Bride Of Convenience. Susan Fox P.

got dressed, Stacey walked out into her bedroom. Her gaze fell to the ivory carpet and fixed on the business card McClain had given her. She thought she’d tossed it in the wastebasket but she must have missed, and it had ended up on the floor.

      The sight of it was a profound irritation. She couldn’t even throw something away and do it successfully. Aggravated, she picked up the card and started to toss it away again before she suddenly froze.

      The bold scrawl on the back of the card gave the name of one of the most beautiful and exclusive hotels in New York. Seeing how he’d written the letters gave her a swift sense of McClain himself: bold, masculine, decisive.

      His handwriting wasn’t something spidery or refined-looking or difficult to read. It was as blunt as he was, as unpretentious, but the letters seemed confident. The pressure he’d put on the pen fairly shouted guilessness; he’d not needed to dither over what to write, he’d just done it. He was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said, and there’d be no mistaking him because he was too straightforward.

      Holding that card in her fingers seemed to calm a little of the anxiety that made her feel so sick. No one would cheat or steal from a man like McClain, if for no other reason than the fact that he looked like he could beat the daylights out of anyone foolish enough to trifle with him.

      If he were in her place, he certainly wouldn’t be moping around his house wondering how he’d survive or where he’d live. He probably wouldn’t care that his closets weren’t tidy or feel incompetent because he couldn’t cook for himself or do his own laundry.

      He wouldn’t be afraid to look for a job. If his friends shunned him, he’d probably say “To hell with them,” and he’d put all his energy and strength into making his own way in the world, even if he’d need to find some new way to live.

      That was her impression of Oren McClain. Because of that, she wondered again what a man like him could possibly see in someone like her. Or was he the kind of man her archaic and chauvinistic grandfather had raised her to marry? The kind of man so driven and taken up with his wealth or position or his business life that he’d choose a wife as an accessory and make certain he selected one with breeding who could provide him with handsome and/or beautiful heirs?

      Stacey supposed some Texas ranchers and oilmen might be the same on that score as some of the moneyed eastern elites. She turned the card over and read down through the list of phone numbers. There were six of those.

      She felt a spark of hope. If Oren McClain was looking for a trophy wife, he might not be disappointed in her. She took good care of her skin and her body, and she had personal taste and a refined style that would never be an embarrassment to him.

      Surely he wasn’t looking for a woman who could outride, outrope and outcowboy him, because he could have found a woman like that in Texas. Before her hope could rise very far, Stacey got a swift mental picture of a Texas cattle ranch. How did anyone survive socially and culturally so far from a city?

      Did McClain have a maid? A cook? He’d talked like he had money, but how much money did he actually have? And how did he spend it? Did he spend it all on cows and land and pickup trucks and cowboy hobbies, or would he spend some on household help? How big was his house? Was it a cabin or something with some real size to it?

      She thought again of his remark about jewels and designer duds. Her impression of him was of honesty and straightforwardness. Maybe he hadn’t exaggerated the things he could provide a wife. If anything, McClain might be the kind of man who understated things to avoid appearing a braggart.

      Stacey’s hopes rose a little more as she considered all that. He’d said he’d come to New York to see her, to find out if she’d changed her mind, but she couldn’t just take him at face value. She needed more information, but she needed a means to get it that wouldn’t cost very much.

      An Internet search got her started. Going by McClain’s business card, she found out which part of Texas he was from and managed to find newspaper coverage that mentioned McClain Ranch and McClain Oil. A social page in a San Antonio newspaper mentioned an Oren McClain in an article about an area fund-raiser weeks ago, but something else that had gotten her attention was the fact that a TV Western mini-series had been shot on location on McClain Ranch.

      Stacey began to feel a little more at ease about Oren McClain. He apparently wasn’t a social outcast, he was well known in the area of Texas he was from, and she hadn’t seen his name associated with anything criminal.

      She gave a self-deprecating groan. Her grandfather would have had the background of any potential husband investigated at least as far back as three generations, and he would have had to know to the penny how much the man was worth. Stacey was reduced to doing an Internet search to rule out a criminal background and reading through a society page and business directory to see if the man had enough resources to support a spoiled wife.

      Disgusted that she’d gone this far toward the idea of marrying a stranger for his money, she got up and started to pace. Though her apartment was large it seemed to grow more oppressively small by the hour.

      She thought about the money she’d had over the years. Or rather, the money she’d spent. What she’d give for a year’s worth of the money she’d spent on clothing and jewelry alone! And now she couldn’t buy much of anything. What little she had left would have to fund a new, painfully modest life. And what if she couldn’t find a job? She’d already waited two months for something she could live with.

      The grim future she pictured for herself made it nearly impossible to contemplate the wait between now and Monday, when she could again call the employment agency she’d consulted in hopes of finding something she was qualified to do.

      Saturday night loomed before her like lonely shadows in a long dark hall. She was already sick of the deli food in the refrigerator. A fine, hot meal would go a long way in calming her jitters and helping her shore up what little actual courage she had.

      Stacey glanced over at the business card propped up on the computer keyboard and realized she was in serious danger of sinking low enough to take advantage of Oren McClain.

      Perhaps it wouldn’t be so awful to at least find out if he’d like to take her to dinner. Maybe he wasn’t really serious about marriage. After all, he said he’d come to New York to see if her answer was still no. Perhaps if he took her out once or twice, he’d realize that he didn’t really want her to say yes. She might be doing him a favor if she let him spend enough time with her to become disillusioned.

      Stacey didn’t let herself think about how far she’d twisted things around to make her selfish motives—and her craving for a hot meal—seem noble. Not until she’d made the call to McClain’s hotel and let him know she’d changed her mind about seeing him.

      Once they’d made plans for the evening and she’d hung up the phone, she felt so heartsick over her cowardly scheme that she almost, almost called him back.

      The lady was as jumpy as a flea on an old dog. He could almost smell her guilt over their date tonight, and he was satisfied by that hint of character.

      A little aristocrat like Stacey Amhearst was probably terrified of being poor, and she was no doubt close to the point where she’d do just about anything to save herself from the horrors of being broke. She might even marry a rough old Texas boy like him.

      She’d secretly studied him all through dinner as if she was judging a horse she might buy. He knew she liked the way he made her feel because he couldn’t mistake the way she’d melted when he’d escorted her across the restaurant with his hand at the back of her waist.

      Or earlier, when he’d picked her up at her place and taken her arm to go downstairs to get in the taxi. And again when they’d arrived here and he’d taken her hand for the short walk from the taxi into the restaurant.

      The lady was like a choice sweet in a kid’s warm grip, and he liked that her cool grace and polite reserve was about as thin as a cellophane wrapper. Months ago, she’d behaved as if she hadn’t quite known how to handle him—or herself—when he got close. She still behaved