A Wife by Accident (2 page)

Besides, after really looking at him, she could tell he wasn’t more than a few years older than her—probably in his early thirties at best. He didn’t have any wrinkles except for creases of scrutiny at the corners of his narrowed eyes, and only one or two grey hairs mixed in with that scruffy stubble of his. He might have been good-looking if his expression wasn’t so terribly serious.

She took in a gulp of air. “Huh?” Disbelief blocked her words.

“I’m offering you a job. So you can pay off the watch.”

Just a month ago
Hayely
had packed her bags, loaded up her car and started driving—all to avoid a life and a job someone else had picked out for her. But here she was, back between another devil and another deep blue sea.

“I got as far as you needing someone to decorate your house. That I could do. But marry you like that? That’s not even legal, is it?”

Gary narrowed his sparkling hazel eyes at her again. “I’m talking about a six-month commitment at best.
A contract arrangement, binding and legal.
You can come over after work or on weekends. I don’t care when you work or how many hours it takes to get the place finished. I just want it done well. If it is, we’ll call it even for the watch.”

Six months?
Hayely
could feel the adrenalin surging through her blood. Could she agree to something so bizarre? Six months would buy back her
independence,
buy her way out of this situation … Her family didn’t need to find out about the marriage part, did they?

She raised her chin high to look at him directly. “What if I don’t agree?” There. What would he say to that?

The corners of his mouth lifted up higher—almost imperceptibly so, but definitely higher. If she’d known who he was, he was sure
Hayely
Black would have jumped at the chance. Every other money-hungry female in town would have, which was exactly why he couldn’t ask any of them. Too many strings
attached,
too many complications.

“I’m glad you’re so entertained,” she said when he didn’t respond.

“Your eyes look like shiny smoke when you get all emotional.
Never seen pure grey eyes before.”

“Drop dead.”

Gary shrugged his considerable shoulders and hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “We could always walk down to the police station. It’s just a couple blocks away.”

Hayely
ran her hand across her forehead again and looked at the pile of pulverized watch. There was really no way she could imagine repairing the thing. The wind had already started to blow little bits of shattered glass and the watch’s tiny inner workings across the parking lot. She cursed that husky, quiet voice of his. She’d walked right into his trap.

Gary tilted his head a little to the side. “Good. I’ll take your silence as a yes. Do you have a business card?”

She fumbled inside her purse and handed him one of the company’s little sticky notes with her office address on it. Writing her name and phone extension on it, she moved in slow motion as if she’d slipped into automatic pilot mode somewhere under his gaze. What was she doing? She simply couldn’t see another way out of an expensive mess.

“I’ll have someone courier over an agreement. Read it. Sign it.”

He tucked her card into his shirt pocket with a frown and walked off across the parking lot with his big boots clunking on the pavement. He didn’t even turn his head to look back.

•

“I’m going to fire some idiot this week. I just haven’t decided who yet.” Kathy L. Mark stopped in front of
Hayely’s
desk and tossed a thick envelope onto it. “Maybe it’ll be someone who receives personal deliveries on company time.”

With a saccharine smile she turned on her heel and walked off down the hall. Kathy always dressed in petite, tailored suits and worried openly about her thinning, anemic blonde hair, which she kept short enough to just brush the back of her neck. At sixty, she still fancied herself a traffic stopper.
Hayely
suspected that Kathy hadn’t been any great beauty even in her prime.

Unkind thoughts were easy for her to have in that office. At least once a week, she and the rest of the staff suffered through Kathy’s threats to fire one of them.
Hayely
looked daggers at Gary Tarleton’s package, anonymously sent via a nearby law firm, on the desk in front of her. It had just turned her into Kathy’s target of the week. It was
Hayely’s
typical luck that the ever-hostile woman had happened to walk through the reception area just as the courier arrived.

Hayely’s
workday had ended at five o’clock and it was already a quarter after. Did she dare leave so soon? She’d seen Kathy’s wrath when an employee didn’t donate an extra half an hour both morning and evening. But the envelope screamed to be opened. She thought she could actually feel it speaking to her fingertips.

Hayely
scooped up her coat and purse, and had barely gotten into the elevator before she tore open the package. A local attorney had drawn up the paperwork and it all looked very legal and straightforward. Could she actually sign it? If she did, a strange situation would become frighteningly official.

She finished reading the document in her car and froze when she got to the last page. Gary Tarleton had drawn up the agreement exactly as he’d said except for that last paragraph. With unsteady fingers, she turned off her car radio so she could concentrate.

“An extra ten thousand dollars?”
Her hands started shaking as she reached deep into the envelope and retrieved the key to Gary Tarleton’s house. “Oh, Lord
have
mercy. He’s added a bonus.”

With that much money she could maintain her independence, resign from K. L. Mark Enterprises, and actually find a job she enjoyed. Who knew? Maybe she was fated to become an interior designer and this was the universe’s way of showing her. And all it would take was six months of acting like Gary Tarleton’s wife. How bad could that really be?

With a tremble, she took a roller ball pen from her purse and signed her name plain as day in indelible blue ink.

Chapter Two

Hayely
put the key Gary had sent her into the lock of his front door. She didn’t think anyone was home yet—the place was far too quiet. She’d driven around the block several times before finally working up the courage to turn into his long, winding driveway.

The address matched the one on the note he’d sent, but she must have made a mistake somewhere along the line. This creation of light grey stonework and colorful stained glass wasn’t a house; it came closer to being a castle, one with so much land behind it that she knew she was entering a kingdom.

Hayely
walked up the grand cement stairs and gave the key
a firm twist
. To her amazement, the big wooden doors yawned open at her touch. She walked in and shut the doors behind her with a thud and
click
that echoed through the empty foyer.

“Anybody home?” she called and was greeted only with the sound of her own voice coming back to her. She wondered where anyone who lived in a place like this usually went on a Saturday morning. Probably on a jet tour of Europe, she supposed.

There wasn’t a stick of furniture as far as she could see. An enormous staircase spiraled upward in front of her and the marble floor of the entryway made her afraid to step on it. There wasn’t so much as a throw rug or a leafy green houseplant to decorate the place. She kicked her shoes off to the side. She hoped more than anything that she wouldn’t be expected to do all the housekeeping, too.

“It’s no wonder he needed a decorator,” she whispered to herself as she craned her neck back to look up at the high ceiling.

“It’s high time, too. The place has been empty a couple of months now. We’d both like to stop eating off of cardboard boxes.”

“I didn’t think anyone was here.” Her hand flew to her chest. She turned to see a slender man with striking auburn hair leaning against the wall underneath one of the massive stained glass windows. He gave her a pleasant smile, a genuine greeting without hesitation.

“I’m Charlie,” he said as he shook her hand.
“I sort of help Gary out with things.
He told me to expect you. The uh—minister should be here any time now. Guess I’m the witness, huh?”

Hayely
swallowed hard. “I imagine
it’s
better just to get it over with.” She reminded herself that she had entered a business deal—a very lucrative one if she could just get through the next few minutes. She shook her head at her own thoughts. What had she expected anyway?
Flowers, gifts and a reception?
A honeymoon with champagne and chocolates?
Not in her lifetime, she’d bet. And especially not in this strange situation she’d managed to get herself into.

Charlie looked at her with sympathy. “I tried to talk him out of this, but it’s really the only way we could come up with.”

“The only way for what?
I know why I’m here. I just don’t know why he is. I don’t even know who he is for that matter.”

“You don’t know who Gary Tarleton is? Don’t you ever read a newspaper or turn on the local news?”

A peculiar twist caught
Hayely’s
insides. Maybe she was biting off more than she could chew. She could live on macaroni and cheese, have the telephone turned off, sell those diamond earrings she’d gotten three birthdays ago—she might be able to make monthly payments that way.

“I just moved here to Nevada a few weeks ago. Am I supposed to know who he is?”

Charlie studied her for a moment and made a surprised sound high in his throat. “No, I guess not.”

They turned toward the sound of the front door opening again.
Hayely
hadn’t seen Gary since the unfortunate incident with the watch, and maybe her panic and embarrassment had clouded her first impression of him. He was a larger man than she’d remembered. Tall and confident, he had the kind of smooth muscles earned from hard, honest work rather than evenings spent at a gym. The difference was easy to tell—her father had tried to set her up with enough card-carrying gym members.

Gary wiped his hands off on his already dirty jeans and tucked in his white T-shirt. Her first thought that he was a construction worker sprung to mind again. He was certainly looking the part right about then. If it was possible, his chin was covered with even more stubble than before.
Hayely
couldn’t believe a man would grow a beard that looked that unkempt on purpose. He even had dust on his eyelashes.

“Got delayed at the Turner site.”
He turned a guarded expression toward
Hayely
and smiled wryly. She’d worn a casual white cotton dress that was buttoned tightly from the neckline and continued in a row of buttons all the way around her narrow waist. The demurely flowing skirt fell to her ankles.

His gaze rested on her pretty face. “At least you look the part of the bride. Good.
Best to be believable.”

A small, balding man with rounded glasses appeared in the doorway behind Gary. “I was so surprised to get Mr. Tarleton’s call,” he said.
“Such an honor to be asked into your home.
Ah, you must be the future Mrs. Tarleton.”

The minister crossed the floor to
Hayely
and took both of her hands in his. “You’re lovely.
Just lovely.
It’s no wonder he wanted to snap you up so quickly. Are you ready to begin the ceremony?”

What had she gotten herself into? This was too much.
Vows?
She’d hoped to bypass the formalities and just sign the marriage certificate. She wasn’t sure she could choke out wedding vows to this man she’d really only just met.
Monthly payments.
Somehow she’d scrape by and figure out a way to send him something each month.
Something.
Anything.
Even it if took twenty years to pay him off.

•

Gary narrowed his eyes as he watched
Hayely
freeze on the spot. The girl was absolutely terrified, he realized. Every muscle in her body had visibly stiffened. He shouldn’t have put her in this position. She wasn’t a money-driven corporate shark built to handle this sort of deal. For a moment he toyed with letting her off the hook.

He studied her soft, pretty face and white dress. No, he needed someone exactly like her in this role. There was no way around it. This arrangement was the only way he could keep the promise he’d made years and years ago, and Gary Tarleton always kept his word regardless of the cost.

He walked over and put his heavy arm around her small shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. “She’s a little nervous. Why don’t we begin now?” he suggested.

The minister smiled and frowned ever so slightly. “Don’t you want to change clothes first?” He pushed his round glasses up higher on his nose only to have them slip down again as soon as he moved his hand away.

Gary shook his head. “We’d better start with the ‘I do’s’ now, I think.” He stood at her side and smiled innocently at the minister. Just get it done with already.

Hayely
leaned in closer to him. Her warm body felt good there, made him feel like he could give her all things secure and safe. She looked so small beside him that he had no doubt he could catch and hold her with one hand if her knees gave way.