The Millionaire's Cinderella Wife. Lilian Darcy

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СКАЧАТЬ The word startled him. “Whose principles?”

      “I’m not the one who walked out of our marriage. I’m not the one who wanted it to end. You did, Ty. So the divorce should have been up to you.”

      “I never walked out of our marriage! I walked out of Landerville.”

      “That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

      “No, it isn’t! I was pretty clear on that at the time, I thought. There was no future for me there. Not one that could possibly have made me happy. I needed this.” He swept his arm around, encompassing his world.

      “What’s ‘this’?” She hooked her fingers around the word to make the quotation marks.

      “The ocean, the boats, a chance to make a future for myself in a place where I wasn’t just that more-or-less-orphaned Garrett boy who might get as far as managing the hardware store some day, if the love-struck mayor’s daughter from the right side of the tracks could keep him honest. But you still don’t get any of that, do you?”

      “No, I don’t. Dad never looked at you that way.”

      “The rest of Landerville did.”

      “You weren’t just asking me to turn my back on a few narrow-minded attitudes. You were asking me to—” She stopped. Her cheeks were pink and angry and her dark eyes flashed. “A family is not something you can just walk away from, Ty. My family was not something I could just walk away from.”

      He sat up straighter. “I don’t consider—I’ve never considered—that I was asking you to do that.”

      “Just listen to us!”

      Sierra did the lemon thing with her mouth again and he couldn’t find an answer. Yeah, listen to them! Back to square one. Back eight years to exactly what had slammed them apart in the first place.

      She was so right. The divorce was overdue.

      She sat there looking at him over the rim of her cappuccino cup and he took a moment to assess the changes in her. She’d been stunningly beautiful, to his eyes, when they’d gotten married twelve years ago. That graceful figure, as lean as a catwalk model’s. That creamy skin. That wide, expressive mouth. That dark, straight, silky hair, flowing like a satin waterfall down her back. Those big, slightly exotic brown eyes—a throw-back to some distant Cherokee heritage on her mother’s side.

      And she was still beautiful. The hair was the same, only kept a little shorter and folded into an efficient pleat high on the back of her head, this morning. The figure was a touch more womanly beneath its conservative olive and beige top and skirt, but if there was a man in this world who didn’t like a few feminine curves in the right places, then that man wasn’t him.

      Her eyes and her mouth and her skin?

      Yeah, beautiful.

      Stunning.

      Except…

      She looked tired, at certain moments. Stressed. Angry? Unhappy?

      And her eyes and mouth and skin were the places where the problems showed, whatever they were. The sucking on a lemon thing. A tightness to her skin which sketched out to the world where her wrinkles would some day appear. A way of narrowing those dark eyes so that the fire deep inside them almost looked as if it had gone out.

      If the limbo of their non-marriage gave an explanation for any of this, all the more reason to get it dealt with so that both of them could get on with their lives.

      Ty gulped some coffee and took a bite of the cherry and cream cheese Danish, wondering how best to get down to the nitty gritty of lawyers and such.

      They had no kids, no joint property acquired during their four years together. And Sierra had never been the grasping type. On the contrary she was far too generous for her own good at times. She would never stake any kind of a claim on the wealth he’d acquired since their split, and even if she did no judge would award it to her.

      He leaned closer to her across the table. “There’s no reason why this can’t be simple and amicable and quickly dealt with, right? Since it’s what we both want?”

      “No reason at all,” she agreed.

      “Then, yes, let’s get it taken care of, get the ball rolling, before you head back.”

      “I’d appreciate that,” she said. “No fuss.”

      “No going over old ground.”

      “No. Because we’ve—”

      “Ty?” said a musical female voice that he recognized, and Sierra didn’t get a chance to finish.

      Ty looked away from her tight face to find A-list journalist Lucy Little smiling at him, much more casually dressed than Sierra in clam-diggers and a tight little black tank. She seemed as relaxed and at home as if she lived here, even though Ty had had no idea she’d planned to come back to Stoneport once she’d completed the magazine story that was causing all the current trouble.

      He wasn’t thrilled to see her, especially not at this moment. Sierra still looked so tight and emotional on the other side of the table, and his own feelings were attacking his sense of certainty like a guerilla-style ambush.

      Before he could react to Lucy’ greeting, she leaned down, cupped her hand around his jaw and kissed him European style, once on each cheek. The second kiss caught the corner of his mouth and trailed away slowly enough to signal unmistakable interest, and he remembered a couple of cryptic comments she’d made about professional boundaries and personal needs during the three days she’d spent here last month.

      Okay…

      He couldn’t remember the exact wording, but the intent was much clearer, now. Their professional interaction was done with. Roll in the personal needs. Apparently all her questions about the state of his private life while she was researching the article hadn’t simply related to the banner Bachelor of the Year headline he’d disliked so much.

      “Lucy,” he said, hiding what he felt behind the customary warmth he gave to clients. After all, the article had brought a serious surge in his cash flow. And it had brought Sierra, with her necessary wake-up call. “It’s great to see you back in town.”

      “It’s great to be here. You knew I would be, didn’t you?” She looked at him through flirty lashes.

      She pulled a chair across from the adjoining table and sat down, angling herself so that her veiled curiosity about Sierra wafted across one of her bare shoulders for a moment, disguised as a smile, then wafted away again. Sierra gave an uncertain smile in return, and took refuge in her muffin.

      “I could have called, I know,” Lucy said, her smile disarming and self-mocking now. “But I had to come find out in person whether you’re pleased about the reaction to the article. We’ve had a ton of feedback at our end, let me tell you!” She gave a gurgly little laugh. “An astonishing number of e-mails and calls from women wanting your contact details. My editor is threatening me with a follow-up story.”

      “Threatening you?”

      She pouted her mouth. “I’m СКАЧАТЬ