Her Convenient Millionaire (9 page)

She followed him into the kitchen and found herself fascinated by the motion of his strong throat as he tipped his head back and drank from a beer can. There, just under his jaw, the faint shadow of his afternoon beard faded into vulnerability and she had to swallow, too. This might be harder than she thought. Especially since Clara had more or less blackmailed them into staying in the same apartment.

“Sure you're not thirsty?” Mike was watching her the way she watched him. He held out his already-sweating can as if offering to share.

“I'll have some ice water.” She needed something to cool herself down, though she wasn't sure ice water would do the job.

Sherry got a glass from the cabinet while Mike broke ice from the trays. The water had the typical flat oceanfront taste. Not bottled designer water by any stretch, but it was cold and wet and felt good going down. It took her mind off Mike's throat—and the places on it perfect for kissing.

She set the glass on the counter. “I guess I'd better go get my suitcase.”

“No.” He drank again.

Sherry didn't notice his neck this time. She was too busy glaring at him. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“Just what I said. No.” He leaned against the kitchen counter, watching her without expression, but Sherry had no doubt something was going on behind that bland exterior. Probably lots of somethings. She wished she knew what they were.

“Does that mean you're going out to get it for me?”

“No.”

Now she was annoyed. What happened to the nice guy? Not that he was so nice to start with. Or was this what always happened after the wedding? The nice guy turned into the tyrant. “Why not? I want to change clothes.”

“Sorry. But nobody's going back downstairs for at least an hour.” Mike finished the beer and tossed the can at the swing-topped trash can across the room. It hit the lid and bounced off. “Two hours would be better,” he said as he strolled over to pick up his bride.

“Why?” Sherry did not understand.

He sighed. “Because Donna and Lanita are out at the pool with the girls. You have to walk by the pool to get to the garage. And we're newlyweds. Remember?”

He waggled his hand at her so that light glinted off the plain gold band. Clara had provided the rings when they realized they would need the stage props. Mike wore his father's wedding ring, Sherry wore Clara's. She'd argued against using them—the sentimental value of the rings
made her uncomfortable. But she hadn't been able to let herself agree to new ones. She didn't want Mike spending his money on her, and she didn't have enough to contribute her share.

“I don't think you should go over to Mom's to get anything, either. They could have left something and come back.”

“I remember. We're newlyweds.” Sherry ran her thumb across the inside surface of the matching band on her hand. “So what?”

“Are you sure you grew up in Palm Beach?” Mike's forehead creased as he studied her, as if she presented a puzzle he couldn't solve. “Think, Sherry. We just got married. I carried you over the threshold. What are the neighbors going to assume we're doing?”

Heat rushed to her face as she finally put the pieces together. The neighbors would expect them to be involved in hot, sweaty, tempestuous sex right about now. “Oh.”

Sherry felt totally stupid. Especially since the idea now swelled up in her mind and took up all the space that normal thoughts usually occupied. She really, truly wished she hadn't seen Mike in nothing but a bath towel. It hadn't left much to the imagination, and her imagination had been working overtime lately. She knew what he had hidden under that shoulder-enhancing jacket and wilted white shirt, and she wanted to see it again.

See it? She wanted to touch.

Which was probably why she hadn't caught on to Mike's explanation of why they were trapped in the house. She was focusing too hard on being angry with him for all those blunt-force
no
s of his, so she wouldn't think about that soft, vulnerable spot just under his jaw begging for a kiss. And now he thought she was ignorant about sex as well as indifferent to it.

“I'm going to change. It's too hot to stay in this coat.”
Mike slid out of his suit jacket and headed out of the kitchen. “I can probably find you some shorts and a T-shirt if you want.”

“That would be nice, thanks.” Sherry took her ice water with her as she wandered back into the living room. “What are we going to do for the next two hours?” She raised her voice so he could hear her through his closed bedroom door. “Vegetate?”

Mike didn't deign to respond. She strolled around the room, inspecting the shelves of videos and music discs collected for the state-of-the-art entertainment system he'd assembled piece by piece. She assumed he'd gathered the components that way, since no three pieces bore the same brand name, except for five of the eight speakers. She thought Clara could listen to his music from next door if he turned it up higher than dead quiet. Heck, Donna and Lanita could probably hear it by the pool.

“We could watch a video,” Sherry called, running her finger across the titles that ran the gamut from action-adventure all the way to action-thriller, with a few sophomoric comedies thrown in. “Is there a particular shoot-'em-up, blow-'em-up movie you prefer?”

“Suit yourself. I plan to.” Mike tossed two gray somethings at her.

One landed on her shoulder, the other on the floor at her feet. When she investigated, they proved to be shorts and a T-shirt, just as he'd offered.

“Thanks,” she began, before she looked up and the rest of her words stuck in her throat.

She had seen him, before, wearing even less than the cutoff T-shirt with ripped-out sleeves and the knit shorts he had on now. Her short-term memory had to be slipping. That was the only explanation. Though she knew she hadn't noticed the tattoo, which was right where he said it was, she did not remember that washboard stomach or the
corded thighs. She did remember that little trail of hair leading down from his navel.

Sherry squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. When she opened them, he was gone. Back to his bedroom, she decided, from the rustling-around noises. But it didn't really matter where. The man was temptation in bare feet.

With a sigh she went into the other bedroom to change.

 

Mike straddled the weight bench in his bedroom and sat down. It wasn't anything fancy, unlike the ones in the weight room downstairs, but it was enough to help keep him in shape and he didn't have to leave home. He ducked his head under the bar as he lay back for some bench press. The weight was light, since he didn't have a spotter. He wished he could pile it on. He needed to work hard, to wear himself out and sweat the woman out of his pores. The way she'd crawled under his skin, he figured it was the only way he could get her out again. He did not need this grief.

He listened over the hum of the air conditioner for her bedroom door to open, for the TV to click on, as he pushed his first set of lifts to double the usual number of reps. He smelled her first, the heady fragrance of woman mixed with some expensive perfume. Then he saw her watching from the doorway.

His T-shirt had never looked so good. The faded USMC stenciled across the front of the well-washed fabric followed every little rise and fall of his new wife's breasts, making her braless state abundantly clear. She'd knotted the shirt at her waist and tied a big looping bow in the drawstring of the shorts to hold them up. Her panty line showed through the knit shorts. She wore bikinis with wide elastic. He could see both edges of the elastic where his shorts draped lovingly over her hips.

Mike never slowed the rhythm of his lifts as he watched
her watch him. He should stop. Tell her to leave. Close his eyes the way she'd closed hers, as if it offended her to look at him in his workout gear.

It offended him to see her now, to see how she watched him, her eyes following the bar down and back up, skimming over him as if he were a pet she could play with for a while then dump out in the swamp for alligator bait when she got through with him. How would that look change if she knew the truth?

He lifted the bar high and settled it in its cradle, then sat up. “Like what you see?”

One of her shoulders lifted a tiny space, then dropped in a careless shrug. “Yes.” She paused briefly. “But then, I don't imagine that's any surprise to you.”

He allowed himself a brief, bitter laugh. He'd never had any doubt that his looks or his money would pass muster. It was his class that usually got called into question. “No beating around the bush with you, is there, Sherry?”

“I've given it up. You never get anywhere that way.”

Mike picked up a small weight and fitted it over the end of the bar. He would add five pounds for the next set of repetitions. He fussed with the weights and the clamps, waiting for her to get bored and go away. She didn't. Finally, he asked, “Was there something you wanted?”

“Is this going to get us in trouble at work? Us getting married?”

“There's no written policy.” He gave up waiting—she apparently had no intention of leaving—and lay back down to start his next set. “Nobody's going to say anything.”

Sherry came farther into the room, to the foot of the bench. “Are you sure? What about the owner?”

“Yes, I'm sure. The owner doesn't care.” Which was a lie. He cared in ways he didn't want to think about.

“How can you be positive?”

“I'm sure, okay?” He'd had enough of this conversa
tion. Why wouldn't she just go away? “Give it a rest, will you, please? It's not any of your business, anyway.”

Mike concentrated on his form, keeping the bar balanced neither too far forward or too far back, holding his arms at the exact angle to do himself the most good. She still came seeping through all his cracks and crannies, impossible to ignore.

“I guess not. How can anything about you be any of my business? After all, I'm just your wife.”

His temper sparked high. He tossed the heavy bar back into its cradle and leaped to his feet. “Only on paper.”

Still straddling the bench, feet spread wide, he bent to put himself nose-to-nose with her. “Got that?” He had to be sure she understood. “Maybe you carried real roses, but this is a paper marriage, and you are a paper wife.”

She didn't smell like paper, though. She didn't look like paper, either, all round and sleek and satin soft, with golden skin and pink lips and a little rosy tongue that sang a silent siren's call just by making a slow trip from one corner of her mouth to the other.

M
ike was kissing her before he knew he'd moved, his tongue following the call of hers back into her mouth. She tasted sweet, cool from the water she'd been drinking, but she warmed quickly to his caress. Her hands slipped behind his neck as he pulled her close, easing forward until she nestled in the cradle of his widespread thighs. He filled his hands with her bottom, squeezing, shaping, pressing her tight against his arousal.

He tilted his head the other way, taking the kiss deeper. His knees bent until he was her height, until his erection nudged her mound, told her where he wanted to be. She gasped at the intimate touch, and Mike's brain snapped back where it belonged from the other end of his body.

He stumbled back a few steps and sat down on the bench with a thump, somehow not cracking his head against the weight bar.

Sherry didn't seem any steadier. “What was that?” she rasped out. “A paper kiss?”

Mike wanted to hide his face in his hands, but confined himself to drawing a shaky hand across his mouth. Not to wipe away the kiss—he was sure that kiss was branded on his soul—but in hopes of recovering a little composure.

“'Cause I have to tell you, sweetheart,” Sherry went on, her voice a little clearer, “that sure didn't feel like paper. It didn't feel like ‘no kissing' or ‘no sex,' either. So if you want to enforce your ban, you're going to have to do a whale of a lot better than that.”

She backed away till she reached the doorway, then turned and fled the room. Mike scrambled to follow. But what could he say? She was right. He would have to do better.

“Look,” he said from the opening to the kitchen, where she was busy refilling her water glass. “Sex isn't a game to play for lack of anything better to do. It should mean something more than just a way to get some feel-good exercise. To
both
of the people involved.”

“Why did you kiss me, then?” Sherry turned off the faucet but stayed where she was, staring at the sink.

“Hell if I know.” Frustrated, Mike ran both hands back over his hair. “I think my brain dissolved.”

She stifled a snicker, badly. Most of it escaped. “How much more?”

“How much more what?” He must not have all his brain cells reconstituted yet, because now he was confused.

“How much more should it mean? Sex…to the people involved…?” Sherry turned and looked at him.

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Is it enough to like each other, or do you have to be all the way in love? Obviously, being married isn't enough. So what is?” She bit her lip, reminding Mike that his body still wanted what he wouldn't let it have.

“What does it matter? It isn't going to happen.” He wouldn't let his teeth grind together, either.

“Okay, fine. But I still want to know. Hypothetically speaking, if you insist. How much more? In love?”

“It's not something I can put a tape measure to.”

“Why not? You're the one making up all these rules. I just want to know what they are.”

Mike threw up his hands. Why did she think he had all the answers? “All right. Yes. In love.”

“So if people just like each other, sex is out.”

“Sure.” He agreed for the sake of agreeing.

“What if they like each other a whole lot, but they're not sure if it's love? What if having sex would help them figure out if they love each other? Wouldn't that be all right?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

She was pacing now, from refrigerator to sink, thinking out loud. “But what if they just got swept up in the moment? Carried away by passion?”

“Sherry.” Mike was pretty sure that if she didn't stop talking about it, sex would be taking place in the kitchen in the next two minutes. “Leave it alone.”

He turned and walked away. Not back to his weight bench. He didn't know if he'd be able to bench press anything again without getting a hard-on. Maybe the living room would be safe.

“So I guess this means you just like me a little bit, right?” Sherry followed him, perching on the arm of a chair.

Mike rummaged through his shelves for a movie. Something safe. Something with a high body count, none of them naked. “I like you fine,” he mumbled.

“But not enough for sex.”

“Sherry.” He put a warning in his voice. “Enough.”

“It's okay. It doesn't hurt my feelings. I'm used to people not liking me. Bebe doesn't like me much.”

“Who's Bebe?” Mike asked before he could stop himself.

“My stepmother. Remember? She thinks I'm prettier than Juliana. I'm not. Juliana's pretty in a different way. But that's what Bebe thinks, so she hates me.”

“I don't hate you.” He switched on the TV, giving up on the idea of a movie. Sports would do.

“You don't like me much, either.”

He rolled his eyes. “Will you stop? I like you plenty.”

“Just not enough to have sex with me.”

If he strangled her, they would call it justifiable. “It's not
me
liking
you
that's the problem. It's the other way round.”

“I like you. A lot.”

“Today.”

“I'll like you tomorrow, too.”

He did not want to talk about this, but he couldn't stop himself. He was caught in an undertow and it was about to drag him far out to sea. “What about after that? What about when your money comes in? You won't be able to say goodbye fast enough.”

That shut her up. For a minute or two.

“You don't know that.” She actually sounded as if her feelings were hurt. But that was impossible.

“Sure I do.”

“How? How can you possibly know—”

“You're from Palm Beach, babe. You're one of them. And I'm not.” Not deep down. Not really. He had enough money to be one, but he didn't care about the right things. Mike sank into one of the cushy club chairs and put the remote through its paces.

“I'm not her, Micah.” Sherry's voice came softly, floating just louder than the TV, creeping inside him.

“Her who?”

“Whoever made you feel this way. Whoever played
games with your heart and kicked it aside when she was done. The one from Palm Beach.”

“Don't kid yourself, babe. You're just like her.” He found a baseball game and slumped lower, till his head rested on the back of the chair. He was lying, of course.

Sherry was different. She'd refused to marry Mr. Money-bags Greeley. Lots of people with fewer advantages than she'd grown up with would turn their noses up at the job he'd given her. Sherry hadn't. She worked hard at it. All of that didn't mean much, though, in light of the trust fund waiting at the end of the summer. He had to make sure she saw the problems, without ever discovering the truth.

“Get me a beer, will ya?” He clicked over to the fishing show during the commercial. “Since you're up.”

The silver can came whistling through the air and smacked him in the head. He should have ducked.

 

They tiptoed around each other for the next few days. Mike took some time off to make things look good, in case Tug investigated, but the close quarters didn't improve things between them. Sherry felt guilty every time she saw the bruise on Mike's forehead where she'd thrown the beer can at him. She'd intended to hit him, just not in the head. She could have killed him.

Then again, probably not. Hard as his head was, she thought a sledgehammer would barely dent it. She'd never known anyone so thick-headed stubborn. Tug took stubborn to a high art, but he was an amateur compared to Sherry's temporary husband.

On Monday Mike had business to take care of off the island. Sherry talked him out of insisting she come with him. She didn't want to trail after him like some idiot who couldn't tie her own shoes, nor did she want to sit in the car and wait. But sitting in the apartment wasn't much more exciting.

After several hours of twiddling her thumbs, flipping through a thousand television channels that had nothing on, cleaning out the refrigerator, eating the rest of a bottle of olives, half a jar of peanut butter and way too many crackers, followed by more thumb twiddling, Sherry couldn't stand it anymore. She grabbed a towel and headed for the beach.

Mike's T-shirt and shorts were about to be introduced to sea water. If Tug showed up—well, Mike would just have to save the princess from the dragon. She was certain he'd rather that than have his apartment upended by a crazed woman sent over the edge by boredom.

Sherry didn't do much more than get wet. She knew better than to actually swim alone. Mostly she sat under a palm tree and watched seagulls fight over scraps of food. The sun and the waves and the breeze gradually soothed away her restlessness and she headed back to the apartment.

When she walked in the door, Clara was waiting.

 

An hour later Sherry was almost ready for work, hunting her wandering shoes, when Mike walked in the door. He looked way too good in yet another of his fabulous suits, this one black. He wore it with a silvery shirt that matched his eyes.

“How'd it go?” she asked, locating the missing sandals under the edge of the coffee table. She sat down in one of the cushy arm chairs to drag them out.

Mike went still a moment before opening the refrigerator to pull out a drink. “Don't try to play Ozzie and Harriet.”

“We can't even talk?” Sherry was getting tired of all Mike's rules.

“We can talk. Just leave off the ‘how was your day,' ‘honey, I'm home' stuff.”

“Okay. Fine.” She'd rather throw another beer can at his head. Maybe this time it would knock some sense into
him. She stuck her foot in a shoe. “Conversation. Your mother has moved back home. She wants to know why we're not having sex.”

Mike froze, the can he was drinking from tipped high. Then he started to cough. Sherry put on her other shoe as she waited for him to recover.

“You told her that?” he croaked between coughs.

“No, I did not.” Maybe she'd get one of those super-size cans to whack him with. “I didn't have to. She knew.”

“What, exactly, did she say?” He sounded almost normal now.

“Exactly? She said, ‘Why aren't you and Mike sleeping together?'”

“What did you say?”

“I said—I didn't know what to say—so I said, ‘We are.' And she said, ‘Liar.' And I said, ‘How do you know?' And she said—”

“Wait.” Mike stopped her. “How did you say it? Did you say it like, ‘How do
you
know?' or like, ‘How do you
know?
'”

“What difference does it make?”

“One way you're saying ‘None of your business' and the other way you're saying ‘Caught me.' So how did you say it?”

“How should I know?” Sherry couldn't believe this conversation. The man was certifiable. Besides, she wasn't about to admit the truth.

“You told her,” Mike said.

“She tricked me!”

“She's like that.”

“So are you. You tricked me just now, you sneak. But I expect it of you. You're a man. She's a little old lady. A sneaky, little old lady.”

“Who taught me everything I know.”

Sherry sighed and pulled one of the decorative pillows
into her lap, carefully combing the tangled fringe straight. “So what do we do now?”

“Nothing.”

“What about your mother?”

He sighed. “She'll give me a lot of grief. I won't pay her any attention. Things will go on like they are.”

“She told me to seduce you.” Sherry didn't understand that. “Do you think she meant it?”

“Probably. Are you going to do it?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Do you want to?”

“Can you say anything without turning it into a question?” Now the conversation was getting silly.

“I don't know, can I?” He turned it back on her once more with a wicked grin.

Sherry laughed and tossed the pillow at him, which he caught and threw back at her.

“You know,” he said. “For somebody who got all up-tight over whacking me on the arm a few short days ago, you sure have turned violent all of a sudden. I went to the club for a minute this afternoon and had to tell everybody that my wife coldcocked me with a beer can. I'm a victim of domestic violence.”

“You told them?” Her stomach did a funny little dance.

“I told them the truth. Mostly. You were tossing me a beer and missed. Don't worry about it.”

“No, I mean, you told them we were married?” It made it seem more real that he'd told their co-workers.

“They already knew. Bruno followed me outside the night your dad came to the club. He heard me. When I said…what I said. That's the idea, isn't it? For people to know we're married, so your dad will leave you alone.”

“Okay, yes, but—” Why did she feel so uncomfortable?

“I went ahead and put you on my insurance, just in case, but I didn't make any other changes, if that's what you're
worried about. You don't mind, do you? I just want to be sure somebody's close by to make sure Mom gets the treatment she needs if I'm away. Putting you as my next of kin will do that.”

He'd named her next of kin?

Sherry had to take a deep breath. Maybe his accusations did have cause. Maybe she had been seeing all of this, their marriage and everything associated with it, as a game. As playing make-believe, something she could put back in the box like dress-up clothes when it was over and forget about. Mike would be hard to forget, but she thought she could do it. It wasn't as if she was in love with him or anything.

But it was real. Maybe not all the way real, given their sleeping arrangements, but a lot more so than she had let herself realize. When a man started talking about next of kin and life-or-death situations, things couldn't get much more real than that.