The Husband Contract

And how was she going to manage without it?

“Here you go.” The picnic bench rocked slightly as Clay settled his weight on it She opened her eyes and stared at the cup in the outstretched hand as if she hadn’t ever seen such a thing before. “You wanted a snow cone?” he repeated patiently.

No, she hadn’t She had been trying to buy a little time to collect her composure. His showing up like this had been oddly unsettling. All that robust masculinity and suave confidence…Industrial-strength machismo was a rarity on a boys’school campus.

And then there was the way he had turned her lovely sword into a piece of overcooked silver spaghetti—don’t tell her that wasn’t a deliberate power play. He knew that she had needed this inheritance desperately, and he was warning her that there was no way she could fight her uncle’s will—or the lawyer who had drawn it up.

A sudden stinging behind her eyes startled her. No, damn it. She wouldn’t give in to weakness now. She wasn’t the type to whimper and beg. She straightened her spine. So what if his sword was bigger than hers? When he informed her that she was disinherited, she intended to laugh in his movie-star face.

“Melanie? Do you want this?” He sounded irritated, as if he had begun to suspect he was dealing with a simpleton. She took the paper cup, glancing at his shirtsleeve as she did.

Suddenly she frowned. What was that? That pink blob…surely he wasn’t wearing a pink polka-dot shirt? That would be a cute sight in a courtroom. The image pleased her. She felt a satisfying urge to chuckle.

He seemed to sense her amusement. “Cotton candy,” he said, turning over his wrist so she could see the extent of the damage. “Insidious stuff. I can’t get rid of it.”

“Suck on it,” she said. She raised her gaze to his, enjoying the surprised furrowing of his brow. She blinked innocently.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Suck on it,” she repeated sweetly. “You do know how, don’t you? It’s easy. Just put your lips over the stain and—”

“Yes,” he interrupted, “I think I remember how it works.”

She raised her brows, daring him, knowing, of course, that it would be miles beneath his dignity. But hey—she could play power games, too.

To her amazement, he shrugged slightly, slipping his jacket free of one broad shoulder, then the other. He folded the expensive coat, laid it over the picnic table and then, watching her the whole time, he slowly raised his wrist to his mouth.

He was going to do it. Oh, heavens… She hadn’t noticed before what a sensual mouth he had, but there was no missing it now. Oh, my… A generous mouth, lips full but hard-edged, as if they had been laser-cut into the perfect shape.

Damn. She had meant to throw him off balance, but now, like a fool, she was the one blushing. Oh, Lord, wouldn’t she ever learn to squelch these hotheaded impulses? She should have known one little off-color word wouldn’t embarrass a man like this.

She couldn’t quite take her eyes off those lips. A tiny wriggle of discomfort moved in the pit of her stomach as he lowered them over the stain and covered it. She held her breath and waited. His lips were almost motionless. Only a subtle rhythmic pulse at the corner of his jaw hinted at his mission, but that pulse seemed suddenly to beat in time with her blood.

Inhaling a stiff breath, she lifted her gaze. He was still watching her. His brown eyes were flecked with gold, the irises deepening to dark chocolate over the pure white of his sleeve. She opened her mouth to say something, anything. Preferably something lightly sarcastic—that was her specialty. If she could only think of something.

But her mind was on strike. Before she could come up with a single witty syllable, he was finished. He lowered his arm and, without exhibiting the slightest interest in the results of his labors, smiled at her enigmatically.

“Interesting,” he said. “It’s not as sweet as you’d think, is it? A lot of things are like that. They look quite innocent, but—”

“Mr. Logan,” she broke in tersely, holding her snow cone so tightly that blue syrup trickled over her fingers, “why don’t you get to the point? You didn’t come all the way out here today to swap laundry tips.”

“No.” Still smiling, he leaned back against the table, getting comfortable. He obviously knew that their symbolic tussle for superiority was over, and he had drawn first blood. He flicked a glance at her fingers. Blue blood. “I came because you missed our appointment this morning. I wondered why.”

She stared at him. “We didn’t have an appointment”

“My secretary seems to think we did.” He propped his snow cone in a crack of the table. “She set it up a week ago. She said she confirmed it yesterday afternoon.”

Melanie ran her clean hand through her hair. This was crazy. She couldn’t have forgotten a call from her uncle’s lawyer—she had been praying for that call every time the telephone rang the past two weeks.

“There’s some mistake,” she said. “I wasn’t even at home yesterday afternoon.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “What about your brother?”

Something in his tone made her feel defensive. “Well, yes, Nick was there, but he certainly wouldn’t ever have—” She broke off self-consciously. Of course Nick would have. He was dreadful about messages. But Clay Logan couldn’t have known that. Why would he, after seeing Nick the grand total of about two minutes, automatically assume it was all the boy’s fault?

But she knew why. Because Clay Logan had no patience for teenage boys, especially troubled ones like Nick, that was why. The smoothly groomed attorney in front of her had undoubtedly never slipped one foot off the fast track from cradle to college. He’d probably been president of his preschool.

“Well, whatever happened, I’m sorry about the mix-up,” she said, hoping he’d let it drop. “Would you like to reschedule?”

“We could.” Clay hadn’t moved from his half-reclining position. He looked completely comfortable out here at the picnic grounds in spite of his regimental-striped tie and wing tips. “Or I could just tell you the terms of the will right now.”

She caught her breath. So it was that simple, was it? Obviously it wasn’t going to require reams of paperwork and notarized signatures to tell her what Joshua Browning had left her. One word would do it: Nothing. He had left everything to charity, just as he warned her he would on that awful night eight years ago.

She wondered numbly whether Clay would even say he was sorry. Or did he, perhaps, think this was what she deserved? She could only guess what Joshua had told his lawyer about his wild, ungrateful niece.

“Okay.” She put her snow cone down carefully, then met his gaze. “Now is fine.”

“Good.” But Clay didn’t speak right away. His gaze drifted to the next picnic table, where Dutch Allingham and Josh Smithers were forcing bewildered beetles to race down the length of their swords.

The silence stretched. She tried to ignore it, concentrating on wiping her hand with paper napkins. But she noticed that Clay’s forefinger flicked against his thumb, the only sign of perturbation she’d seen in him yet. Perhaps, she thought, he did regret, just a little, what he had to say.

“Toward the end of his life, your uncle insisted on drafting a rather strange new will,” he said slowly, returning his gaze to Melanie’s face. “I hope you’ll take time to think it over carefully before you react. I know it’s going to come as a shock.”

She laughed, and the sound was harsher than she had intended. The boys looked up from their beetle race and stared. “I doubt it. I knew my uncle very well.”

“So did L”

“Did you really?” She eyed him coldly. “Did you live with him for eight years, dependent on him for every scrap of food you ate, every stitch of clothing you wore, every smile, every hug, every bit of affection you received?”

“No.” He frowned. “Of course not”

“Then I don’t believe you knew him quite well enough,” she said. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be a single controlling, vindictive thing he could do to surprise you.”

Clay sighed. “Look, Melanie, I’m sorry…”

His voice sounded genuinely regretful, and even that little hint of pity threatened to destroy her hard-won composure.

Bracing herself, she dug her heels into the sand beneath the table and narrowed her eyes.

“Violins aren’t necessary, Mr. Logan. I’ve known since I was sixteen years old that my uncle planned to disinherit me.”

One side of Clay’s mouth—that wide, generous mouth—quirked up. “And you never let yourself hope that Joshua might change his mind?”

“Never,” she lied, though she could see that he knew it wasn’t true. “Never.”

“Then perhaps I’m going to have the pleasure of surprising you after all.” Clay crossed one leg over the other and propped his head against the palm of his hand. He was the picture of languorous ease—darn him. Melanie’s own posture was so tight she could almost hear her muscles humming.

“Well, you can try,” she said, managing what she hoped was a lazy smile, but which felt annoyingly like a sickly one.