Boardroom Bride and Groom

She’d been financially cut off in Boston and had opted for the only school that had offered her a partial scholarship and a tuition she could afford.

But she’d had difficulty fitting in among the informal Midwesterners who didn’t understand the stiff-upper-lip Bostonian. One month in, and Carolyn had yet to make any friends. As she’d crossed the campus, she’d felt the stares of the other students. Her step had caught on a bump in the sidewalk, the books began to fall—

And then Nick Gilbert came along.

He’d stood out in a sea of brown and navy like a neon sign. He’d rushed over, righted the books and done the most insane thing she could have imagined to set her at ease.

He’d made a quarter disappear.

But in that simple, unexpected magic trick, Nick had won her over and made everything Carolyn had to face seem so much less daunting.

“So, what’ll it be?” Nick asked. “Tough it out on our own in the wilds of the toy department or join forces?”

Carolyn met Nick’s gaze and smiled, caught up in the old magic once again. “All right, I’ll shop with you, but only because you are so clearly hopeless at this.”

“Oh, I see, take pity on the man. Is that it?”

A bubble of laughter escaped her, filling Carolyn with a lightness she hadn’t felt in weeks, months. How she craved that feeling, yet at the same time, felt the urge to flee. “Don’t you need pity, Mr. Burp-or-Cry?”

“Oh, I need more than that, Carolyn.”

The way he said her name, with that husky, all-male tone, the kind that spoke of dark nights, tangled sheets, hot memories, sent a thrill running through Carolyn, sparked images she’d thought she’d forgotten. But, oh no, she hadn’t forgotten at all. She’d merely pushed those pictures to the side, her mind waiting—waiting for a moment like this to bring them to the forefront, like an engine that had idled all this time.

How she wished she were in a courtroom instead of a toy store. That was the world she knew, could predict. But Nick Gilbert was about as predictable as a tiger in a butcher shop.

This was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

“Playing house,” Carolyn said, popping into action. “That’s what we need.”

Nick arched a brow. “You and me? Play house? I thought we already tried that and it didn’t work so well.”

“Not us. For…” Her mind went blank. Looking at Nick, thinking of playing house…oh, why had she thought she could do this? Just being here was a mistake. But she’d already made the deal and couldn’t renegotiate. Not with a lawyer and especially not with this one. “I meant for the child you’re sponsoring. Little girls, they like to play house. Pretend to go to the grocery store, set the table, all that.”

“But not you, right, Carolyn? Or did you ever have a moment when you did play house? When you imagined being a Mrs. for longer than a few days?”

“Me?” She snorted. “You know that is so not me. I don’t think I have a domestic bone in my body.”

“We still have that in common,” Nick said. “I’ve yet to become domesticated myself, though I am housebroken.” He grinned. “What about you? How have things been for you over the last three years?”

Carolyn reached for the nearest toy on the shelf. “How about this broom set for Angela?”

“I recognize this avoidance tactic. Divert attention from the personal and get back to work, right?”

“Nick, if you’re not going to take this seriously—”

“Oh, I’m serious, Carolyn.” He straightened, his demeanor slightly chilled. “As serious as you are.”

Then he started pushing the cart, heading down the aisle toward the faux food and make-believe vacuum cleaners. Now also all business and no play. Not anymore.

Carolyn wasn’t the least bit disappointed. Not the least.

“How about this for Angela?” Nick held up a pretend cooking set, plastic frying pans, spatulas, bright yellow faux eggs and floppy bacon. Little cardboard boxes of cereal marched up the side of the package, with cheery pretend names like Cocoa Crunchies and Corn Flakies.

“Perfect,” Carolyn said, coming up beside Nick and holding the other side of the package. Only a few inches separated them. When she inhaled, she caught the scent of his cologne again. She could sense the heat from his body, read the strength in his hands. She focused instead on the bright happy packaging, on the images of children sitting around a plastic table, pretending they were dining at a five-star mock-up restaurant. “When I was a little girl, they didn’t make toys like this. I was always taking the real thing out of the kitchen and if I didn’t have any friends over, I made my poor dad sit down for pretend meals. Oh, how I made that man suffer through tea parties with me and my bears.”

Nick chuckled softly. “My sisters used to try to do the same thing to me and my brothers but we were too fast. We’d steal the cookies and run like hell for the yard. Linda, Marla and Elise still think Daniel and I are the spawn of the devil because we ruined their plans to recreate the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”

Carolyn laughed. “I never did get a chance to meet your family. I wish I had. They sound so fun.”

“They would have liked you.”

The words hung between them. They’d been married too short a time for meeting families—not that there’d been anyone on Carolyn’s side to meet. Anyone who would have cared about meeting Nick, anyway.

Had Nick told his family about her? Had he told his sisters about the woman who had stolen his heart, then broken it, all in the space of a month?

Carolyn shoved the thoughts away. She’d had good reasons, reasons Nick had refused to see at the time, refused to listen. He’d fought her, tooth and nail, telling her it could wait, that they’d just gotten married—stay awhile, don’t go, not yet—and not understanding at all that she’d had to go—

Had to get on that plane. She couldn’t sit in Indiana, acting the part of the happy wife, while the man who had killed her father went on another rampage. By the time she came home, the divorce was final. Nick had done the filing, taking care of the details, cleaning up the mess.

It was all for the best, she told herself again

“Let’s get the rest of Angela’s gifts,” Carolyn said, returning to business. Nick seemed relieved to do the same, and they made quick work of filling the cart with toys for the little girl.

“My turn to help you,” Nick said a little while later. “And for your information, little boys don’t want to play house, so let’s pick a different aisle.”

Work again. Concentrate on the project. Not the man.

Carolyn led the way as they headed over to the aisle of trucks and cars. Nick directed her toward the larger, more indestructible options. “This is what Bobby wants.” Nick hoisted up a red plastic truck large enough to transport a puppy.

“How do you know for sure? There’s this one, and that one, and the one down there.” Carolyn gestured all over the aisle, as confused as she had been an hour ago.

“I know because I was once a little boy. And I had one of these, except mine sported the less-knee-and-elbow-friendly metal finish.” Nick turned the box over in his hands, lost in a memory. “I had a lot of fun with that truck. I remember the Christmas I got it. I was five. Daniel was three. He came charging at me, wanting to play with the truck. Cut his chin open on the coffee table and he ended up in the emergency room on Christmas day, getting stitches.”

“Oh, my goodness. That must have been awful.”

Nick shook his head. “My mother is a saint. She could raise all five of us and run a household blindfolded. She shot off directions to my dad and the rest of us for how to put together Christmas dinner, loaded Daniel in the car and drove to the hospital, calm as a summer breeze. We, of course, butchered dinner without her there.” Nick laughed. “But when she came back, with Daniel all stitched up, she somehow made it all right and saved Christmas.”

Carolyn spun the loose plastic covering on the shopping handle. She thought of how her aunt Greta would have reacted to such an event. For one, it wouldn’t have happened because there’d been no big happy family around the Christmas tree. No turkey to stuff. No hectic gathering. But if there had been, Greta simply wouldn’t have allowed chaos to disrupt her house. In Aunt Greta’s house, chaos never, ever visited. It didn’t even walk down the sidewalk. And secondly, children didn’t take chances. They didn’t run. They didn’t ride their bikes down the sidewalk. They didn’t do anything death defying. “Your family sounds like something out of a novel.”

Nick smiled, then put the toy truck into the shopping cart. “Sometimes I think it was.” Nick paused midstep, then met her gaze, and for a fleeting second she wondered if he was reading her mind. “Carolyn—”

“Let’s get this shopping done. I need to get home. I have a ton of work waiting for me.” Carolyn started down the aisle, cutting off Nick and the attraction she read in his gaze.

Then the look disappeared, gone in a simple blink.

“Yeah, good idea. We should concentrate on the shopping,” Nick said, joining her by the race cars. “I have work waiting for me, too.”

Carolyn gave him a sidelong glance but couldn’t read anything in Nick’s face. Maybe she had read Nick wrong. Or maybe he had changed, maybe he wasn’t the man she remembered.