In Need of a Wife, page 14
Out stepped a man who frowned at Sasha.
‘The brother,’ Nathan murmured.
He was followed by a woman who was quite strikingly beautiful and voluptuously curved.
‘Urszula,’ Nathan murmured.
Sasha reflected that she could have felt savagely jealous if Nathan’s rings weren’t on her finger.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Tyler.
Sasha cynically suspected he wouldn’t mind consummating his paper marriage.
Then out of the car stepped Elizabeth Maddox.
‘The lawyer,’ Nathan murmured.
Elizabeth drew herself up to her full height for the purpose of looking down her nose at the waiting group.
‘Your choice of witnesses, Nathan,’ she invited, as if preparing for a duel with pistols. She ignored Sasha.
With a wave of his hand Nathan indicated Tyler and Joshua.
‘What poor taste you have!’ Elizabeth observed coldly.
‘I think introductions are in order,’ Nathan replied. ‘This is my wife, Sasha Parnell. Beside me is my replacement bridegroom for Urszula. You have met before. His name is Tyler Cullum.’
Hell broke loose.
Elizabeth’s strident responses indicated that not only were the dogs of war unleashed, but also the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. What was being called down upon their heads was about to make Armageddon look like a children’s play yard.
Urszula’s brother broke into violent argument and agitation. He saw a life of ease and luxury evaporating before his eyes.
Elizabeth went into legal argument as to why the marriage was void. Nathan urged Sasha to come home and consummate immediately. Elizabeth’s blood-pressure soared to a new medical record before she conceded bitter defeat to a fait accompli, and turned her attention to punitive damages.
Urszula gave emotional outcries of piteous horror at the situation.
At this critical moment, Tyler stepped forward and into the ring. Urszula surreptitiously cast a glance over him as she held a hand to her bleeding heart.
‘Pain and agony!’ Elizabeth ranted in triumph. ‘You’ll pay for pain and agony. You’ll pay for loss of reputation to my client. You’ll pay for abrogation of her rights, arrogation of powers you don’t possess, and derogation to Tyler Cullum...’
Tyler smiled at Urszula. It was a full blast double whammy smile of explosive impact. Many a lady had felt the full blast of Tyler’s smile. Few recovered.
Urszula was no exception. The legal argument going on around her was falling on barren ground. Urszula was a realist. She half smiled back at Tyler.
Tyler had many attractions. At his charming best, most women would look and keep looking. Urszula kept looking. Sasha observed a certain animal magnetism flowing between Tyler and Urszula. Sasha understood that. She wondered if Urszula would like a trip to the great interior of Australia.
Tyler seized the moment.
He stepped forward and took Urszula’s hands in his. ‘You’re the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life,’ he said with winning fervour. ‘I can make you happier than you’ve ever been before. I’ve got the money and I’ve got the time. I’ll take photos of you that will be featured in every magazine in the country. You’ll be famous.’
‘I will?’ Urszula’s eyes filled with stars. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Elizabeth snapped.
‘I’ll give you everything,’ Tyler promised. ‘Everything a woman can want. In return I require one thing.’
‘Not children. I don’t want children,’ Urszula said anxiously.
‘I have all I need,’ Tyler assured her hastily.
‘Then what do you want?’
‘Fire your lawyer.’
Urszula turned a glazed look to Elizabeth. ‘You’re fired.’
Tyler curled Urszula’s arm around his and swept his bride-to-be into the register office. Joshua belatedly followed, looking perfectly relaxed about all that had transpired.
‘No, Urszula, no!’ her brother yelled, running after her.
‘Go and marry Elizabeth,’ Urszula hurled back at him. ‘I’ve got what I want.’
Elizabeth screamed a tirade of abuse after Tyler’s retreating back. What she would do to him in court would be nothing compared to what she would do if she ever had him at her mercy.
‘Time for us to leave,’ Nathan said to Sasha. ‘Now we can start planning a proper wedding and a proper honeymoon and a proper everything.’
‘Don’t they need a second witness in there?’ Sasha didn’t want any hitches in phase two of the plan.
‘Let the brother come to his senses. I’m sure he will. Otherwise they’ll have to use a clerk.’
The door of Elizabeth’s Mercedes slammed shut. The car surged forward, away from the kerb, and Nathan stood looking after it for quite some moments.
‘What are you thinking, darling?’ Sasha asked, drawing his attention back to her.
‘Elizabeth is a most erratic driver,’ he said cheerfully, taking her hand. ‘Let’s go home. For ourselves. And for the children.’
* * *
WHEN NATHAN explained what their marriage meant to his son, Matt’s eyes glowed with satisfaction in his own inner belief. ‘I knew she was my mother. She’s not my pretend mother any more. She’s real.’
Nathan clearly had no inclination to correct him, yet fact was fact, and he could hardly ignore Elizabeth’s natural claim on their son. Matt did have to understand in case Elizabeth still persisted in wanting custody.
‘Matt, the other lady who came last week...’
‘You were wrong about her, Daddy,’ the little boy said with unshakeable conviction.
‘Why am I wrong, Matt?’
‘Cause it wasn’t in her eyes.’
From the mouths of babes came the simplest of truths, Sasha thought. Elizabeth was his biological mother, but that had no meaning whatsoever to Matt. Maybe he was right.
He turned to Sasha, his eyes clear with the knowledge that was so clear to him. ‘I felt it inside when you looked at me. Like at the park when you said you were sorry you had to go. And at playschool when I told the other kids.’
Her empathy for his loneliness.
‘I felt it too, Matt,’ she said softly. She crouched down to draw him closer to her, their eyes sharing the same knowledge. ‘What your daddy was trying to tell you...the other lady is your birth mother. But I’m your real mother in here.’ She pressed one hand to her heart and the other over Matt’s heart. ‘I always will be.’
They shared a secret smile of perfect understanding.
Then Matt turned his smile up to his father, ‘See, Daddy?’
‘Yes, I see, Matt.’ The look he turned to Sasha was all she wanted to see. The deep forever love that would see them through their lives.
* * *
SASHA TOLD Nathan the proper wedding and proper honeymoon could wait until some time in the New Year. What she wanted most of all was a family Christmas.
The next day a huge van arrived in the driveway. It took four men to carry a large fir tree in a huge pot into the lounge. Only a room with a fourteen-foot ceiling could have accommodated such a tree.
They spent hours decorating it. When the happy task was finally completed, and Nathan switched on the string of coloured lights he’d draped around the branches, Bonnie thought it so wonderful, she took her first tottering steps.
On Christmas Day, Sasha’s parents came to share in the festivities. The roast turkey had just been set on the dining-table when the doorbell rang. Sasha and Marion had their hands full bringing in all the accompanying dishes to serve with the turkey, so Nathan went to answer the call.
There was a murmur of voices. Sasha idly wondered who it could be. She didn’t have to wait long to find out. Brooks entered the room, his arms laden with presents. Jane followed, carrying a big plate containing a massive plum pudding surrounded by bon-bons for the children. Behind them came a voice that Sasha recognised all too well.
Hester Wingate.
She entered the room, complaining bitterly as Nathan ushered her in before him. ‘I broke my word. I swore I’d never enter this house that Seagrave built for me.’ She found Sasha’s eye and looked sternly at her. ‘But I can hardly go to meet him on the other side without knowing he had done a proper job of it, can I?’
Sasha hastened to her side, uttering reassurances. ‘Of course, you had to come and see for yourself. We’ll set three more places at the table for you and Jane and Brooks, and have Christmas dinner together. Afterwards I’ll show you through all the rooms.’
‘I’d like that,’ Hester agreed, ‘but I still think I did better taking all his horses.’
‘I’m sure that’s right,’ Sasha said, inwardly rejoicing that Hester had finally found peace and goodwill to all men. Especially with Seagrave Dunworthy.
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, when their visitors went home and the children were tucked up in bed asleep, Sasha and Nathan relaxed together on one of the chesterfields in the lounge. The lights were out except for those on the tree, and they reminisced over the day in a mood of blissful contentment.
‘Life is full of chance,’ Sasha mused. ‘If we hadn’t met in the park, if Tyler hadn’t turned up, if I hadn’t been desperate for a place to live, you would never have found me, Nathan.’
‘Sasha, my darling, after we met in the park, nothing was left to chance. It was only a matter of time.’
‘How could you be so sure I would come here?’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘What would have happened if I hadn’t turned up?’
‘I would have come to you.’
She turned on him in exasperation. ‘You didn’t know where I lived. Or where I might have moved to.’
He grinned. ‘Yes, I did.’
She suddenly recollected that he had found her parents’ address, and not through the telephone directory. ‘How?’ she demanded.
His grin grew wider. ‘Computer games.’
She heaved an impatient sigh. ‘Stop teasing.’
‘When I slipped the address of this house into your bag, I also slipped in a tiny technological device.’
‘You bugged me?’
‘No, darling. That’s against the law,’ he said sanctimoniously. ‘I was simply tracking your bag. Wherever it went.’
‘What if I’d left it in a bus? Or had it stolen?’
‘The first stop gave me your parents’ address. I figured they’d always know where you were.’
‘Promise that you’ll never do such a thing again.’
‘I promise.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Because, my love, I was in need of a wife.’
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8419-7
In Need of a Wife
Copyright © 1994 by Emma Darcy
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Emma Darcy, In Need of a Wife
