"Christian? What are you doing?"
Turning from the closet, Christian found Gia standing in the doorway and sagged with relief. "Thank God you're back. Can I borrow-"
He stopped in surprise as she suddenly crossed the room to grab one of the two robes arranged on the bed and tossed it at him.
"Cover up," she said with disgust as he caught it. "I love you, cugino, but not enough to have you waving the family jewels in my face."
"Sorry," he muttered, pulling on the robe.
"So what did you want to borrow?" Gia asked once he was decent.
"Oh, yes. Can I borrow a feather? And maybe a pair of gloves?"
"Why would you want..." Her words trailed off as she concentrated on his forehead, and then she said. "Ewww.
No. You can't."
Christian was just sagging with disappointment when she added, "You can have a pair of gloves and a feather, but I do not want them back. Ever."
Christian grinned at her disgusted expression as she moved to the dresser. "You're just jealous because I've found my lifemate and you haven't."
"Yeah," she agreed, digging out the desired items.
"Let's just hope you can hold on to her."
"I will. I'm not letting Caro go," he said grimly, taking the red feather and black gloves she held out.
"Then you'd better come up with a good excuse for the blood in the fridge," Gia said quietly.
Christian stiffened. "What? Why? She doesn't know about-"
"She woke up and went in search of you. In the kitchen, she stopped for a bottle of water and found the blood."
He felt himself pale. "What did she-?"
"Don't panic," Gia said soothingly. "Carolyn really isn't sure what to make of it at the moment. Hemophilia crossed her mind, but she didn't get much chance to think about it. We returned then and she heard us and closed the fridge door. She was standing in the center of the kitchen looking guilty when we walked in, which is why I read her memory," Gia explained, and then added, "And discovered she loves you."
Christian felt his heart stutter in his chest. "She does?"
Gia nodded solemnly. "You should maybe go tell her you love her too. If nothing else, it should distract her from thinking about the blood."
Christian nodded, but hesitated and frowned. "How the hell am I going to explain the blood if she asks about it?"
"Tell her it's fake blood for the stage show."
Christian turned to glance toward the door at that rumble from Santo. The man stood leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. Raising his eyebrows, Christian asked, "Stage show?"
Santo shrugged. "Rock bands do all sorts of weird things, biting heads off bats and such nonsense. Say Zanipolo wanted to use it in the show, but the rest of us refused."
"Why Zanipolo?" Gia asked with amusement.
"Because he's just crazy enough to do something like that," Santo said dryly.
"Good. That's good, Santo," Christian said, nodding as he moved toward him.
"Thanks," Santo said with a wry twist to his lips as he turned to let him pass. "I do occasionally do more with my head than shave it."
"And I'm glad you do," Christian said wryly as he moved into the hall. "Cause nothing was coming to my mind to explain it."
He heard Santo grunt as he hurried back to his room.
Christian found Carolyn in the bathroom wearing one of his t-shirts and hanging her dress over the shower door to let it dry out. He watched silently, trying to figure out how to bring up the subject of the blood in the fridge. He wasn't supposed to know she knew about it.
"Oh." Carolyn's surprised murmur drew his attention to the fact that she'd turned and spotted him. A slow blush slid up across her skin and he smiled.
"Sorry I wasn't here when you woke up, I went to find-"
He paused and suddenly whipped the hand holding the gloves and feather behind his back. It was just better he didn't even think about those items until they'd talked, otherwise they might never get to the talking. Seeing the question on Carolyn's face he finished, "A surprise."
"Oh?" Carolyn remained where she was, looking uncertain.
"Wait here." Christian turned to move to the dresser in his room and stowed away the borrowed items, then called out, "Cara?"
"Yes?" She came to the door of the bathroom.
"Are you thirsty or hungry?" he asked innocently.
"Thirsty," Carolyn admitted quietly.
Nodding, Christian grabbed one of the two robes that he'd tumbled to the floor earlier when he'd carried Carolyn to the bed and held it out to her. "Come on. We'll go get a drink and see if room service is still available."
"Oh... er... your cousins are back," she said uncomfortably.
"That's why I'm giving you the robe," he said with amusement.
"Yes, but..."
His eyebrows rose as he noted the embarrassment and discomfort on her face and he said gently, "Cara, there's no reason to feel shy around my family. They understand the situation."
"Do they?" she asked uncertainly. "Because I don't."
Christian turned to toss the robe on the bed. The talk would be about them before the blood then. Obviously she wasn't as concerned about his having blood in the fridge as she was about what was happening between them. He figured that had to be a good thing. It showed some trust, didn't it? She wasn't jumping to mad conclusions and suddenly concerned that he was a freak or something.
Turning back, he caught a look of yearning and fear on her face before she quickly ducked her head, and he felt his heart tighten. Gia said she loved him, and that look made him pretty sure Gia was right. But that love wasn't going to reassure her about what she thought was their age difference. He could reassure her pretty quickly simply by telling her everything, but her feelings were too new and he was afraid of what would happen if they weren't yet strong enough to withstand what he had to tell her. He had to work with what he could tell her.
"I love you."
Her face came up, eyes wide, and then she began to shake her head. "I know you want me. At least I'm pretty sure you haven't been faking that, but love?"
"Yes, love," Christian said firmly and then frowned.
"Carolyn, I know your husband did a number on you. It's obviously left you feeling..."
"Old, ugly, useless and unlovable," Carolyn said dully.
"Bastard," Christian breathed, fighting fury as he saw her eyes glaze with tears. If he ever met the man-He cut off his own thoughts. Anger wouldn't help. He needed her to talk to him, and pleaded, "Help me understand. Tell me about him."
A struggle started on her face and, for a moment, he feared she didn't trust him enough to speak about it yet, but then she just started to talk.
"I bumped into Robert in a coffee shop on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Literally bumped into him. I turned from the counter with my coffee and crashed into him spilling coffee all over both of us. I was embarrassed and upset of course, but he was so sweet and nice about it, assuring me it was all his fault..." Her mouth tightened.
"It turns out it had been all his fault. He'd planned the whole thing."
Her eyes looked faraway with a combination of anger and regret, but Christian didn't speak, he was afraid to even breathe and bring an end to her revelations. She was finally talking about her marriage, and while he knew the guy hadn't treated her well, he didn't know the specifics, and suspected he needed to know those to know how to handle things.
"Anyway," Carolyn said with a sigh. "The next thing I knew he'd bought me another coffee, ushered me to a table and was chattering away at me..." She grimaced and said, "Brent had been gone for almost a year, and I was lonely, it was why I'd gone to the coffee shop in the first place. There were people there and noise and..."
She shrugged. "We ended up staying there all afternoon.
"He was charming and sweet and I just soaked it all up, basking in the attention, the admiring looks, the pretty compliments, and all from this smart, successful businessman." She snorted. "He told me he was a VP of finance for a large, international corporation with its head office in Toronto. I found out later that too was a lie. But then so was everything else," she said wearily and fell silent briefly before admitting, "In a rare moment of honesty after I left him, Robert told me just how pathetically easy it had been for him to make me love him. Bragged about it actually. He'd hardly had to work at it at all. A little charm, a few compliments, a couple of dates and kisses, some flowers and-as he put it-a bit of drivel about how our happy accident must have been fate pushing us together-and I was easily convinced to fly off to Vegas for a quickie wedding."
He'd kill him, Christian decided calmly. He would hunt the man down and-"
Then we flew back home to find my father's lawyer at my apartment door."
"You were suddenly married and rich," he said quietly.
Carolyn nodded and said bitterly, "The luckiest girl in the world: a charming new husband, and now an unexpected inheritance that neither of us had known about. I mean, I hadn't known about it, so how could he, right?"
Carolyn shook her head and said grimly, "No matter how he behaved and what he said, I was safe in the knowledge that he had married me for love and not money and everything could be worked out."
She rolled her eyes as if that was about the stupidest belief in the world, and then continued, "And he was so amazing about everything. So supportive as I watched my father die, so eager to help me settle everything, so concerned that it was a lot to handle. Of course, he gave up his VP of finance position with this imaginary corporation to become VP for me."
"How kind of him," Christian said dryly.
"Yeah." She sighed. "Well, with everything going on I didn't pick up right away on the fact that my marriage was pretty much a sham. We had separate rooms within the first couple of months, but that was my fault. My snoring bothered him and he'd poke me a dozen or so times a night to wake me and tell me I was snoring."
"You don't snore," Christian said grimly.
Carolyn shrugged. "I have wondered since then, but at the time I felt horrible that my snoring was disturbing his sleep and moved to my own room so he could get his rest. Sex then became practically nonexistent. Not that I minded," she added wryly. "It wasn't all that wonderful anyway. I mean, it was definitely nothing like... er..."
She flushed and glanced away.
"Like our lovemaking?" he said gently.
Carolyn bobbed her head, and rushed on, "Not that I think it could possibly be this good with anyone else anyway, but he..."
"Didn't trouble himself to please you," Christian guessed quietly when she hesitated.
She sighed and then said bluntly, "If he knew I had breasts or anything else besides a hole between my legs, you couldn't tell from him. He didn't even like to kiss once we were married. Sex with him was cold and sometimes even painful despite the fact that he... er... wasn't as well... er... set up in certain areas," she muttered, her eyes skating to his groin and away.
Christian's lips twitched with gentle amusement at her obvious embarrassment, but his hands also clenched at his sides as he imagined the marriage bed she'd been conned into.
"Anyway, the sex stopped altogether after the first couple of years. I'm not sure now why he even bothered with it that long, but as much as I didn't care for it, I felt horrible when it stopped. I was failing him in that area as well, and was sure the sex thing was my problem. I was too hung up and frigid."
"You are not frigid," he said firmly.
Now her lips twitched into a brief smile. "Yeah, I've kind of figured that out thanks to you." Her smiled faded almost before it was fully formed and she added, "But I believed him when he said I was. And I believed everything else too when his nicey-nice act died and he started in with the criticisms. I was stupid, ugly, clumsy, useless... Basically, there was nothing good or worthwhile about me, and really I was very lucky that he put up with me...
as he spent my money." She shrugged. "You get the idea."
Oh, he got the idea all right. The man had systematically set out to con her into marriage for her money and then to keep her as his cash cow by making sure she didn't think anyone else would want her. It was really rather amazing that she'd been able to pull herself out of that, Christian thought now. She'd had no family or friends, no support system at all. No one to counter Robert's insults and abuse.
"How did he know about the money before you did?" he asked abruptly.
"He worked for the private detective agency my father hired that last time to find me. He was an office grunt who was handy with a computer and had aspirations to be Magnum PI," she said with a dry laugh. "He was the one they put on the task of finding me through my social insurance number. And he found it, and then with a little more computer wizardry, he found out I was single.
I gather this information made him consider a career change. Millionaire was so much more attractive than PI," she said grimly. "So he held back the information he'd found and told them there was no SIN number for a Christiana Carolyn Carver."
Christian blinked, still not used to the idea that her real first name was the feminine version of his.
"Robert then took a two-month leave of absence, claiming his father had cancer, and flew to Toronto to find out more," Carolyn continued. "He figured out pretty quickly that I was alone in the world and lonely and arranged to 'bump into' me. Then once the I dos were done, he e-mailed his boss a resignation and a bashful admission that, in his worry over his father, he may not have been thorough in the SIN search for me and they might want to have someone else do it again."
"Nice," Christian said dryly. "And how did you find all this out?"
"A true happy accident," she said with a slow smile.
"The investigative agency that found me, hired our advertising agency for some work. Jason Conroy, the owner, wanted a new Web site with more punch, some magazine and radio ads and possibly a television commercial though he wasn't sure on that one. He was very concerned about the right tone, however, and flew to Toronto to meet with me and the head of the creative department to discuss suggestions. Robert was leaving my office when Conroy arrived. Robert stopped dead outside my door and went pale. I'd never seen him like that. Conroy seemed surprised to see him too, and asked how he was, but Robert was in such a panic he just muttered and hurried out of the office. Both Conroy and I stared after him with surprise, and then my head of creative showed up and we moved to the meeting room to discuss his campaign.
"Everything went well, but I could tell Conroy was distracted during the meeting." She smiled grimly. "He was adding things up. I was Robert's last job for the company.
He was my VP. My name was now Connors-"
"But it was Connors when his company found you," Christian said with a frown. "Robert didn't send him the e-mail until after the I dos in Vegas."
"But it took place in Vegas. It had to be registered in Canada, and I had to apply for new identification. I hadn't done any of that when we flew back. In fact, between my father's dying and everything else, it was months before it was done and then Robert took care of it. I was still legally Christiana Carolyn Carver when they found me."
Christian nodded, and she continued. "As we were shaking hands after the meeting, Conroy said, "Your last name is Connors now. You've married?" I said yes, that in fact Robert was my husband, and I noticed they seemed to know each other. He just stood there, holding my hand, his expression still for a minute and then he asked to have a word with me. I took him to my office and he started asking what I thought were very strange questions. How and when had I met Robert? What had he told me about himself and so on... and then he was silent for a long time. But finally he began to speak."
"He told you Robert had worked for him, and had been on your case," Christian said quietly and thought that meeting truly had been a happy accident. Without it, Carolyn might still be married to the bastard. She might never have come here, his mother might not have met her and he wouldn't have found her.
"He told me more than that," she said grimly. "It seems Robert had lied about his age too. He was ten years younger than me, but had claimed to be the same age.
His face is weathered, he looks old for his age, but he also dyed his hair gray at the temples to add to the lie.
When he stopped dying it and let it go natural, I thought he'd actually started to dye it to look younger," she admitted tightly. "Something else he laughed about when I confronted him. How he'd expected questions about it when I saw his birth date on the wedding license as I signed it, but I hadn't even looked, I'd just quickly signed and stepped back. But then I was incredibly trusting and gullible, he informed me. How else could I have imagined someone as handsome and virile as he was would be interested in a boring old broad like me?"
"Virile?" Christian muttered, but he was thinking that not only had Robert been an abusive gold digger, he'd been ten years younger and had used that against her at the end... which he supposed explained a lot of Carolyn's attitudes.
"He thinks he's virile," Carolyn said and sounded more amused than angry now. "And I believed that too at the time, but then other women seemed to agree," she added and explained, "He chases women like a dog chasing cars. I can't even count the number of affairs I caught him in while we were married. Of course, each time he apologized, even as he explained that he only had them because I was so frigid, but he loved me and didn't want to leave me, and this was the best solution. I stopped caring a long time ago," she added. "But since meeting you I-"
"You what?" Christian asked quietly.
Carolyn flushed, but then lifted her chin defiantly and admitted, "I've imagined telling him he doesn't even know what virile is. That he has chicken legs, a potbelly, the chest of a twelve-year-old, and no family jewels to speak of, let alone any skill in using them. And if it weren't for a pretty face and a way with words, I doubt he'd ever get laid. I'd tell him that was probably why he had so many affairs, because the women were more experienced than me and moved on quickly... And then I'd show him a picture of you and say this is virile."
Christian's lips twitched with amusement. "Then that's what we'll do."
Carolyn blinked and then flushed at the thought and shook her head quickly. "Oh no, I would never do that."
"Why not?" he asked curiously.
"It would be mean," she said simply.
Christian raised his eyebrows. "You're worried about being mean to a piece of crap like that?"
Carolyn eyed him solemnly. "It isn't about him. It's about me. Perhaps he deserves it, but I'm not going to be the one to do it. I won't lower myself to it. And why expend any more energy on him than he's already claimed? Life's too short to waste it on petty revenge and nastiness."
She shrugged. "Divorce is no fault in Canada. It's going to cost me half of everything the advertising agency and my investments have made these last ten years to be rid of him. It's not as much as he'd hoped for, because he can't touch the original inheritance, but it's still a fortune and my lawyer wanted to fight it, but I said no. It's worth it to be free of him."
"Of course," she added wryly, "that doesn't mean I'm stupid. He's tried to grab for more, claiming I was frigid and so on, which is why the divorce has taken so long. He kept throwing up excuses for why he should get more and threatening to force it into court if I didn't agree, which he knew I would want to avoid." Her mouth tightened.
"It's humiliating enough knowing he married me for my money, but having it come out in court? And having everyone know just what I put up with for so long?" She shook her head. "So my lawyer kept responding with refusals and efforts to settle. But finally, a month ago, I just couldn't take it anymore. I wanted out. So I said, "Fine.
We'll go to court... and I'll bring in Conroy." All of a sudden he backed off, and now it's just a matter of the paperwork making its way through court and then I'll truly be free of him."
Carolyn paused and shrugged wearily. "Now you know it all. You know just how stupid and pathetic I really am."
"Pathetic?" Christian asked with disbelief and crossed the room to take her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. He then said solemnly, "Cara, a weaker woman would have turned to alcohol or drugs. She might even have killed herself faced with a decade of such systematic abuse. He did everything he could to make you feel completely valueless. And you were alone, without any sort of emotional support.
"You aren't pathetic," he said firmly. "You are smart, and beautiful and you obviously have a core of inner strength that most people could only wish for, because despite everything, he didn't crush you. Your spirit is in there, it peeks out at times when you aren't on your guard and I love that about you. I love your kindness and your wit and your sense of fun and your strength. You are more valuable than gold to me."
Uncertainty crossed her face and she tried to duck her head again, but he wouldn't let her and said solemnly, "I do love you. And I have no need or desire for your money.
I will even transfer all my assets into your name, and insist on a prenup to prove-"
"Prenup?" she squawked with alarm, trying to break free of his hold. "I'm not marrying you, Christian.
I've only just met you. I'm not going to be rushed into another marriage and-Hell, I'm not even divorced yet!"
"I know, I know," Christian said quickly, pressing her to his chest as he added soothingly, "I didn't mean right away. I am just saying that my attentions are not fleeting and that when the time comes I will do whatever it takes to prove it is you I want and not your money." Much to his relief she stopped struggling then. "I don't need your money. There is no reason for me to lie or con you. I have never lied to you. And I never will."
She pulled her head back to snap, "You already have.
The gay thing, remember?"
"That was Gia. She told you I was gay," Christian said at once, pressing her head back to his chest as he admitted, "And I was rather distressed at the time and wanted to tell you the truth, but my mother convinced me to let the lie stand so that you would get used to me."
"Your mother?" Carolyn was out of his arms so fast he didn't get a chance to stop her, and then he just stood, staring with surprise, as she backed away, squawking, "Your mother knows about us?"
Christian blinked, realizing what he'd said, but then his gaze shifted to her again as she began to pace and wring her hands muttering, "Oh my God, your mother knows. She probably isn't much older than me. She'll think I'm a cradle robber. A man-eating cougar out to devour her baby boy." Whirling suddenly, she cried with distress, "How could you tell your mother about us?"
Christian raised his hands, palms out as if soothing a wild horse. "Cara, it's all right. She is fine with us, happy for me."
"How could she be fine with us?" Carolyn demanded with disbelief. "Does she know I'm at least twenty years older than you?"
"You aren't twenty years older than me," he said firmly.
"And she does know your age, and is fine with it."
"How could she possibly be fine with it?" she asked with patent disbelief.
"She-"
"How old is your mother?" Carolyn interrupted, and then paced away, muttering, "She's probably fifty or something. Closer to my age than you are. Dear God, I-"
She whirled back. "How old is she?"
Christian stared at her blankly. He'd just promised not to lie to her. He'd been trying not to before this anyway, saying things like "Zanipolo knows my sexual preference"
when she'd asked if Zani knew he was gay, but there was just no way not to lie in answer to this question.
"Well?" she demanded. "How old-"
"She's much older than you," he finally said and then added, "I'm thirsty. Are you thirsty? Let's get a drink."
Grabbing her hand, he headed for the door, dragging her behind him. It was a way to distract her of course, but it suddenly occurred to him that he couldn't now lie to her about the blood in the refrigerator. But then again, he couldn't tell her the truth either. It was better if he had backup for this conversation; Gia and the others would help out and distract her when necessary.
