The Wrong Wife. Eileen Wilks

Cassie picked up one of the croissants and tore the end off, neither of them bothering to sit down. He could hear snippets of their argument as he signed the tab and tipped the waiter, enough to know that, as angry as Cassie was with him, she was still trying to persuade Ryan he shouldn’t blame Gideon for yesterday’s events.

      Gideon couldn’t remember anyone ever defending him. His response was swift and physical. The sting of desire was sharp enough to burn, strong enough to disorient him.

      He wanted Cassie. Badly. He was still angry over all he’d lost by marrying the wrong woman, angry with her as well as himself. He still felt betrayed in a private corner of his soul no one had ever managed to disturb before. But he wanted her with bewildering intensity.

      He watched her argue with her brother. Cassie put her whole body behind everything she said, everything she did. Like a candle flame, he thought—always in motion. She wasn’t beautiful the way Melissa was. She was short and slight and...fascinating. The sleeves of her silk blouse were rolled up, and the pale flesh of her arms gesturing fluidly enticed him as if she’d bared her breasts. He felt ridiculous. And aroused.

      Maybe he didn’t consciously remember what had happened between them last night, but his body remembered. If, as she’d said, he hadn’t been able to finish what he started, then he might want her all the more today because of what he hadn’t done last night.

      If he could have her even once, he thought, the hunger wouldn’t be so keen, so consuming. He could regain control.

      He watched as Cassie grabbed the butter knife. She paused in her vehement discussion long enough to spread a precise amount of pale, creamy butter on the end of the croissant. She was such an odd little creature. In some ways she subsisted on impulse and emotion as purely as fire lives off the oxygen it bums, yet in others she was as neat and orderly as the facets of a crystal—a small, tidy agent of chaos.

      He had never pretended to understand her. He watched her now, but he was remembering a skinny girl with messy braids and eldritch eyes.

      Gideon had gone home with his new roommate for a rare weekend off. Not that he’d planned to. At eighteen, Gideon hadn’t thought he had time for friendships, not with his heavy course load and the part-time job his aunt considered an essential part of his college experience. Being the sort of woman she was, Aunt Eleanor had made the job necessary in fact as well as theory. She’d paid for his tuition and books. Everything else was up to him. If Gideon didn’t work, he didn’t eat.

      But Ryan O’Grady, for all that he seemed like a cheerful Irish grizzly, was almost as ambitious, every bit as stubborn, and twice as poor as Gideon was. Eventually Gideon had given in and accepted Ryan’s invitation home. By the time the two of them had walked up the short path to the run-down mobile home in a south Dallas trailer park, though, Gideon was regretting having agreed to the weekend.

      Not that the poverty bothered him. He’d lived in places a good deal worse before his aunt took him in, places where no one bothered to trim the grass or set out pots of grocery store mums to brighten a tiny front porch like someone had done here. No, he hadn’t wanted to be there because he didn’t know how to act around a regular family.

      “Ryan!” a lilting voice had called out from somewhere above their heads. “I’m so glad you’re here! I have to warn you, though.” The voice had dropped confidentially. “Mom has been cooking all morning.”

      Gideon had looked up, right into a mermaid’s eyes. A very dirty, landlocked little mermaid, with an elf’s pointed face, skinned knees, and braids half undone, sat on the roof of that rundown mobile home, her bare feet dangling, and watched them solemnly.

      “Is that bad?” he’d been startled into asking.

      She’d nodded. “You have to eat it, you see.” She looked him up and down, and her eyes brightened. “You look like you could eat a lot.”

      “He does,” Ryan had said, laughing and lifting his arms. “Eats like a horse. Mom will love him. Come down from there, brat, you’re confusing our guest.”

      Quick as that, she’d drawn her legs up, held her own skinny arms out, and leaned out into thin air, falling right into her brother’s arms. Gideon had never forgotten the look on her face as she fell. Trust. Utter, joyous trust.

      No, Gideon didn’t understand Cassie. Not the little girl he remembered, or the young woman who stood across the room from him now in a gold and white Las Vegas suite, scattering crumbs on the thick carpet while she argued with her brother. But he did understand responsibility.

      “Ryan,” he said, deciding it was time they settled things. “You didn’t come to my room to argue with Cassie.”

      The other man looked over at him. “No,” he agreed slowly. “I came here to see if you needed your bones broken.”

      Cassie made an impatient noise that the two men ignored. “You thought I would hurt her?” Gideon asked.

      “You were drunk.” Ryan said bluntly. “So was I, or I wouldn’t have let her go with you when you were in that shape.”

      Gideon nodded, accepting that. “Well?”

      Ryan faced him. “She says you didn’t hurt her. So the next question is, what do you plan on doing now?”

      Gideon was silent. What was he going to do? Until Cassie had come out of the shower and announced her desire for an annulment, his course had seemed clear. He’d made promises. Never mind that he’d been drunk at the time. If anything, that made it even more important that he take responsibility for his actions—financial responsibility, at least. Money was the basis for this marriage, after all, however Cassie might try to deny it now.

      Then Cassie had said she wanted an annulment. He couldn’t let that happen. Gideon didn’t know why it was so important, but he simply could not let her erase their marriage as if it had never happened.

      After all, dammit, he wanted her. He ached, and the intensity of that ache unsettled him. He realized that one time with her would be not be enough. And didn’t Cassie owe him something, too? “I promised her my support,” he said slowly, forcing himself to think beyond the throbbing in his loins and the confusion in his mind. A piece of yesterday’s jigsaw puzzle floated to the surface. “That was our deal, that I’d support her if she would marry me,” he said, remembering. “She wants to paint.”

      “She needs to paint,” Ryan corrected. “Not just because of the gallery owner who’s interested in the direction she’s taken with her work lately. That’s important to her career, sure, but painting means more to Cassie than a career.”

      Cassie frowned and muttered something to her brother. Gideon didn’t listen.

      He understood what Ryan meant when he said Cassie needed to paint. Painting meant more to her than anything, including the husband she’d acquired in order to pursue her painting. He just hadn’t thought Cassie could use people that way. He hadn’t thought she could use him that way.

      Yes, he decided, she did owe him. Chances were, though, her brother wouldn’t care for the type of repayment Gideon had in mind. Gideon didn’t want to lose Ryan’s friendship. He had to set this up carefully. “What I decide has to be up to Cassie to some extent. I’m willing to settle funds on her.”

      “Marriage involves a hell of a lot more than a checkbook. If you’re not—”

      “He said it was up to me,” Cassie interrupted.

      She might as well have not spoken. “What I want to know,” Ryan said to Gideon, “is whether you intend to dump my little sister or not. I had my reasons for encouraging this marriage—”

      Cassie squawked and grabbed her brother’s arm.

      “—but that’s because I trusted you to take care of her. I’m riot talking about money here, Gideon.”

      Ryan knew better, Gideon thought with a hot flick of resentment. At least Ryan ought to know how little Gideon had to offer a woman, other than money.