Bargain With The Devil Part 9

"I was afraid you were going to say that," Stacy groaned, poring over the crumpled diagrams with a fierce frown. "Well, we'd better decide exactly where it's going to go, first. I get the feeling that you're not going to want to shift it a few feet if I'm not thrilled with the way it looks after it's up!"

An hour later a deeply amused male voice interrupted Stacy's disgusted concentration on her diagrams, and she looked up from her cross-legged sitting position to find Hunter rounding the corner of the house into the backyard, his suit jacket slung over one arm and a leather briefcase in his other hand.

"What the heft is going on here?" he demanded, surveying the shambles of a greenhouse, the two sweating, straining young men heaving on a post, and his rumpled, stained wife sitting in the middle of a heap of plastic and wood components she had, as yet, been un-able to identify. "Are you reconstructing the last World's Fair?"

"Oh, Hunter!" Stacy wailed, leaping dejectedly to her feet. "It's all a horrible mess! I was so hoping to have it put together by the time you got home from work! Now I don't think it's ever going to work. I'll probably have to buy a new one!" She threw the battered papers in her hands onto the ground with a disgusted gesture and then planted her fists on her hips.

Neal and John, gratefully aware of the presence of another man, even if he were dressed in a suit, dropped the post with which they had been struggling and came forward hopefully.

"Just out of curiosity," Hunter remarked with a suspicious quirk of his lips that told Stacy he was on the verge of laughing outright. "How did you get it together the first time?" He walked toward her, peering interestedly at the various bits and pieces lying on the ground.

"The company I bought it from erected it." She sighed sadly. "But they promised me it would be easy to handle on my own when I was ready to move!"

"I guess we should have labeled the various parts when we tore it down, huh, Mr. Manning?" John suggested, shaking his head.

Stacy suddenly remembered her manners. "Hunter, this is Neal Rhodes and John Finley. They both work for me part-time: They were kind enough to give me a hand this afternoon."

"I told her she should have hired some nonliberal-arts majors." John grinned as Hunter set down his briefcase to shake hands. "What do you think? Any hope?"

Stacy frowned for a moment as she realized Neal and John were instinctively turning to the older man for advice. What made them think Hunter would know anything about putting together a green-house? But she knew the answer to that even as Hunter handed her his jacket and bent down to retrieve the pages of a.s.sembly diagrams. There was an air of competency and authority about her husband that younger men such as her a.s.sistants reacted to automatically.

There was an atmosphere of expectancy among the three would-be greenhouse builders as they watched Hunter glance through the diagrams and then walk briefly around the piles of parts. Stacy could almost feel Neal's and John's inner sighs of relief when her husband nodded his dark head once and glanced up.

"Okay, Neal, you take that sheet of plastic there, and John, grab that post over there. Not that one, the other one," Hunter instructed. The students bent to their a.s.signed tasks with a new att.i.tude of ea-gerness, and Stacy stood by hopefully, Hunter's coat over her arm, his briefcase at her feet.

"Stacy, honey, why don't you go inside and bring out three beers?" he suggested kindly, pausing to drop an absently possessive little kiss on her upturned nose.

Stacy saw John and Neal grin happily at the request, and she frowned hesitantly at her husband.

"I'm not sure they're of age yet," she whispered worriedly. "Per-haps juice?"

"Neal and John," Hunter told her succinctly, "are both doing men's work, and they are ent.i.tled to some of the few privileges left to the male of the species. Go get the beers!"

Stacy caught the appreciative glances of her workers, knew her husband was completely established as a hero, and grinned in rueful defeat. She couldn't fight that; didn't want to. She fled toward the house to fetch the beers.

A long time later, enroute to Eric and Leana's home for dinner, Stacy sent a smiling glance across the car to Hunter. "You know," she said, chuckling, "you're really going to be quite useful around the place! I can't tell you how grateful I am for the rescue of my greenhouse!"

Hunter threw her a sardonic grin, shifting gears in the powerful sports car with smooth expertise. "I have the feeling you would have been equally grateful to anyone who happened along in time to sal-vage things. But that's all right, I won't fight my luck. I'll collect full payment from my adoring wife tonight when we get home!"

"Have you always been able to do that sort of thing?" she pressed curiously, ignoring his teasing. "Working with diagrams and hard-ware and knowing how things are supposed to go together?" She thought again of the efficient way he had hung her plants without marring the woodwork or ceiling and the fact that he had designed his home from scratch. He surrounded himself with quality machines where machines were needed and knew how to take care of them. All matters that were foreign to her nature.

He shrugged. "I've always been interested in the way things work, and I've had enough practical experience over the years to be able to pick up something as simple as that greenhouse diagram and figure out what the designers intended."

"Simple! Those little squares and lines were driving me crazy!" Stacy confessed with a laugh.

"On the other hand," Hunter said softly, slanting her a warm glance, "I doubt that I could get even a weed to grow. Your abilities and skills are diflerent than mine, Stacy, and just as amazing to me."

Stacy felt herself become suffused with a pleasant glow at the outright compliment, a glow that vanished the moment her brother, Eric, opened the door. Instantly she knew something was wrong.

"Good evening, Hunter," Eric said politely, his face wearing the right expression for a genial host as he shook hands with his new brother-in-law. "Good to see you two. Come on inside. Leana's waiting with drinks." He bent down and gave Stacy a quick, affec-tionate hug. "You've done all right for yourself, Sister," he mur-mured in her ear. "I must admit I had a few doubts last week when you announced you were getting married, but not anymore. You look very happy."

Stacy, unaware she appeared any different than usual, blushed.

"What about you, Eric?" she whispered as Hunter stepped past them to greet Leana and take the drink she was holding out. "Is eve-rything all right with you?" She saw that Leana had made herself up with more than the usual care this evening, and she saw, too, the added warmth in the other woman's eyes when she greeted Hunter.

"I'm fine, Stacy, just fine," Eric said quickly, putting a drink into his sister's hand, and Stacy knew'at once he was lying.

"Stacy, darling, I'm honored," Leana mocked lightly. "You put on a dress for my little party!"

"You should be pleased." Stacy smiled dutifully, not liking the strange brittleness in her sister-in-law's words. "It's one of the only three dresses I own!"

Hunter glanced at his wife's simple, fitted black dress patterned in huge yellow and orange orchids and chuckled. "And all three have flowers on them, just like all her shirts!"

But none of the three dresses, Stacy thought grimly, were cut as daringly and as provocatively as the sapphire-blue hostess gown Leana wore tonight. It struck her admittedly unsophisticated senses as being too much for an evening at home with relativesv And one of Leana's skills was in knowing exactly what to wear for any occasion.

"What with all the rush of the wedding," Leana began' brightly as she pa.s.sed around a plate of hors d'oeuvres, "and you must admit it was a bit hurried," she added chidingly, "I didn't get a chance to find out if you two have plans to take time off from work for a hon-eymoon."

Stacy, concentrating intently on dipping a carrot stick in the cheese spread, said nothing. Let Hunter answer that one!

"Oh, we'll get around to it," her husband replied dis-missingly. "I thought I'd take Stacy down to Acapulco in a couple of months."

Stacy did glance up at that. It was certainly the first she'd heard of any such plan!

"That sounds marvelous," Leana said enthusiastically, glancing significantly at Eric. "Eric and I haven't been out of Tucson since he took over Rylan Enterprises. It would be great to get away...." She let the sentence trail off on a wistful note that was apparent to every-one. Eric smiled, a rueful smile, and Stacy saw his glance go to Hunter, as if appealing for some masculine understanding. To her complete astonishment, he got it.

"It's going to take some time to settle down into a position like the one you've got, Eric," Hunter said easily. "If you don't put in the time that needs to go into the business in the beginning, you'll never be able to make up for it later, as I'm sure you realize."

Something in Eric's face lightened just a fraction as he nodded in agreement and then took a sip of his drink.

"Right now it feels like a twenty-four-hour-a-day job! And the problems never stop coming. For some strange reason the technical side of things is turning out to be the easiest part to manage. It's the people side of the business that's getting to me. I guess, although I'd never thought much about it, I'm basically a little different in my approach than Dad was," he added almost hesitantly, his eyes going to his sister's.

"Stacy tells me the job is yours now. Completely," Hunter said softly, meaningfully. "You have no need to do things exactly the way your father did."

"I suppose not," Eric said slowly with a small frown. "But it's hard to argue with success, and Dad was nothing if not successful!"

"I take it," Hunter said perceptively, "you're in a position where your instincts tell you to go one way, and you can almost hear your father looking over your shoulder and telling you to handle it a dif-ferent way."

Eric grinned. "You've hit it right on the nose."

"Are you two going to talk business all evening?" Leana de-manded with a small, charming pout.

"Uh, Leana, why don't we go check on Maria and see how things are going in the kitchen?" Stacy suggested hastily, getting to her feet. "Perhaps we could help out by setting the table or something, and I've been wanting to ask how your party went last weekend. I hope I didn't cause too big a scene appearing out of nowhere in my jeans...." Before the younger woman could respond, Stacy had her firmly by the arm and was leading her off toward the kitchen. Eric needed someone to talk to just then, and Hunter seemed willing to act as a sounding board. She wasn't certain why he should be so generous, but she wasn't going to ruin the opportunity, either. She hadn't liked the tension in her brother's face this evening, and it was obvious Leana was not overly sympathetic.

"Honestly," Leana complained as she allowed herself to be led out of the living room, although not without a last, pleading glance over her shoulder to Hunter, who ignored it. "That brother of yours! It seems all he can talk about lately is business! Things were differ-ent before he took over control. I wish..." her voice trailed off wist-fully.

"Have you tried letting him talk to you about it?" Stacy inquired quietly as they stepped through the dining room into the elegant kitchen. "Perhaps if you "

"Oh, Stacy, Rylan Enterprises is the last thing I want to hear about when he gets home from work! Besides "

"Ah! La Senora Manning!" A large person waving a ladle and wearing a white ap.r.o.n whisked toward Stacy, enveloping her in a huge hug. "Senora Rylan told me of the wedding! I am so happy for you! I have seen your man...." Maria paused, grinning down into Stacy's face and gesturing significantly with the ladle. Without a pause she slipped into Spanish. "He is very much a man, no? I thought the first time I met him there was some of the devil in him, but there is that in such men. And I think you will make him happy. You are now La Senora de las Flores! No longer La Senorita de las Florest"

Flower lady. Stacy chuckled in spite of herself, thinking of how Hunter had called her that more than once. "Thank you, Maria. I appreciate your good wishes," she said in English. "Leana and I have come to help. Shall we set the table?"

"Si, si! Muchds gracias, senora." Maria waved them cheerfully on ahput the task, smiling happily as she saw Stacy sniff delightedly at the makings for cheese enchiladas, tostadas, and a variety of other good things. "No meat!" she a.s.sured Stacy, beaming. "I remember from the time you ate here once before on Senor Rylan's birthday!"

"Thanks, Maria." Stacy laughed.

"I suppose we'd better get going if we're ever to get the table set," Leana told her sister-in-law petulantly, handing her a stack of napkins. Without a word Stacy followed her out into the dining room, where the two women worked in silence for a long moment. And then Leana said coolly, with a sidelong glance, "When's the baby due?"

Stacy blinked in astonishment, staring at the younger woman. "What?" she managed, completely taken aback.

"Oh, come on, Stacy, there's no need to pretend. It's obvious!"

"It is?" Stacy glanced down at her flat stomach and smiled wryly. "Leana, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not pregnant!" Her gaze lifted to meet her sister-in-law's narrowed blue eyes.

"Why else," Leana inquired with great casualness, "would Hunter have married you?"

Stacy felt the red flood into her face, and a wave of anger swept along her nerve endings. She wondered what Leana would say if she told her the truth. That Stacy had bargained with Hunter to keep him from destroying the younger woman's marriage. Perhaps Leana wouldn't be the least bit grateful! But it was really Eric Stacy had wanted to protects Eric,, who loved his lovely, selfish wife.

"I a.s.sure you, it wasn't for that reason," Stacy said flatly, resum-ing her ch.o.r.e.

"I know he never had any intention of marriage, right up until the night of the party, when you made your grand announcement," Leana whispered grimly. "He had probably been seeing you casu-ally, but until you ran into him on the patio and told him you were pregnant, I a.s.sure you he wasn't planning to marry you. Is that the real reason you came back to the house that night, Stacy? Because you knew Hunter would be there and you wanted to trap him with the news?"

Stacy's rising anger put her suddenly on the offensive. "How do you know Hunter wasn't planning on marriage, Leana?" There! Let her sister-in-law wriggle out of that one!

"Hunter and I had grown rather close," Leana said with great dignity. "We... we understand each other, you see."

* "Perhaps if you made more of an effort to understand Eric..." Stacy let her words trail off meaningfully, taking a certain satisfac-tion in the spots of color that appeared in Leana's cheeks.

She never learned what the other woman might have said next, however, because Maria threw open the kitchen door and informed them that dinner was ready and told them to fetch the men, as men never liked waiting for their food.

It was Stacy who walked back into the living room to make the announcement, and she paused a moment before Hunter and Eric glanced up from their conversation. Eric's expression had changed, she decided with some relief. There was a thoughtfulness in his eyes now, rather than the look of tension that had been there earlier.

"I agree," he was saying quietly to Hunter. "I know Dad would say fire the man and the h.e.l.l with it. But you can't do that to some-one who's devoted most of his working life to your firm."

"Your idea of shifting the responsibilities is a good one." Hunter nodded encouragingly. "Correctly handled, Winthrop will see him-self as adviser to up-and-coming junior management. And I'm sure he still has a lot to contribute in that capacity, judging from what you've told me. But he needs to get away from the stress of directly managing production work."

"Yes, I think you're right. I appreciate the chance to talk it over with you. One of the things I'm learning is that it can be a bit lonely in my position. I have to be careful about taking people who work for me into my confidence when it comes to dealing with their co-workers. That sort of thing would cause havoc and jealousy in no time!" He looked up then, saw Stacy, and smiled.

"I must say, Sister dear, I'm awfully glad you decided to marry Hunter, here, rather than that philosophy-spouting bookshop owner you introduced me to that day I dropped by the nursery to pick up flowers for Leana. It's going to be great having someone else in the family to talk big business with besides Dad. Not that I don't like discussing things with my father," he added quickly to Hunter. "But he does have a rather rigid point of view on most subjects. One doesn't really discuss things with him so much as receive advice, I'm learning as I grow older. I think it's a lesson Stacy learned before she was out of the cradle!"

Stacy, who had seen her husband's eyes narrow slightly at men-tion of Gary Bowen, interrupted quickly to tell them dinner was ready.

A long time later during the drive home, Stacy forced herself to consider the evening from a strictly logical viewpoint. There was no doubt that Hunter had made an admiring friend in her brother. And her husband had totally ignored Leana's small glances and meaning-ful in-nuendos at the dinner table. She could understand his being willing to ignore her sister-in-law; after all, he'd given his word not to disrupt the marriage when Stacy had made the bargain. But why would he go out of his way to be especially friendly and helpful to Eric?

"What's on your mind, Stacy?" Hunter asked softly as he guided the car through evening traffic. "You're awfully quiet over there."

"I I was just thinking about the evening," she admitted.

"Worried about Leana's behavior?" He smiled grimly. "Eric sure as h.e.l.l ought to be concerned about it!"

"She, uh, seems to think you and she had had something of an understanding before you married me," Stacy replied evenly.

"Oh, I understand her, all right," he growled.'"It's just too bad your brother doesn't! Out with it, though. What particularly did she say to upset you this evening? You had a strange look in your eyes when you came through the door to announce dinner."

"It was nothing, really...."

"Stacy!"

She shrugged. Why not tell him? His reaction might be interest-ing. "Leana had. just finished suggesting that the reason for our mar-riage was that I was was " The sentence had started off well, but somehow it was proving difficult to end!

"That you were what?" Hunter demanded gently.

"Pregnant," Stacy concluded bluntly, her eyes on the night view out the car window. There was a suspiciously long pause from the other side of the vehicle.

"Perhaps," Hunter finally said in a low, neutral tone, "you are. Now."

"No!" Stacy's head swung around in shock, and her green eyes glittered as she glared at his profile.

He tossed her a strange, quirking smile. "You don't like chil-dren?"

"I have nothing against children," she snapped, abruptly infuri-ated. How could he be so casual about something like this? "But I certainly wouldn't want them born into a situation where the only thing holding the parents together is the father's need for revenge."

"I see," he stated, still in that strange neutral voice. "But perhaps it will happen anyway. You know I'm not taking any precautions, flower lady," he added gently. "And I hadn't noticed you "

"A woman," Stacy declared tightly, seethingly, "can take care of herself."

With a suddenness that was startling, Hunter swerved out of traf-fic, coming to a neat, efficient, totally unexpected halt alongside the curb.

"Hunter! What are you doing?" Stacy gasped as he switched off the engine and turned to confront her, his arm flung along the back of the seat. In the confines of the sleek vehicle's c.o.c.kpit he seemed larger and more menacing than usual. The lights of the well-instrumented dash reflected starkly from the shaft of silver in his dark hair, and the gray eyes were dark, threatening pools.

"If you're planning on handling any unwanted complications of this marriage by having an abortion, you can d.a.m.n well forget it!" he grated, not touching her.

Stacy stared at him, wide-eyed, and suddenly it all made sense. "You wouldn't mind in the least if I got pregnant, would you?" she whispered in heavy comprehension, her heart sinking.

"The thought of you having my baby doesn't bother me in the slightest," he confirmed, giving emphasis to each word.

Stacy swallowed, battling fiercely to hold back tears of despair and rage. He had said his revenge would be a subtle one. It wasn't until now that she had fully understood. "You needn't worry about my having an abortion," she bit out evenly. "I went to a doctor last week and got some pills." At least he would know she didn't intend to cooperate completely in his plan of revenge!

"Why didn't you tell me?" he snapped.

"I didn't see that it was any of your business!"

"My G.o.d, woman! You try a man's patience! How dare you leave me out of a decision as basic as this?"

"If you were really concerned about the matter, you would have brought it up yourself. Before the marriage!" she hissed angrily.

She saw him take a visible grip on himself, and once again he demonstrated his annoying ability to handle his own temper. It was clear she had upset his plans, and he was furious, but he wasn't go-ing to pursue the battle tonight. She wondered why.