Wife By Deception. Donna Sterling

credit cards and spent all the cash she could before she divorced him. She’d then left town with his daughter. About the only thing he hadn’t lost to her was his small house on the swamp, his fleet of shrimp boats and his heart. His heart remained strictly his own, thank God.

      “Cap’n, you want me to stop?” Darryl asked him.

      “Pull over here.”

      Camryn’s lips parted in dismay as Darryl swerved the van onto the shoulder of the highway.

      “We’re stopping here?” she said. “You expect me to…to go in the woods?”

      He lifted a shoulder. “It’s up to you, chèr’. But we’re not stopping anywhere else, and we still have quite a ways to drive.”

      Although clearly dismayed, she nodded and sat forward in the seat.

      He clicked a handcuff around her wrist, and the other around his own. “Ready?”

      She gaped at the handcuffs binding her wrist to his, then stared at him in patent horror. “You don’t mean that you’re…you’re…coming with me!”

      “You didn’t think I’d let you loose in those woods, did you?”

      He had to admire her acting ability. He could swear her objection was based on outraged modesty rather than a foiling of her escape plan. But he knew damn well she’d never been overly modest, even before they’d been married. At times she hadn’t even bothered to close the bathroom door.

      An oddly convincing blush crept into her face, and she pressed her lips into a thin, white line. “You will not come with me,” she decreed, her tone imperial and her bearing regal. “I won’t allow it.”

      She really had that lady-of-the-manor act down pat. “You think I should just let you out and, uh, trust you to return?”

      “Absolutely.”

      “So…you’re trustworthy, are you, chèr’?”

      Something flickered in her pretty brown eyes. Looked a little like guilt. Imagine that. She recovered quickly enough, though, and tilted her chin at a haughty angle. “Yes, I am.”

      “Then why do you have my wallet in your pocket?”

      The color drained from her face, and she silently stared at him. Never had he seen her more at a loss. Not a lick of her former arrogance remained.

      He held out his hand—the one that wasn’t chained to hers.

      Color rushed back into her cheeks as she dug into her back pocket and placed the wallet into his palm.

      He flipped it open, glanced to see that his credit cards and cash remained in place, then slipped the wallet into his pocket. His shirt pocket, this time. “What were you planning—to skip the country, compliments of my American Express?”

      “No. Of course not. I…I wasn’t going to take anything from your wallet. I just…I just…”

      He waited, curious as to what explanation she’d come up with.

      She seemed fresh out of creativity, though. At least, for the moment. She bit her lip, looking utterly humiliated.

      Something about her reaction bothered him. Crazy as it sounded, she seemed too mortified. The old Camryn would have been merely upset at being caught. A subtle difference, but one that he couldn’t easily shake off.

      Why did the change in her seem so deeply ingrained?

      He didn’t know, and he didn’t like not knowing. He’d have to watch her every move. Good thing he intended to transport her by boat most of the way rather than car. Even if she succeeded in some trickery along the way, she couldn’t do much damage in the Gulf. No one out there would interfere.

      “You want to use the woods or not?” he demanded.

      “No. I’ll just wait.”

      He shrugged and sat back in his seat, forcing her to do likewise, since her wrist was cuffed to his.

      “Could you please release my wrist?” she asked, her dignity back in place.

      “Don’t try to steal my wallet again,” he warned as he unlocked the cuff from his own wrist, then from hers. “Won’t do you any good, anyway. Cash and credit cards won’t mean much to you out there in the Gulf.”

      “The Gulf? Of…Mexico? Do you mean, we’re going on a boat?”

      Another odd response. “I damn sure wouldn’t try crossing on a raft.”

      She digested that quip in silence, then asked, “What kind of boat?”

      He turned and searched her face for signs of mockery or sarcasm. She had to know the answer to that question. Why had she asked it? “The Lady Jeanette,” he told her.

      And though he realized Camryn was a good actress and hesitated to believe anything she said or silently conveyed, he also knew that his reply hadn’t told her a damn thing. The question was still as bright and bothersome in her eyes. How could she not know he’d meant one of his shrimp boats?

      More perplexing still, he detected fear in her expression. Fear. Why would the thought of traveling on his boat frighten her? She’d enjoyed herself the last time she’d gone out to sea with him. She’d enjoyed herself a little too much, actually.

      “Why are we going on a boat?” An almost undetectable tremor reverberated in her voice.

      “Because I don’t want you causing problems along the way. On the water, there’s less chance of it.”

      Looking troubled, she searched his face, as if she suspected some hidden meaning.

      Darryl called over his shoulder, “Is Joey gonna meet us at the dock, Cap’n?”

      Before he had time to answer no, that he’d instructed Joey to head straight for home, Camryn cut in, “Joey?

      The same Joey who has Arianne? Will he bring her, too?”

      That question, more than anything, convinced Mitch that something was going very wrong here. Even Darryl glanced back through the rearview mirror to frown at the woman who’d asked the question.

      “You know Joey, Cam,” Mitch answered, watching her. “Why would you ask a question like that?”

      From the blankness of her stare, he knew she hadn’t caught his meaning. She clearly had no clue to what she’d said wrong.

      “Do you mean—” she hesitated “—he won’t be bringing Arianne to the dock?”

      What in the hell was going on?

      “I mean,” said Mitch, “that Joey isn’t a he. She’s my sister.”

      His sister.

      In the tense silence that followed, the facts of the situation rearranged themselves in Kate’s mind. The person keeping Arianne was not the shady gangster character she had envisioned but a woman who held the same family relationship as she herself—Arianne’s aunt. A measure of relief came with that knowledge, but only a slight measure. She had no solid reason to believe this Joey was any more competent or caring with babies than a strange man would be.

      On the heel of those thoughts came the understanding that she’d made a huge mistake in referring to Joey as “he.” Both Mitch and his driver were waiting for an explanation. You know Joey, Cam. Why would you ask such a question?

      And this was just the beginning. If Mitch was taking her to “his neck of the woods,” as he’d called it, she could be facing a community of people whom Camryn should know. How could she possibly bluff her way through this impersonation?

      The answer occurred to her in a flash of unprecedented brilliance—an explanation that would cover her latest blunder and any she might make in the future, as well as offer Mitch an explanation that might help soften his attitude toward Camryn.