Did You Say...Wife?

“This doesn’t seem familiar,”

Lucas muttered, and Jocelyn froze in sudden fear.

“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

“I mean shaking your hand just doesn’t feel right. Not like when I talk to you. That feels natural, but shaking your hand doesn’t.”

“Probably because we haven’t shaken hands all that often, whereas, we talk all the time,” she said truthfully.

Lucas gave her a blinding smile equally mixed with devilment and relief. “Of course, I should have thought of that myself. Married couples don’t go around shaking hands, do they?”

Jocelyn blinked, trying to pull her attention away from the intoxicating effect of his smile long enough to focus on what he was saying.

“Kissing would be familiar,” he said softly, gently pulling her close.…

Dear Reader,

The summer after my thirteenth birthday, I read my older sister’s dog-eared copy of Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and I was hooked. Thousands of romance novels later—I won’t say how many years—I’ll gladly confess that I’m a romance freak! That’s why I am so delighted to become the associate senior editor for the Silhouette Romance line. My goal, as the new manager of Silhouette’s longest-running line, is to bring you brand-new, heartwarming love stories every month. As you read each one, I hope you’ll share the magic and experience love as it was meant to be.

For instance, if you love reading about rugged cowboys and the feisty heroines who melt their hearts, be sure not to miss Judy Christenberry’s Beauty & the Beastly Rancher (#1678), the latest title in her FROM THE CIRCLE K series. And share a laugh with the always-entertaining Terry Essig in Distracting Dad (#1679).

In the next THE TEXAS BROTHERHOOD title by Patricia Thayer, Jared’s Texas Homecoming (#1680), a drifter’s life changes for good when he offers to marry his nephew’s mother. And a secretary’s dream comes true when her boss, who has amnesia, thinks they’re married, in Judith McWilliams’s Did You Say…Wife? (#1681).

Don’t miss the savvy nanny who moves in on a single dad, in Married in a Month (#1682) by Linda Goodnight, or the doctor who learns his ex’s little secret, in Dad Today, Groom Tomorrow (#1683) by Holly Jacobs. Groom Tomorrow (#1683) by Holly Jacobs.

Enjoy!

Mavis C. Allen

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

Books by Judith McWilliams

Silhouette Romance

Gift of the Gods #479

The Summer Proposal #1562

Her Secret Children #1648

Did You Say…Wife? #1681

Silhouette Desire

Reluctant Partners #441

A Perfect Season #545

That’s My Baby #597

Anything’s Possible! #911

The Man from Atlantis #954

Instant Husband #1001

Practice Husband #1062

Another Man’s Baby #1095

The Boss, the Beauty and the Bargain #1122

The Sheik’s Secret #1228

JUDITH MCWILLIAMS

began to enjoy romances while in search of the proverbial “happily-ever-after.” But she always found herself rewriting the endings, and eventually the beginnings, of the books she read. Then her husband finally suggested that she write novels of her own, and she’s been doing so ever since. An ex-teacher with four children, Judith has traveled the country extensively with her husband and has been greatly influenced by those experiences. But while not tending the garden or caring for family, Judith does what she enjoys most—writing. She has also written under the name Charlotte Hines.

Memorandum—ROUGH DRAFT

Dear Mr. Tarrington,

Please let this memo serve as my official resignation. I imagine you may be shocked, but I must move on to face new challenges in my life. I did enjoy being your assistant. The only explanation I can offer for my leaving is that, well, I’m in love with you.

Sincerely,

J. Stemic

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Prologue

Tomorrow Lucas would be back! The knowledge warmed Jocelyn far more than the camel hair coat she was wearing. In—she checked the time on her delicate gold watch—precisely fourteen hours and twenty minutes she would see his beloved face again.

The elevator she was riding in came to a smooth stop on the ground floor, and the doors silently slid open. Automatically she headed across the broad expanse of black marble that covered the ground floor of Forester Enterprises.

“Good night, Harry.” Jocelyn smiled happily at the elderly guard sitting behind the reception desk.

“Night, Miss Stemic.” Harry smiled back. “You sure look chipper. Got a heavy date tonight?”

For a brief moment an image of Lucas’s leanly chiseled features filled her mind. His dark eyes glittered with emotion. His lips were curved in a sensual smile that sent her heartbeat into overdrive. What would it be like to have a date with Lucas? she wondered. To have him look at her with love and longing, instead of with his normal impersonal friendliness? It would be mind-boggling, she thought, answering her own question. World changing. Her world, at least. The closest thing to heaven on earth she was ever likely to find.

“He must really be something to send you off into a trance like that,” Harry teased.

“That he is,” Jocelyn agreed wholeheartedly and then hurried toward the outside doors before Harry could ask any more questions. Questions she couldn’t answer. She could hardly tell him that she was head-over-heels in love with a man who viewed her as nothing more than a highly competent administrative assistant. It sounded pathetic, but it wasn’t.

Just because Lucas didn’t love her at the moment didn’t mean that he might not come to love her in the future, she assured herself. After all, she hadn’t loved him at first sight, either. When she’d interviewed for the job as his administrative assistant, she’d only thought he was incredibly sexy. It hadn’t been until she’d worked with him for a few weeks that her feelings had developed into love.

It was quite possible that, given time, his liking for her might deepen enough for him to forget his determination never to become emotionally involved with a woman who worked for him. And she had time. Lots of time. Her whole lifetime.

She smiled as she shoved open the heavy, plate-glass door and caught the fragrant whiff of pine from the wreath hanging on it. It was the Christmas season, and anything was possible. Absolutely anything.

Jocelyn stepped outside, and her breath caught in her lungs as a gust of icy wind slapped her across the face. Bending her head, she hurried across the almost empty parking lot intent on getting to her car before she froze.

“Hey, babe.” The irritating greeting scraped across her nerves a second before a hand closed around her upper arm. The hand jerked, pulling her against a hard masculine chest, and a man’s arms embraced her.

Jocelyn instinctively tore herself out of them. She didn’t want any man except Lucas hugging her.

“You can’t still be mad at me, babe. Not after all these months,” he said. “Hell, everyone sleeps together these days. I’m the one who should be mad. You ruined a perfectly good weekend. To say nothing of all the time I wasted dating you with nothing to show for it.”

Ignoring him in the hopes he’d go away, Jocelyn pulled her remote opener out of her coat pocket and unlocked her car.

To her extreme annoyance, he hurried around the hood of her car and slipped into the seat beside her.

Jocelyn pushed back a stray tendril of her chestnut hair yanked out of the neat chignon she normally wore to work by the vicious wind, briefly wondering what Bill was doing here. She hadn’t seen him in more than a year.

Deciding she didn’t care enough to even ask, she said, “Get out of my car.”

“Not yet. You and I need to have a talk, babe. I need help, and you’re going to give it to me.”

“Not this side of hell,” Jocelyn said flatly.

“Oh, I think you will.” His gloating expression sent a premonition of disaster through her. “You wouldn’t want old Lucas to find out that his oh-so-efficient administrative assistant and the half brother he hates were lovers, now would you?”

“We weren’t lovers!”

“You could try telling him that, but which of us do you think he’ll believe when I show him this. Mmm?”

Bill handed her a sheet of paper.

Gingerly Jocelyn took it with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach—a feeling that plummeted into nausea as she read. It was the copy of a receipt for a hotel room made out in her name and Bill’s. And unfortunately it was real.

Late last January he’d invited her on a skiing weekend in the Poconos. Thinking it sounded like fun, she’d agreed to go on the condition that they have separate rooms and that she pay all her own expenses. But when they’d arrived at the resort, she’d discovered that Bill had canceled her room earlier in the week and registered her into his.

Since Jocelyn had driven up from Philadelphia with Bill and the only local car rental place was closed for the night, she didn’t have any way to leave. The final straw was when she had tried to get her own room and been told that the lodge was filled to capacity.

Angry and frustrated, as much at her own gullibility as at Bill’s scheming, she had told Bill exactly what she thought of him. Then she had dragged half the blankets off the suite’s one bed and had curled up on the couch in the sitting area to spend a very uncomfortable night. First thing in the morning she left. It had been the last time she’d seen Bill.

“How did you know I was working for Lucas?” she said, trying to give herself time to think.

“Dear cousin Emmy. She was bragging about how she’d helped you find the job as old Lucas’s administrative assistant.”

“But why contact me now? I’ve had this job for six months.”

“Because I’ve suffered a few financial reverses.”

Bill shoved his fingers through his perfectly barbered hair. “To put it bluntly, I’ve spent every penny Dad left me, and if I can’t find a new source of income—”

“You’ll have to go to work like the rest of us?” she said unsympathetically. “Blackmailing me won’t help you. My entire life’s savings wouldn’t keep you for a week.”

“Not you, you stupid witch! Lucas.”

Jocelyn grimaced. “Surely you can’t think I have his power of attorney?”

“You always did think small,” he said coldly. “I don’t want to embezzle from the company. I want to take over the company. I can sell it for a fortune. It should have been mine, anyway.”

“Lucas’s father left it to him.” Jocelyn repeated what Emmy had told her.

“I think Lucas substituted a fake will for the real one. Mom does, too.”

Jocelyn watched as his mouth suddenly compressed, giving him a mean, vicious look, and she shivered, glad they were in an open parking lot in full view of any passersby.

“Has it occurred to either of you that Lucas’s father might not have had any choice but to leave the company to Lucas?” Jocelyn said. “From what Emmy said, the company originally belonged to Lucas’s mother. Maybe it was—” she gestured ineffectively “—whatever the modern-day equivalent of an entail is?”

“Not a chance. Mom was very careful to look up Dad’s first wife’s will before she married him. Lucas’s mother left everything she owned to her husband. No, the only explanation for why Dad didn’t leave the company to me was because Lucas substituted a fake will. And I want you to help me find the real one.”

“Use your head, Bill,” Jocelyn tried to reason with him. “Even if, for the sake of argument, there had been another will, why would Lucas keep the original? He would destroy it the first chance he got.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Bill insisted. “He’d want to be able to gloat over it, thinking about how he’d outsmarted me and Dad. So you’re going to help me find that will or I’ll tell Lucas about us being lovers. And then where will your job be?”

Down the tubes, Jocelyn thought with horror. Just like her life. She stared blindly out the windshield at the wind-whipped snowflakes that had begun to fall.

“Think about it, babe. I’ll be in touch.” He gave her a self-satisfied smirk and got out of the car.

Numbly Jocelyn watched him swagger over to the silver Porsche parked behind her and get in.

What did she do now? she wondered frantically. She didn’t have the slightest doubt that Bill would carry out his threat. Not only carry it out, but take a great deal of pleasure in doing it. There was a sadistic streak in the man a mile wide.

Which meant that she had to do something before he could act. But what? She closed her eyes and tried to think, not even noticing the bitter cold inside the car. Blind panic filled every cell of her consciousness. There was simply no room left for any other sensation.

“It isn’t fair,” she muttered as she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, blinking back the tears that blurred her vision. But then, very little in her life to date had been fair, she thought tiredly.

Chapter One

Jocelyn resisted the impulse to pull her thick winter coat more snugly around her, knowing that the chill she was feeling wasn’t from the weather outside. It was coming from the silent man beside her.

Surreptitiously she studied Lucas Forester, her eyes lingering on the slight cleft in the middle of his square jaw. Longingly her gaze moved upward, searching for some hint of thawing in his formidable reserve, however slight. She couldn’t find one. His lips were compressed, and his brown eyes were staring straight ahead. He could have been alone in the car for all the notice he was taking of her.

In just eight days she would have worked out her notice and she’d have to leave. Leave and never see him again. Panic filled her, but she refused to even acknowledge it. There was no point. One thing her miserable childhood had taught her, and taught her well, was never to rail against the Fates. It did no good. The Fates simply didn’t give a damn. Either that or they had it in for her personally. And after this latest turn of events, she was beginning to wonder.

She chewed on her lip in impotent frustration. It was all so unfair. She hadn’t done anything except to briefly think that Bill Forester might be someone special. It hadn’t taken her very long to realize she was wrong. To figure out that he was an egomaniac who had exactly two interests in life. Himself and the pursuit of pleasure.

Lucas on he other hand…Instinctively her gaze returned to his beloved profile. Lucas’s hard work had more than doubled the worth of his company in the five years since his father’s death. And where he might take it in the next five years…

Pain lanced through her at the knowledge that she wouldn’t be there to see him do it. At the thought of a future that didn’t include daily contact with Lucas.

She’d get over it, she told herself, trying desperately to believe it and failing miserably. Lucas Forester made every man she had ever met fade into insignificance.

“I think I’ll stop before we get to the airport for dinner,” Lucas stated, and Jocelyn barely suppressed a shudder at his harsh tone. The indulgent, patient man she’d worked with for the past six months had vanished ten seconds after reading her resignation. If only it hadn’t been necessary to give notice. If only she could have just not shown up for work. At least then she could have taken away happy memories of their last weeks together. Instead she would be left with the memories of a stranger. A rigidly polite, icily cold stranger who made no secret of the fact that he was furious at her sudden decision to quit. And for the flimsiest of reasons, as he’d pointed out to her when, in response to his demand to know why, she’d muttered something inane about needing time to find herself.

“Is that all right with you?” Lucas demanded, and Jocelyn jumped as the clipped sound of his voice sliced through her thoughts.

“Yes, that’s fine,” she hastily agreed.

“There’s a place a few miles ahead that serves decent meals. Not that it would have to be much to be better than airline food,” he said.

“No,” Jocelyn answered cautiously, not sure if his comment called for an answer. Apparently it hadn’t because he lapsed into silence again, concentrating on maneuvering over the icy patches the snowstorm had left on the road.

Stifling a sigh, Jocelyn resolutely focused on the dismal landscape outside the window. Buffalo in December looked as desolate as her heart felt.

Lucas shot a quick glance at the delicate lines of her averted profile and felt the now-familiar, stomach-churning mix of anger and betrayal flood him again. How could she even consider leaving him? For six months they had been a team. For six months they had worked closely together, laughing at the same things, feeling the same sense of outrage at the same societal ills, arguing amicably over the best way to fix those ills. He’d gone from thinking she was the best administrative assistant he’d ever had to believing that she was unique, a woman without a hidden agenda. A woman who could be trusted. He’d actually believed that she liked him, Lucas Forester the man, and not Lucas Forester the wealthy industrialist who could bankroll her every indulgence.

He’d gone from an abstract appreciation of her beauty to a realization that she was the most incredibly sensual woman he’d ever met. He’d spent long nights imagining all the ways he wanted to make love to her. He’d actually begun to believe that it could be safe to become emotionally involved with someone he employed. That business and pleasure could be successfully combined.

And with one short, typewritten page she’d shattered every one of his beliefs. In the length of time it had taken him to read her resignation, he’d realized that he’d been wrong. Dead wrong. None of the loyalty and liking she’d projected toward him were real. Not even the interest she’d shown in her job had been real.

Hell, she hadn’t even bothered to lie about having found another position. She’d given him some song and dance about taking time off to find herself. What she’d undoubtedly found was some poor sucker who was willing to buy her what she wanted without the necessity of working for it.

Anger burned painfully in his chest. He was lucky, he told himself. Lucky to have found out that Jocelyn was just another fortune hunter before he had given her even an inkling that he…

Lucas instinctively shied away from examining exactly what he did feel for her, because it didn’t make any difference. In eight more days she would be gone, and he’d never see her again. And he was glad, he told himself. His father’s second marriage had taught him the absolute futility of loving a woman who wanted what a man owned and not what he was.

If only…He resolutely squashed the thought. Dwelling on might-have-beens was totally pointless.

A few miles further up the road, he caught sight of the restaurant he was looking for and, flipping on the turn signal, pulled into the lot. It took him a moment to find a place to park. It appeared that many other travelers were taking a break from the bad road conditions.

He pulled into one of the two last spaces and cut the engine. Getting out, he automatically rounded the car to open the door for Jocelyn, only to find that she had already scrambled out. Almost as if she were telling him that she wouldn’t accept anything from him, he thought sourly. Not even an exhibition of good manners.

Frustrated, he shoved his hands into his pockets and stalked across the parking lot beside her. They were at the door before he realized that he’d forgotten his briefcase, which contained his cell phone. He needed to check in with Richard, his senior vice president, and find out what was going on back at the office.

“I forgot my cell phone.” He bit out the words, and Jocelyn shuddered as their rough edges grated across her nerves. “Go inside. I’ll be in as soon as I get it.”

Without another word, Lucas turned on his heel and headed back toward the rented car.

Jocelyn watched his lean figure as he walked away from her, wanting to run after him to explain why she had to leave. But the impulse died instantly. It wouldn’t work. She knew it wouldn’t work. She’d been over and over her options in her mind a million times. After his father’s disastrous second marriage to his secretary, Lucas was determined never to become emotionally involved with a woman who worked for him. When you added that bias to the fact that she had not only dated his hated half brother but had spent a night alone in a hotel room with him…

There was no way Lucas’s casual liking for her would overcome both his own prejudices and the web of lies Bill would weave. Even if Lucas didn’t fire her, he would view her with suspicion forever after. And she couldn’t bear that.

Damn Bill! she thought savagely. How could he do this to her? Because he didn’t think of her as a real person, she answered her own question. Bill moved through life as if he was the only real person in the world and everyone else was simply shadowy figures who had been put on earth to serve his needs.

Learn from the experience and go on. She repeated the mantra she had developed during a childhood spent in the uncertainties of foster care. But the thought brought no comfort. As far as she was concerned, after loving Lucas there was no place to go. No place but down. Down into a seemingly bottomless pit filled with pain and hopeless despair.

Maybe…

Jocelyn’s absorption in her problems was broken by the black sedan that had suddenly appeared in the parking lot. It was going much too fast.

With a sudden spurt of speed the driver swung the car into the empty parking space next to Lucas, intent on beating out the minivan approaching the space from the opposite direction.

Jocelyn’s breath caught in her throat as the sedan hit a patch of ice and began to skid sideways.

Sheer terror wrapped its clammy tentacles around Jocelyn’s mind, freezing her in place. Horrified, she watched as the driver tried to regain control of his car and failed. The car continued its skid. There was an audible thump followed by the heart-rending sound of crunching metal as the sedan crashed into Lucas’s car.

“No, please, God,” Jocelyn whispered incoherently, straining to see Lucas over the bulk of the black sedan.

As if the sound of her voice were a key, she was suddenly released her from the paralyzing effects of her terror.

She sprinted across the parking lot intent on reaching Lucas. Her mind refused to even contemplate the idea that it might be too late to help him. The thought of a world that didn’t contain the man she loved was too horrific to even contemplate.

She reached the sedan, and a quick glance showed her that Lucas was unconscious and trapped between his rental car and the sedan. Trapped and bleeding badly.