A Family Circle 1 - A Very Convenient Marriage Read online

  "We'll take the steak and eggs," Sam told her after another glance at Keefe, who shrugged again. "Eggs over easy. Steaks rare."

  "Comin' right up, sugar."

  After she'd left, Sam looked at his brother. "You look like hell."

  "Good to see you again, too." Keefe lifted his coffee cup and took a deep swallow. "I've been putting in a lot of hours."

  "Including working all night? You look like you haven't slept in a week. I thought ranchers went to bed at sundown. Are you out branding cattle at midnight?"

  "Don't pull the big-brother act on me." Keefe's smile was tight around the edges. "The only ranchers who go to bed with the sun are the ones who ranch for a hobby. I'm trying to make a living from the Flying Ace, remember?"

  "I remember. How's it going?"

  "I'm breaking even this year, which is about as much as I'd hoped. I wouldn't be doing that much if Jace Reno hadn't busted his butt for me this past year."

  "He's a good friend."

  "And a hell of a rancher. He should have a place of his own." Keefe swallowed the last of his coffee and set the cup on the edge of the table for the waitress to refill. "If I want a lecture on my life-style, I'll go see Mom.''

  "Sorry." Sam forced back the questions he wanted to ask. "Old habits are hard to break."

  "Even bad ones." Keefe grinned and some of the tension seemed to leave his eyes. "You always did act like the nineteen months between us were nineteen years, especially after Dad died."

  "I was the oldest. Someone had to keep the rest of you in line."

  "You're lucky Gage and Cole and I didn't get together and beat some sense into you."

  "I wasn't that bad," Sam protested.

  "Worse." Keefe pulled a cigarette pack out of his pocket and tapped it until the end of one came loose. As he lit it, he caught Sam's frown and grinned tiredly. "like I said, even bad habits are hard to break."

  "I thought you quit when you and Dana got married."

  The humor instantly disappeared from Keefe's eyes and the lines around his mouth deepened, making Sam regret mentioning Keefe's ex-wife. "Yeah. Well, you may recall that we haven't been married for a while now so if I want to rot my lungs, there's no one around to nag me. Unless I have breakfast with my big brother, of course."

  "Sorry." Sam shook his head. "I didn't drive all the way up here to harass you."

  "Could have fooled me." But there was no anger in Keefe's response. "Why did you ask me to meet you? Thanksgiving is only a couple of weeks away. I'd be seeing youthen."

  Sam shifted uncomfortably in the vinyl booth. He'd driven three hours from L.A., leaving before dawn. And Keefe had driven down from his ranch in the Sierra Nevadas. There was so much to say, but now that he was here, he didn't know where to start.

  The waitress's arrival with their food gave Sam a moment more to think. When she was gone, he watched Keefe stub out his half-smoked cigarette.

  "Have you talked to Mom?" Sam asked finally.

  Keefe picked up his knife and fork before glancing across the table at his older brother, his dark eyes shrewd.

  "I know you're married, if that's what you're pussyfooting around mentioning."

  "A couple of weeks ago." Sam cut a piece off his steak and stared at it.

  "Mom says nobody's met her." Keefe chewed and swallowed. "I don't think she was real thrilled about the way you did things—not having any of the family at the wedding and all."

  "We were in a hurry," Sam muttered as he reached for his coffee cup.

  "She pregnant?"

  Sam choked on the coffee.

  Keefe waited calmly until he'd stopped coughing. "Is that a yes or a no?"

  "No!" Sam gasped the word out, reaching for a glass of water. "God, no."

  Keefe's brows rose at Sam's adamant response. "That's the usual reason people get married in a hurry."

  "Well, it wasn't our reason," Sam said shortly. He sliced another piece off his steak and chewed it without tasting.

  "Okay." Keefe reached for his coffee. "You plan on telling me what the reason was?"

  "How's Mary?"

  Keefe looked surprised by the abrupt change of topic, but he went along with it.

  "About the same, as far as I know. I haven't talked to Cole in a while, but I asked Mom and she said there was no change. She still needs surgery and Cole still doesn't have the money for it. I've got my place listed, but there aren't many people buying ranches these days." His expression was grim. "I guess it's a good thing they're not going to be doing the surgery right away. Gives us a Utile time to come up with the money."

  "Take it off the market."

  "I might as well, for all the good it's doing to have it listed."

  "You don't need to sell it."

  Sam gave up the pretense of eating and looked across the table at his brother. He'd made the long drive to see Keefe because he wanted to tell him the truth. He might be able to convince everyone else that his marriage to Nikki was a real one, but he knew Keefe would never believe it. Of his three brothers, he was closest to Keefe. They'd fought the most when they were young, but they'd still ended up friends.

  "I don't have to sell the ranch?" Keefe said slowly. "If you're saying that, then it must mean you've found a way to come up with the money Cole needs." Sam could see the wheels turning in Keefe's head, adding things up and coming to the obvious conclusion. "Does this have something to do with you getting married in such a hurry?"

  "It has everything to do with it." Sam's grin was crooked. "I have just made what is called a marriage of convenience, Keefe. And considering the circumstances, it's a very convenient marriage. I'll have the money for Mary's surgery by Thanksgiving."

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Keefe pushed aside his half-eaten meal and gave all his attention to his brother. "You want to rim that by me again?"

  "You heard me the first time."

  "I heard you, but I don't believe what I heard. You married some woman to get the money for the surgery?"

  "That's right."

  There was another long silence and then: "Are you nuts?"

  "Just desperate. It was Max's idea."

  "Max knows about this?" Keefe asked, surprised.

  "He set it up. Nikki is a friend of his."

  "Nikki? Is that your wife?"

  "Yeah." Sam frowned over the description. The word wife didn't sound right. Sara was his wife, the only wife he'd had, the only one he'd wanted.

  "Maybe you'd better explain this whole thing to me from the beginning," Keefe said. He reached for his cigarettes as if they were a lifeline.

  Sam was surprised at how little time it took to tell the whole story. Keefe's cigarette was burned only halfway down when he finished talking. It seemed as if something that had such a cataclysmic effect on two lives should take more than a couple of minutes to describe.

  "So she gets her inheritance and you get the money for Mary's surgery," Keefe summed up when Sam was done. "And all you've got to do is stay married for the next year."

  "There's only eleven and a half months left now," Sam corrected him.

  Keefe's brows rose and one corner of his mouth twisted in humor. "You sound like a prisoner marking off the days to parole on the cell wall."

  "That's about how I feel."

  "Is she that bad?"

  Sam started to say yes but caught himself and shook his head instead. "It's not Nikki. We barely see each other. Which is just as well, because we get along about as well as oil and water."

  "She hard to get along with?"

  "Yes." Sam's mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile and he shrugged. "But I probably haven't been much better. On the way home from the wedding, I threatened to dump her out on the freeway and make her walk the rest of the way. She damn near did it, too."

  Keefe's eyes narrowed speculatively at the reluctant admiration in his brother's tone. He wondered if Sam was even aware of it.

  "She's stubborn as hell," Sam was saying.

  "And you'
re a picture of sweet reason." Keefe's tone was dry as dust.

  "That's me." Sam grinned. "Not a stubborn bone in my body."

  "Tell that to someone who didn't grow up with you." Keefe shook his head as he stubbed out his cigarette. "I can't believe you actually did this—got married like this, I mean."

  "You'd have done the same thing."

  "Probably." Keefe reached for his cigarettes, caught Sam's eye and dropped them back in his pocket without taking one. "You're as bad as Mom," he complained without heat. "What does this new wife of yours look like?"

  There was that word again. Wife. It was technically correct but it made him uneasy to hear it said out loud. He shook off his uneasiness and considered the best way to answer Keefe's question. What did Nikki look like?

  An image of her, more vivid than he would have liked, sprang to mind. She was exquisite, like a fine china figurine or a painting by one of the masters. She was golden hair and porcelain pale skin and eyes the color of jade. She made him think of cold winter nights and soft rugs in front of a fireplace. Or hot summer days and cool green grass and the feel of her skin beneath his hands.'

  "You do know what she looks like, don't you?" Keefe's quizzical question made Sam realize that he'd been staring into space as if struck dumb by the question about Nikki's looks.

  "Of course I do." He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug and reached for his coffee. "She's about five feet four inches, weight maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. Blond hair, green eyes."

  "You sound like you're giving a police report," Keefe said, disgusted by the lack of information. "That description fits just about anyone from Michelle Pfeiffer to Attila the Hun. Details, bro. Details."

  "I think Michelle Pfeiffer is taller," Sam muttered.

  "So are half the women in the country. What does Mickie look like?"

  "Nikki. Her name is Nikki. And she's.. .attractive." The word hardly did her justice, but if he tried to describe her to Keefe, Keefe was going to end up with the idea that he was attracted to her, and he wasn't. At least, no more than any living, breathing male would be. It was impossible not to find her attractive.

  "Attractive. That tells me a lot. It's a good thing you're a cop and not a writer. I can see your description of the characters now—the woman pointing the gun at Fosdick was...attractive."

  "I never claimed to be Hemingway," Sam pointed out sourly.

  "Good thing, too." Keefe lit another cigarette, ignoring Sam's pointed frown this time. "You going to tell the family the truth about this marriage?"

  "No." Sam shook his head. "You're the only one I'm telling. It's going to be hard enough to get Cole to take the money without him knowing how I got hold of it. Gage spends most of his time out of the country. As long as he knows Mary's okay, he won't question the whys and wherefores. And I don't see any point in worrying Mom."

  "You think you and this Nikki can pull off the happy couple act well enough to fool the family?"

  "I hope so." Sam didn't need his brother's raised eyebrow to tell him that he didn't sound as positive as he might have liked. That was still a big question. Could he and Nikki maintain the facade of loving newlyweds when they could barely be in the same room without going for each other's throats?

  ❧

  Sam was no surer of the answer to that question a few hours later, when he turned onto the narrow street that led to Nikki's home—his home for the past two weeks. In those two weeks, he and Nikki had done a fine job of avoiding each other, which wasn't difficult in the large house. But he didn't doubt that they could have managed to keep a certain distance, even if they'd been sharing a one-room studio apartment.

  Luckily, his new residence was far from a studio apartment. The house was nestled in the hills that surrounded the Rose Bowl. Even after having lived there for two weeks, Sam still found himself surprised by it. He'd had a certain image of the place before he married Nikki. He'd been picturing pillars and a veranda, a sort of latter-day Tara. He should have known better. Everything about Nikki Beauvisage—now Walker—spoke of money, but it wasn't flashy money. It was quiet money, the kind that had been around so long that it didn't need to be flashy.

  And the house in front of him could be called many things, but flashy wasn't among them. A sprawling, two-story, Spanish style home with off-white stucco walls and clay tile roof, it nestled gracefully into, its setting. Three ancient pepper trees, their delicate branches shifting in the slightest breeze, stood near the house, contrasting with the darker green of the oaks that created a ragged line along the edges of the property. The landscaping was beautiful but modest, giving the impression of nature gently curbed.

  Sam parked in front of the house, at the end of the long driveway. As soon as he cut off the engine, he was struck by the quiet. Like a lot of other things about his new living arrangements, he still wasn't used to the silence.

  He'd grown up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Glendale, a place with lots of families, lots of kids and dogs, and not much silence. His own apartment was situated not far from Hollywood and Vine, a fabled corner that had little to recommend it these days, unless one liked taking a chance on getting mugged. The street noise was so prevalent that he'd long since stopped hearing it.

  Here he listened to a silence broken only by the sound of a mockingbird working its way through the scales. In the distance, he could hear a subtle rushing noise that was the traffic on the Foothill Freeway, but the sound was far away and unobtrusive. The house was set so far back from the small winding road that he couldn't even hear a car go by.

  For no particular reason, the quiet was suddenly irritating, and Sam took some pleasure in slamming the door of the Bronco when he got out. The mockingbird paused, as if shocked by the rude interruption, and then continued with his song, graciously ignoring the ill-mannered human in his territory. Sam glared in the bird's direction. Even the birds were high-class.

  The complete irrationality of that thought brought him up short. He was losing it. The stress of this past month had finally gotten to him. He brought his hand up to run his fingers through his hair, but his eyes caught the glint of sunlight on the gold band nestled at the base of his finger and the movement was never finished.

  It felt odd to be wearing a wedding ring again. He rubbed his thumb over the band, remembering. He'd worn a ring during his marriage to Sara. It had been buried with her, along with a good part of himself. When he'd bought Nikki's wedding band, he'd hesitated a moment over the matching band for himself, but he knew his family would expect it.

  It had been tough enough to spring the news that he was married again, he didn't want to do anything that might make them question the reasons for that marriage. It was important that they all believe this was a real marriage, particularly Cole. His youngest brother had more than his fair share of pride, and knowing the reasons for Sam's marriage would grind that pride into the dust.

  He'd have to stress to Nikki that his family was not to know the truth behind their marriage, any more than her family could.

  Nikki. His wife.

  Sam shook his head in disbelief as he started toward the house. He just couldn't quite connect the words Nikki and wife. Not his wife, anyway. Maybe by the time the year was up, he'd get used to the idea. He paused to consider that possibility and then shook his head. Nope, Nikki Beauvisage and Sam Walker just didn't go together. Not in a year, not in five years, not in a lifetime.

  He glanced at the beat-up old Chevy parked directly in front of the house. It was painted an improbable shade of purple that made him shudder every time he saw it. He still couldn't believe the vehicle belonged to Nikki. It was a long way from the sleek luxury car he'd envisioned her driving. The first time he'd seen it, he'd assumed it was the housekeeper's and thought that if it was the best she could afford, maybe it was time to suggest a raise. But the housekeeper, Lena Sinclair, drove a respectable, late-model sedan and the purple bomb was Nikki's.

  Sam shook his head as he passed it, wondering, as he did every
time he saw it, why a woman who wore silk suits and Italian leather shoes drove a car that looked—and sounded—as if it were on its last legs.

  He pushed open one of the heavy wooden doors and stepped inside. The entryway was all Spanish tile and white stucco. There was a fountain in one corner, and a profusion of potted tropical plants. The stained-glass skylight overhead provided enough light to keep the plants luxuriantly green. The exterior landscaping was the province of the gardener, an elderly Scotsman named McDougal, but the indoor plants were Lena Sinclair's pride and joy.

  When Sam entered, she was nipping faded fronds from one of the several ferns that hung from wrought-iron hooks on the wall above the fountain. The thud of the door closing behind him made her turn. She dropped a faded leaf into the basket that hung over her arm as she came to greet him.

  "How was your drive?"

  "Long and wet," Sam said with a smile. Nikki's housekeeper had proven far more welcoming than Nikki had been, and Sam liked her.

  Lena was one of those women who could have been any age from forty to sixty, though Sam thought she was closer to the latter than the former. He guessed that, in her youth, she'd been strikingly beautiful. In late middle age, she was still a handsome woman. She was tall, with a trim figure and a subtle elegance to her carriage that made him think of deposed queens rather than housekeepers.

  "Supper's in an hour," she told him.

  "Thanks, but I'll probably just get a sandwich later."

  They had the same conversation or a variation of it nearly every evening. He wasn't comfortable with the idea of her cooking for him, but, even more than that, he had no desire to share a meal with Nikki. They'd managed to be civil for the past two weeks, a feat that could be attributed, in large part, to the fact that their paths rarely crossed. He didn't see any reason to tempt fate by having a meal with her.

  "I've got my best baked chicken in the oven, fresh wholewheat rolls and an apple pie to die for," Lena coaxed.

  Sam felt his stomach stir with interest. Aside from a couple of stale doughnuts in the early hours of the morning, the only thing he'd eaten all day was half of a steak-and-egg breakfast with Keefe. The meal Lena had just described sounded wonderful. On the other hand, the odds of him and Nikki making it through an entire meal without getting into an argument were slim to none.