Wife Wanted

The phone was ringing as Natalie staggered in from the small enclosed side porch that served as a mudroom in winter. She was lugging several bags from a number of exclusive Minneapolis boutiques. She dropped the bags inside the door and raced for the kitchen extension.

It was Sterling, calling to tell her that Rick Dalton had checked out just fine.

“It’s about time you called me,” she chided. “They’re due to move in two days from now.”

“Sorry. I wanted to do a thorough job.”

“I’ll bet.”

“And there’s no problem, anyway. I’m sure he’ll make a fine tenant.”

“I told you that over a week ago.”

“I know, I know. Intuition wins again. But isn’t it nice to know that the facts support your instincts?”

Natalie agreed that it was. Smiling, she thanked Sterling for looking out for her. Then, after promising to meet him for lunch before she left for the Mediterranean, she said goodbye.

She was turning to pay some more attention to her glamorous new wardrobe when the phone rang again. She picked it up.

And then immediately wished she hadn’t.

“Natalie. I called just a minute ago. The line was busy.”

“Joel. Give it up.”

“Natalie, we have to talk.”

“No, we don’t. Goodbye, Joel.”

He was still begging her to talk to him as she gently replaced the receiver. She looked over at Bernie, who had stretched out on the floor a few feet away, his head on his paws.

“Some people just don’t understand the word no.”

Bernie lifted his head and yawned hugely.

“My sentiments exactly.” She started for the side door and her waiting bags of beautiful clothes, but then decided that maybe she ought to check her messages first. After all, she had been gone all day.

In the study where she kept the answering machine, she found there was only one message. From a soft-spoken woman with a British accent.

“Hello. My name is Jessica Holmes.” On the tape, the woman paused, then sighed. “Oh, this is so difficult. Actually, I’m calling because I’m seeking relatives of a Benjamin Fortune. I thought perhaps… I don’t know how to put this—except to say that the matter is extremely urgent. I would greatly appreciate a call back if you are related to, or know of, a Benjamin Fortune, aged in his seventies, who served in France during the Second World War.” The voice left a London number and said goodbye.

Torn about what to do next, Natalie hovered by the machine as it squeaked and beeped and reset itself. As one of the few people in her family who kept a listed number, Natalie often paid the price for being so accessible; she got a lot of crank calls.

Total strangers had contacted her on more than one occasion with “urgent” messages. Inevitably they turned out to be reporters trying to get an inside scoop, or would-be wheeler-dealers who thought someone from the Fortune family might be interested in getting in on the ground floor of whatever money-making scheme they’d dreamed up.

No one before had mentioned Grandpa Ben, though. That was a slightly different angle.

Natalie replayed the woman’s message and actually went so far as to start to dial the number Jessica Holmes had left. But then she shook her head and put down the phone. She was sure of what would happen: The woman would turn out to be working some kind of angle. And Natalie had dealt with people like that one time too many.

As the machine reset itself, she thought again of getting back to the job at hand: her new wardrobe. She’d spent three days in Chicago last week, buying everything in sight. And today she’d driven into the Cities to pick up a few other things. She was going to be très glamorous at the railing of that cruise ship, her hair blowing in the wind off the Strait of Gibraltar. Or maybe dancing on the tables in some picturesque Greek restaurant, drinking too much retsina and staying up until the crack of dawn.

But then it occurred to her that Rick Dalton and his little boy would be arriving in two days’ time. And Rick wanted to put Toby here, in the study, so that he’d be nearby if Toby had bad dreams during the night.

It was definitely time to move some furniture around. And she’d need some help; her back had been sore for two days after she dragged that old steamer trunk back up to the attic. Natalie picked up the phone and dialed the number of the big house across the lake.

When the morning finally came that he and Toby returned to Lake Travis, Rick was more than ready to go. Though it was hotter and muggier than it had been that day two weeks before, the drive through the countryside was every bit as lovely as the first time. Rick simply kept the windows up and let the air-conditioning do its job.

As they neared the farmhouse, Rick was conscious of a rising feeling in his chest, a lightness, a sense of pure anticipation at the prospect of seeing Natalie Fortune again.

It was crazy, and he knew it, but he couldn’t get the enchanting brunette out of his mind. He knew he’d thought about her way too much in the past weeks, about her big brown eyes and her shining coffee-colored hair and the subtle perfume she wore that seemed both floral and musky at once. And about the way Toby had responded to her and her huge, friendly dog. After that visit, Toby had seemed more withdrawn than ever by comparison.

Rick gave the boy a quick glance. Miracle of miracles, Toby met his gaze.

“Excited?” Rick asked.

He got no answer, but he was sure he saw Toby’s little mouth quirk. Rick chose to take that as another positive sign that this vacation was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to either of them.

When they pulled into the turnaround in front of the walk, the captivating Natalie was there on the lawn, as Rick had secretly imagined she might be. She wore cutoffs and a snug T-shirt, and she was laughing, tossing a big stick for that lumbering, wonderful dog of hers to fetch.

Rick’s heart did something impossible inside his chest. Dressed that way, with her hair caught back in a messy ponytail and sweat from the heat and the exercise making her skin gleam, she was Rick Dalton’s living, breathing fantasy of the girl next door. No one would guess that she was actually a daughter of one of America’s wealthiest and most famous families.

She gave them a wave and tossed the stick overhand. It sailed, end over end, through the air. The dog loped off after it, and she jogged over to the car. Rick rolled down his window.

She stopped a few inches from his door. “Right on time.” She was panting. Sweat had darkened her shirt beneath her arms and between the soft swells of her breasts. Rick would have sworn he could smell her: flowers and musk. He felt a hard, thoroughly inappropriate kick of arousal, one that tightened his slacks and cut off his air.

He forced himself to breathe, grimly reminding himself that his son was sitting in the passenger seat beside him and he hardly knew this woman.

Right then, the Saint Bernard came bounding up, the stick Natalie had thrown for him clutched in his jowls. Natalie’s quicksilver laugh rang out as the dog headed straight for Toby’s side of the car. Once he reached the passenger door, the huge animal sat, dropped the stick and gave a low, friendly woof.

Toby flung open his car door, jumped down and wrapped his too-thin arms around the dog. Rick watched, his heart aching in his chest.

He glanced at Natalie. She met his eyes and smiled—a soft, quivery-lipped kind of smile. She understood what a step Toby had just taken. And she was moved.

A moment ago, Rick had wanted her desperately. Now he just plain adored her. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind now that the woman and her dog were absolute magic.

When he looked back at his son, Toby was already lugging the big stick out to the lawn. Bernie trotted along behind him.

“Come on,” Natalie said. “Let’s get your things inside.”

Rick popped the trunk latch from inside the glove compartment. When he got out and went around to the back, Natalie was there ahead of him, pulling two bags of the groceries he’d bought into her capable arms. He hauled out a couple of suitcases and followed her up the walk, pausing to call a reminder to Toby that he wasn’t to wander off anywhere. Toby turned and looked at him, which Rick knew meant the boy had heard and understood.

Inside, Rick found that Natalie had already made the study over into a bedroom. He set Toby’s suitcases down and admired the changes while Natalie went on out to the kitchen to drop off the grocery bags. Rick was still surveying the room where his son would sleep when she appeared in the doorway.

“I had a couple of my father’s men come across the lake to help me out,” she explained. “We switched the furniture in here with the stuff from the room at the top of the stairs.”

Rick was standing on the far side of the bed. He touched the bedspread, which was quilted and stenciled with airplanes. “I don’t remember seeing this upstairs.”

Her cheeks flushed an adorable shade of pink. “All right. I confess. I bought the bedspread just for Toby.” She moved into the room, across the bed from him, and touched the wooden propeller of the airplane lamp that sat on the nightstand. “And I bought this lamp.” She pointed at the airplane mobile in the center of the room. “And that, too. I thought Toby would like them.”