Colby's Wife

‘I’ve always found it impossible to understand,’ he said roughly, ‘why someone as lovely as you would need to look to a married man like Brad Pierson for satisfaction. You could have had any man you wanted. Why did you have to set out to seduce him? Good God.’ His voice had hardened. ‘I’d known him for years and I’d have sworn he was the last person to have gotten involved in an adulterous affair.’

‘You thought you knew Brad but you didn’t. You thought you knew me but you didn’t.’ Greer couldn’t keep the bitterness from her tone as memories of that long-ago summer rushed in again...

And shock froze her as, with a swift and totally unexpected movement, Colby grasped her by the shoulders and jerked her toward him. Before she could even gasp, he took her mouth in a deliberate and soul-shattering kiss.

It was over in a few seconds. Nothing was left of the abrupt assault but his harsh breathing, and her own...and the bruised tingling of her lips. She and Colby had never touched before, in any sexual way. This...this attack had her cringing from him as surely as if he slapped her.

‘Don’t ever,’ she whispered raggedly, ‘try to do that again.’ She stared at him through blurred eyes, seeing the dark mass of his hair, the bronzed color of his face, the brilliant blue of his eyes...

The cynically twisted slash that was his mouth.

He had kissed her. In days gone by she would have sold her soul for one kiss, just one kiss, from Colby Daken.

She would never have believed it would come to this. A tiny sob escaped her, before she could stifle it.

‘Very good,’ he said softly. ‘Very convincing. And oh, my God, very tantalizing. This summer—’ slowly, eyes never leaving hers, he ran the tip of his index finger over the chiseled curve of his upper lip, as if he would capture and store forever the memory of his stolen kiss ‘—is going to be far more fun than I’d expected. And before it ends, my darling Greer, I shall take you to my bed. And there I’ll find out just what it is about you that can make a man like Bradley Pierson succumb to your advances while his wife is in hospital waiting to give birth to their child. A challenge.’ His breath hissed in through narrowed nostrils. ‘That’s what you are. And one I accept.’

With a self-assured swing of his shoulders, he turned away and bounded down the steps. A moment later, she heard him open the screen door at the east side of his cottage; and then she heard the door clatter shut again.

Her mind in turmoil, Greer walked slowly down the steps, across the lawn and out onto the sandy white beach.

Why had she agreed to come with Gran to the cottage? Oh, what a mistake that had been. How she wished she had never come...

Still, when she thought of Jamie, and his troubled little mind, she acknowledged that perhaps something good would come out of this summer. Jem would get to know her great-grandson, and with her wonderful way of dealing with children, she might well be the means of drawing the boy from his state of unhappiness and confusion.

Had it not been for that, she would have reneged on her promise to Jem, and insisted they go back to the city right now.

She couldn’t. There was Jamie to consider.

She would just have to handle Colby as best she could, when he started his campaign to get her into his bed.

For that must never happen.

If she slept with him, he would discover she was a virgin. He would know she had never slept with Brad Pierson....

And he would have no option but to come up with another scenario, one that had obviously never crossed his mind.

It was Eleanor who had been involved with Brad. Eleanor, Colby’s own wife, the woman he’d loved so blindly it had verged on idolatry...and it would have destroyed him, Greer had believed then and still believed now... if he’d discovered she had betrayed him.

And this, of course, was why she’d agreed to cover up for her cousin. Oh, not for Eleanor’s sake—she had despised the woman for her adulterous behavior—but for Colby’s, to protect him from the truth that would have shattered him.

Now all Colby had left of his wife were his precious memories. And she, Greer, would do anything in her power to keep those memories intact.

Lisa Pierson and her three children turned up at Lake Trillium that afternoon.

Greer didn’t see them arrive. She’d gone out to the shed in the backyard after lunch, and had spent a couple of hours sorting out tools and planters and half-empty packages of this, that and the other, telling herself she was just getting things organized in case Jem had to sell the cottage...but all the time knowing in her heart that she was trying to avoid Colby.

Around four-thirty, she had just flopped down on an old tree stump outside the shed, and was wiping a grubby hand over her brow, when she heard the back door of the cottage swing open. Expecting to see Jem, she looked up with a smile...the smile changing to an exclamation of astonishment when she saw the woman coming down the path toward her, a petite brunette in her late thirties, dressed in a navy blouse and a pair of shorts.

Greer stumbled to her feet. ‘Mrs. Pierson?’

Lisa Pierson’s eyes glowed with pleasure. ‘Greer, I couldn’t believe it when Jem said you were here. I thought you’d given up on cottage living!’

Greer made a helpless gesture with one hand. ‘Is it really you? You look great—so slim and—’

She broke off, grimacing. But even as she started to murmur an embarrassed apology, Lisa laughed delightedly.

‘Don’t apologise, honey—it took two long years to lose those extra fifty pounds, and believe me, there’s nothing I like more than people complimenting me on my changed appearance. But you—’ she embraced Greer, and then stood back to examine her ‘—you look pretty wonderful yourself.’

Greer chuckled. ‘I hardly think so, Mrs. Pierson—I must look a sight, all cobwebs, and dust, and—’

‘Oh, drop the Mrs. Pierson, please!’ Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘You’re no longer a little girl...besides, you make me feel ancient. Call me Lisa. Look, I’ve got to dash—the kids and I just got here and I’ve left them unloading the van—but I’ll see you later. Jem has told me just enough about your successful career to whet my appetite—if I have one weakness, it’s gorgeous silk lingerie! But we’ll have loads of time to talk about that. I’ve brought enough steaks to feed an army and you and Jem are coming over for a barbecue. Around seven. Give us time to settle in. Okay?’

Greer knew, from Jem’s reports over the past several summers, that Lisa and her husband were still married, and still, apparently, happy together, but it sounded as if, on this trip at least, Lisa and the children were here on their own. Perhaps Brad was too busy at work to get away. Greer hoped that was the case; it was enough that she’d had to face Colby, without having to be in the company of the man she was supposed to have seduced into an illicit affair.

But even if Brad had been there, how could she have gotten out of the invitation? What possible excuse could she have come up with that would hold water? Besides, as far as she was aware, Lisa knew nothing of the incident that long-ago summer; she, Greer, would make sure it remained a secret. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Great. See you around seven.’

Greer stood watching Lisa bounce away along the path, her short brown hair as sleek as a seal’s, her trim behind attractively set off by her striped shorts and the shapely curve of her legs enhanced by the heels of her espadrilles.

Brad Pierson, Greer reflected wearily, was one very lucky man. Why would he ever have been foolish enough to risk losing a wife like Lisa?

She went back into the shed, but somehow, she had lost the zest for cleaning. It was too hot, of course...but Lisa’s visit had opened the doors to the past and, despite Greer’s earlier decision not to haul out her unhappy memories till later in the summer because she still felt too vulnerable to confront them, those memories—driven by forces over which she had no control—came rushing in...

Memories of the night her own happiness ended.

The night of the betrayal.

That summer, in late August, Mackenzie Daken had died, and Colby and Eleanor had come back to Canada for the funeral.

They’d been living in Australia since their wedding almost three years before, having chosen to settle there because Eleanor had wanted to be close to her widowed mother in Melbourne. Colby had started an Australian branch of Daken Construction and was doing extremely well.

Jem had attended the memorial service, but Greer—in the throes of final exams—had been unable to accompany her. Right after the exams were over, she had driven up to the lake with Jem, and didn’t come into contact with Colby till he and Eleanor turned up a week later; the couple planned to spend a few days there, readying the Daken cottage for sale.

For Greer, seeing Colby again was a taste of heaven, but she made sure she showed no sign to anyone that she was in love with him. Brad Pierson had come to the cottage for a few days, too; Lisa was carrying their third child, and it wasn’t due till October, but she’d been threatening to miscarry, so her doctor had hospitalized her. Brad’s mother was taking care of his two daughters, Brittany and Sarah, and Brad—stressed out with worry over Lisa, and with problems at work to boot—had taken some time off to relax.

That Colby was as besotted as ever with Eleanor was plain; and because it made Greer’s heart ache to watch them together, she’d spent a lot of time with Brad, laughing and joking with him much more than she normally would have, to make sure nobody suspected her real feelings.

On the third day after Colby and Eleanor arrived at the lake, Colby had gone to Toronto to meet with his father’s lawyers regarding the sale of Mac’s house in the city. Since the meeting was scheduled for evening, Colby planned to stay over and drive back to the cottage in the morning.

That night, Jem went to bed around eleven, leaving Greer and Eleanor sitting on the veranda at the Daken cottage, the moon lighting up the beach in a way that made it look like a silver and purple fairyland. Eleanor seemed restless, and disinclined to chat. In the end, Greer left her, and went off to bed.

But once there she couldn’t sleep for the heat. She tossed and turned for almost an hour, naked, on top of the covers, but sleep still eluded her, so in the end she got up. After slipping on a bikini, she tiptoed out of her room, hoping a stroll in the night air might cool her off.

She walked along the beach just below the cottages. All three were in darkness...and the occupants, she guessed, all asleep—Eleanor in the Daken cottage, Jem in the Westbury cottage and Brad in his.

But after she’d gone a little way past the Pierson place, she heard an unfamiliar sound ahead. It seemed to come from the edge of the forest about ten feet away, from the black-shadowed grassy area under a large maple tree. It sounded, Greer decided with a frown, like someone crying.