence in Gideon over this.” The looks on their faces told her she wasn’t improving. Cassie gave up and went back to the dresser, opened her lingerie drawer, and pulled out a pile of colorful cotton, silk and nylon. The nightgown on top, a bright red wisp of silk, slithered to the floor. She bent to pick it up.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Jaya slid in front of the dresser, slammed the drawer shut and barred Cassie from it with her body. “You are not going to pack until you start making sense, you hear? Even you wouldn’t agree to move in with a man just to help him keep his reputation solid in business. And why did you say annulled instead of divorced?”

“It doesn’t matter, since we aren’t getting either one. At least, not right away.” She tossed the nightgown over her shoulder. Since Jaya was standing in front of the dresser and Mo blocked the closet, and since Cassie didn’t want to tell her friends about Gideon’s one-year trial plan, she turned and headed for the bathroom.

The phone rang. “Get that, will you?” she called, and opened the battered metal tackle box that held her makeup. She could fit in her toothbrush and toothpaste, but not much else. “Damn,” she muttered. She still had to pack her shampoo and conditioner and eye drops and hair spray and first aid cream and curling iron and blow drier and...she put her hand on her stomach. It felt jumpy and unhappy.

“If you’re this nervous,” Mo said from the doorway, “maybe you should rethink what you’re doing.”

“There ’s so much to the business part of marriage,” she said. She’d never before considered the amount of paperwork involved in getting married. “I’ll have to cancel my utilities, change the name on my credit cards and with Social Security.”

He nodded, crossing his arms on his chest and leaning against the door frame. “Then there’s the post office. You’ll need to leave a change of address there, cancel the newspaper and change your magazine subscriptions.”

Cassie bit her lip. She hadn’t even moved in with Gideon, and already she felt as if her life were being swallowed up in his. “It makes sense to move into his place, though,” she told Mo—or maybe herself. “It’s bound to be a lot bigger than mine.”

“Bound to,” he said agreeably.

“It’s probably all black-and-white, though,” she muttered. She did remember Gideon’s fondness for those two noncolors from her one visit to another apartment of his eight years ago. She sighed and turned, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The cherry red nightgown was still draped over her shoulder. Thoughtfully she pulled the bit of silk provocation down and looked at it.

This was one thing, she understood suddenly, that she wouldn’t need. Not yet. She had to keep some part of herself separate while they both adjusted to this marriage. Maybe, she thought with the optimism that was part of her, it wouldn’t have to be for long. Maybe she’d be able to get under his guard, get him to let down his walls quickly once she was actually living with him.

Yes. she needed time. She was desperately vulnerable to him. She needed him to be a bit vulnerable, too, before they made love again.

Or for the first time, as far as he was concerned.

“Hey, Cassie,” Jaya called from the other room. “This guy on the phone wants to know if you want to buy some supplemental accident insurance.”

“Too late,” she called back, flicking the nightgown up over the shower curtain rod. “Fate can’t possibly have another accident in store for me.” Not after yesterday’s head-on collision.

“It’s not too late,” Mo corrected her. “You don’t have to do this, Cassie, if it isn’t what you want.”

She met his eyes and said softly, “Maybe it was too late years ago.”

He held her gaze steadily for a long moment. “Okay,” he said at last, laying his hand on her shoulder. “No more questions, no more pressure. But you know where to come if you need anything, don’t you?”

Her eyes filled. She smiled and nodded.

“Oh, no,” Jaya said as she joined them. “Are you two getting sentimental on me?”

“Cover your eyes,” Mo said equably. “We’re almost finished.” He gave Cassie’s shoulder a last squeeze. “Since you’re determined to do this, I’ll go get that overnight case you always borrow when you visit your mom. You can load some of this stuff in it.” He turned and left.

“You could help me pack, too,” Cassie pointed out to the friend who remained, and started pulling things out of the medicine cabinet. She paused, holding up an odd-looking pile of glued-together seashells that usually sat on the vanity. It somewhat resembled an angel with chunky, gold-tipped wings.

Jaya folded her arms in front of her flat chest. “Help you screw up? I don’t think so.” She noticed what Cassie held and snorted. “I still can’t believe you bought that thing. Artists are supposed to have some sort of standards.”

“Art,” Cassie said loftily, turning the little statue over to inspect it from a different angle, “is about genuine feeling. This is as genuine a piece of cheap tourist kitsch as any I’ve seen.” And the old woman who made and sold the statues had delighted Cassie.

Jaya might have been reading her mind. “That old woman knew a pigeon when she found one.”

“She did, didn’t she?” Cassie smiled, remembering the mixture of shrewdness and humor in eyes cradled in several decades’ worth of wrinkles. But amusement drained out as she considered the present. Wistfully she said, “I can’t quite see this in any place Gideon owns, can you?”

“Cassie.” Jaya’s narrow face was earnest and worried. “Think about what you’re doing, here. Running off and marrying Gideon Wilde is one thing—an impulse, maybe a mistake, but nothing you can’t fix. Moving in with a man who doesn’t want your stuff cluttering up his place is something else entirely.”

Cassie had to smile at Jaya’s unique slant on what was important. “Living together tends to follow marriage. And... I did make promises.”

“Is that why you’re doing this?” Jaya demanded. “Because you said ‘I do’ when some preacher told you to?”

“Maybe,” Cassie admitted. There were other reasons, like the friendship between her brother and Gideon. She didn’t want to see either man lose that, but it would be especially hard on Gideon. Cassie wasn’t sure he had any other friends. “Mostly, though,” she admitted at last, “I’m doing it for me. Because I’ve got a chance at him now, and I’d be a fool to toss that aside just because I’m scared, wouldn’t I?”

“Lord, I don’t know.” Jaya ran an impatient hand through her hair, making the spiky bangs stand up straight. “I don’t—what’s that? It sounds like a truck.”

Oh, Lord. “The movers.” Still carrying the little shell angel, Cassie hurried out of the bathroom and looked out one of the windows.

Sure enough, in the driveway below, a man with a droopy mustache and a cigar was climbing down from the passenger side of a big, orange moving van. Cassie watched, paralyzed, as the door on the driver’s side swung open and a skinny man in a red shirt stepped down.

They were here. They were going to pack up her things and put them away somewhere. Her fingers dug into the edges of the shells hard enough to hurt, but she didn’t notice as she looked wildly around the room. What should she take with her? What had to be left behind?

She felt Jaya’s hand on her shoulder. “You want me to get rid of them?” her friend asked.

Cassie looked down at the awkward angel, biting her lip and thinking about Gideon’s apartment. Not his current apartment. He’d been living at an address not quite as expensive, not quite as exclusive, when she’d humiliated herself so thoroughly on the night of her twentieth birthday. But she remembered very clearly the white carpet, silvery gray couches and black lacquered tables. Just like she remembered the pale blond hair of the woman who’d been in his apartment.

That hair, the subtle shade of ripened wheat, had been the only color in the room.

Of course. Cassie’s panic fled as she realized what she needed to do. “Jaya,” she said slowly, “do me a favor and go tell those guys I won’t be needing them, okay? They can bill Gideon for an hour of their time or something.”

Jaya whooped. “I knew it,” she said, her long legs taking her to the door in a twinkling. “I knew you were too smart to do this.”

“That’s right,” Cassie said, moving briskly herself now that she’d decided. She stopped at the little breakfast bar where Mickey Mouse held the telephone receiver out. “There’s simply no reason to make all these decisions today. I’m paid up until the end of the month, so I’ll leave most of the furniture here for now. We don’t need to pay a mover for the other stuff.”

“Cassandra Danielle O’Grady.” Jaya turned, one hand on the doorknob. “What are you talking about? You aren’t still planning on moving, are you?”

“My name,” she said as she dialed, “is now Cassandra Danielle O’Grady Wilde.” And that was the key. As of last night, she was part of Gideon’s life. Even if he’d changed his mind and didn’t want her there. Even if he did try to put fences around their relationship with his stupid one-year-marriage idea. Even if he had an apartment full of grays and blacks with no color....

Especially because he lived without color. He needed Cassie, needed her and her paints and her tacky little shell angel, and she didn’t need to put half of her life in storage in order to be with him. She had to believe that, or give up hope right now.

Cassie was simply no good at giving up. “I thought I’d see if Sam and Nugget could bring a truck and some muscles,” she explained to Jaya. who glared at her from the doorway, as Cassie listened to the phone ringing at the other end. “I’m sure Mo will help, too. Even if I leave some of the furniture here, there will be a lot of lifting involved, and it’ll go faster if—oh, hi, Sam. I have a favor to ask. But first...guess what I did yesterday?”

Four

At 5:20 Gideon started clearing off his desk. He put the rolled seismic section he’d been studying into the stand behind his desk and shut down the computer. After a brief hesitation he put his working disk in his desk drawer, which he locked. He wouldn’t take any work with him today. Cassie was waiting.

When he reached for his coffee cup he noticed the framed photograph that had sat on his desk for the past six months, a token that had reassured him daily of how close he was to his goal. How close he’d thought he was. The painful bewilderment that had ridden him for the past five days, ever since Melissa’s phone call, rose again to tighten his throat.

He couldn’t very well keep the picture of his former fiancée on his desk now that he’d married another woman, could he? Gideon picked up the picture.

Six months ago, when he and Melissa had become engaged; her parents had given him this studio photograph of their daughter, framed in silver. He held it in his hands now, feeling the weight of that heavy frame, staring at the lovely, poised woman in the pale blue Chanel suit who was supposed to have become his wife.

Why hadn’t she wanted him?

It should have been perfect. They never argued, and their tastes were almost identical. They’d agreed on everything from music to movies to where they would live and what kind of house they would live in. Oh, they’d had a minor difference over the wedding itself. They’d agreed that the sanctuary at St. Luke’s was the only possible place for the ceremony, but St. Luke’s was the most fashionable church in the city. The sanctuary had been booked up on weekends for the next two years. Gideon had put his foot down. No way was he waiting more than six months, as Melissa had urged at first. In the end, she’d agreed to a weekday ceremony. At least she had told him she agreed. How could he be sure of anything now? She’d also told him she wanted to marry him. and she hadn’t meant that.

Slowly Gideon opened the back of the frame and slid out the glossy photo. He unlocked his desk, opened the. bottom drawer and pulled out a photo album.

The album had been cheap to start with—a dull green binder with gilt trim stamped into the vinyl. Now, many years and much handling later, it looked shabby and completely out of place in the elegant office.