Susan Mallery - Tempting

"You're the most beautiful woman in the world," he told her. "You're my wife."

Soothing words that should have made her feel better. But they didn't.

"So who is this young woman?"

"Her name is Dani Buchanan. Dani for Danielle, Alex told me later."

"Alex? What does he have to do with this?"

"Not anything, really. He was there and he met her. Tried to run her off. Your son is quite the watchdog."

"He cares about his family."

"I know." Mark touched her cheek. "Katherine, do you remember when we were engaged the first time? How you ended things with me?"

She nodded slowly. She'd been an only child from an old money East Coast family. Her parents hadn't approved of her relationship with a brash young man from Seattle. Mark had charm and energy but no family to speak of and certainly no pedigree. Still, Katherine had loved him and had won her family over to her way of thinking. Mark had proposed and she had accepted. But six weeks after the engagement, she'd broken things off. She'd been unable to tell Mark the truth about herself. Rather than have him pity her, then leave her, she'd ended their engagement and he'd gone back to Seattle.

"I came home to figure out what to do with my life," he said. "While I was here, I met someone. I didn't mean for anything to happen, but it did."

The fear turned sharp, cutting her from the inside. She felt both cold and hot. Her whole body ached and still she sat there unmoving, determined to show nothing.

"You had a relationship with this woman?" she asked calmly.

"Yes. She was married. Neither of us meant for it to happen. No one knew, because of her husband. I didn't want to hurt anyone. One day it ended. I never thought much about it again, until today. Dani is her daughter. My daughter."

Katherine stood. Maybe if she moved, the pain wouldn't be so bad. Maybe then she could breathe. But the white-hot pokers pricked her everywhere and the spacious study offered nowhere to hide.

"Obviously I didn't know," he said, as if unaware that anything was wrong. "Alex suggested a DNA test so we can all be sure. It's a good idea. She seems like a great girl. She looks like Marsha mostly, but I see a little of me in her. With the campaign, we'll have to be discreet, of course."

Mark kept talking, but Katherine couldn't hear him. He had a child. A child of his own. A child he'd met.

"I invited her to dinner," Mark said. "I want you to meet her. We don't have to tell the kids who she is right away. But eventually we will."

She turned to him. Her face felt frozen. She wasn't sure she could speak. "She's coming here?"

"Tonight." He stood and crossed to her, then took her hands in his. "I know you'll like her. Didn't you say you wanted another daughter?"

He couldn't mean that. He couldn't not know what he was doing to her. And yet he kept talking as if he thought everything was fine. As if she wasn't devastated that some other woman had been able to give him something she, Katherine, never could.

***

Alex arrived early for dinner at his parents' house. He'd thought about calling his mother, but had then decided it would be better to speak with her in person. His father might think she would take the news of Dani Buchanan in stride; Alex wasn't so sure.

Before he could head up the stairs, Fiona stepped out of his mother's study.

"Hello, Alex."

He remembered a Discovery Channel special on spiders. Fiona reminded him of a black widow, just biding her time until she could eat her mate.

"I didn't know you'd be here," he said.

"Meaning you wouldn't have come home if you'd known?" Her green eyes widened with emotion. "Do you hate me so much?"

"I don't hate you at all." Hate would mean having strong emotions about her. He didn't. He could look at her and acknowledge her physical beauty, yet feel nothing. In a perfect world, she would have disappeared from his life after the divorce. Unfortunately, he had a feeling she was never going away.

"The ice queen cometh."

Alex turned and saw his brother Ian rolling toward them. Alex grinned and stepped toward him. He bent slightly so he and Ian could perform their complicated ritualistic greeting. Alex did most of the hand slapping and turning. It was easier for him. Ian's CP limited his mobility. But what his younger brother lacked in physical prowess he more than made up for in brains and creativity.

"She's always hanging around," Ian told Alex. "I think she has a thing for me."

Fiona shuddered visibly. She looked over Ian's thin, twisted body as he sat in his wheelchair.

"That's disgusting," she snapped.

Ian raised his eyebrows. "But after last night… What do you think, Alex? You're the expert on what turns Fiona on."

Alex stared at his ex-wife. "Not as much as you'd think."

Fiona seemed torn between fury and pleading. "Alex, you can't let him talk to me like that."

"Why not? Ian has a great sense of humor."

"Something you wouldn't understand, babe," Ian said. "Humor is not your thing." He turned and rolled out of the room. "Love ya," he called over his shoulder.

Fiona drew in a breath. "I've never understood that boy."

"You've never tried." It had taken Alex a long time to figure out how Fiona felt about Ian, but he'd finally understood that she couldn't stand to look at the kid. It was as if the variation on normal had disgusted her. That truth was only one thing on a long list of reasons he'd walked away from her and their marriage.

"Alex, I don't want to fight."

He crossed to the wet bar and opened a cabinet. After pouring himself some scotch, he faced her. "I'm not fighting."

"You know what I mean." She glided close to him and put her hand on his chest. "I miss you so much. There has to be something I can say or do to help you forgive me. It was only one mistake. Can you really be so cold and unforgiving?"

"I'm the bastard king," he said, then took a sip. "Literally. Well, the bastard part anyway."

She drew in a breath, as if determined to ignore his baiting of her. "Alex, I'm being serious. I'm your wife."

"You were my wife."

"I want to be again."

He looked her up and down. On the surface, she was everything a man could want-beautiful, intelligent, an excellent dinner companion. She could talk to anyone, anywhere. Nearly all his friends had wondered how he had let her get away.

"Not happening," he told her flatly.

"But I love you. Doesn't that mean anything?"

He thought about that night nearly two years ago. When he'd come home unexpectedly. "No," he said. "It doesn't mean a damn thing."

Dani stood on the porch of a large, impressive house in Bellevue and told herself that the world wouldn't end when she rang the doorbell. It might feel as if it would, but that wasn't real. Besides, just standing out here, lurking, would upset the neighbors. What if they called and told Mark's wife about a potential thief hovering? Katherine Canfield would open the front door and find her there. It was not how Dani wanted them to meet.

"I'm babbling in my head," Dani muttered to herself. "This is bad. Seriously bad. I think I need therapy. Or at least a frontal lobe transplant."

She forced herself to push the bell. As the soft ringing sound echoed inside the house, she felt her heart speed up until it was in danger of bursting into warp eight and zipping off to the nearby non-earth galaxy.

The door opened. Dani tried to brace herself, but there wasn't enough time. Then all the air flowed out of her lungs when she recognized the man standing there.

"Thank God," she said before she could stop herself. "It's just you."

Alex raised his eyebrows. "Just me? So I wasn't intimidating enough at our last meeting? None of the threats worked?"

Oops. "No, no. Of course not. You were terrifying. I won't sleep for weeks. Dragons. I'm going to have nightmares about them. Seriously. It's just compared with meeting your mother… no offense, but you're a snap."

He didn't even crack a smile. Was it that the man didn't have a sense of humor or was it her specifically that he didn't find funny? She thought about pointing out this was actually pretty good material, but decided not to. There was a better than even chance she would be barfing from nerves shortly. Why push her luck now?

He stared at her for several seconds. She smiled tightly. "It's the whole visitor, front door thing. You're supposed to invite me in."

"I don't want to."

"You'll warm up to me."

"I doubt it."

"I'm a very nice person."

He looked unconvinced but still he took a step back and allowed her to ease past him into the foyer.

The interior of the house was large, but homey. It was the kind of place designed to make someone feel at ease-too bad it wasn't having that effect on her at the moment.

She turned to Alex, but before she could speak a teenage boy rolled into the room. He was pale and thin, with dark hair and eyes. His right hand worked a control on his motorized wheelchair while his left hand lay bent and curled in his lap.

"Are you the stripper I ordered?" he asked as he eyed her. "I've been waiting over an hour. I was expecting better service from your company."

Dani tilted her head slightly as she tried to figure out how to handle the outrageous question. Finally she settled on the truth.

"I'm not exactly stripper material," she said with a grin. "I'm too short. I always picture them really tall and with those big headpieces like the Las Vegas showgirls wear."

"They couldn't drive in one of those feather things," he told her.

"They could if they had a sunroof and kept it open."