“Relax, Regina,” he said, reaching over and covering her hand with his own. “I won’t make you meet the queen.”
Her eyes widened momentarily and then she laughed. “Good. I won’t ask you to come with me to the seamier places I sometimes travel to when taking photos.”
Dell let that sink in. Interesting and alarming. Had has wife been spending time in dark alleys and he didn’t know about it? Was she safe? And could they bridge their gaps and make this marriage work?
He hoped so. It had been difficult enough dodging bad publicity when they had gotten married. Divorcing so soon afterward would only make the gossips and the media gather. They would dig deeper. The O’Ryan name would be smudged and Regina would be gossiped about. Her experience with Lee would no doubt be discovered and made public. Some might accuse her of being a gold digger, and that kind of thing couldn’t help The Wedding Belles, the business that was Regina’s life. So, if they could avoid divorce they should.
“All right,” he said, just as if she hadn’t mentioned the words seamier places. “Now that we’ve set a course, I’ll want to meet the people you spend your time with.” And I’ll want to make sure you’re safe, he thought.
“Dell, the shop isn’t exactly a male kind of place. Are you sure?”
He smiled. “I’ll be brave, and I’ll stay out of your way. Let’s just call this a beginning. Now about those seamy places…”
Frowning, Regina looked up at him. “I don’t go there to embarrass you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And I don’t end up there often, but…”
He waited.
“In my spare time, I freelance, and I’m doing a pictorial on Boston. I cover a lot of territory and a variety of settings. Businesses, bridges, landmarks, artists, executives, homemakers, museum curators, hot dog vendors, homeless people and yes, sometimes prostitutes or addicts. I interview them. I listen to their stories. They let me take their pictures. It’s my work,” she explained solemnly. “It matters to me.”
“Understood,” he said. “But it’s your safety I’m concerned about. I can hire people.”
She considered that. “I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that, but I’ll be careful. I always am, and since night photography isn’t my specialty, I’m out in daylight, usually on Sundays. The risk is slight.”
Their gazes met, held. Dell couldn’t help thinking that their ideas of what constituted a risk might be different…
But she was already uncomfortable now, practically squirming from all his questions. He would file the subject away for later.
For now, he made a few more suggestions about things they could do and gatherings they might attend together. He’d make sure there was good publicity surrounding these events. Then, if things fell apart and she still wanted out once these two months were up, at least the world would know her as a real and valuable person, not just as the whirlwind wife of Dell O’Ryan.
“Dell?” Regina suddenly said.
He looked at her. She was clenching her water glass.
“I’m sorry. Have I overdone things? Is there anything we should change or omit?” he asked.
She sat up taller and took a visible breath. “I just want you to know that I’m going to do my best and give this a solid effort, no-holds-barred. In the end…we’ll at least be friends, won’t we?”
Their eyes met. “I hope we will if it comes to that.” Maybe it would. No doubt this marriage had been far less than the salvation he had planned. She had obviously once wanted something with Lee that she had lost, and marriage with Dell O’Ryan hadn’t been it. “You’re sure you’re all right with this plan?” he prodded gently again.
Regina looked slightly shaken but she nodded, her silky hair sliding against her shoulders. “Absolutely.”
“All right then. We’re on,” he agreed.
“What do we do now?” Regina asked, looking around the rapidly emptying restaurant.
“We go home,” Dell said simply, but as he stood to pull out her chair he realized that there was nothing simple about it. Beginning tonight they were moving down a new path, one that would lead them into the spotlight they had avoided thus far. As a prominent Bostonian he was used to having private moments showing up in the newspapers. Now that he and Regina would be spending time together, they would be on display. It wasn’t the first time. When they had first gotten married, there had been photographers hovering, but after the two of them had failed to make public appearances together, the interest in them had tapered off. It would resurface, and there would be questions about why they were a couple again. The fact that Regina had suffered a miscarriage might come up.
Dell tried to block the automatic ache that assaulted him at that memory, but it was difficult. He concentrated on the fact that he would do what was necessary to protect Regina and to distract reporters from that topic. That meant giving them something else to concentrate on. And now was the time to begin setting the stage with the media should there be any gossip miners around.
“I should—” Put my arm around you, he thought, but given their circumstances and the newness of all this, that seemed intrusive. Instead he reached down, his fingertips sliding against her palm as he folded his hand around hers.
She was warm, smooth, soft. His skin tingled. All he was doing was holding her hand, yet it felt like an intimate caress.
Regina looked down to where their hands were linked. “Of course,” she said. “A married couple would do this. We’ll go home.” Where they would not be on display.
Where they could be private, Dell thought, then immediately pushed the vision of Regina in his arms away. She had just asked him for a divorce yesterday. She had agreed to a plan to get to know each other and nothing more. This marriage wasn’t real yet, not in the true sense of the word.
And it might never be.
For the first time in a long while, Regina dreaded seeing her friends. The Belles loved her and knew her so well that they were practically mind readers. And the truth was that when she and Dell had arrived home last night, she had been painfully aware of him as a man in a way she hadn’t been before.
That was risky. She’d been hurt by men who wanted to be friends but not more. And then there had been Lee who had left her pregnant and—given the fact that she’d funneled most of her money into The Wedding Belles business—with almost zero funds to raise a child. The whole scenario had been utterly demeaning and frightening.
“Now, I’m…”
Better, she wanted to say, but the truth was that she was a mess, she admitted, struggling into her jeans and slipping on a pair of electric-blue clogs with silver lightning bolts on the sides. This business with Dell was making her feel weird and uncomfortable. Even physically they were night and day, him being the tall, gorgeous, lean one and her being the ten extra pounds one. Moreover, she was socially not of his class, and their basic life philosophies would appear in two different volumes if there were encyclopedias that tracked such things.
The fact that they were now trying to think of each other as an actual husband and wife was making her crazy. He had held her hand, and her body had tightened in response. They had entered the house together, and all she could think of was what he must have done with other women in bed.
And then she had realized that he had probably been forced to give up sleeping with other women this past year and she hadn’t been sleeping with him, either. It had been impossible not to wonder if he was feeling