Husband in a Hurry
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Muriel Jensen
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CHAPTER ONE
“NELL, PLEASE! This is the man for you—believe me!”
Natasha Fortunescu fluttered around the small bedroom, her bracelets jangling, the silky flowing fabric of her caftan billowing out behind her Beneath a purple coin-studded scarf and fringe of curly gray hair, her gold cat’s eyes were wide with fervor.
“Nope. Sorry.” Nell Fairfield smiled as she tucked the gray shirt-style uniform top into the no-style uniform skirt and slipped on her serviceable shoes. “I know you mean well, Auntie, but I can’t select a father for the children on the strength of something you saw in your crystal ball. Spells and fortunes and astrological predictions are for your booth on the boardwalk. I don’t believe in that stuff.” She removed a badge from the front pocket of her big purse and pinned it on her shirt. It identified her simply as “Janelle.”
Natasha came up behind her, her eyes just visible above Nell’s shoulder in the mirror’s reflection. She spun her niece around.
“Don’t make fun—the universe doesn’t like it. And I didn’t see him in my crystal ball. I was casting a spell for you in the first hour after sunset and—” she stirred the air with her hands “—his image just came to me.”
“Auntie-”
“Listen to me!” Natasha held Nell’s arms to prevent her escape. “He is very tall, his hair is dark, his eyes are blue. Dark blue. And his name…” She closed her eyes to concentrate, then shook her head as though to clear it. “I’m not sure. Joshua?” She opened her eyes and looked hopefully into Nell’s. “I see him in an elegant place. Is there a man named Joshua at the country club?”
Nell was relieved to be able to say there wasn’t. She didn’t completely believe in her aunt’s skills, but Natasha came uncannily close in her predictions often enough to make Nell wary when she found herself involved in them.
“If there was, Auntie,” she said, giving her a hug, then firmly moving her aside, “do you think he’d want to fraternize with a waitress, much less marry her?”
Then, dismissing the subject because of its absurdity, Nell turned and focused on her reflection in the mirror. She frowned. No amount of accessorizing could turn the Cape Hancock Country Club uniform into a fashion statement.
“It’s going to happen,” Natasha insisted. “I’ve seen it. All you have to do is ask him to marry you and he’ll say yes. I’ve seen it.”
Nell turned away from the mirror and patted her aunt’s shoulder. “You also saw wealth coming my way,” she said wryly, and indicated her cramped little bedroom in the small apartment.
“It’s all tied together!” Natasha went on urgently, turning with Nell as she went to the bed for her bag. “His work reaches many people. Have you waited on a man who fits my description who’s in some high-profile business?”
“Probably,” Nell replied absently, rooting in her purse for keys. “Half the members live in Boston or New York and summer here on the Cape.”
“Well, think! Is there someone from the stage? From television? Someone whose face everyone knows?”
Nell pulled wallet, tissues, a toy car, a sandwich bag full of Cheerios, a pen, a pocket flashlight and the latest Dean McBride novel out of her purse. But no keys. “Has Jerica been in my purse again?”
Natasha put a hand to her eyes in exasperation. Then she caught Nell’s shoulders and pulled her down with her onto the edge of the bed. “Please, pay attention,” she begged. “Does anyone at the club fit my description?”
Nell heaved an impatient sigh and tried to think. Tall. Dark. Deep blue eyes. Someone prominent.
Her heart fluttered as her distracted brain finally made the connection. Dean McBride.
She held up the book she’d removed from her purse. “There’s a writer.”
Natasha’s gold eyes widened as she took the book from her. She ran a fingertip over the name embossed in gold leaf. Dean McBride. “Why am I getting Joshua?” she muttered to herself.
“He was on the cover of People last week,” Nell said. “He joined the club during the winter, but he lives…I don’t know, Boston or somewhere. He just arrived again last week. I’ve waited on him a couple of times. He seems polite and thoughtful to the staff, but remote.” She sighed a little wistfully. Men like Dean McBride who wrote wonderful action/adventure novels that made big money didn’t happen to first-grade teachers with four children and an aunt who told fortunes. “Anyway, his name is Dean, not…” She paused as a detail about Dean McBride’s books hit her with the impact of cymbals crashing together.
At that same moment Natasha looked up from reading the back-cover copy, and Nell saw that she was beaming. She’d made the same connection Nell had.
“His main character in this book,” Natasha said, her voice hushed in reverence of the powers she represented, “is Josh Brodigan. Joshua.”
Nell let that fact stun her for a moment, then decided it could be no part of something as critical as making a man a permanent part of one’s life.
She stood resolutely and scooped everything back into her purse. “Auntie, I’m not going to propose marriage to a complete stranger because you had a vision. He’d have me arrested!”
Natasha rolled her eyes. “It is not illegal to propose marriage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
“Well, if you don’t know the man, it should be.”
Natasha apparently decided to try another tack. “You made a promise to a dying friend and took in her four children. That’s the gesture of a bighearted open-minded woman! But the truth is, if you’re now going to keep this merry little band together, you’ll have to continue to think big.”
Nell’s expression softened, and she leaned down to kiss her aunt’s cheek. “It was simply the response of a woman who once had an aunt do the same for her.”
Nell had been fifteen, lost and terrified when her parents died. Then Natasha had bustled into her life.
Her aunt had been only a sometimes visitor before then, the product of Grandma Billings’s elopement as a young woman with a traveling musician. He’d died right after Natasha was born, and she’d been absorbed into a very conventional life-style when Grandma Billings married a banker and had several more children.
But Natasha had grown up with a lust for travel and a host of eccentricities that were both endearing and just a little scary.
Her love and understanding had helped Nell regain her foothold on life. That had been part of the reason she’d accepted the monumental responsibility of Diane’s four children.
Natasha’s gaze ran over Nell with deep affection. “I took over the care of one quiet teenager. You’ve taken on four rambunctious children under the age of eight. You need help.”
“You’re a big help to me.”
“I mean financial help. There I’m just an added burden. I wish you’d listen to me.”
Nell shouldered her purse and smiled at her. “I would, Auntie, but you’re nuts. We’re going to be fine without a wealthy man. I have everything under control.”
“You’re ignoring the fates,” Natasha warned. “Among all the wealthy men you wait on every day, they’ve placed this special one in your path. If you ignore them, they won’t try to help you again.”
Nell sighed and tried reason one more time. “Tasha, what kind of a person would I be if I tried to divert a man’s life to fulfill the needs of my own?”
Natasha uttered a small scornful sound. “It’s done every day. It’s called dating.”
Nell glanced at her watch. “Auntie, if I don’t find my keys and get to work, I’m going to be late, someone else will get my tables, and if I do decide to take your advice, I’ll have to propose to Dr. Boardwell, instead. You know how long he’s been wanting to do your root canals.”
Natasha studied her for one exasperated moment, then stepped out of her way. “All right. Make fun. One day when we’re homeless, you’ll remember that I warned you.”
Nell hurried into the apartment’s small living room, where three of her four children were gathered on the floor, their backs to the television that roared loudly as one animated character chased another through an orchestra pit. She hurried to turn it down.
“Don’t turn it off,” Joey said urgently. He reminded her most of his mother, with his dark hair and eyes and the need to create. He was eight.
After two months with him, Nell was beginning to believe that he needed the blare of the television to fill the void his parents’ death had left. He’d barely recovered from his father’s death, when his mother had had to try to prepare him for hers. He accepted Nell as a friend, but she wasn’t yet the nurturer, the parent, he needed.
“I just turned it down a little so Mrs. Griffin won’t complain.” She was the downstairs neighbor who wasn’t thrilled to have four noisy children living overhead. “What are you inventing?”
He smiled suddenly. His “inventions” were his only source of pleasure On the floor before him were the handle of a wooden spoon, a shoelace and a few other unidentifiable parts of things, which Nell inspected quickly and was reassured to find were neither sharp nor combustible. Something in the apartment would probably fall apart tomorrow because he’d cannibalized it for his project, but she considered it worth the smile on his face.
“Something that’ll bring my socks to me,” he said, “so I don’t have to get up to dress for school till the last minute.”
She kissed his forehead. “When you have it working, I’ll order one. And what are you up to, Gracie?”
A year younger than Joey, Gracie had the same dark features but was plump and prone to theatrics. She loved to draw and color, and Nell wished there was room for an easel in the apartment’s second bedroom, which was crowded with two sets of bunkbeds.
But there wasn’t, so she’d bought a roll of butcher paper, which she’d cut to fit a piece of Masonite, and two butterfly clips to hold one to the other. Gracie seemed to love it and could usually be found on the floor creating a masterpiece. This time it seemed to have a turret.
“A castle,” she said with a smile. She was good-natured, if a little bossy. And Nell knew she shouldered many worries.
“It’s going to have a prince in it. Are you going to work now?”
“Soon as I find my keys.” Nell kissed the top of the child’s head, and Gracie went back to her drawing.
Jerica, sitting in a corner of the sofa in blue rompers and a long-sleeved flowered shirt, stirred something in a plastic bowl with a metal spoon. Nell heard the clink of metal on metal and knew she’d hit pay dirt.
“Can I have my keys, baby?” Nell asked, reaching into the bowl.
Jerica hit her hand with the spoon. At two, she had a cherubic face with large cocoa brown eyes. Wispy blond curls were just beginning to grow. She had all the qualities of a nineties’ woman. Nothing within Jerica’s reach would be kept from her grasp. “Soup!” she said emphatically, and stirred the keys.
Nell, ever the teacher, admired the eye-hand coordination. But she had to get to work.
She looked for something else in her purse with which she could distract the child. She found a two-pack of soda crackers from the club’s restaurant. She opened them, but withheld them when Jerica reached for them.
“Soup,” she said, pointing to the bowl, “for the crackers.”
Jerica considered the deal a moment, then handed Nell her keys and took the crackers. “Clever businesswoman,” Nell praised, kissing her noisily and going into the kitchen in pursuit of her fourth charge.
She found Gib, four, standing on the counter, inspecting the contents of the cupboard. She scooped him off and hugged him to her.
“I told you not to do that,” she reminded him. “If you fell and got hurt, who would help me measure and pour?” Gib had his father’s blue eyes and hair as blond as her own. He loved stories about pirates and helping her in the kitchen. He ate enough to fuel a tank, though he weighed just thirty-five pounds.
He giggled. Nell loved the sound. “The pirates are hungry.”
“How about a glass of milk?”
He wrapped his arms around her neck and smiled winningly. “How about a cookie?”
“If Gib gets a cookie,” Joey said, appearing at her shoulder, “I want a cookie.” Then he added as an afterthought, “Please.”
“I need a cookie,” Gracie said with wide-eyed centerstage drama. “I’m going to draw the prince!”
Nell couldn’t argue with that. It required considerable energy to create the man of one’s dreams.
“Cookie?” That single word, spoken with experienced clarity, came from Jerica, who clung to Nell’s leg.
Natasha, standing in the kitchen doorway, shook her head indulgently over all of them.
Nell knew she was being manipulated, but in such a harmless way she couldn’t consider it a problem. And this was what had brought her to teaching. She loved the press of children around her, the sparkle of their intellects, the challenge of staying ahead, the rewards of smiles and hugs.
These children didn’t laugh much yet, but she was determined to find a way to immerse them in their favorite things, to fill them with laughter. “Dinner’s in an hour,” she said gravely. “But you can each have one cookie. If you don’t finish dinner, though, no dessert.”
She was sure they missed the last proviso in their excited assault on the cookie jar. She threw kisses and headed for the door Natasha held open. “Remember,” Natasha prompted quietly, “what you always tell your students. If you see it, you can be it. You’re destined to be Dean McBride’s wife. Make it happen!”
Nell felt her aunt’s forehead as though she suspected fever. “And this man, who is now probably worth big money, who can go anywhere he wants, anytime he wants, is going to smile over my proposal and say, ‘Why, of course, Janelle. I’d love to take on a misguided bleeding heart and four screaming children and clutter my life with schedules and tantrums and sleepless nights. Why haven’t I thought of this before?”
Natasha ignored her sarcasm. “The man writes about a secret agent. He has to have a sense of adventure. And you’re forgetting one very important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe he’s been placed in your path because he needs something you have.”
Nell shook her head. “Who could possibly need poverty and overwork?”
She felt Natasha’s foot hit her backside as she headed for the stairs to the street.
In the privacy of her little secondhand Toyota, Nell put her key in the ignition, then let her smile fade and privately confronted the dire nature of her situation.
What Natasha didn’t know was that the landlord had given her a month’s notice. He’d promised her three months’ grace when she’d taken in the children, though her lease forbade them. In that time she’d hoped to find a house to rent, but her grocery bill had tripled, the children were growing out of everything they owned, and she needed a bigger car. She longed for a place to live where the children would have room to run and let off steam.
As a grade-one teacher, she was conditioned to identify and encourage a child’s potential in any direction, and Diane’s four children were bursting with it. She wanted Joey to have tools and materials, Gracie to take dancing lessons, Gib to attend preschool, and Jerica to have a world to explore beyond the confines of their small apartment.
And, ideally, she’d love to be able to stay home with the children, to be a full-time mother, to help direct each one of them on the road to happiness and success.
She expelled a ragged breath, aware that was a tall order.
If she was alone, she could be happy in a studio apartment as long as she had books and a cable channel that featured old movies. But she was now the sole support of four growing children and an eccentric aunt who had nothing to her name but meager social-security checks and the money she made telling fortunes at five dollars a pop.
Nell turned the key in the ignition and wished she could turn on some magic engine inside her to help her produce all the things her family needed.
THE WORLD WAS ROSY around the edges. Dean McBride had consumed a full bottle of Merlot with his prime rib, then followed it with a vodka, straight up. He was already aware that it was a mistake. He’d come to Cape Hancock to think, to try to clarify his plot problems and solve them, to try to remember how in the hell a man and a woman communicated.
In the two years since Kelley had died, he’d forgotten how it was done. Dean placed a hand to his stomach where grief burned tonight like an open wound.
The world might be rosy, he thought, but it hadn’t quite colored over the darkness at the center of his being. If Kelley had lived, today would have been their sixth anniversary. And the life she had carried when her car had been sideswiped would have been almost two years old.
But Kelley had died and so had the baby, so this was just another day without them. Some days he could deal with it, even though he was adjusting to the loss. But not today.
Everything was wrong today. He was a childless widower with a writing career that had just put him on the best-seller list big time. Number two the second week out. Optioned by one of Hollywood’s top producers. He was hot. But the next book wasn’t going anywhere.
Even his favorite waitress was frowning at him.
“Janelle,” he called as she passed his table on her way back to the kitchen.
She stopped and turned to him, a professional mask on her face He frowned at her Her smiles for him had always been warm and genuine. He had liked that. But tonight she looked…judgmental, maybe? He wondered why.
“Another vodka, please,” he said. Maybe he’d forgotten to tip. He placed a bill on the tray she held.
She raised an eyebrow. Definitely a judgmental eyebrow. “Would you like something more to eat?” she asked. Her voice was frosty.
“No,” he replied politely. “Thank you.”
She inclined her head and walked away. She had a graceful walk for a small woman. He liked that about her, too. If a rose could walk, he thought, it would look like she did. Head high, just a little undulation of the…stem.
She brought the drink and walked away before he could thank her.
“Put a woman in the new book,” Marty, his editor, had said. “A woman Josh cares about. Let’s broaden that audience even further. Let’s make you number one.”
What his editor hadn’t known, and what he himself hadn’t even realized until he tried to follow those instructions, was that bc’d turned emotion off so completely when Kelley died that he couldn’t even begin to deal with a woman’s viewpoint.
Physically it had been easy enough to put her together. Tall brunette with yards of glossy hair and legs like a Las Vegas showgirl’s. Sultry voice. Ph.D. in criminal psychology. But he couldn’t put words in Josh’s mouth to create dialogue between them. He couldn’t put thoughts in her head, much less words in her mouth.
The essence of a woman was lost to him. Forever. He thought about that for a while as he watched Janelle work. She kept such a distance from his table that he had to get the other waitress to bring him a drink.
Yes. Lost to him. Like his career was about to be lost. Finito. Kaput.
Dean pushed his empty glass aside and was surprised to find the dining room empty. And moving. He needed another drink to stabilize things. “Janelle?” he called. Not finding her, he looked around for the other waitress. “Anyone?”
“WELL, SOMEONE HAS to tell him to leave.” The bartender, a tall redhead in her forties, peered through the glass in the kitchen door. “And Mr. Hatcher’s gone.”
Linda Fleming, who’d worked the shift with Nell, stood on tiptoe beside the bartender and peered through the small window. “Peggy, it doesn’t take the manager to tell him we’re closing. You’ve got seniority. You tell him.”
“I can’t tell him.” Peggy sounded horrified at the idea. “He’s Dean McBride. Those great books. That go-to-hell gorgeous face…” Her voice took on a breathless quality. “That beautiful bu—”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Nell, her purse already over her shoulder, pushed her way between them. She felt ready to burst with impatience. Natasha should see the subject of her vision now. Even she was disappointed.
Tonight the nice Mr. McBride had been like so many other men who came to the club. They arrived looking like the epitome of charm and elegance, then drank too much and ended the evening either staring vacantly or behaving like lecherous boors.
If she had entertained thoughts of doing as Natasha had suggested, they were squelched now. A single woman might risk taking the trouble to find out what lay behind his need to drink tonight, even give him the benefit of the doubt that it was a onetime thing.
A woman with four children and an aging aunt couldn’t afford to.
“I’ll tell him to leave.” She marched across the empty dining room to the table he still occupied by the window. He sat back in his chair, his shoulders slightly slumped, as he stared out into the night.
“Mr. McBride,” she said firmly.
He didn’t hear her.
She shook his shoulder impatiently and raised her voice. “Mr. McBride!”
He turned to her, his face a mask of pain even in his obvious intoxication. His eyes were dry, but the anguish in them almost brought tears to hers.
Nell remembered with a start her aunt’s suggestion that Dean McBride might need her. Then he blinked and focused on her.
“Janelle,” he said. “Linda cut me off.”
Annoyance rose anew in her. “Yes. You’re drunk, Mr. McBride. I’m going to call you a cab.”
“No.”
“Mr. Mc-”
Dean shook his head. That was a mistake. It wasn’t that it hurt. Nothing hurt. Except his heart, and that would probably ache forever. But the world seemed out of alignment. Things wobbled. His brain felt mushy.
And he thought he would die if he didn’t feel the touch of another human being. Every night since he’d arrived in Cape Hancock, Janelle had been his connection to the gentle world. Her smile had warmed him, reminded him that though he no longer had it, there was sweetness and grace in the world.
“You take me home,” he said.
He tried to focus on her face, to gauge her reaction, but she, too, was wobbling. He could sense her disapproval.
“Mr. McBnde,” Nell began impatiently, “I can’t take you…”
He pushed himself to his feet and reached an arm out toward her. “Please?”
Nell blew out a breath that fluttered her bangs. She couldn’t ignore someone who needed her help—even if it was the intoxicated object of Natasha’s vision. The least she could do was drive him home. In the morning, when he was sober, he could come back for his car.
Nell fitted herself under his arm and pulled it around her shoulders, hoping she could support his weight. He was an inch or two over six feet and big boned. She felt his fingers curl around her upper arm, but he bore his own weight, using her for steadiness, rather than support.
She saw the looks of openmouthed surprise on Linda and Peggy as she and McBride passed the kitchen and wove toward the exit.
In the parking lot, they moved in a fairly straight line, past his red Ferrari, gleaming like a rare jewel under the club’s lights, to her Toyota. She leaned him against it and held him there with one hand in the middle of his chest while she unlocked the car door with the other. She tried not to notice the effect of oaklike muscle through the cotton shirt beneath her hand.
She helped him inside and reached around him to buckle his seat belt. He smelled of alcohol and some expensive musky scent.
His belt secure, she began to back her body out of the car and found herself eye to bleary eye with him. Something seemed to light up in his gaze, as though he suddenly recognized her. There was disbelief and joy there that touched and alarmed her. Did he feel it, too? That touch of fate?
“Kelley!” he whispered, decimating the lofty notion. He thought she was someone else.
Without warning, and with remarkable dexterity for a man in his condition, he caught her to him and kissed her.
She tasted the rich biting liquor on his breath, and a desperate urgency that ran deeper than lust. She guessed it related to the woman whose name he’d whispered. The kiss suggested a hundred questions—and a need to pull away from this spell it was weaving around her. She had to get him home.
Nell eased herself from his arms and he fell back against the seat with a sigh, his eyes closing. She shut and locked his door, then walked around to the driver’s side, dragging in a deep gulp of damp early-summer air. It smelled floral and salty at once and served to renew her disappointment. In what? she wondered, impatient with herself. She’d never believed Natasha.
She knew Dean McBride was spending the week at the Cranberry Hill Condominiums. There’d been an item in the paper when he’d arrived. She hoped there’d be a guard on duty to help her get him out of the car.
There wasn’t, just what looked like a locked security door. Great. Nell patted his jacket pocket for keys. No luck. They had to be in his pants pocket.
She coaxed and tugged him out of the car.
“Kelley,” he murmured, surfacing somewhat into awareness. There was warm affection in his slurred speech. His hands went to her face as she propped him up against the car. “God, I’ve missed you.”
Nell felt profound annoyance with him and vague jealousy of Kelley, whoever she was. Carefully she touched his right pants pocket in search of keys. They weren’t there, but the action elicited a low groan from him.
“I wish you hadn’t gone without me,” he said, pulling her tightly against him with a sudden resurgence of strength. “I begged you not to.”
Nell felt the warmth of his body through her uniform, and the tenderness under the strength in his touch. She experienced a sharp temptation to wrap her arms around him and melt against him.
He wrote such wonderful books. He was so handsome. But he couldn’t stand up on his own, and she was already supporting five people
She wondered if the mysterious Kelley had left because he drank too much She took advantage of their closeness to check his other pocket. Metal jangled against her fingertips. Success!
She withdrew the keys and hooked her index finger in the ring. “Come on, Mr. McBride,” she said, wrapping her arm around his waist and pulling his arm around her. “We’re going to get you home “
“You’re home, Kelley,” he said, stumbling along beside her. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
Nell got him into the lobby. She checked the mail slots behind the guard’s station for his name. Apartment 219. She guided him onto the mirror-lined elevator and glanced away from the sight of herself, arm in arm with Dean McBride, who looked almost normal if one discounted the vagueness in his eyes. Something in the picture seemed right. She didn’t want to think about it.
On the second floor, she walked him down a greencarpeted hall until they came to 219 at the far end. Nell fitted the key in the lock and helped him inside, flipping a switch near the door.
The light revealed a living area in decorator elegance—subtle blues and grays in a deep sofa and chairs, a large spray of silk flowers, sheer curtains letting in the lights of town. On a table near the window, a laptop was set up, with the contents of an open folder scattered around it.
She felt a moment’s excitement at the knowledge that she was looking at the skeleton of his new book.
“Come with me, Kelley,” he said, pointing past a small kitchen to a large pristine bedroom. With his weight aimed in that direction, Nell could do little but keep pace with him.
He brought her to a shaky stop at the foot of the bed and had to steady his stance as he framed her face in his hands. But his eyes looked as though he knew precisely what he was doing and with whom. “It’s been two years,” he said, his expression changing from the pain that thought apparently caused him to sudden happiness and a broad smile. “Two years! And here you are, after all.” He ran his thumbs over her cheekbones and shook his head in wonder. “You’re alive. You’re…alive!”
Oh, God, she thought. The Kelley she was jealous of was dead.
Nell pulled his hands from her. “Mr. McBride, listen to me. I’m not—”
He caught her hands and kissed them. “I knew they were wrong,” he said. “I knew.”
“Mr. McBride, I’m not Kelley,” she said quickly, grasping his upper arms and giving him a shake. “Lie down and go to sleep, and in the morning you’ll remember what’s…what’s real and what isn’t.” She walked him to the side of the bed and positioned him with his back to it so that she could guide him down to the mattress. Her mind was trying to assimilate this new information. Kelley had been his wife? His lover? And she had died? Or was he just rambling?
“No,” he said, throwing off her arms and turning her toward the bed as he gripped her shoulders. “You’re Kelley! You are!”
“I’m not,” she said firmly. “Look at me.”
She saw him narrow his focus, study her face. Then pain crossed his in a visible wave. The sound he made ripped her heart open.
She saw his body buckle in slow motion. She hesitated a moment, unsure whether to move right or left, and in the second it took her to think about it, he fell against her, pushed her at an angle onto the mattress and landed on top of her.
