The Inconvenient Bride - By Anne McAllister Page 0,36
to want her.
Not all of her.
He only wanted the physical Sierra Kelly—Wolfe, she corrected herself. Damn it to hell!—that made him feel good.
“No? We aren’t going to go? Imagine that. Fine. We’ll stay here. But I’m going back to work. Tomorrow. And I’m working every damn day I want, and you’re not going to stop me.”
“Sierra, it’s not necessary.”
“I’ll decide what’s necessary!” She grabbed the lasagne pan, slapped some foil on it, then stuck it in the refrigerator. She did the same with the salad, her movements jerky and furious. She banged the dishes into the sink and began to scrub them hard enough to rub the pattern right off.
“I have a dishwasher,” Dominic said over the sound of the water.
“And now you have two.” Sierra thumped the pasta pot down into the sink and set to work on it, too.
“Sierra.” He sounded patient and long-suffering and totally in control.
She wanted to punch him in the nose. Instead she took her rage out on the pot.
“I don’t need you to be a dishwasher.” He came up behind her and slid his arms around her. She could feel the heat and hardness of his body against her back, and it took all her control not to melt right back against him. Her traitorous body wanted to.
But not her mind. Her mind was furious, and angriest of all was her heart.
“No,” she said bitterly, “you just need me in your bed.”
“I like you in my bed,” he corrected.
“Well, that’s just too damn bad, because I’m not going to be there anymore!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sierra! Stop being melodramatic. You can’t tell me you don’t like being there, too.”
She thumped the pot down and whirled around, shoving him back with wet hands that left an imprint on his suit coat. “Of course I like being there. And once that was dandy. But now we’re married. There’s more to marriage than that!”
“I can’t give more than that.”
Once the words were out of his mouth, he looked as if he wanted to call them back. His lips pressed into a tight line and he glared at her. Like it was her fault!
“Why?” She didn’t shout the question. She asked it very calmly, quietly almost. But it didn’t mean she didn’t want to know.
“I won’t give more than that,” he corrected himself.
“Oh, thank you very much!”
“Christ, Sierra. It’s not that I don’t like you. I do. It’s just…I don’t want to get involved!”
She stared at him, openmouthed. “You don’t want to get involved? Then why the hell did you marry me?”
He didn’t answer.
And that was answer enough.
“For the sex,” she said bitterly. She rubbed her palms dry on the sides of his shirt that she wore. It had seemed like such a good idea when she’d put it on. It had made him seem so close—as if they were a part of each other.
And now he was telling her he didn’t want that.
He didn’t want her.
Except in bed.
She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I can’t do that.”
He looked halfway between furious and astonished. “What do you mean you can’t do it? We’ve done it!”
“It isn’t enough. Not now. Not anymore.”
“So what do you want to do, back out? Run away downtown again? Get a divorce? Give me back my half million?”
Oh, damn.
Because she’d managed to think, yes, yes, and yes to his first three questions. Her fingernails dug into her arms.
“I can’t do that,” she muttered.
His eyes widened. “You spent it?”
She stared out the window across the park and saw nothing. “I gave it away.”
“What?”
Her gaze snapped back to meet his incredulous one. “I gave it away,” she repeated stonily.
“To the homeless? To the starving poor of the Lower East Side?
“To a friend of mine whose son needs a kidney transplant!”
He blinked, then shook his head. “What? What friend? Who?”
“My friend Pammie who lives in my building. Her son Frankie needs one and they fell through the cracks insurance-wise. She needed a quarter of a million to get him on the list. I can give you back half of it now. I’ll figure out some way to—”
“The hell you will!” He was shaking his head, pacing the confines of the kitchen like some furious jungle cat, raking his hand through his hair. “Keep the damn money! It’s not important!”
“To you—”
“To me!” he shouted, then whirled and glared at her, spitting the words, “Do. You. Want. A. Divorce?”
“Do you?” Sierra asked quietly.
He went stone still. A muscle ticked in his temple and beneath hooded lids his