Under the Millionaire's Mistletoe(16)

Luke's gaze didn't leave her face. "Aren't you going to introduce me, darling? I saw only a few familiar faces."

Not daring to look away, she said, "Everyone," and the word came out a  hoarse whisper that made him grin a shark's grin. She cleared her  throat. "This is Luke Maitland. My husband."

Then it all happened in a blur: hugs, congratulations, assurances that  they knew she'd want to be alone with her husband after his unexpected  return. Within minutes she and the stranger she'd married stood together  at his front door as the quiet purr of the last departing vehicle faded  into the night.

Meg stepped out and away from the arm he had draped possessively and  firmly-as though he knew she wanted to bolt after that final car-over  her shoulder. Frigid air wrapped itself around her in its stead.

He followed close as she led the way back to the high-ceilinged living  room. His living room. Platters of nibbles still sat on the coffee  table, Bing still sang, but everything had changed.

Those eyes. How could she not have known him instantly?

Finally, when the silence had stretched way beyond comfortable, Meg  spoke. "You're looking … better." The last time she'd seen him he'd been  lying, pale and unshaven, on a makeshift hospital bed on an Indonesian  island. And taller. In the few days she'd spent with him, he'd  invariably been lying down, or bent with pain when he'd tried to stand.  Illness had a way of diminishing people. There was nothing diminished  about him now. Upright and strong, he comfortably cleared six foot.

"Disappointed?" he asked quietly.

The question stunned her. "No! How can you ask that? I thought you might die."

"So did I. But that wouldn't necessarily have worked out badly for you." He glanced around the sumptuous living room.

They'd spent only a few days together, but she'd thought she'd had a  bond with the observant, insightful man in her care. A man who, despite  his pain, had made her laugh. The man she remembered had been nothing  like this-cool and distant. Suspicious. Then again, the man she  remembered had been close to death. "No, it would have worked out  terribly."

His gaze never wavered. "You got my house. It could have been permanent.  And you'll have realized by now that there's much more than the house."

Back then, he'd talked only of the beauty and magic of the area, of how  he'd wanted someone who could appreciate it to have it, someone who  understood him. She'd had no idea when she'd married him just how  wealthy he was, that when he'd said house he meant mansion on the shore  of Lake Tahoe, complete with private jetty, indoor pool, game room,  boardroom and a library stocked floor to ceiling with books. She could  have lived happily for years in the library alone.

Meg crossed to the fireplace and positioned herself behind an armchair,  her fingers pressing into the padding of its high leather back. "You  have no right to just walk in here-"

"To my own house?"

"To just walk in," she continued, "and start accusing me of … what exactly is it you're accusing me of?"

He paused and she held her breath, waiting, uncertain. "Nothing," he  said on a rough sigh, dragging a hand across the back of his neck, and  some of the accusation leached from his eyes.

"Luke, it was all your idea. You practically demanded I marry you."

He strolled closer, picked up one of the Christmas cards from the  mantelpiece and glanced at the inside before replacing it. "I don't  remember much more than a token resistance from you."                       
       
           



       

"You were sick, so let me help you remember. As I recall it, you were desperate. You even invoked the memory of your mother."

She'd met his mother only once. Meg had gone with a friend to hear her  speak at a lunchtime fundraiser in L.A. and had been so impressed that  she'd introduced herself to her afterward. They'd ended up having coffee  together and talking for hours. It was as a result of that one fateful  meeting that when things had ended between Meg and her then-boyfriend  she'd thought of doing something completely different. Had thought of  Indonesia and the Maitland Foundation. A path that had led her to here  and now. "You asked me to do it for her-because of how much I'd  respected her and because I knew how revered she'd been on the island.  And you even threatened that if I didn't accept you were going to  propose to the very next woman who walked into the room." She'd believed  him to be serious and in an uncharacteristic fit of possessiveness Meg  hadn't wanted anyone else to have "her" patient, the man she'd spent so  many hours talking to. "You said I was doing you a favor."

Hard to imagine how that could be true now, how plain Meg Elliot, with  little to call her own, could have done a handsome millionaire a favor  by marrying him.

He rested an arm on the mantel and stared at the fire. A smile touched  his lips and then vanished. Uncomfortable in the same room as the  stranger who was her husband, Meg edged around the chair and toward the  door. She needed space, needed to get to her own room and process what  was happening, figure out what she did next. His return changed  everything.

"You must be tired." She had no idea where he'd come from or how far  he'd traveled today. But it was late and deep lines creased the skin  around his eyes, so she assumed her guess had some foundation. "We can  talk all this through in the morning."

Luke straightened and strode to the door, cutting off her exit. "You're  right. I am tired." He looked down at her, then lifted his hand to twist  a lock of her hair around his finger. "I take it our bed's in the  master bedroom."

Meg swallowed. "Our?" He was joking. Testing her. She was sure of it.  Almost one-hundred-percent sure. Ninety-eight at least. Even if she had  been the type of woman someone like him would be attracted to, theirs  had been an arrangement of practicality and desperation. An arrangement  that they'd agreed would end when he returned home.

"You got the benefits of being my wife. Surely I get some benefit in being your husband?"

She pushed his hand away and squared off to him. "You got benefits.  Because of me, your brother hasn't moved into this house already."

"Half brother," he corrected her. "And that wasn't the benefit I was thinking of."

"It was when you married me. Or maybe you didn't care about there being  any benefit to you, but you most definitely cared about making sure  Jason didn't benefit. Cared enough to marry a stranger."

"A stranger with the gentlest hands."

Meg stilled.

"I thought about those hands as I was recuperating."

His sudden change of tone and topic disconcerted her and she took a step  back. He was still trying to dominate her, unsettle her, this time with  words. That was all it was. She couldn't let him know the effectiveness  of his strategy, how very unsettled she was. She, too, had thought  about her hands on him.

"You have a lot to explain to me. Where have you been? Why haven't you been in touch before now?"

He watched her steadily. "Nagging me already?"

"Legitimate questions."

"I have several of my own."

"Understandably. So I suggest we both get a good night's sleep and deal  with them in the morning. The guest wing is that way." She pointed down  the hallway.

"The guest wing? In my own house?"

"My things are in your room. I'll shift them out tomorrow. But for  tonight, yes, you can have the guest room." Over the lonely months Meg  had imagined many possible scenarios for Luke's homecoming-they had  varied from tender to joyful to passionate.                       
       
           



       

This tension-laden standoff certainly hadn't been one of them.



Luke watched his wife's pretty blue eyes as he searched for the familiar  in her face, searched for the differences. Time was, women jumped at  the chance of going to bed with him. Although admittedly he was a little  out of practice. Still, appalled horror was definitely a first for him.

He'd dreamed of this woman. And granted, many of those dreams had been  the product of delirium. Many, but not all. The others had been the  product of good old-fashioned desire. He hadn't known whether that  attraction was merely the product of time and circumstance.

And he still couldn't answer that question for sure. Different time,  different circumstance and he could still feel the pull of the woman  standing in front of him.

Who was this woman he'd married?

He recognized the irony in his situation. Most of his life he'd kept  people at a distance and now he had a wife he scarcely knew.

He reached for the tendril of golden-brown hair that curled against her  pale throat. She blocked his hand, wrap ping slender fingers around his  wrist. "Afraid of me, Meg?" Her scent was something floral. Innocent.  And distracting.