A Wife in Time (Silhouette Desire)

This book is dedicated to Desire Senior Editor Lucia Macro, with much thanks for letting me play in the nineteenth century!

And thanks go to Judy Ann Newton for the early encouragement, talented historical romance author Linda Wiatr for checking my research, and to the staff at Downers Grove Public Library for all the historical nonfiction interlibrary loans.

“H
ey, you! Hold it right there! I want to talk to you!”

Susannah Hall ignored the loudly spoken order, certain it couldn’t possibly be directed at
her.
In fact, Susannah felt a bit sorry for the poor soul to whom it
was
directed, for the man’s command was driven by enough anger to fuel a fleet of jets for a week. A second later she dismissed the man and his anger from her thoughts. She had enough things to worry about.

Although Susannah had been an editor for almost five years now, this was her first time attending the huge American Publishing Convention, taking place in Savannah this year. Her recent promotion to senior editor at McPhearson Publishing meant that she was now expected to attend this bigger-than-life trade show.

From the moment she’d first walked into the convention center earlier that morning, she’d felt like a kid at the circus, surrounded by hype and hoopla. But now, midafternoon hunger pangs had forced her to leave McPhearson’s display booth in search of the convention center’s cafeteria.

“I said I want to talk to you!” the furious male voice repeated, this time from directly behind her.

Years of living in New York City had Susannah pivoting in her tracks, her huge purse automatically held at the ready should she need to use it in self-defense. The man and his anger were just a little too close for comfort.

He was tall, had dark ruffled hair, and he radiated fury. She’d never seen him before in her life.

Looking around, Susannah was reassured by the presence of the crowd despite the fact that, like water in a stream, the people simply flowed on around them, paying them little heed. But then this was a crowd in single-minded pursuit of the almighty buck, as millions of dollars’ worth of transactions were in progress at this convention.

Keeping a cautious grip on her large bag just in case, Susannah addressed the angry stranger. “Are you talking to me?” she demanded.

“Damn right, I’m talking to you,” the man confirmed with a growl.

“Shouting was actually closer to the truth,” Susannah noted frostily. “What seems to be the problem, Mr.—” She paused to read the name tag that everyone attending this convention was required to wear. Kane Wilder. The name fit, Susannah decided. The man’s behavior was certainly wilder than normal or acceptable. “What’s the problem, Mr. Wilder?”

“
You’re
the problem,” Kane Wilder replied, openly glaring at her.

She frowned, unable to imagine what she could have done to have so irritated this man, a man she’d never even met before. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him bluntly.

“I’m talking about my brother, Chuck, and the fact that he’s threatened to leave his wife because of you.”

Stunned, Susannah blinked at Kane. “Excuse me?”

“No, I won’t excuse you. There’s no excuse for what you’ve done!”

“I think you’ve made a mistake of some kind, Mr. Wilder,” she began in a conciliatory tone of voice when he interrupted her.

“The only person who has made a mistake is you, Ms. Hall. You
are
Susannah Hall, right? Senior editor at McPhearson Publishing, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So now you’re pretending you don’t know my brother? Is that your game?”

“It’s no game, Mr. Wilder.”

“Playing bedroom games with a younger, married man is exactly the kind of cheap ploy a Mata Hari like you would play.”

Mata Hari? Her? Susannah didn’t know whether to be insulted or complimented. She couldn’t imagine anyone further from the image of a seductress. Her hair was too long and too curly, her figure too full. She knew her eyes and her thighs were both too big. Her taste in clothes was too romantic and soft, although the sky blue suit she wore now was pretty businesslike.

Everyone knew that Mata Hari types were slinky, confident and ruthless. Susannah was a passionate dreamer. The worst that could be said about her was she could be aloof. And when crossed she’d once been called a “tough cookie.”

But a Mata Hari? No way. The man was clearly off his rocker.

“My brother’s name is Chuck Wilder. Charles Wilder,” Kane continued as if speaking to a two-year-old. “Ring any bells or are you fooling around with so many men you’ve lost count?”

His last stinging comment didn’t really sink in as she focused on the first part of his statement. “Are you talking about Charles, the intern at my office?” Susannah had never paid attention to the young man’s surname before. He was just “Charles the Intern.” One of them, anyway. McPhearson had four at the present time.

“That’s right. And you’ve been teaching him plenty, haven’t you?” Kane noted caustically.

“Well, yes, that’s what he’s there for. To learn.”

“Would it have mattered to you if you had known he was married?” Kane demanded.

“Well, no, not really,” Susannah admitted. Although most of their interns were still single—and in their junior year of college—it wasn’t a requirement for entrance into the internship program.

“Listen, I’m only going to say this once,” he bit out. “Stay away from my brother.”

“A little hard to do since he works for me,” Susannah noted wryly.

“Then fire him.”

“I’ll do no such thing. Besides, he’s an intern. He can’t be fired. He’s not a paid employee. Look, I’m sorry to hear your brother is having marital difficulties, but I fail to see what that has to do with me.”

“Lady, you take the cake! You don’t think your having an affair with him might have something to do with his marital problems?”

“An affair?” Susannah repeated in astonishment. Now she
knew
Kane Wilder was off his rocker. “No way!” It was too ridiculous to even contemplate. Sure, she’d had lunch with Charles a few times, but that certainly didn’t qualify as an affair! There had never been a hint of any impropriety— Well, there
was
that one time in the copying room two weeks ago when he’d brushed up against her. At the time, she’d thought she’d been imagining things. Now she was quickly reassessing that conclusion.

It made Susannah very uneasy to think that Charles might have had a crush on her and she hadn’t even noticed. A crush so intense that he was threatening to leave his wife over it. Things like that didn’t happen to her, which was no doubt why she hadn’t recognized the signs earlier.

“Look, Mr. Wilder,” she began. “Your brother clearly has a problem—”

“Oh, sure, put the blame on him,” Kane retorted.

“He
is
the one who’s married,” she reminded him.

“And you’re the one who went after him—a
much
younger man.”

Stung, Susannah said, “He’s not
that
much younger!”

“You’re old enough to know better.”

“So is he. Not that anything happened, because it didn’t,” she quickly clarified before going on to bluntly say, “Your brother is lying if he told you that he’s having an affair with me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“And I’m supposed to just take your word for it, is that it?”

Susannah nodded emphatically.

“The word of a woman I’ve just met over the word of a brother I’ve helped raise, the brother who has never told a lie in his life.”

“Well, when he decided to start, he sure started with a big one,” she countered. “Because the claim that the two of us are somehow romantically involved is ludicrous.”

“I see. So you’re merely sexually—not romantically— involved with him, is that it?”

“No, that’s not it! My relationship with your younger brother has been strictly professional.”

“
Strictly
professional?” he questioned. “Meaning you never met with him privately. You treated him as you did all your other co-workers?”

Susannah couldn’t stop the flash of guilt that shadowed her face.

“I knew it,” Kane said, looking at her as if she were something the cat had dragged in.

Susannah’s patience was rapidly running out. “No, you don’t know anything! Okay,” she acknowledged, “so I may have taken him more under my wing than I have with some of the other interns. But that doesn’t mean that I’m having an affair with him. Not by any stretch of the imagination!”

“And why do you suppose my brother would lie about something like this?” Kane asked coldly.

“I have no idea. You’d have to ask
him
that question. Maybe you misunderstood what he told his wife,” Susannah suggested.

“I didn’t misunderstand what he told
me
,” Kane retorted.

“I can’t believe he made up such a ridiculous story,” Susannah said with perplexed frown. “Surely he realized he’d be caught in a lie of this proportion?”

“My point exactly,” Kane agreed with a pleasant smile that conveyed mockery rather than humor. “It would be pretty foolish of him to lie about something like this.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth, however,” Susannah quickly maintained. “When I get back to New York, I’ll clearly have to talk with him.”

“Another little talk at your place?”

“He’s never been to my place.” She paused, remembering the time she’d stayed home to read manuscripts and he’d brought over a contract she’d needed to authorize. “Okay, so maybe he was at my place. Once. For five minutes. Maybe fifteen. I offered him a cup of coffee.”

“I’m sure you did. Along with a little sympathy about his unsupportive wife.”

“I didn’t even know he had a wife!”

“Well, now that you do, you can break it off.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, there’s nothing to break off,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You can tell me until you’re blue in the face. That doesn’t mean I believe a word you say. But believe
me
when I tell you that I’m not about to stand by and watch my brother get hurt by a—”

“Mata Hari like me,” Susannah sarcastically completed. “I get the picture, Mr. Wilder. And I’ll be expecting an apology from you in writing when this misunderstanding is cleared up.”

He stared at her in astonishment. “You’ve got some nerve, lady.”

“Oh, so now you think I’m a lady,” she said mockingly. “Funny, you didn’t act like it a moment ago when you accused me of seducing your brother. If it weren’t so absurd, I’d be highly insulted. As it is, I’ll chalk your incredibly rude behavior up to male hysteria.”

“Those two words are mutually exclusive.”

“Not in your case,” Susannah noted sweetly before turning on her heel and marching into the sanctuary of the women’s bathroom.

“I’m not done talking to you!” Kane bellowed from outside the door.

“Do you know if there’s another way out of here?” Susannah asked a woman in the bathroom.

“That door over there leads to the hallway outside the exhibition area.”

“Great. Thanks.” She made a beeline for that exit. Her little run-in with Kane Wilder had just taken up fifteen of the thirty minutes she had for lunch. Standing in the long line at the convention center’s cafeteria ate up another ten. Meanwhile, Susannah still hadn’t eaten a thing.

She grabbed an apple and an anemic-looking green salad, all the while lecturing herself on how she should have handled Kane. She wasn’t happy with the way he’d put her on the defensive. She should have stopped him in his verbal tracks the second he started making his ridiculous accusations.

Stashing her purchases in her oversize purse, Susannah hurried back to her employer’s display booth. She never did get around to eating, as a rush of people stopped by the booth. As one of the representatives of McPhearson Publishing, it was her job to answer any questions booksellers might have about the line of books McPhearson published.

Smiling at conventioneers as they passed by the booth, Susannah couldn’t help wondering if Charles the Intern had told his ridiculous story to anyone else, aside from his wife and his brother. Specifically, had he told any of her co-workers? And if he did, surely they hadn’t believed him, had they? Not that she was about to come out and ask. But perhaps she could make a few discreet inquiries....

She started with Roy, the head of Marketing. “So what’s your impression of our batch of interns this year?” she asked him during a lull in the action.

“They seem okay,” Roy replied. “Is it just me or do they seem to get wetter behind the ears each year?”

Susannah was tempted to ask about Charles specifically but then reconsidered, realizing her inquiry might only raise further speculation. The best thing to do would be to confront Charles when she returned to the office Monday morning—to go directly to the source...and kill him!

She grinned, making a passing sales rep pause and look at her twice. Of course, Susannah had no intention of doing Kane’s precious baby brother any bodily harm, but she’d certainly make him wish he’d thought twice about dragging
her
reputation through the mud.

She pumped Roy from Marketing again. “Ever heard of Wilder Enterprises?”

“Aren’t they that hotshot company on the forefront of the new CD-ROM technology?”

“CD-what technology? Speak English here, Roy.”

“I forgot I was speaking to a technophobic editor afraid to turn on the computer on her own desk.”

“I’m not afraid to turn it on,” Susannah calmly denied. “We have an understanding. I don’t bother it, and it doesn’t bother me.”

“It could make your workload a lot easier.”

“I know I’ll have to learn how to use it eventually,” she admitted. “But I’m not in any rush since the rest of the office isn’t hooked up yet.”

“It will be by the end of the year,” he told her.

“Let’s get back to Wilder Enterprises and the CD-ROM stuff.”

“It involves storing information onto compact disks and then reading them on your computer. How about your own library with 450 of the world’s greatest books on one disk?”

“Who would want to stare at a screen instead of reading a book in the comfort of their own easy chair?” she asked, mystified by the very idea.

“They have computers small enough to hold in the palm of your hand,” Roy reminded her. “The twenty-first century is right around the corner, you know.”

“Don’t remind me,” she muttered.

“So why the interest in Wilder Enterprises?”