“Worked out fine. Figured there was no rush in telling you.”
“Especially since I didn’t want a wedding.”
Simon frowned at him and Hunter remembered being thirteen years old and standing in this very study, trying to explain why he’d hit a baseball through the study window. The same sense of shame and discomfort he’d felt then washed over him now. The only difference was he was no longer a kid to be put in his place.
“How’d she talk you into this, Simon?”
In answer, his grandfather pushed himself out of the chair, drew himself up to his full height and gave Hunter a look that used to chill him to his bones. “You think I’m some old fool taken in by a pretty face and a gold-digging nature? You seriously believe I’m that far gone, boy?”
“What else am I supposed to believe?” Hunter stood up too and met Simon’s hard stare with one of his own. “I come home for a visit—”
“After two years,” Simon threw in.
“—and you tell me you arranged to marry me off to someone I’ve never met just so you can have family close by?”
“You can watch your tone with me, boy. I’m not senile yet, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You were thinking it.” Simon turned, walked to his desk and sat down behind his personal power center. From that very chair, Simon had run the Cabot family fortunes for more than five decades. “And I’ll tell you something else. Margie didn’t want any part of this. It was all my idea.”
“And she went along out of the goodness of her heart.” Sarcasm was so thick in Hunter’s tone that even he heard it.
“’Course not. This was business, pure and simple. I’m paying her five million dollars.”
“Five—” Hunter sucked in a gulp of air. “So she is in it for the money. And you said she’s not a gold digger?”
“She damn well isn’t, and you’ll figure that out for yourself after you spend some time with her.” Simon picked up a pen from the desk and twirled it absentmindedly between his fingers. “Had to browbeat her into taking the money and doing this for me. She’s a good girl and she works hard. She’s done a lot of good for this town, too, and she’s done real well by your name.”
“How nice for me.” Hunter shook his head at the sensation of a velvet-lined trap snapping shut around him.
“You should be grateful. I picked you out a wife who’s a hard worker, and she’s got a big heart as well.”
“Grateful.” Hunter moved in, leaned both hands on his grandfather’s desk and ground out tightly, “What I’ll be grateful for is a damn annulment, Simon. Or even a divorce. As soon as possible.”
Disgusted, his grandfather muttered, “I should have known you wouldn’t appreciate this.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.”
“If you’d open your eyes and see her as I do, you’d change your tune.” Simon looked so damn smug, so self-satisfied that Hunter felt a surge of temper rise up and grab the base of his throat. For his whole damn life, Simon had been the one he could count on. The man who had taught him what duty and honor meant. The one who’d instilled in Hunter a sense of right and wrong. Now, he was blithely explaining how he’d set Hunter up with a marriage he didn’t want all for Simon’s own convenience.
“My ‘tune’ doesn’t need changing,” Hunter told him. “Just why the hell should I ‘appreciate’ having a wife I didn’t want in the first place? One you’re paying.”
“I told you. She didn’t want the money. Had to talk her into accepting it.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll bet she was really hard to convince, too. Five million dollars? Damn it, Simon, what were you thinking?”
“You weren’t here,” the older man said softly. “I’m getting on, Hunter, and you weren’t here. Margie is.”
Again, he felt that soft, swift stab of guilt—then he buried it. “She’s your secretary.”
“She’s more than that.”
“Sure, now,” Hunter allowed.
“You don’t know her,” Simon said, and his voice was whisper soft. “She came here to build a life for herself and she’s done it. And she’s been a good wife to you—”
“I haven’t been here!”
“—and a good granddaughter to me.”
All right, he could at least admit that much to himself, Hunter thought. Gold digger or not, the curvy redhead had at least apparently been good to Simon. When Hunter had finally heard about his grandfather’s brush with death, guilt had gnawed him for not being there when the old man had needed him. But the nature of his job meant that he couldn’t always be around. He lived and died according to orders.
So, knowing that Simon hadn’t been alone during that frightening time in his life was good. And for that, he could be grateful. Not that he’d be telling that to the curvy redhead with the quick temper.
“Margie deserves your respect,” Simon warned, lifting one finger to point at him.
“For marrying a man she never met to keep her boss happy.” Hunter nodded sagely. “Yeah, that spells respect to me.”
Simon scowled at him. “You never did know enough to listen to me.”
“I listen. I’m just not interested in what you’re saying. I don’t want a wife.” All right, he’d been doing some thinking about his future lately. Maybe he’d even considered getting married, for about thirty seconds. But thinking about doing something and actually doing it were two wildly different things. And if he did eventually decide to get married, he’d be the one picking out his own damn wife, thanks.
“You could do worse,” Simon grumbled.
“Yeah? I don’t know about that. A woman who has to be paid to marry me pretty much sounds like the bottom of the barrel.”
“Shows how much you know about anything,” Simon said, and his fingers tapped restlessly again. “Margie’s the cream of the crop.”
“Not much of a harvest around here, then,” Hunter murmured, then louder, added, “I won’t stay married to her.”
Simon blew out a breath. “No, I didn’t suppose you would. Though you should know Margie feels the same way you do.”
Hunter wasn’t so sure. She may have had the old man fooled but not him. With five million dollars at stake, a woman might be willing to do just about anything.
“She’s been good to me, and I won’t have you embarrassing her.”
“Oh yeah. Wouldn’t want to embarrass anybody.”
His grandfather sighed dramatically, then kept talking as if Hunter hadn’t said a word. “She’s planned a big party for my eightieth birthday, and I don’t want anything spoiling that, either.”
“A hell of a lot of demands flying around here,” Hunter said under his breath.
“So, until the party’s over, I expect you to act like the husband everyone in town knows you are.”
“Excuse me?” He hadn’t expected that.
“You heard me. People in Springville like Margie. They respect her. And I’m not going to stand by and watch you make her a laughingstock. You’ll be leaving again, no doubt—” He paused as if waiting for confirmation.
Hunter nodded. “I have to report back in about a month.”
Another