A Proper Wife

“And I tried to apologize,” Ryan said with an innocent smile.

Devon slammed her hands on her hips. “He tried to kiss me,” she said, her lips curling.

“It was a joke.”

“Some joke!”

“Yes, well, apparently Miss Franklin doesn’t have a sense of humor, Grandfather.” Ryan lifted his hand to his jaw and gently touched the faint purple smudge. “Because that was when she slugged me.”

There was complete silence in the room. Then, like the distant wail of a siren, Bettina sobbed out Devon’s name.

“Devon,” she said. “Oh, Devon, you didn’t!”

Ryan kept his eyes on his grandfather.

“Did you hear what I said? Your sweet-tempered, old-fashioned, demure, well-mannered gem of deportment hit me with a right hook to the jaw that would have put George Foreman to shame.”

Something that was impossible to read flickered in James’s eyes.

“Interesting,” he said calmly.

Ryan nodded. “I thought you might think so.”

“Devon,” Bettina said in a hushed whisper, “how could you?”

Lord, Devon thought, how different the story sounded coming from Ryan Kincaid’s mouth.

“It wasn’t like that! If you’d heard him—if you’d seen him...” Devon looked wildly at the three people facing her. Bettina was staring at her in horror; James was looking at her with no expression at all. Ryan, damn him, was smirking. “I just wish I’d hit him harder!”

Bettina rushed toward Devon and flung an arm around her shoulders.

“It’s the stress she’s been under, my poor baby! She’s spent her life among people of a certain class, and now—”

“Don’t make excuses for me,” Devon said angrily.

“And now, through a quirk of fate, she’s been forced to associate with riffraff! Oh, what terrible times these are, that my Devon should have had to take a job as a salesclerk to put food on the table!”

Devon stared at her mother. That was nonsense! She’d been working as a salesclerk for three years, supporting herself in the tiny apartment she shared with another girl. It had been the only job she could get; the boarding school Bettina had insisted on sending her to had specialized in preparing its graduates for a silly, boring world that no longer existed.

“No,” Devon said, “that isn’t—”

“She should never have had to take such a menial position,” Bettina said, her voice quavering. “It’s just that our financial situation is so desperate. Oh, if only darling Gordon hadn’t left us so unexpectedly. We all know how he was, always leaving things till the last minute.” Despite her soulful expression, she couldn’t keep a sudden hard glitter from her eyes. “For instance, he told me a dozen times how he planned to change the deed to our house so it was in my name and not his, but he never got around to it.”

Ryan shot a triumphant look at James. There it was, the reason for Bettina’s sudden appearance. She wanted the house; Devon was to have provided the distraction that would secure it for her.

He brought his hands together in slow, exaggerated applause.

“Brava, Bettina. What a performance! Worthy of the Broadway theater at its best.”

That was precisely what Devon had been thinking, but hearing Ryan say it was quite different. Her eyes flashed him a warning as she broke away from Bettina’s encircling arm.

“And you should have been taught some manners when you were little! Stop insulting people, dammit!”

“Enough,” James said, his voice sharp with authority. “All of you, calm down and we can talk like reasonable people.”

Bettina snapped open her purse, drew out a lace handkerchief, and dabbed it gently at her eyes.

“I should hope so,” she said in a tremulous whisper. “Ryan, that was cruel.”