The Millionaire Claims His Wife

“No, of course not.” Annie shut the refrigerator door. The kettle had begun to hiss, and she grabbed for it before it could whistle. “Hand me a couple of mugs, would you? They’re in that cupboard, right beside you.”

“He doesn’t seem the type who would.” Chase grabbed two white china mugs and slid them down the counter to Annie. “But if he’s so much as hurt a hair on our daughter’s head, so help me—”

“Will you please calm down? I’m telling you, it isn’t that. Nick’s a sweetheart.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

Annie looked at him, then away. “It’s, ah, it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” Chase’s eyes narrowed again. “It’s not—the boy isn’t...”

“Isn’t what? Do you still take two sugars, or have you finally learned to lay off the stuff?”

“Two sugars, and stop nagging.”

Annie dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into her ex’s tea, and stirred briskly.

“You’re right. You can wallow in sugar, for all I care. Your health isn’t my problem anymore, it’s hers.”

“Hers?”

“Janet Pendleton.”

“Janet Pen...” He flushed. “Oh. Her.”

Annie slapped the mug of tea in front of him, hard enough so some of the hot amber liquid sloshed over the rim and onto his fingers.

“That’s right. Let your fiancée worry about your weight.”

“Nobody’s got to worry about my weight,” Chase said, surreptitiously sucking in his gut.

He was right, Annie thought sourly, as she slid onto the stool next to his. Nobody did. He was still as solid-looking and handsome as he’d been the day they’d married—or the day they’d divorced. Another benefit of being male. Men didn’t have to see the awful changes that came along, as you stood at top of the yawning chasm that was middle age. The numbers that began to creep upward on your bathroom scale. The flesh that began to creep downward. The wrinkles that Janet Pendleton didn’t have. The sags Chase’s cute little secretary hadn’t had, either.

“...make him normal. That’s not what happened with Dawn and Nick, is it?”

Annie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Reality, that’s what. I was telling you that I just heard about this guy, married a girl even though he knew he was a switch hitter, hoping that having a wife would make him normal—”

Annie choked over her tea. “Good grief,” she said, when she could speak, “you are such a pathetic mate stereotype, Chase Cooper! No, Nicholas is not, as you so delicately put it, a ‘switch hitter.”’

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, it might not hurt to ask.”

“Nick and Dawn have been living together, the past three months. And Dawn hasn’t so much as hinted at any problem in bed. Quite the contrary.” Annie blushed. “I dropped in a couple of times—not in the morning, or late at night, you understand—and I could pretty much tell, from the time it took them to get to the door and the way they looked, that things were perfectly fine in that department.” She looked down at her tea. “I don’t drop by without calling first, anymore.”

“What do you mean, they’ve been living together?”

“Just what I said. Didn’t Dawn tell you? They took an apartment, in Cannondale.”

“Dammit, Annie, how could you permit our daughter to do that?”

“To do what? Move in with the man she was going to marry?”

“Didn’t you tell her no?”

“She’s eighteen, Chase. Legally of age. Old enough to make her own choices.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

“You could have told her it was wrong.”

“Love is never wrong.”

“Love,” Chase said, and shook his head. “Sex, is more like it.”

“I asked her to take her time and think it through, to be sure she was doing the right thing. She said she’d done that, and that she was.”

“Sex,” Chase said again.

Annie sighed. “Sex, love...they go together.”

“Yeah, well, they could have had the one and still waited for the other, until after the wedding.” Chase glowered into his tea. “But I suppose that’s too old-fashioned.”

“It was, for us.”

Chase looked up sharply. Color swept into his face. “What we did, or didn’t do, has nothing to do with this situation.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Annie stood. She picked up her mug of tea, cupped it with both hands and walked to the deep bow window that overlooked the garden. “I’m afraid we have everything to do with this situation.”