The Millionaire She Married

He looked good. He really did.

And she had been staring too long. She cut her eyes away, not sure what to say next.

She wanted to demand, What are you doing here? To order, Go away, and don’t come back. To insist, I have my own life now. I run my own life. It’s a good life, and it doesn’t include you.

But she knew that if she said those things, she would only sound defensive, would only put herself at a disadvantage right from the start. So the uncomfortable silence continued for several more agonizing seconds.

At last he spoke. “Struck speechless at the sight of me, huh?”

She met his eyes directly, sucked in a breath and forced out a brisk reply. “Well, I have to admit, I don’t understand why you’re here. Key West is a long way from Meadow Valley, California.”

Key West. She never would have believed it. Mack, the ultimate workaholic lawyer, living in the tropics, drifting around the Gulf of Mexico in that boat of his. The idea of her driven, success-obsessed husband—correction, ex-husband—drifting anywhere seemed a complete contradiction in terms.

And she wished he’d quit looking at her with that amused and embarrassingly knowing expression, quit making her feel so…young and awkward. As if she were twenty-one again, a lonely college girl far from home, instead of the mature, settled, self-possessed thirty she was now.

What was it about him? How did he do it? It had been seven years since she’d seen him face-to-face, and five since their divorce should have been final. Still, right now, staring at him, with him staring back at her, she felt exposed. Raw. As if the mere sight of him had ripped open old and still-festering wounds—wounds she’d been certain had healed long ago.

It had been hard enough to pick up the phone and call him, after tracking him down through one of his colleagues at his old law firm. Hard enough to talk to him again, to hear his voice, to ask him to send her the papers she needed.

When she’d hung up, she’d told herself, Well, at least that’s done.

But now here she was. Face-to-face with him, feeling raw and wounded. Breathless and confused.

It shouldn’t be like this, and she knew it. All the hurt and recriminations were long past, not to mention the yearning, the tenderness, the love.

By now she should be able to smile at him, to feel reasonably at ease, to ask calmly if he’d brought her the papers.

The papers. Yes. That was the question.

She cleared her throat. “Did you…decide to bring the papers in person, is that it? It really wasn’t necessary, Mack. Not necessary at all.”

He didn’t reply immediately, only kept looking at her. Looking at her so intently, causing that weakness in her knees and a certain disturbing fluttering in her solar plexus.

Now she wanted to shout at him, Answer me! Where are those papers?

But then the buzzer sounded again. Jenna glanced over her shoulder, pasted on a smile. “I’ll be right with you.”

“No hurry.” The new customer, a well-dressed, fortyish woman, detoured toward a display of afghans and furniture scarves hung from quilt stands along the side wall.

Jenna looked back at Mack. He glanced toward the woman over by the afghans, then spoke in a low voice. “I want to talk to you. Alone.”

“No!” The word came out all wrong. It sounded frantic and desperate.

“Yes.” Lower still and very soft. Gentle. Yet utterly unyielding.

“Miss?” The customer was fingering the fringe of a piano shawl. “There’s no price tag on this one.”

Jenna realized she was scowling. As she glanced toward her customer, she rearranged her face into a bright smile. “I’ll be right there. Just one moment.” She turned to Mack again, the cheerful smile mutating instantly back to a scowl. “We have nothing to say to each other.”

“I think we do.”

“You can’t just—” Her voice had risen. She cut herself off, got herself back under control, then went on in an intense whisper. “You can’t just wander in here after all these years and expect me to—”

“Jenna.” He reached out and snared her right hand.

Before she could think to jerk away, he tugged her behind a wrought-iron shelving unit stacked with Egyptian-cotton towels and accessories for the bath. Vaguely stunned that he had actually touched her, she looked down at their joined hands.

“Let go,” she instructed in a furious whisper.

He did, which stunned her all over again, somehow. One moment his big warm hand surrounded hers—and the next, it was gone.

He said, “I’m not expecting anything. I only want to talk to you. In private.”

She could see it in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. He was not going to just go away. She would have to deal with him, to listen to whatever he’d decided he had to say to her.

Right then, guiltily, she thought of Logan, her high school sweetheart, her dear friend—and now, her fiancé. Logan had waited a long time to make her his bride. And when this little problem with her divorce from Mack had cropped up, Logan, as usual, had been the soul of understanding. He hadn’t reproached her, hadn’t asked her how she’d managed, over five whole years, to let it slip her mind that she’d never received her copy of the final divorce decree.

He’d just gently suggested that she get the situation cleared up.

So she’d called Mack.

And Mack had said that he did have the papers and he would sign them, have them notarized and send them to her right away. So she’d reported to Logan that everything had been worked out. When the papers came, in the next few days, she would file them. Within six months she and Logan would be free to marry.

Logan hadn’t been thrilled about the waiting period required by California law. But he had accepted it gracefully.

She wasn’t so certain how he’d accept the news that Mack had appeared in person and demanded to speak with her in private.

But then again, maybe he wouldn’t even have to know about this little problem until after it had been resolved.

Logan, who was an M.D. in family practice, had left two days ago for a medical convention in Seattle. He wouldn’t return until Sunday night—two more days from now.

By then, Jenna told herself, she’d have everything under control. By then, she would have listened to whatever Mack had to say, taken the papers from him and sent him on his way. The whole situation would be much easier to explain to her fiancé once she had the papers in her hands.

“Miss?” It was the woman over by the afghans, beginning to sound a bit put out.

“Go ahead,” Mack said. “Take care of her.”

The woman bought the piano scarf. Mack waited, standing a little to the side of the register counter, as Jenna rang up the sale.

Once her customer had left, Jenna sighed and conceded, “All right. I close up at seven. After that, we can talk.”

“Good,” Mack said. “There are a couple of promising-looking restaurants down the street. I’ll drop back by when you close and we’ll get something to eat.”

Not on your life, she thought. She would not spend the evening sitting across a table from him, fighting the feeling that they were out on a date.

“No,” she said. “Come to the house at seven-thirty. We can talk there. Lacey’s visiting for a while, but she won’t bother us.”

“Lacey.” He said her younger sister’s name with more interest than he’d ever shown in the past. “Visiting? From where?”