Just the Husband She Chose Page 3

  Her perfume teased him. It reminded him of a summer garden in Savannah, sweet with a hint of the erotic, and when she murmured, “At the moment, it all seems so overwhelming,” he leaned slightly closer to her.

  “You’re in a strange city with a new life before you. That can be overwhelming. My mother will probably want to help with the arrangements. Is that a problem?”

  Eve’s eyes glowed with a glistening softness. “No, not at all. I’m looking forward to meeting her and the rest of your family. You have a brother and a sister, right?”

  “Yes, I do. And there’s someone else now, too. Around Christmas, I found out I have a twin brother. His name’s Slade.”

  “How wonderful! Is he here in Denver?”

  “No. He lives in Montana with his new wife and her son and daughter, and I don’t know if they’ll be able to come to the wedding on short notice. They have a ranch that needs a lot of care. But if not at the wedding, you’ll meet them soon. We’ll make a point of it.”

  Suddenly Eve looked troubled. After a few moments, she asked, “What are you going to tell your family? About our marriage, I mean.”

  “I don’t have to tell them anything.”

  “Surely they’ll wonder why you suddenly decided—”

  “My family isn’t that involved with my life, and I’m not involved in theirs.” Every time he thought about how his parents had separated him from Slade, how they’d left his twin, resentment welled up. He didn’t know if it would ever go away. “But I might tell Slade the truth, if that’s not embarrassing for you.”

  Blushing, she looked down in her lap. “He’ll probably wonder what kind of woman I am.”

  The opinions of others had mattered to Emory Ruskin, and they mattered to his daughter. That hadn’t changed. Reaching out, Hunter slid his hand along her cheek and nudged her face toward his. “To save your inheritance, you need a husband. To start a family, I need a wife. Slade and Emily won’t make any judgments, and no one else needs to know.”

  Eve’s skin was a beautiful ivory and just as soft as he remembered. Her gray eyes sparked with a desire that made his body thrum. Yet he dropped his hand and leaned away. A sense of self-preservation even stronger than desire warned him to use caution and reminded him she could still change her mind.

  She brushed her hair behind her ear and then stood. “I’d better unpack.”

  He stood, too. “Let me give you a tour so you know where everything is. I’ll be leaving for the office early tomorrow morning, but there’s no reason you have to get up. I’ll call you once I find out about the availability of churches and reception halls.”

  “Hunter, I don’t want you to have to do everything.”

  “Not everything. I’m just going to get the ball rolling. Come on, I’ll show you the guest room.”

  When Eve opened the closet door, she saw a fluffy, green terry robe hanging on a hook inside. Hunter’s guest room, with green-and-beige-striped spread and drapes, double-sized bed, dresser and chest, had its own bathroom. Hunter had given her a quick tour of the small dining room, kitchen, gym and office. He’d opened the door to the master suite, and she’d glanced in briefly. She’d felt a funny, curling sensation in her stomach when she thought about sharing it with him.

  Eve hung her dresses in the closet and wished she could get a better grasp on the turmoil inside her. Her decision to ask Hunter to marry her had started it. The twenty-four hours in which she’d waited for his answer had kept it going. And now…she should feel relieved.

  He was being polite, almost friendly, and when he’d kissed her and touched her, so many old feelings had come rushing back along with new ones. But she had the feeling Hunter’s definition of a real marriage included sex, and her definition included so much more. Yes, she wanted to save her inheritance, but she’d come to Hunter because…

  Because she still had feelings for him? Because she wanted his forgiveness? Because she expected to pick up where they had left off?

  She’d agreed to his conditions, not only to save her inheritance, but also to save her dreams. Hunter had been the man of her dreams, and she hadn’t realized it. Or maybe she had and understood that her dreams were very different from her father’s. When she’d met Hunter, and talked with him and laughed with him and come to know the true definition of attraction, it had all taken her by surprise. He had taken her by surprise.

  Five years ago there had been a recklessness about him that told the rest of the world to be damned because he was going to get exactly what he wanted. She’d never known recklessness or impulsiveness. He’d been a man who’d known how to take risks, and she’d been scared by that. Now she was the one taking the risk, and he seemed guarded.

  Was he that way only with her? Had she done that to him?

  As if it were yesterday, Eve remembered making the call to Florence six weeks after Hunter had left Savannah.

  The phone had rung only one time before a woman had answered. “Allo.” The voice had been soft and husky.

  Eve had taken a deep breath. “I’d like to speak to Hunter Coleburn.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman had said. “He’s in the shower. Would you like to leave a message?”

  Eve had imagined Hunter not getting the message. She had imagined exactly what had gone on in that hotel room before Hunter’s shower. It was eight o’clock in the evening in Italy, and she suspected that Hunter’s night had just gotten started. From their love-making, she’d known he was a man with strong needs, and she’d been afraid of that, along with everything else.

  With that phone call, she’d realized none of it mattered. Apparently Hunter had easily found someone else. Apparently he’d already put her in his past, and she decided to do the same with him by responding to the voice on the line, “There’s no message.” She’d hung up, resolving to raise her child alone.

  But she’d miscarried two weeks later…after she’d told her father about the pregnancy, after she’d seen the deep disappointment in his eyes, after her affair with Hunter had changed her relationship with her father forever.

  Trying to push the pain back into the past, she put her garment bag in the closet, then opened the suitcase on the bed. She’d stuffed in a little bit of everything, not knowing what she’d need. Going to the top drawer of the chest, she opened it and returned to the suitcase, piling panties and bras into her arms.

  But when she returned to the drawer, something in the corner caught her eye. Dumping her clothes in, she picked up a red silk chemise nightgown. She could smell perfume emanating from it, strong and potent. Apparently Hunter’s last guest had left it. The woman in the picture with him? Someone else?

  Eve thought about Hunter’s lifestyle. He had money. He traveled everywhere. He could have any woman he wanted. Would he be faithful to her? He said he wanted a family. Surely that meant he wanted commitment. They’d have to talk about it. But for tonight they both needed time to think about this marriage of convenience—what they expected and where it could take them.

  They’d talk about all of it tomorrow.

  The Morgans’ home in a suburb of Denver was a modest two-story neatly landscaped with a hedge along one side. When Hunter had called Eve at noon, he’d asked her if she wanted to go to his parents’ house for dinner, after taking a look at a church in the neighborhood where they could have their wedding. It would be available Tuesday evening for the service.

  She’d loved the feel of the small church as soon as they’d stepped inside. It had a quiet holiness about it, and the minister had greeted them warmly, telling Hunter how much he respected John and Martha Morgan and the volunteer work they did at the church. Now as she and Hunter stepped inside his parents’ house, she wondered what the Morgans would be like, if Hunter’s environment had shaped him as a man more than his genes. She suspected that would be true but didn’t know if Hunter would admit it. He’d told her long ago that he’d always felt “adopted.” Eve wondered why and if his parents were the cause.

  Martha Morg
an was a plump woman with a big smile. She wore an apron over her short-sleeved, shirt-waisted, flowered dress and opened her arms to Eve. “We are so glad the two of you could come to dinner tonight. When Hunter phoned with his news, we were a bit…flabbergasted.”

  A receding hairline made John Morgan’s face look longer than it actually was. After Martha’s hug, he extended his hand to Eve and his brown eyes looked her over curiously. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear. Welcome to the family.”

  As Eve studied the couple, she felt they meant their warm words. “Thank you for inviting us. We stopped at the church. It’s lovely.”

  Martha hooked her arm into Eve’s and pulled her along to the kitchen. “Come tell me everything you’re thinking about for the wedding while I get supper on the table. If Hunter wants this to happen on Tuesday, we don’t have much time.”

  Eve glanced over her shoulder at her soon-to-be husband. “Hunter…”

  He gave a casual shrug. “Mom knows what she’s doing. I’m sure whatever you two decide will be fine.”

  Martha talked as she walked, drawing Eve along with her. They went through the dining room with its maple table and chairs and huge hutch into a homey kitchen done in red-and-white gingham. The cupboards were knotty pine, the floor was shiny white linoleum, crisscrossed with black lines. “Hunter insisted he doesn’t want to use the social hall at the church for the reception. He intends to invite colleagues.”

  “That’s right. He told me he rented a reception room at the Rocky Ridge Hotel.”

  “It’s the finest hotel in Denver,” Martha said as she took her arm from Eve’s and motioned to a stool at the eat-in counter.

  “Can I do something to help?”

  Martha gave her an approving glance. “If you’d like. Salad fixings are in the bowl, plates are in the cupboard above it.”

  Eve went to the counter and opened the cupboard.

  “The hotel kitchen will cater the reception, but I thought maybe tomorrow you and I could go to the florist and then to the bakery to pick out a wedding cake.” After Martha lifted a lid on the stove to check the steaming vegetables, she turned to Eve. “Unless you’d rather do it yourself?”

  “Oh, no, I’d like you to come along. And if you have the time, maybe you could help me look for a wedding dress.”

  Martha’s eyes misted. “I’d love to have that honor. Larry’s wife and her parents pretty much planned their wedding. And I don’t know if Jolene will ever get married. She puts in so many hours at that ad agency.”

  Taking a pot from the stove, Martha set it on a hot pad on the counter. “Hunter tells me both your parents are deceased. Your father, just recently. I’m sorry.”

  “He had high blood pressure for some time, but the stroke was unexpected.”

  “Hunter says that with no brothers and sisters, you have the responsibility of closing up the house and selling it.”

  Eve nodded. “That’s why we’re going to Savannah next week.”

  “How did you and Hunter meet? He didn’t mention that.”

  “It was almost five years ago when he was doing some work for my father in Savannah.”

  “Then this wedding isn’t as sudden as it seems.”

  Not sure what to say to that, Eve gathered up three dishes of salad. “Should I take these to the dining room?”

  Martha gave her a quizzical look and answered, “Sure. And you can call the men to the table.”

  Once Martha brought steaming platters of meat, potatoes and vegetables to the dining room, a silence settled over the group. But she broke it and addressed Hunter. “Did you call Slade?”

  “He and Emily can’t come on such short notice.”

  “That’s a shame,” John murmured and glanced at his son.

  A look passed between them that Eve didn’t understand. Trying to keep the conversation flowing, she commented, “Hunter told me he and Slade just found each other recently.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the table once more, but again Martha jumped in. “Yes. Slade put an ad in the paper, and we answered it and then contacted Hunter. He was overseas at the time.”

  Eve looked over at Hunter. “Did you go to Montana, or did Slade come here?”

  “Slade came here.”

  “You two weren’t dating then?” John Morgan asked.

  “No,” Hunter said simply without further explanation.

  At John’s surprised look, Martha patted her husband’s hand. “They met five years ago, honey. They’ve known each other a long time.”

  “I see.” John addressed Eve. “Hunter gave us quite a scare when he came home from England in January. It was icy. His plane ran off the runway and he ended up in the hospital with a severe concussion and a broken leg. Did he tell you that?”

  “No!”

  “We called Slade, and he came to the hospital. He was there when Hunter woke up.”

  The undercurrent between Hunter and the Morgans was so strong it tugged at Eve, too. There was a lot more to this story than either Hunter or his parents were revealing. In time, maybe she’d understand what was going on. In time, maybe she’d understand the man she was going to marry. There had been no opportunity to talk earlier. Her pregnancy and miscarriage weren’t something she just wanted to blurt out. And she needed privacy to ask him about other women in his life. She would need some answers before they went any deeper into this.

  Remembering Jolene’s request, Hunter took the opportunity after dinner to talk to his father. Eve and his mother were busy in the kitchen, and Hunter suspected decisions about the wedding would slow down the after-dinner cleanup. Following his father into the living room, he sat on the sofa across from the older man’s recliner. Then he asked, “Are you getting ready for retirement?”

  With a slight shake of his head, his father said, “Not quite yet.”

  Hunter decided there was no way to skate around this subject delicately. “Jolene tells me you haven’t been feeling quite up to par.”

  “She worries too much. I’m fine.”

  “Sleeping and eating okay?”

  His father gave Hunter a pensive look. “With retirement coming on, I’m thinking about all the things I have to do before I leave the business in Larry’s hands. Sometimes that keeps me awake at night.”

  “But you’re feeling okay otherwise?”

  “I had a checkup two months ago, and I’m as fit as a fiddle. Don’t let Jolene start you worrying, too.”

  The two men were silent for a moment then John said, “Hunter, I know there’s been a strain between you and your mother and I ever since you found out about Slade.”

  His mother and father had explained exactly what had happened so many years ago. They hadn’t been able to get pregnant, and had looked into adopting. After they were approved, the boys’ home had told them they had twin eight-month-old babies who needed a family. John and Martha had decided to take the twins, but then several things happened at once. Slade contracted pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. John received a job offer from a company in Billings, Montana, that he felt would benefit his family. And Martha discovered she was pregnant. John’s job had required him to relocate within a month, and in the hospital, Slade wasn’t responding to treatment.

  Medical bills mounted. The Cromwell Boys’ Home told the Morgans they couldn’t let them adopt Slade under these conditions. With a budget that was already tight and another new baby on the way, Martha and John had decided to just adopt Hunter. The orphanage assured them they would place Slade when he was well. In the weeks that followed, the Morgans had put Hunter’s twin out of their minds as they concentrated on the family they were building as well as a new life far from Tucson, Arizona.

  Part of Hunter had understood what happened, why his parents had left Slade behind, why another mouth to feed might have broken the budget. But the part of him that had always been connected to Slade didn’t understand.

  Still, he respected John Morgan and was thankful the man had taken him in. “The pa
st is in the past.”

  John’s brown eyes were troubled. “I wish that were true. But every time you look at me I can see that it’s not. Now that you’re getting married yourself, maybe you’ll see how things change when you do. Maybe you’ll understand a man does the best with what he’s got at the time.”

  Hunter wasn’t sure what John meant by that, but his life had become a round of working, traveling and women now and then whose names he forgot a week later. He was ready for a change.

  It was almost eleven when Eve stepped inside the penthouse with Hunter. “Are you going to bed now?” she asked him as she followed him into the living room.

  He stopped, turned and passed his gaze down her cream silk blouse and slacks. “Do you have something else in mind?”

  He was the only man who ever had the power to make her blush. “I thought maybe we could talk.”

  “We’ve been talking all evening.”

  “We were making conversation with your parents. I like them a lot.”

  “They seem to like you.”

  “Is it my imagination or is something…awkward between you and them?”

  Hunter frowned. “Our relationship is complicated.”

  “Your mother said that they’d christened you Hunter Coleburn Morgan but that you dropped the Morgan when you turned twenty-one. Why?”

  “Because Coleburn is my real name.”

  “But Hunter, they raised you….”

  “Look, Eve, my relationship with them and Larry and Jolene has never been easy. If Mom and Dad had known they were pregnant, they would never have gone looking for a child to adopt.”

  “They adopted you anyway.”

  “Yes, they did. Because they felt obligated. I’ve always known that. Larry has always made sure that I’ve known that. He’s their son, their real son.”

  There was pain in Hunter’s eyes, and Eve wished she knew the whole story and what had caused it. She was sure he wouldn’t feel separated from his family unless there was a reason. “I don’t mean to pry.”