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

Then he climbed from the pool in a long, lazy motion and collected his towel from a nearby lounger. All the while, he felt her watching him and his body’s unwelcome response undid all the good work of those relaxing last laps.

Thank God for jumbo-size hotel towels.

Walking back to where she stood, Tristan subjected her to the same thorough once-over. Payback, he justified. She didn’t move a muscle, even when he came to a halt much too close, and he wondered if her shoes—very proper, with heels and all to match the suit—had melted into the poolside tile.

“A little overdressed for a dip, aren’t you?”

A small furrow between her brows deepened. She moistened her lips, as if perhaps her mouth had all dried out. “I didn’t come here to swim.”

“Pity. It’s the weather for it.”

“Yes, it’s hot but—”

“You want to get out of the sun?” Tristan inclined his head toward the nearest setting with a big shady umbrella. What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been in the business suit, knocking at her door. Now she was on his turf and he aimed to milk the reversal in power for all it was worth.

“No.” She shook her head. “I only came for the letter. Gloria rang to tell me you’d called around but you wouldn’t leave it.”

“I didn’t know if I should.”

She made an annoyed sound with her tongue and teeth.

“Last night you specifically asked that we keep this between you and me,” he reasoned.

“Which is why you insinuated yourself into my house and interrogated my housekeeper?”

Ah. He’d thought she mightn’t approve of that. “Gloria kindly made me tea.”

“Did she kindly tell you what you needed to know?”

“She told me you were tied up with meetings all day.” He allowed his gaze to drift over her charity-meeting outfit. “Yet here you are.”

He sensed her gathering frustration, but she took a minute to glance around the surroundings and the little clusters of tourists and the discreetly hovering staff. If she’d been about to stomp on his bare foot with one of her weapon-shaped heels or to launch herself fully clothed into the pool, she resisted. Her elegantly dimpled chin came up a fraction. “I am here to fetch the letter. Do you have it or don’t you?”

“I have it, although—” he patted his hips and chest where he might have found pockets, had he been wearing clothes “—not on me.”

Despite the dark Jackie O.-size shades, he tracked the shift of her gaze as she followed his hands down his torso. Then, as if suddenly aware of what she was doing and where she was looking, her head snapped up. “I didn’t mean on you. Is it in your room?”

“It is. You want to come up and get it?”

“No,” she replied primly. “I would like you to go up and get it. I will wait in the lounge.”

Vanessa didn’t give him a chance to bait her further. She turned smartly on her heel and walked away. Yes, he tracked her departure all the way across the long terrace. Yes, that filled her sensory memory with images of his bare tanned length wet and glistening from the pool. Of those muscles flexing and shifting as he toweled himself off. Of the blatant male beauty of a strong toned abdomen, of dark hair sprinkled across his chest and trailing down his midline and disappearing into his brief swimming trunks.

Heat flared in her skin then shivered through her flesh as she crossed from the wicked midafternoon sunshine into the cool shade of the hotel interior. She chose a secluded seat away from the terrace windows and surreptitiously fanned her face while she waited.

And waited.

She ordered an iced water and checked her watch. And realized the waiting and waiting had actually been for little more than five minutes. Time, it seemed, had taken on a strange elongated dimension since she opened the door exactly twenty-four hours ago.

In that time so little had happened and yet so much had changed. None of it made sense … except, possibly, the buff body. He’d been an elite athlete, after all, and any woman with functional eyesight would have found herself admiring those tight muscles.

It wasn’t personal.

Vanessa exhaled through her nose, exasperated with herself. She didn’t check her watch again.

Assuming he showered and dressed, he could be five or ten minutes or more. And although she hoped he did shower and dress, she didn’t want to think about him showering and dressing.

To pass the time she scoped the room, wincing when she noticed Vern and Liz Kramer at a table not too far away. Vern and Stuart went way back. While she liked the Kramers, she didn’t want to deal with another introduction and everything-is-fine conversation like last night’s episode with Frank. She just wanted to get the letter and get out of here.

The letter.

Another shiver feathered over her skin with the realization of a purpose and an anxiety forgotten from the second she saw Tristan’s strong, tan body slicing effortlessly through the azure water. Finally she would get to see this piece of evidence. She could make her decision on how to proceed: whether to take Andy’s advice and tell all, or follow Jack’s counsel in revealing as little as necessary.

Since this morning’s breakfast discussion, she’d had little time to weigh the options. Jack’s version tempted her because doing nothing, saying nothing, was always easier. But was it best for Lew? She just didn’t know. But seeing the letter—her heart raced as a tall, familiar, fully-dressed figure entered the room—she hoped, would make up her mind.

Although she’d watched him arrive, Vanessa looked away to take a long sip from her water. Then he was there, standing beside her chair, an envelope in his hand. Her whole stomach went into free fall and she had to close her eyes against a dizzying attack of anxiety.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. From the corner of her eye she saw Liz Kramer peering their way and she sucked in a quick breath. “Can we go somewhere more private? I’m afraid some more old friends are about to come over here.”

To his credit, he didn’t turn and look. “There’s the guest library downstairs. Or I could arrange a private meeting room—”

“The library will do fine. Thank you.”

Tristan stood back, hands in pockets, while she turned the envelope over in her hands. He tried not to notice the pale trepidation on her face. Or the tremor of her fingers as she drew the single sheet of folded paper from inside.

But he couldn’t ignore the tightening in his chest and gut, the desire to reach out and … hell … do what? Take the bloody letter back? Ignore his reason for holding onto it this morning, so he could hand it to her and judge her reaction?

Logic said she wouldn’t look so uncharacteristically nervous—she of the cool poise and composure—unless she were guilty.

Damn it all to blazes, he needed that guilt. He should be turning up the heat, pushing and prodding her into a hot-tempered admission. Except she looked too fearful and vulnerable and he couldn’t. Not yet.

“It’s white,” she murmured, so low he wouldn’t have made out the words if he weren’t so intensely focused on her face. Her lips. The wide bemused eyes she suddenly raised up to his. “This is the original? Not a copy?”

“That’s the original.” Then, when she continued to sit there studying the paper and the envelope, he asked, “Aren’t you going to read it?”

Perhaps she’d been building up her nerve or delaying the inevitable, because now she unfolded the letter and scanned it quickly. When she got to the end, she stared at the page for a full minute. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking only that she was thinking. In the silence of the large library room, deserted but for them, he could almost hear the wheels turning and the gears engaging.

But when she finally spoke it wasn’t to point out the lack of concrete proof in the letter’s content, as he’d expected. It was to ask, “Why would somebody do this?”

Hands deep in his pockets, Tristan shrugged. “To create trouble for you.”

“Well, they’ve succeeded there,” she said dryly, surprising him again … and reminding him of her first baffling reaction.

He nodded toward the letter. “You commented on the white paper.” She’d also asked if it was a copy. “What’s going on, Vanessa? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I …”