- -
- 100%
- +
For all my readers, with a special mention
to those who’ve written to me. I treasure
every note and letter and card.
And to Mrs. White, the number one
advocate for my own little “Lew.”
Thank you, K.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to
Bronwyn Jameson for her contribution to
THE SECRET LIVES OF SOCIETY WIVES miniseries.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Coming Next Month
One
He’d seen pictures. He’d expected beautiful. After all, when a man chooses a trophy wife, he wants one other men will covet. But Tristan Thorpe hadn’t appreciated the extent of that beauty—or its powerful clout—until the front door of the Connecticut colonial opened in a rush and she was there, five-and-a-bit feet of breathtaking impact.
Vanessa Thorpe. His father’s widow. The enemy.
In every one of those society diary pictures she looked as glossy and polished as a trophy prize should…which had left Tristan speculating over how much was real—the platinum hair? the full lips? the petite but perfectly curved body?—and how much came courtesy of his father’s wealth.
He hadn’t wondered about the sparklers at her throat and in her ears. Those, he knew, were real. Unlike her other multi-faceted assets, the diamonds appeared on the listed valuations of Stuart Thorpe’s estate.
But here, now, seeing her in the flesh for the first time, Tristan didn’t notice anything fake. All he saw was the very real sparkle in her silvery-green eyes and the smile. Warmer than the August sun at his back now that the rain had cleared, it lit her whole face with pleasure and licked his body with instant male appreciation.
That hot shot of hormones lasted all of a second, which was as long as it took for shock to freeze the smile on her perfect pink lips.
“It’s…you.”
Her whispered gasp came coated with dismay and, although she didn’t move, Tristan saw the recoil in her expression. She wanted to back away. Hell, she probably wanted to slam the door in his face, and a perverse part of him wished she would give it a go. The long flight from Australia and the snarled afternoon traffic following a heavy rainstorm had him edgy enough to enjoy that kind of confrontation.
Logic, however, was Tristan Thorpe’s master and it cautioned him to remain cool. “Sorry to disappoint you, duchess.” And because he wasn’t the least bit sorry, he smiled, as slow and mocking as his drawled greeting. “Obviously, you were expecting someone else.”
“Obviously.”
Tristan arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say I was welcome here any time?”
“I don’t recall—”
“Two years ago,” he reminded her. After her husband’s death. Seeing as she had to call his estranged family on the other side of the world to inform them of his passing, why not extend her largesse? An ex-waitress with expectations of a cool hundred million in inheritance could afford to appear generous.
Right now she didn’t look so generous. In fact she looked downright inhospitable. “Why are you here, Tristan? The court date isn’t until next month.”
“If it’s even necessary.”
Surprise and suspicion narrowed her eyes. “Have you changed your mind? Are you dropping your contest of the will?”
“Not a chance.”
“Then what do you want?”
“There’s been a new development.” Tristan paused, savoring the moment. He’d flown nearly ten thousand miles for this. He wanted to drag it out, to see her flail, before he brought her down. “I think you’ll change your mind about keeping that court date.”
For a second she stared at him, her expression revealing nothing but annoyance. Behind her, somewhere within the mansion’s vast interior, a phone started to ring. He saw her momentary distraction, a glance, a tightening of her lips, before she spoke.
“If this is another of your attempts to obstruct execution of Stuart’s will—” the hostility in her eyes and her voice confirmed that’s exactly what she thought “—please take it to my lawyer, the same as you’ve done with every other new development the past two years. Nothing has changed in that regard. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
Oh, no. No way would he be dismissed. Not with that snooty voice, not with that imperious lift of her perfect little chin.
Tristan didn’t stop to consider propriety or good manners. To prevent her closing the door on him, he stepped forward. To halt her leaving, he reached out and caught her by the arm.
The bare arm, he realized as the shock of her warm and female softness shot through his system.
Vaguely, beneath that purr of awareness, he felt her stillness and heard the hitch of her breath. Shock, no doubt, that he’d dare lay a hand on her.
“You don’t want to close that door on me.” His voice sounded rough, a deep growl in the tense silence. And he realized that the shrill ringing of the telephone had stopped, whether because someone had picked up or the caller had quit, he didn’t know and couldn’t care. “You don’t want me taking this public.”
“No?”
“If you’re smart—” And she was. They might have dealt with each other largely through lawyers, but he’d never underestimated the smarts behind her platinum blond looks “—you’ll keep this between you and me.”
Their eyes clashed with raw antagonism and something else. The same something that still buzzed through his system and tightened his gut. The same something that made him release his grip on her arm without breaking eye contact, even when he heard the rubbery squelch of rapidly approaching sneakers on the foyer’s marble floor.
“Take the call if you need,” he said. “I can wait.”
The owner of the sneakers stopped and cleared her throat and Tristan’s attention switched to a trim middle-aged woman, even shorter than Vanessa. Despite her casual jeans and T-shirt attire, he pegged her as the housekeeper. Perhaps because of the old-fashioned feather duster poking out from under one arm.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Even though she addressed her boss, the woman’s gaze flicked over Tristan, not curious, not nervous, but sizing him up. The dislike in her expression suggested she recognized him. “Andy needs to speak to you.”
“Thank you, Gloria. I’ll take it in the library.”
“And your…guest?”
The pause was deliberate. He got the distinct impression that, like her employer, she would relish tossing the guest out on his backside. And then turning the dogs on him.
“Show him to the sitting room.”
“No need.” Tristan’s gaze shifted to Vanessa. “I lived here for twelve years. I can find my own way.”
That registered like a slap of shock in her rain-on-water eyes but she didn’t comment. Instead she inclined her head and played the gracious hostess. “Can Gloria bring you tea? Or a cold drink?”
“Would that be safe?”
The housekeeper made a sound that fell midway between a snort and a laugh. Her boss, however, didn’t appear to appreciate his gibe. Her lips compressed into a tight line. “I won’t keep you long.”
“Don’t hurry on my account.”
She paused, just long enough to cast him a long, frosty look over one shoulder. “Believe me. I never do anything on your account, Tristan.”
Uttered with the perfect mix of scorn and indifference, it was a killer closing line—one he would have paid with a salute of laughter at another time, in another place. With another adversary. But this was Vanessa Thorpe and she was already halfway across the foyer, her head bent in earnest conversation with her employee.
He couldn’t distinguish words, but the low lilt of her voice packed the same impact as her million-watt smile.
It created the same sting of heat as when he’d gripped her arm…and that heat still prickled in the palm of his hand. Flexing his fingers helped. Allowing his gaze to drop below her shoulders didn’t.
She wore a little dress—a sundress, he supposed, although the milk-pale skin it revealed hadn’t seen much sun. Very little skin lay bare; this was not a provocative dress. The silky material didn’t cling as much as flow with the subtle curves of her body. It was classy, expensive and feminine. The kind of dress that whispered woman to every red-blooded male cell he owned.
At the door to the library, she gave final instructions to the housekeeper who hurried off. To fix his tea, with a side of lemon, milk and arsenic, he presumed.
For a long moment the only sound was the retreating squeak of rubber soles and then, as if she felt the touch of his gaze or the cynical whisper of his thoughts, Vanessa pivoted on the heel of one of her delicate sandals. The skirt flared out from her legs, revealing a hint of bare thigh.
Making his skin prickle with renewed heat.
Their eyes met, clashed, held, and he saw a flash of something in her face, quicksilver fast. Then it and she were gone, from the room but not from his blood.
Damn it to blazes, he could not be attracted to her. He would not allow it.
With a growl of aggravation, he shut his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. Twenty-six hours he’d been traveling. Longer from when he left his Northern Beaches’ home for the airport in Sydney’s south end.
He was tired and he was wired, running on adrenaline and fixation on his goal.
How could he believe anything he felt right now? How could he trust anything in the turmoil of emotions elicited by his return to Eastwick, Connecticut? To this, the home where he’d grown up, where he’d felt cherished and secure, only to have that comfort blanket yanked from under his adolescent feet without any warning.
Guess what, darling? We’re going to live in Australia. You and your sisters and your mother. Won’t that be exciting?
Twenty years later he was back and his heightened responses—the heat, the bitterness—weren’t all about Vanessa Thorpe.
He expelled a long breath and forced himself to move farther inside.
She’d changed things, of course. The colors, the furnishings, the mood. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous foyer, soaring to the two-story ceiling and bouncing off walls painted in a medley of pale blues. Where he remembered the warmth of a childhood home, now he felt nothing but an outsider’s detachment.
Ignoring the tight sensation in his gut, he executed a slow three-sixty and took in the matched mahogany hall stand and side table, the pair of watercolor seascapes, the vase of long-stemmed blooms. The place was as perfectly put together as Vanessa Thorpe, as carefully executed as had been her plan to snare a multimillionaire three times her age.
For two years Tristan had fought the will that gave her everything bar a token bequest to him, Stuart Thorpe’s only child, a deliberate act to show he’d chosen wife over son as his beneficiary. Tristan had filed motion after motion while he searched for a loophole, an angle, a reason.
He’d never doubted that he would win. He always did.
Finally, from out of the blue, he’d caught his lucky break. An anonymous allegation contradicting what his legal team had learned about the young widow. Initially, all they’d heard was good—Saint Vanessa with all her charity committees and voluntary work and her unstinting devotion to an ailing husband.
But a second round of discreet inquiries had revealed another slant on Vanessa Thorpe. No solid evidence, but enough rumors from enough different sources to point toward the smoke of a secretly guarded fire. Evidence would not be easily attained two years after the fact but it might not prove necessary.
He was banking on an admission of guilt to close this thing off, granting his mother all that was rightfully hers. Winning would not make up for her life’s disappointments and unhappiness, but it would serve to reverse the gross injustice of her divorce settlement.
Twenty years late but it would redress the balance. It was just and fair. And at long last, it would set things right in Tristan’s mind.
Vanessa put down the receiver and slumped over the library desk, weak with relief. Plans had changed. Andy would not be arriving at the door any minute, making her meeting with Tristan Thorpe even more difficult than it promised to be.
And she knew, from experience, that anything involving Tristan would prove more difficult than it needed to be.
Time after time he’d proven that, obstructing the execution of probate at every turn, refusing each effort to compromise, threatening to never give up until he had his due. All because he’d cast one look at her age, another at her background and thought Hello, gold digger.
Vanessa knew plenty about narrow-minded bigots, but still she’d given this one time to reassess. She’d called, she’d extended that invitation to visit, she’d given him every opportunity to take a fair settlement from the estate. She’d thought he deserved it, even though Stuart had decided otherwise.
But Tristan remained inflexible. A greedy, heartless brute and bully. Too bad she refused to be intimidated.
Reflexively she lifted a hand to rub at her arm. She hated that his touch had left a remnant warmth, that she’d felt the same heat from eyes the changeable blue of summer on the Sound. From the depth of his dark drawl and the scent of rain on his clothes and the contrast between civilized suit and uncivilized—
An abrupt knock at the library door brought her head up with a guilty start. But it was only Gloria, her brow puckered with concern. “Is everything all right, hon? Do you need to go out? Because if you do, I can deal with himself.”
The last was issued with a sniff of disdain that made Vanessa smile. For a brief second she considered taking that option, mostly because it would tick him off. But she needed to find out what he wanted and why he’d felt a need to deliver his latest pain-in-the-butt objection in person.
Not that she believed he’d discovered anything new. At least, nothing that could influence the estate distribution.
“Everything’s fine, thanks. Andy’s had to cancel our trip to the city but that’s turned out to be a blessing. As for himself—” she said it with a mocking smile as she rose to her feet “—I can handle him.”
“I know you’re plenty tough, but he’s a big one.”
“The bigger they are…”
Gloria harrumphed. “You better make sure he doesn’t break anything valuable when he falls. And if he does fix on making trouble, I’m here.”
“No,” Vanessa said, getting serious. “You will not be here because your working day finished thirty minutes ago. Now, go home and fuss over your Bennie. As soon as I’m done with our guest, I’m heading up to Lexford anyway.”
“Is everything all right up there? Is L—”
“Everything’s fine,” she repeated. And because she didn’t want to extend the conversation by fielding further queries, she put a firm hand on Gloria’s shoulder and propelled her toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Now, shoo.”
Wanting a glass of water before facing the dreaded enemy, Vanessa headed to the kitchen…and stumbled upon him en route—not in the formal sitting room as instructed, but in the keeping room.
No, no, no. Her heart beat fast with agitation. This was her place. The only room decorated with her things. The only room small enough and cozy enough and informal enough to relax in with a good book or to visit with friends.
Tristan Thorpe did not fit anywhere in that picture. Not the friends bit, and definitely not the small and cozy part. He’d made his mark as a pro football player in Australia, and she could see why he’d been such a forceful presence on the field. It wasn’t only his height, broad-shouldered build and wide male stance. He also exuded an aura of purpose and determination, a hard edge that his tailored suit and expensive grooming could not disguise.
Even standing with his back to the door, without the full-on impact of his intense blue gaze and the decisive set of his strong-boned face, he created an uneasy awareness in Vanessa’s flesh. She wasn’t used to seeing a man in her house, especially one this blatantly male.
But he’s here, she told herself. He is what he is. Deal with it.
That pragmatic mantra had pulled her through a lot in twenty-nine years—more difficulties of more importance than Tristan. Most of them had been solved by her godsend marriage to Stuart and she could not afford to lose that resolution. Not now; not ever.
She started into the room and at the sound of her first footfall, his head came up. A thousand nerves jumped to life as he swung around to face her. She lifted her chin an inch higher. Straightened her shoulders and fixed her face with the cool, polite expression that had gotten her through the most terrifying of social events.
Let him call her duchess. She didn’t care.
And then she noticed what had held his attention—what he now held delicately balanced in his big hands—and her heart lurched with I-do-care anxiety. It was the Girl with Flowers, the most treasured in her collection of Lladro figurines.
That fretfulness must have registered in her expression because he regarded her narrowly. “Bad news?”
Vanessa knew he referred to the phone call, but she nodded toward the figurine. “Only if you drop that.”
Heart in mouth she watched him turn it over in his hands, first one way and then the other. As a football player he’d been magic with his hands, according to Stuart. But magic or not, she didn’t want Tristan’s hands on her things. She didn’t want to look at them a week or a month or a year from now, and remember this man in her home.
As much as she wanted to keep her distance, she couldn’t help herself. She had to cross the room and take the statuette from his hands.
“When I mentioned bad news, I meant the phone call.”
The brush of their fingers unsettled Vanessa more than she’d anticipated. She felt the fine tremor in her hand and prayed he didn’t hear the telltale rattle as she put the figurine down.
“There’s no bad news,” she said, recovering her poise. She indicated a wingback chair with one hand. “Would you like to sit?”
“I’m comfortable standing.”
Leaning against a cabinet with the heels of his hands resting on its edge, he looked at ease. Except the tightness around the corners of his mouth and the tick of a muscle in his jaw gave him away. Not to mention the intentness of the sharp blue gaze fixed on her face.
Like a lion, she decided, lolling in the grass of the veldt, but with every muscle coiled as he waited for the chance to pounce. Paint her pelt black and white and call her zebra, because she was the prey.
The vividness of that mental image created a shiver up her spine, but she snapped straight in automatic reflex. Do not let the enemy see your fear. It was a lesson she’d learned as a child, one she’d tried to instill into her younger brother, Lew.
One she’d used often in her new life, adapting to the scrutiny of Eastwick society.
As much as she wanted to put distance between herself and the enemy, she stood her ground and met his unsettling gaze. “Would you care to tell me about this new development? Because I can’t think of a thing that would make any difference to your claim on Stuart’s estate.”
“You’re aware of every letter in that will, Vanessa. Surely you’ve worked this out.”
“You’ve tried to obstruct every letter of that will. I can’t believe there’s one you missed!”
“We didn’t miss this one, duchess. You were just clever enough to beat us…then.”
Vanessa huffed out a breath. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Stop playing games, Tristan. I don’t have the time or the patience.”
For a long moment he didn’t respond, although she realized—belatedly—that he no longer lounged against the cabinet. He’d straightened, closing down the gap between them. But she refused to ask for space. She refused to acknowledge that his proximity bothered her.
“Is he the same one?”
She blinked, baffled by his question. “Who?”
“The man you were expecting this afternoon. The one who put that smile on your face when you answered the door. The one who called.”
Was he crazy? “The same what? What are you talking about?”
“I’m asking if this man—Andy, isn’t it?—is the one who’s going to cost you a hundred million dollars.”
Vanessa’s heart seized with shock and a terrible realization.
“Well?” he asked, not giving her a chance to recover, to respond. “Is he the man you were sleeping with while you were married to my father?”
Two
Oh. My. Lord. He was talking about the adultery clause. The one left over from Stuart’s first marriage, to Tristan’s mother.
When Tristan had signaled his intention to challenge the will, her lawyer, Jack Cartwright, had gone over every clause with painstaking care, making sure Vanessa understood and that he wouldn’t receive any nasty surprises from the opposing attorney.
She’d given that clause no more thought. She had no reason to. But now Tristan thought she’d had a lover…that she still had a lover.
That comprehension took a moment to sink in, and then she couldn’t prevent her shock from bubbling into laughter.
“You think this is funny?”
“I think,” she said, recovering, “this is ludicrous. Where would you get such an idea?”
“My lawyer’s asked around. There are rumors.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “After almost two years of this dispute, you’ve decided to invent rumors?”
“I didn’t invent anything.”
“No? Then where did these rumors suddenly sprout from?”
He took a second to answer, just long enough for Vanessa to note that the muscle still ticked in his jaw. “I received a letter.”
“From?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does,” she fired back at him, her earlier disbelief growing indignant. “It matters that someone is slandering me.”
He regarded her in silence, a long taut moment that fanned Vanessa’s gathering fury.
“I’m giving you the chance to deal with me privately, here and now,” he said finally, his voice low and even. “Or would you prefer to take this to court? Would you like to answer all the questions about who and where and how often under oath? Would you like all your society friends to hear—”
“You bastard. Don’t you dare even think about spreading your lies.”
“Not lies.” Something glinted, brief and dangerous in his eyes. “I intend to dig deep, Vanessa, if that’s what it takes to discover all your dirty little secrets. I will find every truth about you. Every last detail.”
Vanessa’s head whirled with the implications of his threat. She had to get away from him, to cool down, to think, but when she tried to escape he blocked her exit. And when she attempted to stare him down, he shifted closer, hemming her into the corner where she couldn’t move without touching him.
Her resentment rose in a thick, choking wave. She wanted to sound icy, imperious, but instead her voice quivered with rage. “You start by turning up at my home uninvited. You manhandle me. You threaten me with your nasty lies. And now you’re resorting to physical intimidation. I can hardly wait to see what you try next.”
Their eyes clashed in a lightning bolt that was eight parts antagonism, two parts challenge. She knew, a split second before he moved, before his hands came up to trap her against the wall, that the two parts challenge was two parts too much. And still she couldn’t back down, even when his gaze dropped to her lips and caused a slow sweet ripple in her blood. Even when he muttered something low and unintelligible—perhaps an oath, perhaps a warning—beneath his breath.