don’t know.” Hayley made another beeline for the dresser. This time she returned with a stack of workout clothes and leotards. She placed them neatly in one corner of the suitcase, then pivoted back for another handful. “Your sister Marge and I get along well. Perhaps she’ll let Christine and me stay there temporarily and pay rent. Her kids are off at college and she has extra space.”
Being humiliated in the neighborhood, by having Hayley walk out on him, was one thing. Having his sister not only in on the mess he’d made, but cleaning up after him, was quite another. “You can’t do that,” he said. By God, if she was going to get fifty percent of the profits from the house out of this, then he was going to get something out of it, too. He wanted their budding friendship back.
“After what you did to me tonight, I have no choice.”
“I told you. I’ll straighten it out.”
She sent him an exasperated look. “I only wish it were that simple, Dillon, but you know as well as I that once a woman is considered involved with a man that’s a hard assumption to shake off, particularly in a conservative neighborhood like this. I have Christine to consider. I want to reside in Connecticut permanently. I don’t want this assumption about us coming back to haunt me years from now. I have an example to set for Christine.”
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I only know I’m upset by this. If I’m upset by gossip, I expect she will be, too.”
“Then I’ll marry you,” he repeated sternly.
Hayley scowled at him. “I told you before I didn’t think that was funny.”
Dillon slid his hands into his back pockets. He just didn’t want her to leave. “Who’s joking?” Dillon asked calmly.
“Dillon—”
“We could make it work, Hayley. Just until you finish the house and we sell it, you understand. Then we’ll get an annulment. In the meantime, we could go on as we have been.” It made perfect sense.
“You make it sound so simple,” she said, sighing.
Dillon shrugged and said, “It would be, as long as no one else but us knew it was just a business arrangement.”
Her eyes widened. “You want everyone to think it’s a real marriage?”
“I think that would be best, yes.”
Hayley swallowed and backed away from him uncomfortably. “I don’t like subterfuge, Dillon.”
He watched her sit down on the edge of the bed, beside her open suitcase. As she began to relax, so did he. “Neither do I but sometimes it’s the only way, and in this case I know I’m right. If Marge knew, she’d try to talk me out of it. She’d say it was a crazy thing to do.”
Hayley was back on her feet again in a flash, moving restlessly about the room. “She might be right.”
He watched the color climb her cheeks again and couldn’t help but grin, she was so edgy and unnerved. “Not adult enough to handle it?” he taunted lightly.
She shot him a sharp look, meant to debilitate, but all it did was intrigue him. What was she so wary of?
“What’s the matter, Hayley?” he continued, teasing her gently, yet wanting, needing, to see her reaction all the same. “Don’t you think you could live under the same roof with me and not sleep with me?”
Hayley crossed her arms at her waist. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“See?” Dillon said, as even more fire came into her eyes, making her look simultaneously sexy and unapproachable as hell. “We’re acting like an old married couple already. Sniping. Trading barbs.” He grinned at her unrepentantly.
Slowly, her sense of humor returned. She smiled back at him, just as audaciously. “This is crazy,” she repeated, in a low voice that let him know she was almost sold on the idea.
“It’ll work,” Dillon promised.
Without warning, Hayley’s brow furrowed. “What’ll we do?”
“About what?”
Hayley gulped again. “About sex.”
Now they were talking, Dillon thought, his mind going back to that sexy lingerie and the unbearably sexy way he imagined she would look in it. “Hey, if you want to write that in, too…” he offered magnanimously.
“No,” Hayley said swiftly, her color heightening even more.
“Too bad. I was looking forward to—”
She whirled toward him. “These are not feudal times, Dillon Gallagher. You may not exercise that right, even if we do make it legal. Understood?”
“Understood,” he repeated obediently. It wouldn’t keep him from making love to her, though, if and when the time and the mood were ever just right. And he had a whole year to try and see that they were.
“And if either one of us wants to be with someone else,” Hayley continued in a strangled voice as she avoided his laser-bright gaze, “we can do so, as long as we’re discreet.”
Dillon didn’t like the idea of Hayley with anyone else, but he also knew he had no right to protest. “Agreed.” he said, assuring himself silently that Hayley was just talking big to save face. He believed the truth was that she was just as attracted to him as he was to her, even if she hadn’t allowed herself to act on that attraction yet.
“So when do you want to do this thing?” she asked.
Dillon tried not to look too happy. “You’re saying yes?”
Hayley looked at him, her expression unaccountably grim. She uttered a lengthy sigh. “What other choice do I have?”
“I finally remembered who she is, Dillon,” Marge said, early the following Thursday afternoon. She held a copy of the Darien News in her hands. The marriage licenses section was circled in red. “I remembered why the name Alexander was so familiar to me. Hayley’s husband Hank was one of the NCN reporters killed while covering Desert Storm, wasn’t he? He was one of your reporters.”
Dillon shut the door connecting his private office to the newsroom. In the silence that fell, he could hear his heart thudding heavily in his chest. “Have you said anything about this to anyone?” he demanded.
Marge blinked. “I told Chuck—”
“Besides your husband,” Dillon qualified irritably.
“No.” Marge glared at him.
He glared back. “Well don’t. Okay?”
Marge’s dark blue eyes narrowed. “Hayley doesn’t know, does she?” Marge guessed. “You never told her you were the one responsible for her husband’s death.”
