Part of the Bargain. Linda Lael Miller

touch of mascara and went back to her room to dress. From her suitcases she selected a short-sleeved turquoise pullover shirt and a pair of trim jeans. Remembering her intention to find Cathy and persuade her to go riding, she ferreted through her closet until she found the worn boots she’d left behind before moving to New York, pulling them on over a pair of thick socks.

      Looking down at those disreputable old boots, Libby imagined the scorn they would engender in Aaron’s jet-set crowd and laughed. Problems or no problems, Jess or no Jess, it was good to be home.

      Not surprisingly, the kitchen was empty. Ken had probably left the house before dawn, but there was coffee on the stove and fruit in the refrigerator, so Libby helped herself to a pear and sat down to eat.

      The telephone rang just as she was finishing her second cup of coffee, and Libby answered cheerfully, thinking that the caller would be Ken or the housekeeper at the main house, relaying some message for Cathy.

      She was back at the table, the receiver pressed to her ear, before Aaron spoke.

      “When are you coming home?”

      “Home?” echoed Libby stupidly, off-balance, unable to believe that he’d actually asked such a question. “I am home, Aaron.”

      “Enough,” he replied. “You’ve made your point, exhibited your righteous indignation. Now you’ve got to get back here because I need you.”

      Libby wanted to hang up, but it seemed a very long way from her chair to the wall, where the rest of the telephone was. “Aaron, we are divorced,” she reminded him calmly, “and I am never coming back.”

      “You have to,” he answered, without missing a beat. “It’s crucial.”

      “Why? What happened to all your…friends?”

      Aaron sighed. “You remember Betty, don’t you? Miss November? Well, Betty and I had a small disagreement, as it happens, and she went to my family. I am, shall we say, exposed as something less than an ideal spouse.

      “In any case, my grandmother believes that a man who cannot run his family—she was in Paris when we divorced, darling—cannot run a company, either. I have six months to bring you back into the fold and start an heir, or the whole shooting match goes to my cousin.”

      Libby was too stunned to speak or even move; she simply stood in the middle of her father’s kitchen, trying to absorb what Aaron was saying.

      “That,” Aaron went on blithely, “is where you come in, sweetheart. You come back, we smile a lot and make a baby, my grandmother’s ruffled feathers are smoothed. It’s as simple as that.”

      Sickness boiled into Libby’s throat. “I don’t believe this!” she whispered.

      “You don’t believe what, darling? That I can make a baby? May I point out that I sired Jonathan, of whom you were so cloyingly fond?”

      Libby swallowed. “Get Miss November pregnant,” she managed to suggest. And then she added distractedly, more to herself than Aaron, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

      “Don’t tell me that I’ve been beaten to the proverbial draw,” Aaron remarked in that brutally smooth, caustic way of his. “Did the steak-house king already do the deed?”

      “You are disgusting!”

      “Yes, but very practical. If I don’t hand my grandmother an heir, whether it’s mine or the issue of that softheaded cowboy, I stand to lose millions of dollars.”

      Libby managed to stand up. A few steps, just a few, and she could hang up the telephone, shut out Aaron’s voice and his ugly suggestions. “Do you really think that I would turn any child of mine over to someone like you?”

      “There is a child, then,” he retorted smoothly.

      “No!” Five steps to the wall, six at most.

      “Be reasonable, sweetness. We’re discussing an empire here. If you don’t come back and attend to your wifely duties, I’ll have to visit that godforsaken ranch and try to persuade you.”

      “I am not your wife!” screamed Libby. One step. One step and a reach.

      “Dear heart, I don’t find the idea any more appealing than you do, but there isn’t any other way, is there? My grandmother likes you—sees you as sturdy peasant stock—and she wants the baby to be yours.”

      At last. The wall was close and Libby slammed the receiver into place. Then, dazed, she stumbled back to her chair and fell into it, lowering her head to her arms. She cried hard, for herself, for Jonathan.

      “Libby?”

      It was the last voice she would have wanted to hear, except for Aaron’s. “Go away, Stacey!” she hissed.

      Instead of complying, Stacey laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What happened, Libby?” he asked softly. “Who was that on the phone?”

      Fresh horror washed over Libby at the things Aaron had requested, mixed with anger and revulsion. God, how self-centered and insensitive that man was! And what gall he had, suggesting that she return to that disaster of a marriage, like some unquestioning brood mare, to produce a baby on order!

      She gave a shuddering cry and motioned Stacey away with a frantic motion of her arm.

      He only drew her up out of the chair and turned her so that he could hold her. She hadn’t the strength to resist the intimacy and, in her half-hysterical state, he seemed to be the old Stacey, the strong big brother.

      Stacey’s hand came to the back of her head, tangling in her freshly washed hair, pressing her to his shoulder. “Tell me what happened,” he urged, just as he had when Libby was a child with a skinned knee or a bee sting.

      From habit, she allowed herself to be comforted. For so long there had been no one to confide in except Stacey, and it seemed natural to lean on him now. “Aaron…Aaron called. He wanted me to have his…his baby!”

      Before Stacey could respond to that, the door separating the kitchen from the living room swung open. Instinctively Libby drew back from the man who held her.

      Jess towered in the doorway, pale, his gaze scorching Libby’s flushed, tear-streaked face. “You know,” he began in a voice that was no less terrible for being soft, “I almost believed you. I almost had myself convinced that you were above anything this shabby.”

      “Wait—you don’t understand….”

      Jess smiled a slow, vicious smile—a smile that took in his startled brother as well as Libby. “Don’t I? Oh, princess, I wish I didn’t.” The searing jade gaze sliced menacingly to Stacey’s face. “And it seems I’m going to be an uncle. Tell me, brother—what does that make Cathy?”

      To Libby’s horror, Stacey said nothing to refute what was obviously a gross misunderstanding. He simply pulled her back into his arms, and her struggle was virtually imperceptible because of his strength.

      “Let me go!” she pleaded, frantic.

      Stacey released her, but only grudgingly. “I’ve got a plane to catch,” he said.

      Libby was incredulous. “Tell him! Tell Jess that he’s wrong,” she cried, reaching out for Stacey’s arm, trying to detain him.

      But Stacey simply pulled free and left by the back door.

      There was a long, pulsing silence, during which both Libby and Jess seemed to be frozen. He was the first to thaw.

      “I know you were hurt, Libby,” he said. “Badly hurt. But that didn’t give you the right to do something like this to Cathy.”

      It infuriated Libby that this man’s good opinion was so important to her, but it was, and there was no changing that. “Jess, I didn’t do anything to Cathy. Please listen to me.”

      He folded his strong arms and rested against the door jamb with an