Society Wives: Love or Money: The Bought-and-Paid-for Wife

“Where on earth did this come from?” Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Tristan?”

“He says he got a letter, from someone over here—” she spread her hands to indicate Eastwick, their home “—claiming there is proof.”

Something flickered in Lily’s eyes and she sat up straighter. She opened her mouth, about to speak, but then her focus shifted, distracted by the sound of footsteps. As her husband came into view her expression transformed, growing bright and soft and incandescent with love.

Although Jack greeted Vanessa with an apology for his tardiness, it was a fleeting acknowledgment of her presence. Because then he was smiling at his wife as he leaned over and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead and touched a gently protective hand to her stomach.

It was nothing and it was everything, a symbol of the intimacy of their small family circle and a reminder of what she, Vanessa, had never experienced and could never contemplate for herself.

Suddenly her throat felt thick with a desperate sense of yearning. It was ridiculous, hopeless, frustrating. She didn’t even want this love, this coupledom, this family deal. She had everything she wanted, everything necessary and important, and there was no room or time or emotional energy left for anything else.

“So, I hear that Tristan Thorpe is in town.” Jack straightened, his expression smoothing into business professional. It seemed that the news had traveled even faster than she’d anticipated. “Is he here to make trouble?”

“He got a letter,” Lily supplied, and her husband went very still. His eyes narrowed on Vanessa. “The same as the others?”

“The … others?” Vanessa repeated stupidly, and in the same instant it struck her what they meant.

Two anonymous extortion letters had been sent several months back, one to Jack and one to Caroline Keating-Spence. She shook her head slowly, kicking herself for not considering this connection.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen the letter yet.” Her heart beat hard in her chest, a thick pulse of dismay, as she looked from Jack’s still countenance to Lily’s worried frown and back again. As the full ramifications took hold. “Do you really think this could be the same person? That it might be the same man … the one Abby thinks killed Bunny?”

Five

Tristan had a breakfast meeting, too. Not with his lawyer but with the private investigator engaged by his lawyer to look into Vanessa’s alleged adultery. The P.I. turned out to be a retired cop who was punctual, professional and personable.

Tristan dismissed him anyway.

His decision was split-second, gut instinct. Sitting in a Stamford coffee house watching the guy demolish a towering stack of pancakes while he delivered the lowdown on his snooping techniques, he pictured Vanessa’s face when she’d appealed to his sense of fair play. Same as last night, he felt the grip of her emotion as she looked him in the eye and hit him with the reminder that this was between the two of them.

That didn’t mean he’d changed his mind, only his tactics.

Instead of employing a third party to dig into her affairs, he’d take up the shovel himself.

Instead of arranging for the letter to be sent to her lawyer, he collected it and brought it back to Eastwick. His aim: to deliver it personally.

Turning into White Birch Lane, he pulled over to make way for a horse float and the need to brake and control his deceleration alerted him that he’d been driving too fast. Worse, he realized that his haste was geared by a different anticipation from his first visit to her home. Edgy, yes, but colored by memories of her smile and her taste and the spark of a fiery inner passion when she faced up to his hard-line tactics.

Vanessa might look the picture of Nordic cool but he’d seen her gather that poise around herself like a protective cloak. Measured, learned, practiced—whatever, he knew it was fake and he couldn’t help wondering why she felt the need to adopt a facade. He couldn’t help wondering what she was hiding, and a frown pulled hard at his brow.

He’d spent a good portion of the night wondering about her, uncomfortable with how much he wanted to know. It was an alarm and a warning.

Get to know her, yes, but don’t forget why.

After the lumbering trailer disappeared, Tristan continued at a more sedate pace. He allowed himself to glance around, to take in the big homes set back from the road on finely manicured acreages. His frown deepened as he contemplated Frank Forrester’s reference to coming home.

He didn’t feel any more sense of homecoming today than yesterday, not even when he turned into the drive where he’d learned to ride a bicycle, not passing the first tree he’d climbed, not even looking out over the grass where he’d first kicked a football.

All he felt was the same gut-kick of bitterness and the keener edge of anticipation. He had to remind himself, again, of his purpose.

He wasn’t here to see her, to visit with her, to spar with her—he was here to deliver the letter.

That didn’t prevent the crunch of disappointment when the housekeeper—Gloria—opened the door and informed him, with great glee, that Mrs. Thorpe was out and not expected home until late in the afternoon.

Okay. This could still work. In fact, if Gloria didn’t mind talking, this could work out even better.

“I didn’t ever get that tea yesterday.” He smiled and was rewarded with the suspicious narrowing of the woman’s eyes. “Is the invitation still open?”

“I guess I could manage a pot of tea.”

She stepped back and let him precede her into the foyer.

“So,” he said, picking up his shovel and turning the first sod. “Have you worked for Mrs. Thorpe a long time?”

After visiting with Gloria, Tristan returned to his hotel to catch up on some business. He’d sold his share in Telfour very recently and was still fielding calls and e-mails daily. Then there was his position on two company boards plus an enticing offer to join a business start-up, which had influenced his decision to sell.

He was still considering that direction and monitoring a couple of other options.

The busyness suited him fine. He didn’t know how to do nothing and immersing himself in his normal business world served as the perfect touchstone with reality. He’d needed that after the last twenty-four hours.

Thus immersed, he picked up the buzzing phone expecting to hear his assistant’s voice, only to be disappointed.

Delia Forrester hadn’t waited for him to call. He didn’t much care for the woman’s overly familiar manner but he accepted her invitation to join their party at Sunday’s polo match, regardless.

After the call, his concentration was shot so he headed to the hotel’s pool. His natural inclination was to swim hard, to burn off the excess energy in his limbs and his blood and his hormones. But after a couple of hard laps he forced himself to ease off to a lazy crawl. He refused to cede control to a situation and a woman and an untenable attraction.

Up and down the pool he loped, distracting himself by thinking about last night’s encounter with Frank Forrester, conjuring up vague memories of him and his first wife—Lyn? Linda? Lydia?—spending weekends out of the city at the Thorpe home.

And now, for all the brightness of his conversation, Frank looked worn out. Had his father aged as badly? Had he grown frail and stooped?

Worn out from keeping up with a young, fast, social-climbing wife when he should have been taking it easy with his life’s companion, enjoying the rewards he’d earned through decades of hard work?

Without realizing it, Tristan had upped his tempo to a solid churning pace, driven by those thoughts and by the effort of not thinking about his father with Vanessa.

Too young, too alive, too passionate.

All wrong.

He forced himself to stop churning—physically and mentally—at the end of the lap. Rolling onto his back, he kicked away from the edge and there she was, standing at the end of the pool, as if conjured straight out of his reflections.

Or possibly not, he decided on a longer second glance.

Dressed in a pale blue suit, with her hair pulled back and pinned up out of view, her eyes and half her face hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses, she looked older, stiffer, all polish and composure and money.

She didn’t look happy, either, but then he’d expected as much when he decided not to leave the letter with Gloria.

He knew he’d hear about it—and that she’d possibly come gunning for him—but he hadn’t expected her this early in the day. Not when he’d been told she had a full day of important charity committee meetings.

Despite all that, he felt the same adrenaline spike as last night in the restaurant and this morning walking up to her door. The same, only with an added rush of heat, which didn’t thrill him. To compose himself, he swam another lap and back, forcing himself to turn his arms over—slow and unconcerned.