Karen Smith – Fortune's Secret Husband (страница 3)
By late afternoon, while Lucie sat in the car on her way back to her apartment, she was quite discouraged. None of the spaces had seemed quite right. She was becoming more and more sure that she might also have to help find satellite locations for the actual kids’ programs themselves—summer lunches, music, art, sports. Building a community center might be a possibility, unless the foundation could find already established and deserving programs to fund.
Barry pulled up in front of her apartment building. She was tired and all she wanted to do was soak in her tub. After she climbed from the car, Irv came to meet her at the curb. That was unusual, since the doors had an electric sensor.
He said quickly, “Just in case you wanted to get back in your car and go in the other direction, I wanted to warn you, the man who was here this morning is waiting at my desk.”
Lucie stood at the curb and peered through the glass doors into the lobby. Her heart began to beat in triple time. The man at Irv’s desk was Chase Parker. She couldn’t tell exactly how much he’d changed from when he was twenty-one. After all, he’d be thirty-one now. But she could tell he was still as tall and straight-shouldered. The Western-cut jacket he wore fit him impeccably, his black jeans and boots just as much so.
He turned toward her now, and that tilt of his Stetson told her some of the young man still remained.
“It’s fine, Irv. Apparently he has some business with me, and I have to see what that is.”
She squared her shoulders, forgot her fatigue and started forward to meet her past head-on.
Lucie walked through the glass doors and approached Chase, thinking his dark hair was still the color of the finest imported chocolate. His dark brown eyes seemed to take in everything about her all at once. Even in that wonderfully cut jacket, she could tell he was more muscular than he’d been at twenty-one but not too bulked up. He was long and lean and still looked like everything good about Texas.
Before Lucie took another step toward the unknown, she turned to Irv who’d come in behind her. “Not a word of this meeting to anyone, not anyone.” After all, Irv knew Chase’s name from the business card. If the press associated their names, if reporters started digging, a new scandal could erupt.
“Not a word, Lady Lucie. You know you can count on me.”
“Thank you, Irv. You don’t know how much I appreciate that. Was that reporter around here at all today?”
“I didn’t see him...or the news van.”
She nodded and stepped up to Chase. She felt as if all her composure had slipped away, though she knew that was crazy. After all, she’d practiced that her entire life.
With that stiff upper lip Brits were accused of having, she said simply, “Chase?”
“You’ve grown up.” His gaze traveled over her suit, seemed to linger on her tiny waist, then idled on her long, straight brown hair. She wondered if he could see all the questions in her hazel eyes. She wondered if he had any idea of what seeing him again did to her—increased her heart rate and brought back vivid pictures of the two of them together, but, most of all, squeezed her heart until it hurt.
He nodded to the corner beside the elevators that was away from the doors, Irv’s counter and everyone else for the time being. She walked with him and stood beside a potted palm.
Before she could ask a question, he inquired, “Do you know how hard it is to track you down, even though you and your family and your stories are spread across the tabloids?”
Lucie was flummoxed. So he’d kept up with articles in the tabloids as if they were true.
He went on. “I thought you were in London. Then I found out you were in Horseback Hollow. After consulting a PI, I learned you were here in Austin, where my father’s company is located. If you only knew how much time I wasted—”
After all these years, he was acting as if seeing her was an emergency. “My life is full of people and activities, as I imagine yours is.”
“I don’t globe-trot. I was beginning to have visions of my traveling to some developing country to see you.”
“Would that have been so bad?” she asked, sensing his agitation but still not understanding any of it.
He took off his Stetson, ran his hand through his thick hair and shook his head. “None of that came out right. I read the stories about your work with orphans and refugees. I know you and your mother are selfless in your cause. But I had to find you.”
“Why such urgency?”
“Because...” he started. He leaned close and lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’re still married.”
Chase felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Lucie Fortune Chesterfield was even more beautiful now than she’d been at seventeen. That glossy, dark-brown hair and those expressive hazel eyes... He remembered the dimple that only appeared when she smiled, but she wasn’t smiling now. She looked worried and upset and very pale.
She confirmed some of his conclusion when she warned him, “Come up to my apartment so no one overhears us or sees us.”
She was obviously worried about information getting into the wrong hands. He knew the paparazzi hounded her family. Put an earl in your background, or a sir, as in Sir Simon Chesterfield, her father, and the press thought the whole world wanted to read about you. Maybe they did.
Lucie pressed the elevator button with an impatient finger as she snuck a glance at him. He wanted to smile at her, but he had a feeling this was no smiling matter.
“We’ll get it worked out,” he said in a low voice.
Chase had been twenty-one and a group leader when he and Lucie had secretly married in Scotland. There, at seventeen, Lucie hadn’t needed permission. However, another member of her tour group had caught them disrobed in Chase’s hostel room and reported them. Chase’s father had swooped in with a lawyer and confidentiality agreements with promises of an annulment. Everyone had been sworn to secrecy.
When the elevator doors swished open, Lucie didn’t respond. Maybe she was so upset because of her sister’s recent scandal. He’d read the tabloids about Amelia’s status as a run-away fiancée and that she’d become pregnant from a cowboy lover. That had probably made Lucie even more skittish of public opinion. The tabloids ran with stories that weren’t even true. He knew that. Though he had followed Lucie’s engagement a few years ago with interest, and couldn’t help being irrationally relieved when it had come to naught.
When Chase’s elbow brushed hers, Lucie stepped away. He found himself taking a step closer. He was stabbed by the same desire for her now that he’d felt at twenty-one. Yet he was sure she must hate or resent him because of the way they’d been broken up...because of the way his father had handled it. After all, she’d never answered his letters.
When they stepped off the elevator, Lucie motioned to the left. Chase noted there were two apartments on the floor. “I’m surprised you don’t have a penthouse. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about nosy neighbors.”
“I don’t have to worry about nosy neighbors.” She took her keys from her purse and unlocked her apartment door. “The other apartment is rented by a businessman who travels a lot. He’s in Hong Kong right now for the month while I’m here. So I basically have the floor alone. Win-win all around.”
She’d made her voice light and airy, but he had a feeling nothing was light and airy. There was a note of anxiety beneath her words.
After she unlocked the door and he stepped inside the apartment’s foyer, he gave a quick glance around. “This doesn’t look like you,” he said automatically.
She gave him an odd look. “How do you know? You’ve had nothing to do with me for ten years.”
That sounded like an accusation, but he didn’t stop to wonder about it. The apartment was decorated in chrome and glass, black and white. There was a row of flowered throw pillows on the sofa and he wondered if Lucie had added those.
“You weren’t chrome and glass at seventeen, and I doubt very much if you are now.”
“I’m only going to be here a month, Chase. The sublet was furnished. Now tell me, why are we still married?” She went over to the sofa and sank down on it, motioning for him to do the same.
He rounded the long, glass-topped coffee table and lowered himself beside her, careful not to let any parts of their bodies touch. He didn’t know why, but it just seemed to be the wise thing. Discarding that sentimental thought, he gazed into her eyes and wisdom seemed to fly out the window. This was Lucie, the girl who had stolen his heart. But then he snapped his thinking back to what it should be. She was a public figure now and here only for a month.
He explained quickly, “I applied for a business loan separate from my father’s company. It has nothing to do with him.”
He saw the remembrance pass through her eyes that he’d once told her he’d never work for his father and never be anything like him. Circumstances had changed that, but now they were going to change again.
“After I filled out all the paperwork at the bank,” he went on, “the loan officer called me to tell me I needed my wife’s signature before they could put the payment through. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My parents said our marriage was annulled. But then I did research of my own and discovered it is still on the books. I wanted to tell you in person in case the information leaked out and somehow made the tabloids. I know how much your family has been hounded by the media.”