Leigh Michaels – Maybe Married (страница 4)

Dana gritted her teeth. He’s trying to jab you into making a scene, she told herself.

Behind her, Barclay said smoothly, “I’m sure you misunderstood, Zeke.”

Dana had no trouble interpreting his tone of voice. No matter what a prospective donor said, it wasn’t to be taken as an insult—it was merely a misunderstanding.

“This is Dana Mulholland,” Barclay went on. “She’s not a waitress, she manages all the conferences and special events that the university hosts, and she’s been filling in at Baron’s Hill as well. In fact—”

Dana stepped quickly into the gap. “When we finish raising the money to build a new conference center, I’ll be in charge of it.”

“That’s not what I meant, my dear, but I know you’re right. Since it’s not quite official yet, I probably shouldn’t say anything at all. But it’s so hard to keep such happy news a secret.” Barclay’s tone was confidential, almost intimate.

Zeke’s eyes had narrowed, and only then did Dana realize that Barclay had draped an arm around her shoulders. She tried to shrug it off.

Barclay’s grip tightened. “I’ve asked Dana to marry me.”

Dana wanted to stuff her fingers in her ears on the theory that if she couldn’t hear what was going on, then it wasn’t really happening.

A member of the board of directors, standing nearby, cocked his head to one side. “Did I hear you right, Howell?” he asked. “You’re marrying Dana?”

“I wasn’t actually going to announce it just yet,” Barclay began.

He’s keeping his options open, Dana deduced. But the director didn’t pause. “Capital idea. I don’t mind telling you there was some hesitation on the part of the board when we hired you. We wondered if putting a young man, a bachelor, in that position was just asking for trouble. But marrying Dana—now that’s sensible. Like you’re taking the university to your bosom, eh? Making it your own.” He chortled at his own wit.

Dana’s face felt hot. Say something, she ordered herself. Deny it—and fast.

But that would mean contradicting Barclay in public and mortifying him in front of directors and alumni and faculty. Not that he didn’t deserve it—but if nothing else, self-preservation suggested she keep quiet for the moment and deal with the proposal later, when she could be alone with Barclay. Embarrassing the president of the university wasn’t the best way to improve her job security.

And why should she provide any more of a scene for Zeke Ferris’s entertainment, anyway? It was none of his business what she did.

“And marriage will help keep all the other women from circling around, too,” an alumnus added. “You must have been having to beat them off with a baseball bat this last year.”

Barclay’s self-deprecating smile and vague gesture of denial were so halfhearted, Dana thought, that he might as well have come straight out and said yes, the women found him so attractive that he was forced to defend himself.

The sheer arrogance of the man made Dana seethe with fury. She was drawing breath to set the record straight when she caught a glimpse of Zeke’s face. She blinked in astonishment. She hadn’t expected that he’d rush to congratulate them—but she also hadn’t expected to see pity in his eyes. Pity? How dare he pity her?

He looked at her levelly for a long moment. “Now that could present a problem,” he said finally. “Because she can’t.”

Dana’s temper snapped. Even though she had no intention of marrying Barclay Howell, the very idea of Zeke telling her she couldn’t was enough to make her spit nails. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Zeke, don’t try to lay down the law to me. There is absolutely no reason for you to have an opinion in the matter. Whether I get married or not has nothing to do with you.”

“Much as I hate to disagree with a lady—”

“You expect me to believe that piece of nonsense?”

He wasn’t looking at her, but at Barclay. “She can’t get married till her divorce is final.”

“Divorce?” Barclay said blankly.

Dana’s jaw dropped. “What? We took care of that years ago. You have absolutely no claim on me anymore, Zeke, so stop acting like a dog in the manger.”

“You’re divorced?” Barclay sounded as if he was about to faint.

“That’s the problem,” Zeke murmured. “She isn’t, actually. There was a little hangup with the paperwork, and so our divorce never quite went through. Sorry to break the news this way, darling—but you’re still married. To me.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE room seemed to whirl around Dana.

It wasn’t possible, she thought. It was six years since they’d called it quits, and the proof was buried at the back of the fire-safe box in her closet where she kept her most important papers.

Or…was it?

Suddenly—illogically—doubt swept over her. She had certainly received documents. But when that long brown envelope had finally arrived, months after they’d actually split, she’d simply glanced at the papers inside before she’d put the package away. Half of her had been relieved that the whole mess was over, but the other half was still stinging with misery and injured pride. The last thing she’d wanted to do was read every last detail, set down in harsh black and white in a chilly legal document, concerning the most painful mistake of her life.

But she’d looked at it closely enough to know what it was—a final dissolution of her brief marriage. Zeke was wrong, that was all there was to it. Where he’d gotten the idea that the divorce hadn’t gone through was beyond her, but he had to be wrong.

Or else he was flat-out lying.

She found herself looking uncertainly at him. The one thing he had never done, in their months together, was to lie to her.

People change, she thought. But did they change in such essential ways as that?

Of course, the fact that he’d never lied to her wasn’t exactly an accolade, Dana told herself. There had been times during their brief marriage when Zeke’s bluntness had not helped the situation at all. For instance, during that last argument when he’d made it clear that he was anxious not only to get away from the campus but from her…

This is no time to be reliving the past, she reminded herself. You’ve got enough to deal with right now. Like the fact that Barclay’s face had turned purple and he looked as if he couldn’t breathe.

She hit him a sharp blow between the shoulder blades, just in case he’d inhaled an olive, and he gasped, choked, and started to laugh. “For a minute there, I thought you were serious,” he said. “What a joker—I’d heard you have quite a sense of humor, Zeke, but I had no idea it was quite so…unusual.”

Zeke looked down at him, eyes half-hooded. Though he was only a couple of inches taller than Barclay, somehow he managed to make it look like much more, as though he towered over the other man.

It was a good trick, Dana thought. Under other circumstances, she might have been amused at his lord-of-the-manor pose.

“Oh, it’s a side-splitter of a story, all right,” Zeke said agreeably. “I’m glad you enjoyed my efforts to entertain you, Bark.”

If he hadn’t already had a shock, Dana suspected Barclay wouldn’t even have winced at the mangling of his name. But obviously he wasn’t fully recovered yet, for distaste flickered across his face. “Uh…yeah,” he said. “Let me get you that drink Dana promised you.”

He strode off toward the bar. The buzz of conversation picked up again, and for a moment Zeke and Dana were almost alone in the center of the room.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing,” Dana said, “but I don’t appreciate it.”

“Sorry to interrupt your life, honey, but it isn’t a game.” Zeke’s gaze shifted to a point over her shoulder.

Dana was furious. “You can’t just come in here and make an announcement like that and then ignore me when I ask for an explanation!”

“Oh, you want an explanation,” he said with a bright-eyed air of discovery. “And here I thought you’d already decided I’d made it up just to interfere in your new romance.”

“As if you’d want to,” Dana snapped.

He looked appraisingly at her. “Don’t you mean, ‘As if you could’? Come between you and the new boyfriend, I mean.”

“That, too.” It came out sounding a little lame, Dana thought, but her feelings—or lack of them—for Barclay were certainly none of Zeke’s business.

“Though I’d be doing you a favor if I did break it up. Honestly, Dana, can’t you do any better than Barclay Howell?”

“Coming from you, Zeke, that’s the funniest joke of the year.”

“Everybody thinks I’m so humorous, maybe I should take up comedy.”

“You’d fit right into the profession,” Dana said coolly.

Zeke reached past her to take the glass Barclay was holding. “Thanks, Bark.”

Dana bit her tongue. The night was young, and sooner or later she’d have a chance to get Zeke off in a corner and shake an explanation out of him. Whether he could adequately justify what he’d done was probably another question altogether, but at least she could find out what he’d been thinking when he made that bizarre announcement.

In the meantime, she decided, the best way to head off more questions was to pretend nothing important had happened. She smiled at Barclay. “You must ask Zeke to tell you about his first couple of years here. The university had quite a reputation as a party school back then, and he helped add a chapter to the story. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I see that Professor Wells has just arrived. I’m helping her to organize an event that’s coming up later this week, and I must ask her about a few details.” She tried not to give a sigh of relief as she made her escape.