she’d slapped him, he couldn’t have been more stunned. The Gabriella he used to know would have turned cartwheels through downtown Vancouver during the afternoon rush hour, if she’d thought it would please him. “But you still need me, Gabriella,” he reminded her. “Why else are you here?”
“Only for the next two weeks. After that, I’ll be as happy to leave you to wallow in your own misery as you’ll be to see me go.”
Well, hell! Baffled, he shook his head as she stalked out of the room. This new, underfed edition of the woman he’d married didn’t believe in mincing her words—or give a flying fig about anything he might say or do as long as he didn’t blow her cover during her parents’ visit.
On the surface at least, a lot more than just her dress size had changed since she’d entered the world of international fashion. Unless it was just another act put on solely for his benefit, his wife appeared to have developed a little backbone since she’d flounced out of his life within six months of forcing her way into it!
She was shaking inside, her composure on the verge of collapse. Perhaps it was the cruel irony of the setting: the big marriage bed, so invitingly close they could have tumbled onto the mattress together in a matter of seconds if the mood had taken them, juxtaposed beside her finely tuned awareness of his unabashed animosity. Or perhaps it was as simple as his having shown up unexpectedly and taken her by surprise. In any event, she had to get away from him before she burst into tears of pure frustration.
Given that he’d acted as if she was the last person he wanted to spend time with, she didn’t expect him to follow her downstairs, but he showed up in the kitchen about five minutes later to announce, “I’ve taken your luggage up to the bedroom.”
“I could have managed it on my own, but thank you anyway,” she said, laying out the French bread, cold barbecued chicken, olives, heart of palm salad, and mango salsa she’d purchased at the gourmet deli down the street.
He ambled over to inspect the food. “That chicken looks pretty good.”
“Are you hinting you’d like some?” She pulled a chef’s knife and fork from the wooden cutlery block next to the countertop cook surface and slid the chicken from its foil-lined bag to a cutting board.
“If you’re offering, yes. Thanks.” He helped himself to an olive and cast an appraising eye over the changes she’d made in the kitchen. “You’ve been busy. This place almost looks lived in.”
Choosing her words carefully because, although she itched to ask him who owned the apron and hand lotion, she wasn’t about to give him another opportunity to tell her to mind her own business, she said, “It had a somewhat unused look, I thought.”
“Because I’d stored all the china and stuff you left behind, you mean? Not everyone appreciates fine things, Gabriella, and knowing how you value yours and would eventually want to reclaim them, it seemed best not to leave them where they might get damaged.”
She managed an offhand shrug. “But you were always very careful with them…unless, of course, you’re referring to…other people?”
“What you’re really asking is if I ever let another woman loose in here.” He removed two of the wineglasses she’d arranged in the upper cabinet, then strolled behind her to the refrigerator. She heard him rummaging among its contents, and the clink of a bottle tapping the edge of a shelf before he swung the door closed. “Well, as it happens, I did. For about a month, beginning the week after you left.”
Hearing him confirm her worst fears shocked Gabriella into betraying the kind of distress she’d sworn she’d never let him witness in her again. “You mean to say you didn’t even wait until the sheets had grown cold before you let another woman into my bed?” she squeaked, and refusing to vent her outrage where it truly belonged—on him!—she accosted the hapless chicken, wielding the knife with savage intent. “Why doesn’t that surprise me, I wonder?”
“I didn’t say that.” Calmly, he rummaged in one of the drawers for a corkscrew.
“Not in so many words, perhaps, but the implication is clear enough! And so is the evidence!” Brandishing the two-pronged fork, she gestured at the drawer. That drawer! “I saw what’s in there, so don’t bother denying it.”
He laughed. “And what is it that you saw, my dear? A body?”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” Hearing her voice threatening to soar to top C, she made a concerted effort to wrestle herself under control. “I found the apron and the hand lotion.”
“Well, as long as you didn’t also find high heels and panty hose, at least you don’t need to worry you’re married to a cross-dresser.”
“Worry? About you?” she fairly screeched, aiming such a wild blow at the chicken carcass that a wing detached itself and slid crazily across the counter. “Let me assure you, Max Logan, that I can find better things to occupy my mind!”
Suddenly, shockingly, he was touching her, coming from behind to close one hand hard around her wrist, while the other firmly removed the knife from her grasp and placed it a safe distance away. “Keep that up and you’ll be hacking your fingers off next.”
“As if you’d care!”
“As a matter of fact, I would. I don’t fancy little bits of you accidentally winding up on my plate.”
“You heartless, insensitive ape!” She spun around, the dismay she’d fought so hard to suppress fomenting into blinding rage. “This is all one huge joke to you, isn’t it? You don’t care one iota about the hurt you inflict on others with your careless words.”
“It’s the hurt you were about to inflict on yourself that concerns me.” As if he were the most domesticated husband on the face of the earth, he pushed her aside and started carving the chicken. “You’re already worried your parents might guess we’re not exactly nuts about each another, without your showing up at the airport tomorrow bandaged from stem to stern and giving them extra cause for concern.”
“Don’t exaggerate. I’m perfectly competent in a kitchen, as you very well know.”
He jerked his head at the unopened bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. “Then make yourself useful and uncork that.”
“Do it yourself,” she snapped, the thought of how quickly he’d taken up with someone else once she’d vacated the scene rankling unbearably. She had honored her wedding vows. Why couldn’t he have done the same?
“Now who’s being unnecessarily hostile?”
She detected marked amusement in his voice. Deciding it was safest to keep her hands busy with something harmless lest she forgot herself so far as to take a meat cleaver to him, she began preparing a tray with plates, cutlery and serviettes. “At least,” she said, “I haven’t given you grounds for divorce.”
“There are some who’d say a wife walking out on her husband is ample grounds for terminating a marriage.”
“Then why haven’t you taken steps to end ours?”
Finished with the chicken, he turned his attention to the wine. “Because we agreed there was no pressing need to formalize matters, especially given your parents’ age, health and religious convictions.” He angled a hooded glance her way. “Unless,
