Vega?”
It’d been a while since he’d been called that. “Not anymore. Who is this?” But he knew the answer before the other man answered.
“Chad Wright.”
“Yeah?” Sam’s voice was bland.
The line hummed for a moment. Then Chad cleared his throat. “Well, I was looking for my fiancée.”
Fiancée.
Well, well, well.
Sam shoved his hand in his pocket to keep from tearing the phone out of the wall and slid his gaze to Delaney. “Who would that be,” he asked genially, knowing full well that it was the woman standing in the doorway of his bedroom, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Delaney, of course.” Chad sounded impatient. “Look, I know it’s late. But she never checked into the hotel in San Diego, and I haven’t been able to reach her on her cell phone. She said she planned to speak with you after she’d taken care of some business there, and I’m just trying to locate her. I’ve already checked with Castillo House, and she left there hours ago. Do you know if she was delayed in Turnabout?”
On Turnabout. It’s an island. Idiot. But not such an idiot that his concern kept him from calling Sam—something the other man had to have hated doing. “Cell phones don’t work out here.”
“Yes, I figured that out. So? Have you seen her?”
He held the phone in Delaney’s direction. “Your fiancé’s on the phone for you.”
Her ivory skin went white. She pushed back her hair from her face. “Chad?”
“You engaged to more than one guy?”
She didn’t answer that. The fine line of her jaw tightened. She set her case down on the dresser by the door before quickly moving forward to snatch the phone. She turned her back on him, but she couldn’t go far. It was a corded phone, as good as a leash.
Her voice was low, but Sam could still hear her as she greeted Chad Wright. Chadly Do-Wright.
And his wife was engaged to him.
He moved to the foot of the bed and sat down. He’d be damned if he’d leave, but listening to the muted one-sided conversation took him perilously close to the end of his rope.
The divorce proceedings she’d once started had long ago been dismissed, incomplete. She could well have filed again. Technically, he had abandoned her. Moved out of their apartment. Her apartment, to be precise. Hell, he’d moved out of the state, to the opposite side of the country. Wasn’t surprising that Chad had made a move on her.
Was surprising that Delaney had accepted. She’d always claimed there was nothing romantic between them.
When she hung up, he still didn’t move. He looked at the palms of his hands, entertaining the vision of slamming them into Do-Wright’s perfectly tanned blondness. “So that’s what this is about. Return one ring. Exchange it for another.” He looked up at her, keeping his hands from fisting through sheer willpower. “Are you actually going to wear it this time?”
Her eyes shimmered. “Sam—”
“Come on, honey. Don’t be tongue-tied now.”
“Don’t call me honey.”
“I suppose the endearment’s reserved for the good Dr. Wright now.”
“I’m not discussing Chad with you.”
“Why not? I think a husband should be able to discuss his wife’s lover, don’t you?”
Whitecaps frothed, then iced over. She looked incensed. “Chad is not my lover. And even if he were, it’d be no business of yours, because I am not your wife anymore!” Her voice rose.
Maybe in a few years he’d look back and find some humor in this. Like when he was dead in the ground about a hundred years.
He pushed to his feet and closed his hands over her shoulders, feeling her jump, before backing her to the doorway of his bedroom until she stood in the hall. He took his hands away from her and handed her the briefcase.
His wife.
The only woman he’d ever loved, and the only woman whose lack of trust in him had nearly killed him.
“Yes,” he said almost gently. “You are.”
Then he closed the door in her face.
Chapter 4
Delaney stared at the door for only a moment before she dumped her briefcase on the floor and reached for the handle.
But something inside her paused.
Could it be?
Her fingers curled against her palm.
No. Couldn’t be, she assured herself firmly and reached for the handle and turned it. She pushed the door inward, but couldn’t make herself take a step into the bedroom to save her soul.
Sam was sitting again on the foot of the bed. Hunched forward, muscles clearly defined under a satin layer of bronze skin. His arms were braced on his thighs, hands loose, relaxed, between. She met his unreadable dark eyes.
“I don’t believe you,” she said baldly. As if the words could make it so.
He merely quirked an eyebrow. “There’s a surprise.”
“What do you hope to gain by this pretense? It’s so easily disproved.”
“Then go ahead and do that, Delaney. Disprove it. You’ll need to before you pledge your troth to Do-Wright.”
“Leave Chad out of this.”
“Why? Seems he’s officially part of the threesome now.” His voice was mocking. “Like it or not, Delaney, you are—” his jaw tightened “—my wife.”
“I’ve got the papers that say otherwise!”
“Really. Well, I’ve got the papers that say the action was dismissed because of incomplete paperwork.”
“I had an attorney, Sam. He wouldn’t have made a mistake like that.”
He rose and it was like watching something dangerous uncoil. “Hope you don’t depend on him too often, then.” He slid open a drawer in his bureau and pulled out a thick manila envelope. “Read it and weep, darlin’.” He held it out to her.
She didn’t believe him. He was playing some sort of game for reasons known only to him.
Yet she found herself walking into his bedroom—not a smart place to be in the best of circumstances—to take the envelope.
“Takes only one paper to get married, but takes a stack two inches thick to get unmarried.”
She
