She’d almost been frightened of them.
And she’d been adamant that she didn’t want kids.
She’d come from a difficult background. An unhappy family, poverty and debt and struggle. She’d made herself into the woman she was through sheer gritty determination, brains and hard work. She wanted to keep climbing the ladder of success higher and higher, and she seemed terrified by the idea that Ben might invest in business interests that didn’t pay off—that they might have a few million dollars less in the bank, five years from now, rather than a hundred million more.
She had an unrealistic, gut-level fear that they would lose everything and end up in the gutter. He began to understand that no fortune would ever be large enough for her, no financial security blanket ever thick enough.
He tried to get her to see why she was like this, that it was sourced in unresolved feelings about her childhood, and that it was a problem. He suggested therapy, but she wouldn’t listen. “I’m a strong person, Ben. I know what I want and what I don’t want, and I don’t intend to change. Is that wrong?”
He’d kept trying, for almost two years, but their dealings with each other only became angrier and more distant, with no compromise possible on either side. When he’d sold Radford Biotech, Heather had yelled at him for three days, then didn’t speak to him at all for a month. When he’d bought the Santa Margarita ranch and tried to share with her his vision of how beautiful it could be, she’d started threatening divorce.
Even then he didn’t give up on his marriage. His own father had bullied his mother for years. They’d been a terrible match, after the first sizzle of desire wore thin. They’d divorced when Ben was fourteen. That was why he’d been packed off to boarding school, to keep him away from the ugliness. The fact that he’d been utterly miserable at boarding school wasn’t an issue for his parents. They’d never asked if he was happy, and he’d never told them. But he’d vowed then with an icy kind of idealism that he wasn’t going to repeat any of their mistakes.
He wasn’t a quitter, he wasn’t used to failure, and he wanted to turn this around.
But marriage required commitment from both parties, not one, and Heather wasn’t interested in trying, just in getting her fair share. That valuation of assets she’d presented to him and then snatched back again just now was the product of months of bitter wrangling between them.
Heather wanted as much liquid finance as she could possibly argue for. When it was safely in her hands, she planned to invest it in a mix of reliable stocks and gilt-edged securities to make it grow and grow for the rest of her life so that, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, she would never risk being hungry again.
Ben suspected she wouldn’t even attempt to marry for love, next time around. It would purely be a business transaction—the best dollar value she could get for her assets of beauty and brains and social ambition. He was bitterly angry with her, bitterly disappointed in his own utter failure to get her to change, and deeply sorry for her at the same time. None of these emotions left much room for love, and all of them had shaken him to the core. Hell, he never intended to go through something like this ever again!
“Explain something, Heather. Why does my plan to landscape Santa Margarita affect the valuation?” he asked as she climbed into her car.
“Because you’re going to pour a huge amount of money into it, and that kind of thing never recoups itself in the value of the house. You’ll put in a quarter of a million dollars, and the valuer’s estimate on the house will go up by twenty thousand.”
“Even if that’s true, does it really matter?”
“Oh, you mean, what’s a stray couple of hundred thousand dollars between friends?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
“I want what’s mine, Ben.”
“Aren’t you getting enough already?” Many millions, as he well knew.
“Are you suggesting I didn’t contribute as much as you did to the success of Radford Biotech?”
“Heather—”
“Forget it.” She put up a hand, then turned the key in the ignition, and said above the flare of engine noise, “Our lawyers can talk about this. We’re sure as heck not going to get anywhere with it on our own.”
“No, we’re not,” he agreed. It was one of the few things left in their lives that they did agree on.
“Someday, Ben, your charmed life will come to an end.”
“That’s not a threat, I hope.” Threat or not, it chilled him to think that she wished him ill.
“Of course it’s not. I just hope that when it happens you have the right insurance, that’s all.”
“I think our definitions of the word insurance are probably very different.”
“Very! Don’t give me your spiel on the subject. People and memories and priorities and values. I’ve heard it before. And by the way, I think you’re making a huge mistake with whatshername.” She thumbed over her shoulder in the general direction of Rowena Madison and the derelict garden.
“You mean the project or this particular consultant?”
“Both.” Heather snapped her car into gear, revved the engine again, then spun around with a spray of gravel and dirt that showered desert dust onto his trouser legs and shoes.
“Thank heaven we never had children,” he muttered as he watched her drive away. It was the only piece of positive thinking he could drag from the whole mess.
Then he turned to find Rowena Madison standing quietly nearby, awaiting his attention. She must have come out here through the side gate when she’d heard Heather’s car starting. Her serious, enormous eyes were fixed on him with a troubled expression in their dark-blue depths. Her willowy figure had an angular look. Tightly bent elbows, hunched-up shoulders. The set of her limbs created a force field of distance.
She had a very nice body, he decided, although she didn’t seem to be aware of the fact and certainly had no idea how to dress herself to her own advantage. He assessed her impatiently for a moment.
The severe colors and tailored silhouette were totally wrong, especially with her hair—apart from one wandering strand—folded up so tightly on the top of her head. Her eyes would be incredibly beautiful if she did anything whatsoever to help people notice them. Someone should damn well tell her that she didn’t have to imitate a nineteenth-century schoolteacher in order to look like a competent professional.
The escaped strand of bouncy dark hair blew across her face and snagged against her full mouth. She let it stray between her nicely shaped lips and began to chew on it, and he had a ridiculous impulse to pull the strand away and scold her.
Chewing on your hair, Dr. Madison? An appalling habit. Don’t ever let me see you do it again! And do something about the way you dress!
Suddenly she reminded Ben of how he’d been himself, fifteen years ago, at around eighteen or nineteen—so much going for him in some areas and so clueless in others. If he could change, then so could she.
Heather couldn’t. She didn’t even want to try…
But he wasn’t thinking about his ex-wife right now.
He wanted to grab Rowena Madison and stand her in front of a mirror and tell her, “Look at yourself! Attractive, intelligent, perceptive. Don’t be so afraid to let it show. Don’t be afraid to take risks and to feel. Make an effort. Change. Fight. And please, don’t be afraid to let other people get close to you.”
Although not me, he mentally revised, because I’m not ready to get close to anyone.
Just