Stand-in Groom (15 page)

As Johnny watched, the Ice Princess made an appearance for the first time in days.

“I beg your pardon?” Chelsea said to Tim von Reuter. “The first payment is only one hundred dollars, and I won’t receive the second payment until I’ve been married for
how
long?”

“One year.” The lawyer sat behind his desk, clearly unhappy with the news he’d given her. “There was nothing in the description of this trust fund that led me to believe it wasn’t set up identically to the funds your grandfather left for your brother and sister and your cousins, which allowed them to receive the money directly following their wedding.”

“Yet now you’re telling me that it’s different.
My
trust was set up entirely differently. How could you not have known?”

Von Reuter was definitely starting to get a bad case of frostbite from Chelsea’s chilly gaze. “You saw me break the seal on the envelope,” he told her. “This is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.”

“Can we contest this? Challenge it in some way?”

The lawyer shook his head, gesturing with the document that had been in the sealed envelope. “The terms of the trust fund are in writing. It’s been signed and witnessed. This is the way your grandfather wanted it, this is what you’re going to have to do if you want this money.”

“May I?” Johnny asked, reaching for the papers in question. He skimmed them quickly, trying to get past all the wheretofores and thereupons. Von Reuter was right. Amid all the legal mumbo jumbo, Chelsea’s grandfather’s wishes regarding the money were as clear as day. Chelsea was to receive only a paltry hundred dollars from the trust until her first anniversary.

He looked up to find her gazing out the window, distant and untouchable. She glanced in his direction. “He knew,” she said, more to herself than to him. “He knew I’d never willingly get married. He knew I’d try to cheat the rules.”

To his surprise, despite the fact that she’d tried to hide behind her Ice Princess facade, her eyes filled with tears.

And when she spoke, her words surprised him. “God, I miss that nasty old man. He always swore he’d get back at me for all those times I beat him at chess.” She laughed, one fat tear escaping down her cheek. “I guess this is his idea of a good joke.”

“The good news is that he left you nearly eight times the amount he left your brothers and sisters,” Von Reuter told her.

Eight
times? Johnny flipped to the back of the document and there was the amount of money that had been placed in trust for Chelsea. That money, combined with the interest it would have made all these years, was the equivalent of winning the lottery. Chelsea would be set for life.

“Screw the money. I don’t want the money. If I can’t get to it now, it doesn’t do me any good.” Chelsea stood up, wiping her face. “How long will it take to get this marriage annulled?”

It was obviously not a question Tim von Reuter had been expecting. “Why don’t we finish talking about the ramifications of this trust before we—”

“I want to talk about the annulment now. How long will it take?”

Von Reuter shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, that depends on a lot of different variables. …”

Chelsea swore, leaning over his desk almost threateningly. “If you don’t know, will you
please
just say you don’t know?”

The lawyer nearly choked on the words. “I don’t know.”

There was a note of desperation in her voice. “Give it your best guess, Tim. Please?”

“Best-case scenario? I know we’ll need to schedule a court date. … Maybe a month?”

Chelsea seemed to crumble, holding on to the edge of the desk. “Oh, my God.
That
long?”

Johnny stood up. “Lookit, Chelsea, I know you’re disappointed, and I know that you don’t want to be married to me for even one second longer than you have to, but a month’s really not that much time in the grand scheme of things.”

“Oh, John, no—you don’t understand.” She turned to face him, her blue eyes enormous in her face. “This doesn’t have to do with me not wanting to be married. This is about not wanting to wait a
whole month to”—she glanced almost furtively at Von Reuter and lowered her voice—“to be with you.”

Johnny nearly staggered from the impact of her words. She was upset,
incredibly
upset, because she didn’t want to have to wait an entire month to make love to him. His heart was in his throat. “So we’ll have to get a divorce. Big deal.”

She shook her head. “Without that money, I probably couldn’t afford a divorce.
Everything
I’ve got is tied up in my business. I haven’t even made the mortgage payments on my condo for the past three months.” She looked as if she were about to burst into tears.

Johnny turned to Von Reuter. “Tim, is there somewhere Chelsea and I can talk privately?”

The lawyer stood up. “Use my office. Please. If you’ll excuse me?”

Johnny waited until the door closed behind Von Reuter. Then he turned to Chelsea. “Here’s what we’re going to do, okay? We’re going to stay married for a year. After that you’ll be able to afford all the divorces you want.”

She stared at him in total disbelief. “You’d do that? For an
entire
year?”

“Let’s see, an entire year, married to the most beautiful, incredible woman I’ve ever met?” he asked, pretending to consider it. “Somehow I’ll suffer through.”

He couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh or cry.

She took a deep breath and did neither. “So what’s your cut?”

Johnny shook his head, not understanding. “My cut?”

“Yeah. What percentage do you want?”

“Percentage?”

“Of the money.”

Johnny didn’t want a percentage. The money was the last thing he’d been thinking about. But letting her think he was in this for the money was better than telling her the truth and scaring her to death. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ten percent?”

“That’s
all
?”

“Ten percent of the money waiting for you in that trust fund is nothing to sneeze at.”

“I’ll give you twenty-five percent.”

He had to laugh. “If this is the way you negotiate, no wonder your business is short of funds.”

“We’re talking about a solid year of your life—I still can’t believe you would do this for me.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I kind of like you,” he told her. “I asked you out first, remember?”

“You asked me to go to dinner,” she reminded him. “Not to marry you for a year.”

“If my choice was between zero or three hundred and sixty-five dinners, I’d take the three sixty-five.”

Chelsea’s eyes were filled with tears again.

“I get more than the money for doing this, you know,” he continued softly. “If we’re going to be married for a year, we’re going to be
married
for a year. Starting tonight, you’ll be my wife. For real.”

She took a tissue from a box near Von Reuter’s desk and wiped her eyes and nose. “Only starting tonight?”

Johnny checked his watch, dizzy from the possibilities. But it was nearly nine-thirty. They still had to talk to Tim, tell him what they planned to do, make sure there were no loopholes they’d overlooked. Even if that took only five minutes—and it would surely take longer—that still left them only an hour. And an hour wasn’t long enough to do what he wanted to do. He swore softly.

“I promised my boss I’d be at work by ten-thirty,” he told her.

“I thought you worked in the evenings.”

“I do. Mostly. But there’s a private party that starts at four, and he’s counting on me to be in early to help prepare.”

She was looking at him as if he were one of his gourmet dinners. “I don’t want to wait,” she said suddenly.

He didn’t want to, either. The thought suddenly occurred to him that they could lock Von Reuter’s office door and get it on right there on the lawyer’s desk. But as appealing a thought as that was, he knew he didn’t want to make love to Chelsea that way for the first time. He didn’t want to rush. He wanted to take his sweet time.

“Since the party starts early, it’ll end early,” he promised her. “I’ll be home by ten.”

Home. “Where do you live?” she asked. “God, I don’t even know where you live.”

“I have a condo near the harbor, but … why don’t I just plan to come out to your place.” He smiled. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you give me a key?”

“S
O YOU THINK
with today’s market, we can list it at five hundred K?” Chelsea asked, making a note on her pad as she spoke on the phone.

“I would even try five twenty-five,” the real-estate agent told her. “In that building, in that part of town, with two bathrooms and all those renovations you’ve done … For the type of upscale condominium that you have, it’s definitely a seller’s market.”

“But I need to sell it fast,” Chelsea said. “Immediately. As in, the day before yesterday.”

She did the math on her notepad for both
numbers, figuring in the agent’s commission, the closing costs, the amount of equity she had, minus the last few mortgage payments she’d missed and the ensuing penalties. If she sold the place for five hundred thousand, she’d walk away with just under forty thousand, of which she’d have to pay about half in taxes. But if she wanted to
sell
for five hundred, she’d have to list it higher. …

“Let’s go with five hundred twenty-five,” she told the agent. “How soon can you get it listed?”

“I’ll messenger the paperwork to your office for you to sign. And I’ll put the listing in the MLS computer this afternoon,” he said. “We’ll have to set up a time for the agents in my office to see the unit.”

“The sooner the better,” Chelsea told him. “You set it up—I’ll adjust my schedule to fit yours.”

As she hung up the phone she looked up to see Moira standing in her doorway.

“I can’t believe you’re really going to do it,” her friend said. “You’re selling your condo and moving in with a guy named Giovanni Anziano.”

“I’m selling my condo to make the first payment of the loan,” Chelsea reminded her.

Moira sat down across from her, resting her
elbows on the edge of Chelsea’s desk and her chin in her hands. “Do your parents know?”

“That I’m selling my condo? No. I just made that decision.”

“I’m not talking about the condo,” Moira said. “I’m talking about the truck driver. Do your parents know that the guy you married isn’t descended from Italian royalty?”

“John’s not a truck driver,” Chelsea said. “He works in a restaurant … or something.”

“He’s a waiter? That’ll go over almost as well.”

“He’s not a waiter,” Chelsea said. “At least I don’t think so. I think he’s some kind of assistant cook … or something.” She didn’t know. In all of the conversations she’d had with Johnny, she hadn’t asked him what, specifically, he did at the restaurant downtown. God, she couldn’t even remember the restaurant’s name. Had he even told her?

“Your parents are going to have a cow.” Moira was grinning. “Can I be there when you tell them?”

“Even if he
is
a waiter, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Chelsea said, defending Johnny. “He’s not going to be a waiter forever—he wants to open his own restaurant.”

“With your money, I bet.”

“No, with his
share
of the trust fund.”

“Relax, I’m just teasing.”

Chelsea forced a smile, but truth was, her friend’s teasing hit too close to home. Johnny
was
getting paid for the favor he was doing for her. But really, did she honestly expect that he’d agree to stay married to her for an entire year and
not
get paid?

“On an entirely different note,” Moira told her, “there was a nifty little stash of crack vials and needles in the doorway when I came in this morning. I talked to Sylvia—you know, the woman who works over at H&R Block—and she gave me some special trash containers marked ‘Biohazardous Waste,’ that her office gets from the board of health.”

“You need to be
really
careful when you pick up those needles,” Chelsea said.

“No kidding. But as I was out there, being really careful, it occurred to me that we may want to find a location for our office that doesn’t double as a nightly hangout for addicts.”

“Moira, God, you know we can’t afford to
move. Right now we can’t even pay the rent on
this
place!”

Moira pushed herself out of her chair. “I know.” She shook her head. “Do you think Sears sells needle-proof gloves?”

“Tomorrow, I’ll pick up the trash,” Chelsea told her.

“You mean, the biohazardous waste.” Moira turned back to look through the doorway. “You know, the sad part of what you just said is that we both know there most likely will be vials and needles there again tomorrow.”

Chelsea pressed her forehead against her palms. Damn, she needed cash, and she needed it fast.

But what she really needed was Johnny.

She longed to hear his voice and she nearly picked up the phone and called him at work. But wanting to hear his voice didn’t seem like a good enough excuse to call him—and certainly one she’d have trouble admitting.

She glanced at her watch. It was only two o’clock. Would this day never end? The phone rang, and she scooped it up, hoping that it was Johnny.

It wasn’t. It was the real-estate agent again. “I
just spoke to some of the people in my office about setting up a realtors’ open house at your condo,” he told her, “and I found out if we don’t do it first thing tomorrow, it won’t happen until next Wednesday at the earliest.”

“First thing as in what time?” Chelsea asked. She had plans for the morning. They involved sleeping late, breakfast in bed … and Johnny.

“Seven-thirty.”

She cringed. “Can’t you do it later? Say, noon?”

“Not tomorrow. If you want, we could set it up for next Wednesday at noon.”

“Wait. No,” Chelsea said. “Go back to tomorrow at seven-thirty. Do I have to be there?”

“Absolutely not.”

“In that case, it’s fine. I’ll send over a key with the paperwork.”

Chelsea hung up the phone and glanced at her watch: 2:07. Time had never dragged like this before.

But … Now she had a good reason to give Johnny a call.