His 1-800 Wife (32 page)

She covered him before she let her hands run over his body the way she wanted to. Then she got into bed. She moved close to him, and instinctively his arms wrapped around her, almost as if they could do nothing else. She felt content. Tonight she would sleep. She'd let tomorrow worry about itself. Tonight she would lie in Jarrod's arms even if it was for the last time. She closed her eyes and relaxed. She drifted off, lulled by the rhythmic nature of Jarrod's snore.

Suddenly her eyes snapped fully open. The preg­nancy test, kits, cups, sticks and results were in the bathroom. Catherine eased out of bed as carefully as she had eased into it. She had at least one more mile to go before she slept.

***

Why wouldn't that ringing stop? It hurt, but it was insistent. Jarrod opened his eyes. The room spun. The light stabbed him. He lifted his head. It felt like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer. He fell back. The ringing continued.
It's the phone,
his mind told him. He reached for it, and his body nearly crushed Catherine's. What was she doing in his bed? How did he get to bed? The last thing he remembered. . .he didn't know the last thing he remembered. The phone rang again. He grabbed it and pulled it onto the bed. Catherine opened her eyes.

"Hullo." His voice was thick. His tongue felt like it was swollen and his mouth tasted foul. Then he remembered George's.

"Who is this?" Jarrod tried to make sense of the voice on the phone. The person was talking fast. "Slow down," he said, holding his head.

"Here, let me take it." Catherine took the phone. "Hello?" she said. Then listened. "Hello, Elizabeth."

Catherine looked at the clock. "Elizabeth, it's six o'clock in the morning. What's wrong?" Catherine pushed herself up in the bed. Jarrod pulled a pillow over his head. She was speaking too loud for his hangover.

"What?" Catherine shouted. Jarrod pulled the pil­low back a little. It penetrated his brain that some­thing was wrong. "Newspaper." Catherine's normally low voice was scaling up from a middle C.

She twisted around and hung up the phone. Jarrod felt her scrambling out of bed. "You talked to a reporter," Catherine shouted.

He looked up. "What?"

"How could you?"

She left the room, then. What was she talking about? What had Elizabeth said? Jarrod turned over. He didn't care. His head was going to explode. He needed to keep it attached so he could hold his brains together.

"Jarrod." He heard the door slam closed and Cath­erine's high-pitched voice at the same time.

"Catherine, please be quiet."

She yanked the covers back. "I will not be quiet. How could you do this? Are you just trying to get back at me because I'm still planning to divorce you?" He stared at her as she paced the floor in front of the bed.

She was wearing practically nothing and he had a hard time concentrating when she was fully dressed. With the dregs of last night still fuzzing his mind, he couldn't make heads or tails out of what she was saying. "What are you talking about?"

"Jarrod, this is low. I never thought you were this vindictive." She threw a newspaper at him. He brought his hands up in an instinctively protective gesture. "Now get out of my bed and out of my house."

Jarrod swung his legs over the side of the bed. Catherine left the room with a bang. He hung his head and fought back waves of nausea. When the room stopped moving, and he felt he could focus, he picked up the paper. What was in it that could make her so angry?

He turned it over. Photos of himself and Catherine looked back at him. Sandwiched between them was the headline.
HIS 1-800-WIFE
jumped off the page in bold black letters in 90-point type. The words hit him squarely between the eyes. An arrow pointed from the word
his
to the photo of him. A corresponding one pointed from
wife
to Catherine.

"Bulldog," Jarrod said out loud. Last night at the bar. The man he was talking to. "I've got a bulldog to put to bed." That's what the man had said. At the time, Jarrod thought he had a dog. He was a reporter. He didn't mean a dog. He was going to get his bulldog out, his bulldog
issue,
his newspaper.

"Oh, God," he groaned, wishing he could die right now.

Every detail was there. The phone number, the reason, the temporary nature of the marriage. Every­thing, including the fact that he was in love with Catherine.

He knew why she was angry. The next couple of days were going to be hell for her, and people would bring it up for years to come. He'd done her a terrible injustice, however unintentional. There was no way he could make it up to her; no amount of apology could retract the damning nature of the story. It wasn't on page one, but that didn't matter. In a town this size and with a community this small, word would be all over town by noon.

Jarrod stood too quickly. His head reminded him of the amount of alcohol he'd consumed the previous evening. If only he'd come home last night instead of stopping in George's. He hadn't. He couldn't take another night of being so close to Catherine and not being able to touch her, hold her. He told her that he wouldn't torture her, but he was the one in pain. Every time he looked at her, thought of her, he wanted her, and to be in the same house, knowing she was in bed only a few doors away, was too much. He'd stayed away and gone to George's.

He tried to walk. He had to find her, try to explain, to apologize.

Where were his clothes? He didn't know how he'd gotten into Catherine's bed, who had undressed him or where they had put his clothes. He went to his room and pulled on the first pair of jeans he saw. A shirt hung on the valet and he grabbed it. Barefoot, he padded down the stairs, pushing his arms into the shirt as he went. His head was throbbing. Jenny was in the kitchen.

"Is there coffee?"

She poured him a cup, saying nothing.

"Where's Catherine?"

"I don't know, sir."

If it hadn't been scalding hot, Jarrod would have upended the cup. He took a sip, hoping it would help his head and cursing himself for going to a bar.

"Catherine?" he called, leaving the kitchen. She didn't answer. "Catherine, where are you?" Jarrod looked in all the rooms on the first floor. He found her in the den, pacing back and forth like an angry cat. "Catherine, I'm sorry." She turned and looked at him with rage in her eyes.

"Jarrod, how could you? I trusted you."

"I didn't mean to. We were sitting at the bar, just talking. I had a drink."

"You had a lot to drink."

He nodded. "I did." His head still throbbed with the amount he'd drunk. "I'd never have said anything if I hadn't had too much to drink."

He stopped. He wanted to hang his head, get the ringing to stop. He sipped the coffee. It was cool enough to drink and he drained the cup. He wished he'd asked Jenny to bring him a pot.

"What can I say, Catherine?"

"I think you've already said enough."

"I've been tortured living here. I just can't go on like this."

"It's torture for me too, Jarrod. And as of this moment, you don't live here anymore."

She moved to pass him. He took her arms and restrained her.

"You don't mean that."

She wrenched herself free. Eyes the color of pitch glared at him.

"With every breath in my body."

She left the room, head high but shoulders in a defeated slant. The phone on the desk rang. He ignored it. There was no extension in the kitchen. The answering machine would get it. He couldn't talk to anyone right now.

He'd lost Catherine. No matter what he did, the wedge between them grew wider. His tactics, the dates, the stone house weekend, his resolution to torture her into submission, had all failed. And the paper, the damning evidence of too many drinks, stared at him where he'd dropped it.

Catherine would never love him now. She had, but he'd killed it with a bottle of Jack Daniels and the loose tongue of a drunk. Jarrod didn't drink often. After last night he never should again.

He was sorry, but sorry wasn't enough. The phone rang again. He left the room. His jacket lay over a chair near the door. He pulled it on and left the house. He realized he was barefoot when he stepped onto the cobblestoned driveway. The cold, uneven rocks bore into his feet, unbalancing him. Jarrod rejected the idea of returning for his shoes. He got into the Jeep and found the keys still in the ignition. Backing down the driveway, his anger hot and intact, he slammed into the plastic trash receptacle. It tipped and spilled plastic bags onto the pavement.

Jarrod sped away, never seeing Catherine staring at him from the upstairs window or the open bag of trash with the revealing contents of Catherine's four pregnancy tests.

***

Elizabeth's call was only the first. The phone started ringing and didn't stop. Jarrod was already gone. Catherine hadn't realized how many phones they had. They rang in the bedroom, in the den, the fax phone, the one in her office upstairs.

The first call was from her mother.

"Catherine, is this true?"

"The newspaper story?" She didn't need to con­firm her mother's question, but she did anyway.

"Of course the newspaper report. Did you and Jarrod really marry as a way to keep me from hound­ing you?"

"Mom, the newspaper is exaggerating." She could hear the hurt in her mother's voice. She'd never intended to hurt anyone, especially the people she loved. The phone started to beep, alerting her that there was another call coming in. "Mom, please hold on a moment." Depressing the switch hook, she took the next call.

"Catherine," Audrey said, her voice already higher than normal.

"Audrey, I'll have to call you back. Mom is on the other line." Catherine didn't give Audrey time to say anything. She pressed the button to go back to her mother.

"I'm back," she told her.

"Then it isn't true?" There was hope in her moth­er's voice.

"Newspapers never tell the whole truth."

"Which part of it isn't true?"

Catherine sighed. "I haven't read it all yet," she hedged. She had read most of the half-page article. In newspaper terms, that was an inordinate amount of space.

The beeping started again. She ignored it.

"If you weren't in love with Jarrod, there was no reason for you to feel you needed to marry anyone."

She said
anyone
as if Catherine had pulled the first man she saw off the street.

"It wasn't like that, Mom."

"Then tell me, Catherine, exactly how was it?"

"All right." She sighed again. She wished Jarrod were here. She needed someone to support her, and while this newspaper story was his doing, he was the only person who could possibly understand. The two of them had gone into this scheme together. It had been her plan, but he'd bought into it. And nothing had worked out the way she thought it would. She'd fallen in love with Jarrod. That wasn't supposed to happen. She'd fought with him, ordered him out of her house. Now he was gone and she wanted him back.

And she was pregnant!

She choked on the thought. She'd forgotten. How could she forget such a thing?

"We, Jarrod and I, thought we would get married for six months and then we'd get divorced."

"Why?"

She had to say this delicately. The newspaper reporter had already slanted it in the worst possible way. "We were invited to cozy dinners for four intro­ducing us to eligible young men or women. We thought if we combined forces we could live like we wanted and no one would be hurt."

She couldn't tell her mother how that story ended up in the paper.

"Catherine—"

"Mom." They'd spoken at the same time. "Mom, I know you're upset. I love you and I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you. I just wanted to give you what you wanted."

"What I wanted? Catherine, you'd put yourself into a loveless marriage for my sake?"

It wasn't loveless, not anymore. It had never been that way.

"You and Jarrod have fought with each other since childhood. When you announced the engagement we all thought the hostility had only been hiding your true feelings."

"You were right. We don't dislike each other. We never have."
We have each other,
she finished silently.

More beeps sounded in her ear.

"Mom, I'm going to have to go. Audrey called ear­lier and I know she's trying to reach me."

"What do I tell everybody?"

"The truth," she said.

Audrey was trying to reach her. She went through the same conversation she'd had with her mother. Audrey was more affronted than their mother had been. She shouted at Catherine, telling her that she had no right to bring her into this awful mess. She'd had no right to marry for any reason other than love. She ranted on and on, and Catherine was forced to listen. She had to listen. She loved Audrey with all her faults, and this had happened because of some­thing Catherine had done. She owed her sister the right to chastise her. Catherine only got her off the phone by promising to come over and talk to her in person.