Promoted to Wife (Destiny Bay) (16 page)

“Hey guys,” he said. “What’s happening?”

“Tag. Haven’t seen you in ages.” Grant pushed in to give him room to sit. “You’re boat hasn’t been in the marina all week.”

Matt rose at the same time, mumbling something about picking Janet up at the library. He gave Tag a clap on the shoulder, then headed out.
 

“Where’ve you been this time?” Jennifer asked Tag as he sat alongside her.
 

Tag shrugged. “I took a jaunt up the coast. Thought I’d go stare at some redwood trees, see what they could tell me.”

“And?” Carrie asked.
 

Tag looked slightly puzzled. “It’s no use talking to trees,” he told her. “They don’t talk back. So I gave up and came home.”

“Don’t you get lonely on that boat all alone?” Jennifer asked him softly.
 

“No way. I’ve got the ocean. I’ve got the sea otters. The pelicans. That’s all I need.”

“Really.” Carrie gave him a look.
 

Mickey came out of the back room and her eyes widened when she saw Tag.
 

“Oh,” she said, stopping short.
 

“Hey Mickey,” Tag said, rising and looking at her with a certain glow to his eyes. “I need to talk to you.”

Her hand went to her throat and her eyes filled with tragedy. “No,” she said. “No, Tag. I can’t.”

Suddenly Robert was right behind her. Tag’s face hardened. He stared at Robert and Robert stared back. Terry scrunched down in her seat, wishing she could get up and leave. There was a dangerous electric current in the air. Too much pain and fear and emotion. For once, she thought she understood about animals sensing danger. She was sensing something right now. If only she wasn’t hemmed in, she would run away as far and fast as any stampeding animal.
 

Robert took another step forward and very deliberately put his arm around Mickey’s shoulders.
 

“Hello Tag,” he said. “Are you going to be coming to the wedding?”

Tag looked at him and slowly shook his head.
 

“You ought to come, Tag,” Robert said, his voice seemingly pleasant, but with an underlying sense of steel. “You ought to be there. I hope you will be. Then you can see the exact moment when Mickey officially becomes my woman. It’s a lesson I think you need to learn.”

Tag’s eyes seemed wild for a moment. Terry was afraid the two men would get physical. The sense of anger was thick and they seemed to be straining toward each other.
 

Then Tag said something low and evidently obscene that Terry didn’t catch, and Robert’s head went back and his arm tightened on Mickey.
 

“I think you’d better find a new café to hang out in, Tag,” Robert said evenly. “I don’t want you around Mickey anymore.”

“Robert,” Mickey began, pulling out of his embrace and trying to stop him from laying down impossible laws. “Robert, you can’t say things like that. Tag is…Tag is a good friend and ...”

“I told you that you would have to choose between him and me,” Robert said with quiet intensity. “It’s time to do that. Make your choice.” Turning on his heel, he went to the back room.
 

Mickey was looking at Tag imploringly. He looked back for a long moment, then shrugged.
 

“I’ll go. I don’t want to make any trouble for you.”
 

He hesitated and looked down into her face as though he was trying to memorize it. Lifting his hand, he barely touched her cheek with the palm of his hand, then turned and walked out. Everyone let air out as though they’d all been holding their breath. They looked at each other, and then, suddenly, they couldn’t look each other in the eye.
 

“Well, time to get back to work,” Jennifer said brightly, squeezing Terry’s hand at the same time. “Shall we?”

They said goodbye to the others and started out into the street.
 

“Wow. If that didn’t bring on contractions, I must be bulletproof,” Jennifer muttered. She glanced at Terry. “Robert’s a pretty good guy, you know. He’ll take good care of them. They’re lucky he wants to. It’s for the best.”

“Is it?” Terry asked, looking at her new friend searchingly. “Do you think Tag loves her?”

Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Couldn’t you see it? It was written all over him.” She sighed. “But Tag has his own reasons for needing his freedom. He can’t be tied down. And anyway, Mickey is older than he is and she feels it acutely.” She shrugged. “People make their own heartbreak, but they have to do what they have to do. What can I say?”

They parted, promising to get together soon, and Terry drove away with a new understanding of Carrington family dynamics. They were all over the place. Like any family, theirs was an emotional mess.
 

“That was Rick on the telephone,” Julia said on Friday morning.

Terry's heart skipped a beat, as though it had been only yesterday that he'd held her in his arms. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her hands.

“He'll be home this afternoon,” Julia went on. “He's going to pick up the children at school himself on his way in.”

“Oh, good,” Terry said before she thought, eliciting a startled look from Julia. “I mean, how nice for the chil
dren,” she mumbled and turned away. “I'll air out their
rooms.”

When she heard Rick's sports car come up the drive
later that day, her breath got a little shorter, but she
didn't allow herself to go to the window. She even ig
nored her duty with the door, staying upstairs and
vacuuming the hall.

When the children came tramping up the stairs she
turned with a smile to greet them. Jeremy grinned back and gave her a quick hug before running to his room, but
Erica's face was stormy.

“He says we're to stay for the summer,” she blurted
out with no preamble.

“Oh?” Terry replied, surprised and pleased.

“He says it was your idea,” Erica accused, her eyes
cold and unfriendly. “I don't know why you're so nosy!”

She'd known Erica might not be overjoyed at such an
arrangement, but she hadn't expected such open hostility.
“I'm sorry if you ...”

Erica didn't stay to hear her out. She flounced into her room and shut the door firmly. At the same time Terry
heard Rick coming up the stairs.

She turned, her heart in her throat, and there he was,
all six feet and more of golden masculinity, and she sud
denly thought she understood something that had always puzzled her before—why women swooned so often in the antebellum South. Her head felt light and her knees were
buckling.

His eyes were warm as they met hers and he said some
thing, but she couldn't hear exactly what the words were. There was a strange buzzing in her ears and she only knew she had to protect herself from what she
was feeling. Smiling stiffly, she leaned against the stem of
the vacuum cleaner for support, working hard to main
tain distance and dignity.
 

“Welcome home, Mr. Carrington,” she said, her voice sounding unpleasantly raspy in her own ears.

A shield dropped over his gaze at her tone. “Thank you, Yardley,” he growled in return, making her wonder what she'd done to insult him. “It's nice to know nothing has changed much in my absence.”

No, nothing had changed. She was still weak when it came to him, and he was still the rich, arrogant playboy he'd always been.

“I knew this job would be a challenge,” she muttered to herself as she packed away the vacuum cleaner. “What I didn't realize was just how many fronts I would be challenged on.”

But she would take it one day at a time and get through, somehow. And Rick made it easier for her by keeping his distance. In the days that followed, he was rarely at home, and when he was, his time was taken up with the children.

Jeremy had completely won his heart, and the feeling was evidently mutual. The little boy followed his father everywhere, his brown eyes wide with hero worship. He carried the grubby koala at all times, “in case Daddy needs him,” and seemed to be ready for anything Rick might want to do. From what she could see, Rick responded to that affection in a way she never would have expected. He seemed to have a growing sense of wonder, becoming more and more comfortable in showing the boy just how he felt. Before long, they seemed inseparable.
 

But Erica was another story. Cool and disinterested with her father, she was downright cold with Terry, letting her know at every turn that she resented her part in condemning her to Mar Vista for the summer.

“Why don't you invite one of your friends from school
to come and stay for a few days?” Terry suggested at
one point.

“There's nothing to do here,” Erica replied. “They'd
be bored to death.”

“
Just as I already am bored to death
,” was the unspoken implication. Erica went back to her teen magazine and turned her ipod earbuds on so that she could retreat into her own little world, blotting out Terry, and
everything else at Mar Vista.

“She's not your problem,” Terry scolded herself. But
the little girl was Rick's problem. And Terry was wor
ried that he didn't know any better than she did how to
solve it.

But then, she had problems of her own. In a word,
Rick. He was her biggest problem, even bigger than the
charity ball. He was treating her like the servant she was, and still she couldn't avoid feeling things she knew she
shouldn't.

Rick himself felt like some brooding hero of a bad novel. He got through his days just fine, did all the work he set out to do, was even improving relations with his children, but there was a vague dissatisfaction dogging his steps at every turn. Getting ready for bed one night, he sat down and stared at Angelina, half tempted to call
the number his cousin had supplied him with.

Why not
? he asked himself.
Maybe the real Angelina
could make me forget Terry.

Terry. Closing his eyes, he conjured up a picture, of
her lovely body, her bright blue eyes. She'd taken hold of
his imagination as no other woman ever had, and he couldn't shake her.
 

He punched a pillow, giving vent to his frustrations.

He'd never met such an obstinate woman! He wanted her. She wanted him. What could be simpler? But she
had to make a big production out of denial. It went
against his grain to deny himself anything he wanted. But
he had to admit to a grudging respect for her. She was
strong.

Too damn strong. Stronger than he was. And she was right, really. It was an impossible situation. Why didn't
he listen to her?

The incredible thing was, she was probably doing it as
much for
him
as she was for herself. Lord, he could al
most learn to hate a person who was that unselfish.

He glanced at Angelina again. “Sorry, baby,” he mut
tered. “I might just turn out to be a one-woman man after all.”

In another part of the house, Terry was lying awake, staring into the darkness, telling herself over and over, “I'm going to forget about Rick Carrington if it's the last
thing I do!”

Things went on uneasily for another week. And
then Caren arrived.

CHAPTER EIGHT:

A Force To Be Reckoned With
 

Terry had been warned that another of Aunt Julia's young ladies was arriving in the afternoon, and she had been fairly certain the woman would not be another Brandy McAllister. But she was hardly prepared for what sped up to the doorstep in a sleek limousine.

“I'm Caren Ashford Whitely,” the gorgeous blonde announced, as though that should settle any questions anyone might have. She was at least six feet tall and model-slender, swathed in silk that might have been glued to her body piece by piece by an avant-garde artist. Terry had never seen her like before, except perhaps on the pages of Vogue magazine. “The Carringtons are expecting me.”

“Of course. Please come in.” Terry leaned forward to reach for her cases, but the woman stopped her.

“Now just who are you?” she asked sharply.

Terry looked her in the eye. “Terry Yardley. I'm the butler.”

“The butler!” Her laughter filled the entryway. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

Terry opened her mouth to explain, but Caren waved her to silence. “Don't worry, darling, I know you're just Rick's latest playmate. I've known him for years, so he
has no secrets from me. He does have such a droll sense
of humor, doesn't he? Dressing you up as the butler.” She
laughed again.

Terry was flushing, and only her loyalty to her job kept her from shoving the woman back out the door. “I
was hired on as the butler...” she began, but Caren cut in.

“Oh, darling, forget it. I quite understand. You don't worry me a bit. I'm a modern woman. I understand these
things.”

She walked blithely into the house, turned back to
smile at Terry. “I have a master plan, you see, and girls
like you will play an important part in it.”

Despite Terry's anger, she was curious. “Oh? How?”

Caren laughed charmingly. “I'm going to marry Rick.
And playmates like you will take care of the more...
base side of what he needs. I assure you, I'll handle the
rest.”

The woman's casual cynicism took Terry's breath
away. “Does he know about this?” she couldn't help but
ask.