Inconveniently Wed!. Jackie Braun

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СКАЧАТЬ Three

      SERENA woke late on Monday morning. According to her sorry excuse for an alarm clock she was already forty minutes behind schedule. Even so, she sat on the side of the bed and contemplated the state of her life. The day before she’d awoken in a deluxe Vegas honeymoon suite next to a virtual stranger who was also her husband. This morning she was alone on the lumpy bed of her San Diego studio, but the man in question was very much on her mind.

      How was Jonas?

      The question sneaked past her defenses and brought along a couple of friends. Was Jonas angry with her? Or was he relieved that she’d offered him an uncomplicated way out?

      Serena was relieved, or so she told herself. Maybe she was a little disappointed that she hadn’t heard from him, but only because she wanted to know his plans. Still, it made sense that he hadn’t called yet. It had been barely twenty-four hours, and even in Vegas she doubted the courthouses were open on Sundays. Surely first thing today Jonas would go and file whatever paperwork needed to be filed to get the ball rolling to dissolve their marriage.

      Maybe she should call him and make sure they were of the same mind. The office where he practiced law would be easy enough to locate through directory assistance, or she could always ask for the number for his campaign headquarters.

      As she picked up the phone, Serena imagined a well-mannered receptionist asking, And who may I say is calling, please? She set the receiver back in its cradle with a click. She didn’t have the time or, she admitted, the courage to talk to him right now. What she did have was someplace to be. And she needed to get there before her boss, the highly regarded but annoyingly high-strung Heidi Bonaventure, blew a gasket.

      Twenty minutes later, with a silver travel mug of high-octane java in hand, Serena flung open her apartment door, intending to make a mad dash for the stairs. She didn’t make it past the welcome mat. Indeed, she stopped so abruptly that despite the mug’s protective lid some of her coffee spewed through the small opening. It hit Jonas Benjamin in the center of his sedately striped tie. Counting the silk number she’d mutilated in her haste to undress him two nights ago, this made two she’d ruined.

      She grimaced. “What are you doing here?”

      “Hoping to have the conversation we should have had yesterday morning,” he replied. He didn’t look happy.

      They eyed one another from opposite sides of the welcome mat. Neither one of them moved.

      Serena cleared her throat and broke the silence. “You came all the way to San Diego to talk about our…our…”

      “Marriage,” he supplied.

      Annulment was the word she’d been thinking.

      “About yesterday—sorry for taking off like that, but I…I…” In lieu of an excuse Serena motioned with her hand.

      Unfortunately it was the one holding the travel mug. More java splattered out. Jonas jumped back in the nick of time, and the welcome mat was the only casualty. She pushed at one of the brown marks with the toe of her faux snakeskin flat. It was easier to concentrate on the stain than the man whose head had rested on the pillow next to hers twenty-four hours earlier.

      “Can I come in?” Jonas asked.

      “I’m just on my way out. To work.”

      “Can you be late?”

      “Actually, I already am.”

      “Can you be later?” Jonas tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. The pose took away some of the formalness the pricy suit added to his persona. “This really can’t wait, Serena.”

      “I know.” She stepped back to allow him inside and motioned toward the couch. This time she remembered to use the hand that wasn’t holding her coffee. “Make yourself at home. It will just take me a moment to call my boss.”

      While he took a seat on the couch, Serena stationed herself in the kitchen and pulled out her cellphone. Her apartment measured just over four hundred square feet. It was basically one room, with a bathroom tucked between the kitchen and bedroom areas. This created some separation, as well as a degree of privacy, for her boudoir from the door. But from Jonas’s vantage point he could see everything—including the pile of dirty clothes that was heaped next to the still-down bed with its rumpled sheets and her discarded cotton nightie.

      She hadn’t worn a nightie, cotton or otherwise, in Vegas. Even if she’d had one with her in the honeymoon suite, what would have been the point? None of their clothes had remained on for long. They’d been too hungry, too eager, too desperate to touch flesh.

      “Oh, God,” she moaned.

      “No. It’s Heidi Bonaventure.” A woman’s crisp voice shot through the phone line like a bullet.

      “Mrs. Bonaventure, hi. It’s Serena.”

      “I hope you’re not calling to say you’re ill.”

      Her boss was a whiz when it came to crafting lifelike fruit from marzipan, and her piping work was unrivaled, but no one would accuse Heidi Bonaventure of being warm and fuzzy.

      “No. I’ll be there. Just not for another hour.” Serena glanced over at Jonas, who sat on the edge of her red leather sofa. One wingtip tapped impatiently on the floor, and he hadn’t so much as loosened his stained tie. “Or so.”

      Heidi’s voice no longer sounded like a bullet. It boomed with the force of a bomb as she reminded Serena, “You have an appointment with a client at eleven o’clock. Katherine Bloomwell requested you specifically to create her daughter’s sweet-sixteen cake.”

      “I won’t miss the appointment,” Serena promised. “But something important has come up.”

      “What could be more important than your job?”

      She glanced over at Jonas again. This time their gazes met and, just as she had in Las Vegas, she felt that wild jolt.

      Heidi’s voice snapped her back to the matter at hand. “Given your serious lack of experience and formal training, I took a huge chance when I hired you.”

      Actually, she’d hired Serena as a glorified gopher slash receptionist. She’d only given Serena her current responsibilities out of necessity nine months ago, when her assistant had quit without notice, leaving Heidi in the lurch. Serena had shown promise and an eagerness to learn, staying late without pay if it meant acquiring new skills. Indeed, she was still paid the same lowly amount she’d made coming in. She wisely chose not to point any of this out as her boss’s tirade continued.

      “Since then I’ve offered you the sort of opportunities that many a culinary arts student would kill for. Don’t make me regret it.”

      “I won’t.”

      “See that you don’t.”

      “I’ll be there as soon as I can, and I promise I’ll arrive before the client does.”

      Heidi snorted. “See that you do. In the meantime, I suggest you rethink your priorities.”

      “Everything okay?” Jonas called from the couch as СКАЧАТЬ