Colby's Wife

‘Colby Daken.’ Eleanor’s tone was cool. ‘Gran’s mentioned him once or twice. He’s the one whose father owns the summer cottage next to hers?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Are they... well-off?’

Greer shrugged. ‘I think so. Actually yes—Colby’s father, Mackenzie Daken, owns Daken Construction—one of the biggest construction companies in Canada. The family has pots of money. But you’d never know it,’ she hastened to add, ‘they’re just...well, ordinary, I guess. Really nice.’

The following summer, for the first time, Eleanor had invited herself to the cottage at Lake Trillium for the whole of July and August. Greer had been astonished, and Jem had been, too. Eleanor had never hidden her disdain for cottage life—for ‘roughing it,’ as she scornfully put it—and it wasn’t till Greer saw her beautiful cousin setting her cap for Colby, that she finally realized what was going on. But she’d never told anyone...not even her grandmother...about Eleanor seeing the picture of Colby and asking if the family had money—

‘Have you found it?’

Jamie’s voice coming from right behind her made Greer start. Snapping the album shut, she stuffed it back into the cupboard, and then tugged the green album from the pile.

‘Here—’ she brushed off a trace of dust with her fingertips ‘—it’s yours, if you want to keep it.’

Jamie took the album but didn’t open it. Clutching it against his chest, he took in a deep breath, opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then closed it again. His gaze drifted over her hair, and her face. He raised his hand, and Greer thought he was going to flick up his glasses. To her astonishment, what he did was reach out and touch the top of her head, letting his fingers slip over her hair, as if he wanted to experience the texture of it.

Emotion tightened Greer’s throat muscles. Was Jamie remembering how his mother’s hair felt? Eleanor’s hair had been ash blond, too, though not quite as thick, nor as silky as hers. ‘Jamie,’ she whispered, huskily—and lifted her hand to touch his...but he snatched it away. Wrapping both arms around the album, he took off like a frightened rabbit.

She thought she heard a sound like a gulping sob as he reached the door, but when she went out onto the veranda a minute or two later, she found him sitting on the swing, drinking his lemonade.

And when their eyes met, he looked at her as coolly as if the episode in the sitting room had never taken place.

CHAPTER THREE

‘GREER has done very well for herself,’ Jem said as Greer moved across the veranda. ‘The Passing Fancy label has really taken off. Tell Colby, dear, about your new workshop on Spadina Avenue!’

‘A workshop on Spadina?’ Colby had gotten to his feet when Greer came outside; now, as she perched her hip on the railing, he dropped back into his chair. ‘So,’ his tone was light, ‘you made your dream come true after all.’

‘It was a goal,’ Greer said quietly, her gaze dropping to the mug of coffee nestled in her hands. ‘Not a dream.’ The achievement of a goal needed only drive, talent, hard work... and luck. Dreams were different. Dreams required magic to make them come true. Goals and dreams. She had had one compelling goal, and one shining dream.

She and Colby had sat on this veranda more times than she could remember, her eyes sparkling with excitement, his with determination, as they talked about their goals. Hers: to become a respected and successful lingerie designer with a workshop on Toronto’s Spadina Avenue. His: to work with his father, learn everything he could about the business, and eventually have his own branch of Darken Construction. Of her secret shining dream she had never spoken—Colby was the last person to whom she could have spilled out this most cherished part of her soul, because he, Colby, was at the very heart of it. And he had never spoken to her of any dreams—at least, not till after he’d fallen in love with Eleanor; then he could talk of nothing else—

‘A goal, then.’ Colby sprawled back lazily. ‘And, if my memories serve me correctly, you’ve achieved it a couple of years earlier than you’d expected to.’

‘Greer?’ Jem’s tone was curious.

‘Yes, Gran—I’d always planned on having my own place, even when I was a little girl playing with cutout dolls and paper dresses...but he’s right. I hadn’t expected to get there quite so soon.’

‘Nothing to be proud of in your case, young lady,’ Jem said bluntly. ‘If your life had been balanced, if you’d been involved in a steady relationship with a man—and if that man had been worth his salt—you’d have had to spend less time working, and more time just plain living.’

‘I’ve had men in my life,’ Greer protested stiffly, her cheeks hot with mortification as she sensed Colby’s gaze on her. ‘You know I have. Nick Westmore, and Jared Black—you met them both, you liked them both! At least you said you did—now you claim not even to remember them!’

‘Oh, way back then!’ Jem’s expression was scornful. ‘Now it’s a different man every Friday night! Easy come, easy go! What ever happened to commitment—isn’t that the modern buzzword for what my generation called love?’

Greer treated her grandmother to a glare that would have withered any normal person but only seemed to intensify the challenging glitter in Jem Westbury’s eyes.

‘If you’ll excuse me.’ With a haughty tilt of her chin, Greer slid off the railing. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’

Colby got to his feet, and Jem pushed herself up, too. Leaning on her cane, she addressed Jamie.

‘Young fella,’ she said briskly, ‘I brought some tomato plants from the city and they have to be put in the ground. I need someone to help me, someone handy with a watering can. I don’t suppose you’d like the job? Of course, you’d have to take off your sneakers, and puddle about in the earth and probably get awfully wet and mucky—’

‘I’m not allowed to get dirty. Mommy doesn’t like—’ Jamie broke off abruptly, his cheeks suddenly bright pink.

Jem blinked in surprise, and Colby stood gazing at his son as if the boy was a complete mystery to him. Greer realized she was the one who was going to have to respond to the child’s comment.

‘Jamie?’

He looked at her with obvious reluctance, and she gave him another of her reassuring smiles. ‘Honey, things are different here at the lake. Nobody minds when we get grubby, it’s just part of cottage living, and it’s one of the very nicest parts. I’m sure your mommy didn’t want you getting dirty when you were in your school clothes, or when she took you for outings, or when she had friends in, but—’

‘I wasn’t to get dirty. Ever.’ Jamie’s eyes glistened, but small muscles flexed determinedly in his jaw. ‘I won’t get dirty. You can’t make me.’

Good grief, thought Greer, what kind of upbringing had Eleanor subjected her son to? Telling a boy he mustn’t ever get dirty?

‘Then you must come and watch me,’ Jem said firmly. ‘I’m going to get very dirty, and when I’m done, if you like you may turn the hose on my bare feet and legs and wash them off. Does that appeal?’

Jamie’s glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them up, and to her surprise, Greer saw the beginnings of a wavery smile tug the corners of his mouth.

‘All right,’ he said gruffly. ‘I can do that.’

‘Good lad.’ Jem held the screen door open for him, and they went inside, the door swinging shut behind them. As the snap of the catch echoed, and then faded, Greer became all too aware that she and Colby were now alone.

“Well,’ she said tersely, stepping quickly away from him, across the deck, ‘I’m off then.’

He caught up with her as she reached the short flight of steps leading from the veranda to the beach area. ‘Not so fast.’ He grasped her forearm. ‘Where are you going?’

The touch of his fingers on her bare skin sent a tingle of sensation rippling through her, a sensation that was as pleasurable as it was disturbing. She shook herself free. ‘Don’t you listen?’ She looked up at him...and wished she hadn’t. The blue of his eyes bedazzled her; the arrogant tilt of his head alarmed her. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

‘I’ll join you.’

‘I don’t want you to join me. I want to be left alone.’ Her voice had a breathless quality. ‘I have some thinking to do—’

‘About the cottage?’

‘Yes.’ How unfair that a man should have such lustrous and seductively long black eyelashes. ‘About the cottage.’

‘We can stand here all day,’ he said equably, ‘with you refusing to walk unless I go away...which I warn you I’m not about to do...or we can stroll along the beach... together. I’m going to be here for the summer, your grandmother tells me you’ll be spending most of your weekends here, too. You apparently don’t have a man in your life at the moment, and at present I am also unattached. We have a history, you and I...so why don’t we add to it!’ His lips twisted in a smile. ‘Just a summer affair, Greer—what do you think?’

Had Greer not been so stunned by his suggestion, she would have cut him off the moment he made it. But she was stunned...and not only stunned, outraged. Yet to be honest she had to admit he must feel it perfectly in order to make such a suggestion; after all, when she was seventeen she had allowed him to believe she’d slept with Brad Pierson...and just minutes ago her grandmother had remarked on her ‘easy come, easy go’ relationships with men. What Gran didn’t know was that the men she dated now were—because she wanted it that way—just friends, and nothing more.

‘You’re suggesting we have an affair?’ Greer raised her eyebrows mockingly. ‘In spite of my...promiscuous behavior? Don’t you think that might be dangerous—for you—all things considered?’

‘There are ways to...get around...that.’ A breeze gusted from the lake, tossing a heavy strand of hair over his forehead; gold gleamed at his wrist as he raised a hand and impatiently raked the strand back into place.

‘You’ve changed a lot.’ He really had beautiful hands, she reflected distractedly; long-fingered, elegant, with neatly trimmed spatulate nails. Just watching him thread those fingers through his glossy black hair had sent an odd dark shiver spiraling to some indefinable place deep inside her. ‘You’re not the man I once knew.’ Her tone was icy. ‘You say we have a history. We do, and that’s all it is. History! As far as I’m concerned you are history!’

He sidestepped her and blocked her way as she tried to go down the stairs. Now that he was standing on the step below her, their faces were on the same level...and she was staring right into those lethal blue eyes.