Maybe Married

“Poor Barclay,” Zeke interrupted.

Dana paused. “What about him?” She sounded a little uncertain.

“He must think you’re a diplomat, or he wouldn’t have proposed. Boy, is he in for a nasty shock.”

“Thank you very much for that helpful dissection of my character. I don’t normally have trouble making nice to people—only when they say completely idiotic things. What makes you so sure there’s something wrong with the divorce, anyway? I have all the papers—or didn’t the lawyer ever send you a set?” Her eyes widened. “Dammit, Zeke, if you caused all this trouble just because you didn’t get any paperwork—”

“I got it. It’s a very impressive set of documents. Lots of fine print and gold seals and flowery signatures and whereases and heretofores.”

“Yeah,” Dana said slowly, “that sounds like the same thing I got. But then—”

“Did you ever read the fine print?”

She hesitated, as if she was considering the ramifications of telling the truth, before she finally said, “No. Not all of it.”

“Well, I didn’t either, until just recently. It turns out that we applied for a divorce in the Dominican Republic instead of Wisconsin. Or, rather, our attorney applied, in our names.”

Dana looked at him blankly. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“Apparently because he’d found it to be a very accommodating legal system—and it appears to be a perfectly fine one for the people who live there. Unfortunately, as far as I can find out, very few other courts in the world seems to recognize a Dominican divorce as legal. So if a couple who lives in Wisconsin gets a divorce in the—”

“They’re not really divorced at all,” Dana groaned.

“Not unless they move to the Caribbean. Though, come to think of it, there are plenty of beaches there. It’s worth considering.”

She obviously wasn’t listening. “That shyster! Why bother to file it anywhere? Why not just create the fancy document out of thin air and tell us it was real? We’d have believed it—we’d have believed anything he told us. We were just a couple of kids who were anxious to put a mistake behind us.”

“I suppose he thought that making it up out of whole cloth would be unethical.”

“Unethical!” She made a noise that sounded like a snort. “It sounds to me as if he wouldn’t know an ethic if it bit him in the nose.”

Pure mischief made him say, “You have to give him a little credit for having a conscience. The document we got is certainly real, even if it doesn’t exactly accomplish what we intended it to.”

“Cut it out, Zeke. The man was only after the money, and you know it. He probably calculated the cost of every last gold seal.”

“The question now, of course, is what we’re going to do about it.”

“That’s a no-brainer,” Dana said promptly. “We hire another attorney and get a real divorce this time. No, on second thought, the first thing I want to do is sue him to get my money back, and then—”

Zeke frowned. What was she talking about? “Get your money back?”

“Yes.” She thrust out her chin. “As long as we’re hashing out leftover details, that’s another thing we might as well talk about. I know you were strapped for cash at the time, but so was I. That was why we agreed to cooperate instead of hiring two attorneys in the first place.”

“That was your brilliant idea, I believe,” he murmured. “And an expensive mistake it turned out to be.”

She glowered at him. “I’m not the only one he fooled. And stop trying to change the subject. I didn’t appreciate you sticking me with the bill for the divorce, Zeke. Splitting it down the middle would have been fair, but saddling me with the whole thing—”

No wonder she wants her money back. “I didn’t do anything of the sort,” Zeke said.

“Don’t try to weasel out of it now, because it can’t be done. Not only did I pay the whole bill, but I kept the cancelled checks as a reminder to be more careful who I got involved with next time.”

He didn’t doubt it for a minute. Not that the resolution appeared to have done her much good—taking up with Barclay Howell, for heaven’s sake. What was the woman thinking of?

He spoke slowly and deliberately. “So did I, Dana.”

She stared at him. “You…what?”

Zeke said gently, “I paid the whole bill.” He watched her face turn pale under the brilliant spotlight as comprehension slowly dawned.

“He charged us both? And all this time I was thinking that you’d ducked out of paying your share.” Her voice cracked. “And you thought I’d dodged mine.”

“No, I just believed it was my responsibility, so I took care of it.”

She swallowed hard, but she obviously wasn’t in the mood to give him points for acting like a gentleman. “That shark.” She stretched out her hands, fingers spread like claws. “When I get hold of him—”

She wasn’t wearing an engagement ring, Zeke noted absently. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry at all, in fact; not only were her hands bare but her neck was unadorned as well. Pity, he thought. It was a neck that was made for delicate gold chains. Her throat was slim and long, with an aristocratic arch. It had always been a very kissable little neck. He wondered if Barclay had discovered the ticklish spot right below her ear….

None of your business, Ferris.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said mildly. “You’d be bound to be caught if you committed assault and battery inside a federal penitentiary, and Barclay might not like it.”

“Our attorney is in a federal prison?”

Zeke nodded. “He’s already served two years of an eight-to-ten for fraud.”

“So that’s how you found out we’re not divorced after all? A story in the newspaper or something.”

He toyed with the idea of simply nodding. It would certainly be the easiest course. But Dana had already proved that she wasn’t going to be easily convinced, and he wouldn’t put it past her to demand that he produce the newspaper clipping. The trouble was that there had been no news coverage—or at least none that he’d seen.

“Not exactly,” he said. “Arranging faulty divorces isn’t what he’s in prison for. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know he was in prison till I tried to look him up so he could explain how the hell he’d messed up ours. Until then, I thought it was just a simple mistake.”

The server returned with two platters topped with still-sizzling steaks. Good timing, Zeke thought, and changed the subject. “How long have you known Barclay?”

Dana paid no attention to either her plate or his question. “How did you find out there was anything wrong?”

He met her gaze, levelly. “I happened to run across the divorce papers one day and I decided to check everything out and make sure it was all in order.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Six years after the fact, you just took it into your head to ask an attorney whether you were really divorced?”

“Call it a whim. And it turned out to be a sensible one, too.”

She looked at him for a long moment and then shook her head. “Oh, no, you don’t, Zeke. You’re not going to make me believe that you had nothing better to do than run down the details of a six-year-old legal case. Or to pay a lawyer to do it, either. So what’s really going on?”

He cut a slice from his steak. “This will lose half its flavor if you let it get cold,” he warned.

Dana didn’t seem to hear him. “I’ve got it. You’re planning a little walk down the aisle yourself. And your new bride—who must be a more careful sort than I ever was—wanted to be certain you were really and truly free.”

“Nice story. Not a word of truth in it, but you get credit for a noble effort.”