A Wife by Accident (18 page)

Hayely
dropped her brush back into the near-empty paint bucket when she heard Gary coming down the hall to find her. She’d seen a lightness come over him since his meeting with the
Bellmarks
. She still had to nudge him to get him to speak nicely to anyone he didn’t know well, but she had to admit that she’d even grown to enjoy his standoffish qualities. Now she knew it; when she moved out, his loss would cut.

His lush voice rolled toward her before she saw him. “
Hayely
, the strangest thing happened this morning.” He walked around the corner and leaned in the doorway with his loose jeans shifting in just the right places. “I tried to call the lawyer’s office and get our file back from them today.”

“Why?”

“I thought we could shred all the copies of that ridiculous contract into a thousand pieces together.”

“I would love that. So what was strange?” She pushed a strand of hair back. How she’d gotten paint the color of tomato soup in it, she could only imagine.

“Their office was broken into last week. The only thing stolen was our file.”

Hayely
set the paint bucket down on the floor and her hand fluttered up to rest over her heart. “Are you sure it isn’t just missing?
Misfiled?”

Gary crossed his denim-covered arms over his chest, looking sterner that ever.
“Gone.
Stolen.”
He paused for a moment. “Can you think of anyone who would have known I used that particular lawyer to draw up our agreement?”

Hayely
sank down into a nearby chair and didn’t even seem to notice as the white drop cloth slid off and bunched around her. I’m going to fire some idiot today. I just don’t know who yet. Maybe it’ll be someone who receives personal deliveries on company time.

“Oh no,” she whispered and then looked up at Gary’s piercing hazel eyes.
“The courier.
You had the package sent to me at the office and it had a label from your lawyer’s office on it.”

“Who saw that package?”

Hayely’s
grey eyes hardened. “Kathy.”

Gary’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “I’m tired of dealing with that witch. She’s gone past unethical and flown on her broomstick straight into illegal. I ought to turn her in to the police.”

“How could you prove it? You know she probably didn’t break into the office herself anyway. She probably planted the seed in what’s his name—Darryl’s head and had him do it after an all-night bender anyway.”

Gary struck his hand in anger against the doorframe. “She can’t use it. If she tries, I’ll have her bony behind tossed behind bars so fast—”

The melodious chimes of the doorbell sang through the house and interrupted Gary’s sentence. “Don’t tell me Charlie forgot his keys again,” he muttered with eyes still furious and filled with a livid glint.

He turned and stomped toward the entryway with
Hayely
following on his heels.

Gary turned the bolt on the door and as he did, yelled out, “You don’t have to keeping ringing the thing. We heard you.” With a final twist, he flung open the door as wide as it would go.

Hayely
jumped back as Gary moved almost casually away from the impact of the heavy door. With his arm stretched high against the side of the wood, he said to her, “I think it’s for you.”

All at once a tight red fist appeared in the house from whoever stood outside, and it was aimed at Gary’s stomach through the open door. He stepped back just in time to avoid the blow.

“What have you done to my daughter?” A pair of flashing grey eyes that looked much like
Hayely’s
glared up at Gary.

Gary looked down at the shorter, stockier man on his doorstep. His visitor was round-faced and determined as the sunlight bounced off his nearly bald head. He still had both of his reddened hands clenched tightly at his sides, a bunch of papers clutched in the one he hadn’t swung at Gary.

Gary hadn’t noticed the slender woman standing there next to her husband at first. She was about the same height as her daughter, but seemed so thoroughly engrossed in the pavement at her feet that Gary couldn’t yet see the similarities in her face.

“Mr. and Mrs. Black,” he said with confidence. “Come in.”

“I most certainly will not,”
Hayely’s
father declared with a great huff. “I’ve come to take my daughter back home with us and away from you—you, scoundrel!” he shouted and shook the wad of papers in Gary’s face. “I know what you’ve done to her. I’ve read all about it.”

Mrs. Black rushed in between them when she saw
Hayely
emerge from behind Gary.
“Oh, my baby girl.
What has this horrible man done to you? You look awful. Did he kidnap you and force you to sign that horrible document? I know he must have done something terrible for you to have signed it.”

“It’s nothing better than slave labor,” Mr. Black roared. “We’ll see justice done here. I don’t care who you think you are, Gary Tarleton. You can’t buy people.”

Hayely’s
mother touched her daughter’s paint-
globbed
hair and looked sadly at her ragged clothes. “Look how thin she is.
And her hair.”
Tears sprung to the woman’s eyes. “She hasn’t been treated right at all. It was just as we feared. Come,
Hayely
. We’ll take you home with us right this minute.”

Hayely
pushed her mother’s hand away. “You don’t understand at all. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I tried to call.” Her voice was softer than she wanted it to be, slipping back into the genteel demeanor her father had instilled in her.

Mr. Black pushed his way past Gary and shook the papers again. “We understand everything. It’s all right here in this legal document.”

Gary slammed the door shut and startled them all. Drawing himself up to his full height, he pointed to the living room and commanded, “Go in there and sit.
Now.”

For a moment
Hayely
thought her mother was going to faint on the spot and her father was going to take another swing at Gary’s midsection. “Let’s go sit down,” she soothed. “I’ll make us all some coffee and we’ll work this out.”

Gary strode into the living room and took his seat. His rigid posture told
Hayely
he just might have reached his already short limit on politeness for the day. He actually seemed angry, and not just because of the stolen documents.

“You can sit together there on the sofa. I picked out the furniture myself,” she said and then left the room to fetch the coffee. Here it comes, she told herself. The worst possible scenario I could have imagined. At least there was no doubt what Kathy Mark had done with the stolen agreement.

When she set the coffee down in front of her parents and Gary, it was obvious none of them had spoken a word while she was out of the room. Gary had relaxed somewhat and now looked positively unruffled, slightly curious, and yet a bit hostile. Her mother ran her hand down the smooth fabric of the sofa while her father’s face faded down through several lesser shades of red.

Hayely
sat down in the chair nearest Gary. “You need to know that the person who sent you that document is no friend of mine. She did it just to cause trouble.”

“Are you saying it’s a fake?” her father questioned.

Hayely
looked down. “No, it’s real.”

“Then pack your bags. We’re taking you out of here.” He threatened to stand until
Hayely
gestured for him to sit.

“I’ll be moving out of here soon anyway. You read the agreement.”

For a moment,
Hayely
looked around the room at her mother, then her father and finally Gary. Each beat of her heart thudded in her ears. She could go back to the East Coast. She could go back to school and never have to work in an office as an executive assistant again. She’d have the chance to meet the kind of man her family admired, the kind who would marry her and become the father of her children. All she had to do was compromise. The time of reckoning was at hand.

Then she saw the emotion swirl and hazel colors flash in Gary’s eyes. His hands clenched tightly into fists. He was waiting to hear her answer with an intensity that made her heart thud even louder.

“I’m not leaving with you,” she said firmly.
Calmly.

“I don’t think I heard what I think I heard,” her father said.

She raised her chin and met her father’s gaze. “I didn’t want it to be like this. How did you get here so soon anyway?”

“So soon,” her mother sobbed. “My only daughter has a wedding and is married half a year, and that’s too soon for us to talk to her about it.” She blew her nose into a pristine handkerchief.

“It wasn’t a wedding,” Mr. Black corrected. “It was an entrance into indentured servitude.”

•

Gary leaned forward. She wasn’t leaving him. She’d given her answer, the one he’d wanted to ask her himself and had stopped short of a dozen times in the past two days. He’d told her before that he didn’t let go of things he cared for. He meant to prove it now.

A hardened twinkle of amusement also lurked in his eyes. He’d watched his new in-laws for several minutes now, and it didn’t seem to him that they were out to hurt
Hayely
—just the opposite. Only parents who really cared about a child would jump on the first plane, cross the United States and arrive hopping mad on his doorstep to rescue her.

Mrs. Black dabbed at her nose and sniffled loudly.

Gary sat back again, reached out to rest his hand on
Hayely’s
knee and then thought the better of it.

“Why don’t you tell them what happened? The whole truth of it,” Gary suggested.

“Well,” she started, “I was walking across the parking lot with too many packages and I ran into Gary.” She sipped her coffee and continued. “I mean I literally ran into him. And in the process, I obliterated a very expensive gift he’d just bought for his best friend, Charlie.”

“That would account for the twelve-thousand-dollar figure I read in this contract with the devil,” her father stated and slapped the papers against his sturdy leg for emphasis.

“Yes. That was what it was worth,” she agreed quietly. “And I wanted to do the honorable thing and repay the debt, so I agreed to Gary’s terms. I wasn’t going to tell anyone, I was just going to set things right, do as he asked and move on with my life.”

Her mother turned white. “He didn’t force you to—to—did he?”

“Mother!
He didn’t force me to do anything. It started out as a business arrangement like I said, but then we—” She slammed down her coffee mug. “Mom, I ended up feeling something, feelings that I shouldn’t feel. It isn’t professional, I know. The six months is over, but when he kissed me—”

“I don’t believe it,” Mr. Black sputtered. “No man treats my daughter like, like—I can’t even think of a word for it. And no decent father would let his only daughter throw away her life.
Hells bells.
If you even stay on as his employee, we’ll disinherit you. That’s what we’ll do. And we’ll turn your shrine of a bedroom in a study.”

Gary said curtly, “You don’t mean that.” He recognized a bluff when he heard it, but suspected
Hayely
was too emotionally close to the situation to notice.

The man shook his head in resignation, “No. I don’t. We’re just trying to do right by our
Hayely
.”

“Believe me, so am I,” Gary said. “There’s nothing more important to me.”

Mr. Black looked at his new son-in-law with piqued interest. He was glad he hadn’t been able to punch him at the front door after all—his hand would still be hurting if he had. And now he thought he understood another meaning in Gary’s simple sentence and earnest demeanor. He could see it in the man’s eyes. Could it be that one of the wealthiest, most widely known men in the country had fallen in love with his daughter?

“So,”
Hayely
continued with a stronger voice. “We spent time together and we have similar values and ideas, plans… I don’t know how this will end for us, but I need to be here to find out.”

Mr. Black turned to Gary. “You have more money than all the gods on Olympus and could take your pick of women.
Why her?”

The two men looked at each other in silent understanding.

“Thanks a lot, Dad,”
Hayely
murmured.

Gary shrugged.
“At first?
Because she didn’t know who I was.”

Mr. Black shook his round head from side to side and chuckled loudly.
“Now that I can believe.
Our
Hayely
never paid any attention to money.”

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Gary said with a grin. “She looks straight through to the person and doesn’t even notice his bankbook.”

Mr. Black slapped his thigh and laughed. “You should have seen how she reacted when we tried to get her to date one of the boys down the road. She said he was a ‘stuck-up blueblood’ and kept hiding in the bathroom to avoid him. A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed. I can tell you’re a good man, Tarleton. I won’t object to her staying here if you make it honorable.”