Wife By Contract. Raye Morgan

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      He hesitated. It had been a long time since he’d eaten breakfast. “Well, yes, but...”

      “Then I will cook for you,” she said, opening the refrigerator and staring inside. “Consider it a form of audition for the job.”

      He couldn’t hold back a grin. “This is crazy,” he said, shaking his head.

      She nodded, pulling eggs and bacon out and placing them on the counter. “I think so, too,” she said coolly. “But you seem to need to be convinced.”

      He slumped back against the counter, watching her, pushing back the erotic fantasies that threatened to break into his thoughts. He had an urge to pinch himself. Could he be dreaming? Talk about dreams come true—here was this woman, offering herself up to...

      No, he wouldn’t think about it. That would only end up getting him into big trouble—trouble he didn’t need.

      “I don’t mean to ridicule you, you know,” he told her softly. “But I just can’t believe that a woman like you has to resort to something like...like mail order... to get a man.” He grimaced. “It just doesn’t compute.”

      She spun and confronted him. “Look. You picked me out of the catalog. You must have liked something about me. You wrote me that nice letter and sent me your picture. You signed a contract with the agency.” She searched his blue eyes, looking for answers. “You sent money for my plane fare. What did you think? That this was all a game? That I would never actually show up?”

      He started shaking his head before she was finished and kept shaking it. “That was my brother Greg who did all that,” he tried to explain once again. “My name is Joe. It wasn’t me.”

      She grabbed his hand and looked up into his face, her eyes huge with determined entreaty. “Give me a chance,” she said softly. “Please. I’ll be a good wife. And my kids...” She shook her head, and for a moment he was afraid her eyes would fill with tears. “They’re good kids. You just wait. They won’t be any trouble at all. You’re going to love them.”

      Loving kids had never been one of his goals, but he had to admit he was beginning to feel a definite temptation in other directions. He liked her big brown eyes and the way her breasts filled out the pale pink silk shell she wore and the way her lower lip seemed to pout when she was annoyed with him. His mind began to wander for just a moment, mulling over what it would be like to order up a woman like this from a catalog and have her appear on the doorstep, ready to be a wife. It was a caveman dream, but he kind of liked it.

      But before he had time to indulge in it for more than a few seconds, a cry came from the living room, and suddenly a huge crash shook the house.

      “Yeah, those adorable kids,” he muttered to himself as she jerked away, spun and started for the living room. “I just can’t get enough of how cute they are.”

      But he started after her. Until Greg showed up, he guessed it was his job to act as a sort of surrogate husband here. Though before he made any commitments, maybe he ought to think over just exactly what that was going to entail.

      His gaze fell on the letter she’d left lying on the table, and he stopped, hesitating. It wasn’t nice to read other people’s mail. But what the hell. He had a situation here. Reaching out, he took hold of the letter by the corner, as though he wasn’t sure it wasn’t contagious, and carried it over to where the light from the window was the brightest. Gingerly, he unfolded it and began to read.

      It was the letter Greg had written to Chynna, but it didn’t sound like his brother at all. The handwriting was Greg’s. So was the signature at the bottom of the page. But the thoughts he’d written down sounded like someone else’s entirely. There were references to loneliness and love of the land, and those he could readily identify with his brother. But there was also talk of soul mates and walking hand in hand through life together, which made Joe want to laugh out loud.

      What did he do, copy these romantic phrases from a book? he wondered to himself as he looked them over. The closest thing to a soul mate he could think of for Gregg might be a rabid wolverine.

      He frowned, shaking his head. He and Greg had never been close. In some ways, they were the typical Cain and Abel siblings. Whenever Joe said black, Greg claimed white. When Joe wanted peace, Greg turned his radio on high screech. When Greg came home late, like as not, Joe would have locked the door. When Greg spoke, Joe tended to answer him sarcastically, and when Joe laughed, Greg found a way to turn the mood surly.

      Now that Joe had been away all these years, he sometimes regretted the way they couldn’t get along. He’d even decided, a few years back, that the rift between them was childish and should be over now that they were men, so he’d come home. But nothing had changed. If anything, Greg had grown moodier and more aloof. The planned-for reconciliation hadn’t panned out.

      And now this recluse, this mountain man was figuring to take himself a wife, was he? The situation made no sense at all. And yet it was obvious Chynna was right when she claimed to be here because Greg had...good Lord! Ordered her from a catalog?

      His brother, Greg, was preparing to take himself this lovely woman as a wife.

      “Over my dead body,” Joe muttered aloud, thinking of Chynna and her wide, hopeful gaze. “It can’t happen. I’d better get her out of here as soon as possible.”

      Unfortunately, that was going to be more difficult than it might seem. Unless there had been a radical and unexpected change, the only way out by air would be on the mail plane, and who knew what the schedule was these days. There was probably no other way out except by truck or car, and he couldn’t leave. He had to find Greg.

      He might as well resign himself to the fact that she was going to be staying overnight at least.

      But then she would have to go. It would be much too dangerous to let her stay.

      Two

      This wasn’t working out the way she’d planned it.

      Chynna picked up the small table and vase, which luckily was made of some sort of sturdy ceramic that didn’t break easily. After a nervous glance at the goldfish bowl on the hutch at the window, which luckily hadn’t been touched, she scolded her children for their behavior, her nervousness making her words a little sharper than they might usually have been. Kim looked up at her warily and popped a thumb in her mouth. Rusty’s lower lip began to quiver. Chynna noted that fact, hesitated, then sighed regretfully and drew him to her.

      Her kids were usually so good. She’d been so sure they would charm this man she’d come to marry, make him happy to have them as a family. Instead, things were slipping out of control.

      “What is it, Rusty?” she asked, her instincts telling her that something other than the overturned table was bothering him. As she looked down into his earnest face, it seemed to crumple beneath her gaze, and he threw himself against her.

      “I bit the man,” Rusty told her, sobbing quietly into her shoulder. “I bit him.”

      She frowned, holding him close and trying to understand what it was he was saying. “What man? Greg Camden?” He nodded, his face pressed into the hollow. “You bit him? You mean with teeth?”

      Rusty drew back so that she could СКАЧАТЬ