The Marriage Contract

“I wish you’d stop calling me that. Nothing’s changed between us since Jeff died.”

“I feel awkward calling you Mr. Nick.”

At thirty-two, Nick had almost forgotten the title Hunter had used when he was a child. “Try just ‘Nick.’ You’ve managed not to call me anything for the year I’ve been back in town.”

Hunter’s self-conscious smile looked sad. “I’ll try.”

Nick fought an overwhelming urge to hug the other man. He’d last hugged Hunter on the morning his father had sent him away to boarding school. Hunter, the only man who’d shown him affection. Far more of a father to him than Jeff had ever been.

“If, for some reason, Leota didn’t go to Wilford’s office and she calls here, will you let me know?”

“She’ll be there.” Hunter sounded certain. “Despite her grief, she must be curious about your father’s last wishes.”

Or else she dreaded finding out what Jeff might have planned for them—the housemaid he’d married because she was pregnant and the son who’d almost been born a bastard. Nick grunted agreement. He glanced back at the older man as he curved his hand around the ornate library door frame.

“Get some rest,” he said, uncomfortable with Hunter’s sorrow. How deeply had he cared for his difficult employer? Nick had never discussed Hunter’s feelings for Jeff, because he couldn’t define his own.

The older man had been a refuge of stability for Nick. His presence had buffered Nick from Jeff, who’d found Hunter difficult to criticize.

Nick paused in the wide parquet-floored hall. He owed Hunter more than a caution to rest. He should ask straight out how the other man felt. A normal caring human being would ask the question. And once he crossed the final emotional minefield of his father’s will, he believed he could begin to live like a normal human being. If he survived without a mortal blow, he’d come back here and ask Hunter to join him in a beer.

Nick hurried through the double front doors and then strode down the brick steps to his battered Jeep. The old green car was parked on one side of the curving drive like a poor relative, hoping for a kind welcome. Last night, after the limo driver had brought them back from the family visitation at the funeral home, Leota had suggested Nick hide his eyesore of a vehicle in the garage, or better yet, in one of the empty barns on the property.

Putting the Jeep in the garage would have made it appear he’d come home to stay. And though he’d never admitted it to another living soul, home wasn’t a place where he felt comfortable.

He pushed his key into the ignition. As the engine coughed to life, he watched the lights starting to come on in the town below. From up here on Dylan property, Fairlove looked quaint and warm.

Appearances were deceiving. Since he’d come back to Fairlove, Nick had lived in a small house just two doors from Saint Theresa’s—the church parking lot was where Hunter had taught him to ride his bike. For the past twelve months, Nick had attended countless school-board meetings and potluck suppers. He’d “doctored” townspeople who came to him only as their last resort, and he’d tried to turn himself into one of Fairlove’s ordinary citizens. But the townspeople couldn’t seem to forget he was a Dylan and therefore the last physician they wanted to treat their sore throats, arthritis or lumbago.

As the pole light above the Jeep came on, Nick put the car in gear and started down the winding road into the town spread out below him. Movement on the street in front of the high school drew Nick’s gaze to the kids escaping at top speed from band practice.

Car lights flickered on as the parents who’d waited for their children started their engines and began to head for the tidy rows of federal-style houses. Some of the buildings had been built before the American Revolution, but some were new construction, erected according to the town’s covenants. Nick had bought one of the newer houses. He’d lived in a historical monument long enough.

At the bottom of the hill, he checked for traffic on his left, then his right. The sight of the Atherton house provoked the usual momentary pang of helpless guilt. Derelict, forgotten, except by his father, the house called The Oaks was slowly falling down.

Nick looked away from his father’s trophy. Jeff had destroyed the Atherton family while Nick had been away at college. If he’d been home, would he have tried to end the vendetta before the family disappeared from Fairlove? Or would he have sided with his mother’s wounded pride and stood aside while his father took vengeance on the man who’d married Sylvie Atherton, the woman Jeff had truly loved?

Nick pressed his gas pedal and tried to put the past he couldn’t change behind him. He had to concentrate on the here and now, on Leota, who seemed to be self-destructing, and on the will, which might contain a last, posthumous blow.

He passed his own dark house and the church before he turned in front of the courthouse. His father’s black limo took up two of the hotly contested parking spaces on the square in front of Wilford Thomas’s office. All around the limo, reporters and cameramen waited, their equipment at the ready.

Nick found a space as far away from them as possible and dodged through the evening traffic on foot. Wilford had arranged this after-hours reading to avoid the reporters who’d been following Leota. Obviously his ploy had failed.

“Dr. Dylan! Nick!” As he reached the door to Wilford’s office, a man behind him shouted his name. He ignored the voice and yanked the door shut behind him.

Wilford immediately came out of his inner office. In his mid-fifties, he had white, perfectly coiffed hair and wore a suit as appropriately conservative as Hunter’s. “I thought I heard a commotion. Come on in. I’ll lock this door until we finish. I had the sheriff come by and give the press a talk about trespassing.”

Leota looked up from the far side of Wilford’s desk, slender, blond, perfectly made up and emotionally frozen.

“I thought we planned to drive together,” Nick said to her.

“Why don’t you all stop treating me as if I’m a lunatic on the verge of a breakdown?”

Nick, taken aback at her response, moved to the chair beside hers. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “I only meant you don’t have to do this alone. You and I are still family.”

Leota flashed him a look that fairly sizzled with rage. Nick made a conscious effort not to show his bewilderment. Jeff’s death seemed to have released all the demons she’d formerly held at bay.

“Can I get either of you a coffee?”

Nick turned to Wilford. The attorney’s nervous tone boded bad news. “I’m fine.” He glanced at his mother. “Leota?”

“No. Let’s get on with it.”

“Do you want word for word, or the gist first?” Wilford asked.

Nick tried to corner the attorney’s shifting gaze. “Why don’t you tell us what’s making you uneasy?”

Wilford Thomas subsided into his chair, fumbling with the knot on his silver-blue tie. “I’m sorry, Nick.” His glance flickered to Leota. “Don’t look like that. Jeff hasn’t left the house to a stranger or anything, but he’s made an unusual stipulation.”

“We’re waiting.” Leota’s voice cut like a knife.

“You have the use of the house for the rest of your life, Leota, and you also receive a generous income. I’ll go over the details in a moment, but first, I want to go over the bequest that concerns Nick.”

“Jeff always wanted me to specialize rather than becoming a GP.” Nick attempted a casual laugh. “Are you about to tell me I have to go back to school?”

“Worse, I’m afraid. All assets not mentioned elsewhere, the bulk of the estate, really, go to you, Nick, but—and this is the part that troubles me—he’s stated a condition.”

“Go on.” Nick’s pulse nearly choked him. He let go of all hope that Jeff had finally forgiven him for the fact of his birth.

“He wants you to get married. Actually, the language states you must ‘fall in love and marry within the next twelve months.’ The marriage must exist for at least a year, and the other executors, along with your mother and I are required to ascertain your marriage is valid. Also, you must remain in the family home for the first year of marriage.”

Nick lifted his hands as if he could stop the world from falling in on his head. “Don’t finish.” Standing, he dragged a hand through his hair. “Only my father would believe he could force me to fall in love with someone.”

“And marry her,” added Wilford, a stickler for details.

“And stay married for at least a year.” Leota’s voice was leavened with bitterness. “That’s true love for you. Jeff’s idea of it, anyway. Wilford, can we seal this will? Can we keep the papers from publishing it?”

Dumbfounded she could so easily accept his father’s plans, Nick understood that her first priority was still protecting the family name. She’d sold vital parts of herself to hold that name.

He turned to Wilford. “Can his terms be enforced?”

“You’d have to go to court to fight them. And, Nick, your cousin Hale inherits if you don’t meet the conditions.”

Leota sprang to her feet. “I won’t let you contest your father’s will. You can’t broadcast our private family matters to…to—” she pointed through the windows “—to them!”

Her hysterical tone betrayed her pain, but he wouldn’t go along with a farce of a marriage like the one his birth had caused. “Jeff still wants revenge because you got pregnant with me. I won’t let him have it, and I don’t care who finds out.”

“I know you, Nick. You do care—about people you’ve never even met. People who believed in your father. Look at those happy family pictures your father’s office distributed to any newspaper or magazine who’d run them. You could have stopped posing for them.”