Mad Enough to Marry

“No earthquake insurance?”

Her blue eyes tried to wither him. “I don’t own any diamond mines either,” she said, then swung her legs over the bed to sit up.

She had to flatten her free hand to the mattress to steady herself and her face seemed to go paler.

That sign of vulnerability made him feel a little sick. “Are you having any luck finding someplace to live?”

She took a fortifying breath. “On my budget? Not yet. But I have a few other places to check out today.”

“Today? Hell, Elena, you don’t even have the strength to stand up.”

She didn’t protest, but she didn’t agree either. Instead, she mutely held out the wad of cash.

He hesitated, mulling something over in his mind. If he made the offer, certainly she’d refuse. But hey, that was smart, he thought, because just the offer alone would earn him Good Guy points. In the game of Elena vs. Logan, nobody knew better than he that he needed all he could get.

She flopped the cash at him, both the bills and the gesture tired-looking. That did it. Witnessing yet another crack in that tough shell of hers made his stomach roll over and his last shred of self-preservation play dead.

“I’ll give you the painting back on one condition,” he said. “That you and Gabby move in here with me.”

Her eyes widened. Oh yeah, Logan thought with great relief, she was gonna say no. And he was gonna get to keep Elena in Bed where she belonged.

Chapter Three

“I really had no choice, Gabby,” Elena said a week later, avoiding her sister’s eyes as she shoved another duffel bag into the already stuffed trunk of her car.

“I didn’t say anything,” Gabby answered, her voice threaded with a hint of laughter.

“No, but I can hear what you’re thinking,” Elena replied grumpily, then slammed the lid of the trunk with more ferocity than necessary. “Believe me, if there was another option we wouldn’t be moving in with Logan.”

Gabby didn’t answer. Elena turned to watch her sister slide more boxes into the back seat of their old four-door sedan. Her graceful movements and the sweet expression on Gabby’s face distracted Elena from her bad mood.

Her younger sister was precious to her, she thought in a sudden rush. Gabby summed up all the best qualities of the women in their family. She was beautiful, like their mother, but also full of Nana’s good sense. And, like Elena, she didn’t shrink from hard work.

Her sister had managed to avoid their flaws though, thank God. Their mother, Luisa, had carried an air of resigned sadness from the moment her husband had left her until the day she died. Nana hadn’t wanted much from life, but that meant she expected too little too—both for herself and the two granddaughters she’d taken into her home after their mother’s death. Marriage, babies, a man to provide, that was what their grandmother had told them to want, over and over again. She’d never considered that her granddaughters might desire something different for themselves.

She’d never considered that Elena had learned, in a few painful lessons, that it was foolish to depend on a man for anything.

As Gabby turned to take another box from her boyfriend Tyler, the sweet smile she gave him made clear she was much more trusting than Elena. It was one of two of Gabby’s traits that made Elena uneasy.

“You’re sure my art supplies are in your car?” Gabby asked Tyler.

That was the other.

Elena worried that her sister’s preoccupation with her hobby of sketching and painting might affect their long-term goal—Gabby’s medical degree. “You don’t need to worry about your college information either,” she told Gabby. “It’s in the bright-blue accordion file, right there between the front seats. We won’t lose sight of that.”

“No,” her sister replied, sending Tyler a pained look.

A look Elena decided to ignore. “I guess that’s all we can fit for our first trip. When we come back we’ll figure out some way to strap the futons and the table on the roof.” Making a mental note to find some rope, she circled the car and pulled open the driver’s side door.

“I’ll ride with Tyler,” Gabby said.

Elena frowned, worry niggling at her again. It wasn’t that she begrudged her sister time with her boyfriend, but shouldn’t they be weaning themselves from all this companionship? They would be heading off to separate colleges in a few months, after all— Gabby hours away at Berkeley and Tyler at the prestigious art school thirty minutes south of Strawberry Bay.

“All right,” she finally agreed, with a little sigh. “But listen, both of you, no bothering Logan when we get to the house, okay?”

Gabby looked as if she was holding back a smile. “I don’t think Tyler and I are the ones who bother him.”

Elena made a face at her. “Ha ha. What I mean is…I don’t want him, um, involved with us, you understand?”

Gabby shook her head. “Elena, we’re going to be living at the man’s house for goodness sake. How are we going to manage to keep ourselves uninvolved?”

“We’re staying in a separate apartment in his house. There are two on the second floor. One is his, one is ours.” She looked down at the keys in her hand, trying to make clear—if just in her own mind—how she wanted this co-habitation to proceed. “We’re there not as family of course, not even as friends, but purely on a business basis.”

“I thought we were getting the apartment for free.”

Tyler spoke up for the first time. “Sounds pretty friendly to me.”

Elena glared at them both. “We have a bargain. You’re right, no money is changing hands, but it’s still strictly business.”

Gabby giggled and then stage-whispered to Tyler, “She’s letting him keep Elena in Bed.”

An embarrassed heat crawled up Elena’s neck. “It seemed sensible, Gabby. We need every penny we can save.”

Gabby shared a laughing look with Tyler. “Oh yeah, big sister. Very sensible. Very uninvolving.”

Instead of defending herself, Elena jumped in the car and drove off. Brats. But she found herself smiling as she glimpsed the two of them in her rearview mirror, following in Tyler’s fancy SUV. Despite their smart mouths, they did make an adorable couple, Gabby’s exotic looks a foil for Tyler’s blond all-American handsomeness.

And he did adore her sister. Though their breakup was inevitable, she didn’t think he would hurt Gabby in the same way that Elena herself had been hurt by boys like him. The way their mother had been hurt by their father.

It took less than five minutes to reach Logan’s large but run-down Victorian. It still surprised her, even though a week had gone by since her first visit, that he’d quit his job as a vice president of the Chase family company. And it surprised her even more that he’d left the posh side of town to live in this blue-collar neighborhood.

The homes here were a mix of old Victorians and bungalows, along with newer, modest dwellings and apartment buildings. It wasn’t that the area was seedy, or even particularly neglected, but the people in this part of Strawberry Bay worked long hours at demanding, often labor-intensive jobs. The kind of jobs that left little money, time or energy for the kind of niceties found on the pages of Martha Stewart’s Living or Better Homes & Gardens.

Elena climbed the chipped cement steps to Logan’s house and knocked briskly on the front door. When there was no answer, she let out a relieved breath and searched her pockets for the house keys he had given her.

By the time she’d found them, Tyler and Gabby had joined her on the porch. Inserting the key in the lock, she hesitated before opening the door. “It doesn’t look like he’s home right now, but just remember we don’t want him—”

“Involved,” Gabby and Tyler said together.

Elena thought they were laughing at her again, so she gave them a quelling look then pushed on the door. When the first floor appeared Logan-less too, Elena left the door standing wide open. “We might as well bring some things in before going upstairs.”

They returned to the cars parked at the curb and helped each other load up. With an overstuffed duffel slung over each shoulder, a toiletries bag hanging on each elbow and two large cardboard boxes balanced in her arms, Elena led the way up the two flights of steps to the second floor. Similarly burdened, Gabby and Tyler followed her. The door to their apartment was at the top of the stairs, while Logan’s was farther down the hall. Elena paused, then groaned.

“What is it?” Gabby’s voice came out muffled, her face half-hidden by the boxes she carried.

“The keys are in the back pocket of my pants.” Elena tried shifting the weight of her burdens to one arm. One of the duffels slid down her upper arm, nearly unbalancing her as it smacked into the smaller bag at her elbow. “I’ll have to put some of this down,” she muttered, trying to figure exactly how to do that in the narrow hallway.

A voice spoke in the vicinity of the top of her head. “Need help?”