Marriage by Mistake (14 page)

That would be delusional. Part of her whole
self-destructive bit. Dean was the man she saw before her: stiff,
cold, and formal. Annoyingly superior. Bossy.

Not exactly a soul mate.

Definitely not    and never would
be    the man she'd met in Las Vegas. He was not
   and never would be    the man she'd
married.

Kelly's last thought echoed in her mind. She
was just realizing its import when the iron gates of Dean's estate
appeared in the car's headlights. She sat staring dumbly forward as
Dean pushed a remote control button in the car and the gates swung
open.

So she'd completed her investigation. This
Dean was not the man she'd married. After only a little more than a
week she'd figured it out. Decided.

Dean drove through the gates and up the
winding drive toward the house.

Kelly felt heavy inside. The trial period was
over. Her vows carried no weight. She could go home. She should go
home. Immediately.

At a fork in the drive, Dean bore right. Five
garage doors appeared before them. One began scrolling open. Dean
moved the car into its slot, shifted into park, and turned off the
motor.

Kelly bit her lower lip. She ought to tell
Dean it was over. Now. Then leave in the morning.

Dean opened his car door with an expensively
hushed click. Without looking at Kelly, he got out of the car. She
sat there, depressed beyond words as he rounded the hood of the car
   her exquisitely mannered, soon-to-be-ex-husband. He
bent and opened her door with another classy hush.

Kelly pasted on a polite smile and turned to
face him. He looked back, devilishly handsome, and utterly chill.
His lips were beautifully formed, and perfectly straight, with not
a smile or expression of any kind playing upon them. His eyes were
the crystal blue of an angel, but they expressed not one ounce of
human emotion. Oh, he was the most remote human being she had ever
seen. Utterly alone.

Kelly's polite smile faltered.

Dean's expression, impassive as it was,
seemed to freeze. "What?" he demanded. "You've been upset for the
past five miles. For God's sake, what is it?"

Kelly couldn't possibly get her smile back in
place. Yes, he was remote and chill, no doubt about it. Not 'her's'
at all. But she'd suddenly remembered Troy's bet with Robby. Troy
thought Dean wouldn't be able to keep her for two whole weeks. And
he'd be right! The thought made Kelly's chest squeeze.

"Kelly," Dean's voice was warning.

She could barely breathe. God, she was going
to do it, become the next person in the chain, the chain of people
who had left Dean, making him the way he was, this way that could
not be changed.

Don't fool yourself
! An alarmed voice
squawked in her head.
He'll be no worse off once you've
gone
. Dean had grown too set in his ways, his defenses too
established, for her brief appearance in his life to cause a
ripple. She'd be like a speck of dust that had gotten into his eye.
She'd be like a bug that had been squashed beneath his shoe.
Insignificant. Unimportant.

All the same...

"I'm staying," she heard herself say.

Dean's brows snapped down.

Kelly felt the oddest sensation, like weights
being lifted from her shoulders. Part of her stood back and
wondered what the heck she thought she was doing. This was absurd,
futile, and possibly self-destructive.

But another part of Kelly felt lighter than
air. She stepped out of the car. "I'm not going to give up on you,
Dean, even if you are the most set-in-his-ways, unlikely-to-change
man I have ever met."

Dean's brows relaxed. "Wha   
?"

"He's in there somewhere, the man I married."
Kelly winced. "All right, he's buried pretty deep, but that doesn't
mean we can't try to dig him out. We
have
to try, in fact.
We have to...get the real you out of there."

Dean's eyes widened.

Kelly closed the car door behind her. She had
no idea what this thing was they were supposed to do, but she felt
like she was floating three feet above the ground. There was a
shimmering, wondrous excitement inside her. Something,
something
had to happen.

With a laugh in her throat, she stepped
forward. In surprise, or maybe to set her away, Dean put his hands
on her waist. The heat of his fingers through the silk of her
pantsuit was all the instigation Kelly needed.

Her hands went up to his face, her feet
arched to tiptoe, and her lips touched his.

Dean's hands flinched on her waist. He
uttered a small sound.

Kelly uttered a sound of her own, a moan of
sheer pleasure. Lord, he felt good, even better than she
remembered. The slight scratchiness of his jaw was an erotic
counterpoint to the civilized scent of his aftershave. No less
provocative was the solid strength of him against her torso, and
his taste    Her tongue grazed the closed seam between
Dean's lips. He tasted like all of God's forbidden fruit wrapped
into one. Her hands slid into his hair.

Dean didn't participate. But neither did he
resist. He simply stood there, taut, and moaned again.

The sound, mingled with his continued
immobility, brought Kelly back to earth. Wait a minute. Wait a
minute. She was
kissing
him. She halted, stunned, then drew
her lips away. Inhaling deeply, she took a step back.

She saw immediately she hadn't stopped a
moment too soon. Dean looked as though he'd been pushed to some
inner limit. His eyes were wide and his lips swollen. As Kelly
watched, his expression of bemusement faded. Hard determination
took its place. "Don't," he said, low, "ever do that again."

Kelly felt a quick spike of fear. He was
right. She shouldn't have kissed him. He wasn't 'her' Dean. But
such thoughts were washed away by pure satisfaction. She'd
obviously made an impression. "Oh, good," she said, and tapped his
cheek. "You're worried."

She was delighted to see his eyes blaze.
Then, before she could do anything more, something that might worry
herself
, she turned and, as dignified as possible, wobbled
out of the garage.

###

It was really not a good idea to be drinking.
Nevertheless, Dean nursed a brandy as he looked out his bedroom
window in the hours following his opera date. Behind him, the brown
and gold silk counterpane on his bed lay untouched. He turned the
glass in his hand.

They'd kissed. Rather, Kelly had kissed him.
He had...resisted.

More or less.

Dean lowered his glass. More rather than
less. But was he relieved? Was he proud of himself?

Not exactly.

What was the point of resistance, he was
starting to wonder? What did he gain by turning away all that sex
appeal? He could have kissed her back. He could have pulled her
close and given her everything she'd been asking for. By now they
could have been on the other side of the house, naked in her bed.
And he'd have been satisfied. Finally.

Dean rubbed his thumb on the rim of his
glass. On the other hand, perhaps he wasn't giving himself enough
credit. He'd kept his cool down there in the garage. He'd
remembered the long-range consequences. If he took Kelly to bed, if
she could give him the satisfaction he'd experienced in his dreams,
all hell could break loose. There'd be nothing he wouldn't do for
her, no idiocy at which he'd stop.

He'd become a damned fool.

Dean took another swallow of brandy and
narrowed his eyes at the reflection of his bedroom in the window
glass, the somber wainscoting and dimmed lights. He didn't want to
be a fool. So it had been smart to resist her. Oh, yes, he'd
steered clear of the exact situation he'd been trying to avoid
since Kelly had first burst into his downtown office. The situation
where he handed her all the power.

The only part of her scheme he didn't get was
this bit about 'releasing' him. What did that mean?

Dean swished the liquid in his glass. She
spoke as if the man Dean had been while acting under hypnotic
suggestion not only existed, but awaited liberation. As if Dean
were keeping him under lock and key.

Dean stilled his glass. Even if a part of him
was under lock and key    which it wasn't   
what difference could that possibly make to her? Why should she
care if Dean were 'free' or not? In fact, wouldn't it be more to
her advantage if he were utterly caged?

A strange sensation shimmered through Dean.
He frowned past the bedroom's reflection and into the darkness
outside. For a moment he almost imagined    But, no. That
kiss had been no more than what he knew it to be. Bait. He knew her
type. Even if he couldn't plumb her every motivation, he understood
the basics. She was out for herself, and herself alone. Whatever
her ploy, he wasn't falling for it.

There would be no more kissing.

She would discover he was not as far gone as
she had thought.

With a firm nod, Dean set his brandy on the
windowsill. Then he went to take a cold shower.

###

All Felicia wanted was to be alone that
Saturday night. But after her Aunt Hilda and her Uncle Garrett had
brought her home from the opera, she had to sit in the living room
with them and her mother, drinking coffee and discussing the
production they'd just seen. The conversation had been an endurance
test, since this particular performance of La Bohème was one
Felicia would have liked to blot from her mind.

"Do you have a headache, Felicia?" Her
mother, fully dressed and perfectly coiffed, though she'd merely
been at home watching TV, regarded her daughter through narrowed
eyes.

Belatedly, Felicia realized she was rubbing
her forehead. She lowered her hand immediately. "Maybe I do have a
headache." The excuse would certainly earn her an interrogation
regarding her health the next day, but at least it would get her
out of the room.

"Oh, don't let us keep you up if you're not
feeling well," Uncle Garrett boomed. If Felicia had actually had a
headache, his voice would not have helped.

"Thank you, Uncle Garrett." Felicia rose from
the Italian sofa.

"Take some chamomile tea with honey," Aunt
Hilda suggested.

"Think a couple Tylenol would be more
effective," Uncle Garrett muttered under his breath, then smiled
innocently at Aunt Hilda.

Felicia thanked her aunt and uncle for their
escort to the theater    the theater she wished to God
she hadn't attended    bade her mother goodnight and,
finally, was able to go up the main stairs of the family mansion to
her bedroom.

She closed the white paneled door of her room
after herself and then turned to lean against it with a deep,
quivery sigh. The royal blue and pearl cream furnishings of her
bedroom swam before her eyes.

Troy had been telling the truth. Imagine
that. Troy, that smug-smiling, smarm-dripping
slug
had been
telling the honest-to-goodness truth.

Dean was married.

Felicia drew in and then released another
quivery breath. Yes, Dean was married, and to whom? To a woman who
looked like every man's sexual and emotional fantasy rolled into
one. A real knockout; vibrant, warm, and inviting.

Everything Felicia was not.

With a sound that was part laugh and part
groan, Felicia pushed away from the closed bedroom door. She hugged
her arms as she paced the length of her bedroom, the thick carpet
soft under her feet, the lacy curtains of her bed a subtle
mockery.

Little girl. You're just a little girl.

Not a woman
.

Felicia ground her teeth and went on pacing.
Tears stood stupidly in her eyes. Dean had been her last, her only,
chance. For years she'd thought of Dean as her way out. She could
be married, own all the privileges and status of that condition
   without having to deal with any of the
disadvantages.

The primary disadvantage she'd wanted to
avoid was a husband who cheated. Dean wouldn't have been one of
those. He was completely honorable, completely unlike Felicia's
father, who'd enjoyed one mistress after another the entire span of
her parents' marriage.

The other disadvantage of marriage Dean would
have saved her from, or so Felicia had thought, was having to
satisfy a man in bed. She'd thought Dean was...like her. Driven by
his work, sober and serious. Not distracted by the more basic
elements of human nature.

Now that she'd met the man's oh-so-alluring
wife, Felicia knew better.

Good God, what if they
had
married,
only for her then to discover    ?

Her eyes widened at the mere thought. Coming
to a stop by the large, mullioned window, Felicia crossed her arms
over her chest and turned her back to the window. She didn't want
the glass to show her a reflection of herself. She didn't want to
see the deep deficiency so well hidden beneath a fashionable
exterior.

She was frigid. She had to be. At
twenty-eight years old, she'd never lain with a man. She didn't
even
want
to lie with a man. She didn't want the physical or
emotional vulnerability that would be involved.

Dean, she'd thought, would not have desired
that from her. With Dean she could have been safe.

A laugh escaped her. Well! Not only was Dean
married, but he was clearly
not
safe. That wife.

God.

And somehow...somehow...this disaster was all
Troy's fault.

Felicia couldn't say exactly how. She only
knew that Troy had given her the news about Dean's marriage with
such obvious delight. With smug glee he'd made it clear he
understood the dreams she'd had. And he
mocked
them. He
mocked
her
. He
always
did. He was odious, a toad,
slime.

Down below, outside the window, Felicia could
hear Aunt Hilda and Uncle Garrett's voices. They'd come out the
front door and were saying goodbye to her mother.