Millionaire's Women Part 53

Of course they had. She was acting like a ninny. She should just call him...

And so she had. He'd sounded a bit curt at first, but when she told him she wanted to meet him for lunch, he'd agreed.

"Tomorrow would be good. There's something I need to talk to you about," he'd said.

"Me, too." She hesitated a moment, then asked, "Is everything okay?"

"Yes." And then, "I just hate this d.a.m.n waiting."

The frustration and longing in his voice had sent her spirits soaring. She'd been smiling when she hung up the phone.

He did love her, she thought now as she stepped off the elevator. And she loved him...

His a.s.sistant, talking on the phone, smiled and motioned her toward the office. Ellie entered quietly and saw him sitting at his desk, his hair rumpled, his tie askew, his jacket straining across his shoulders as he bent over some papers.

Dear heaven, how she loved him. For a moment, the emotion almost overwhelmed her. She felt fluttery and elated and buoyant just looking at him. How could she have doubted it for a second? For a moment, the emotion almost overwhelmed her. She felt fluttery and elated and buoyant just looking at him. How could she have doubted it for a second?

"h.e.l.lo, darling," she said, a smile trembling on her lips as she stepped forward.

He looked up. Something blazed in his eyes, but he didn't return her smile. He had a tense look about his mouth and jaw. She heard a low cough. Turning, she saw a short man in a tailored suit rising from a chair.

Garek stood also. "Ellie, this is Larry Larson, the company lawyer. He has something for you to sign."

"Something for me to sign?" Ellie repeated in confusion. "What is it?"

Garek met her puzzled gaze steadily.

"A prenuptial agreement," he said.

Garek watched Ellie as Larry explained the contract to her. She was very quiet. She'd barely said a word since he'd first told her about the prenuptial agreement. She sat in the chair across from him, her face very pale.

What was she thinking? He didn't know. Except for one stunned glance at him when he'd made his announcement, she hadn't looked at him. She looked hurt. She looked as though he'd done something unspeakable.

Dammit, he thought angrily. She had no right to look like that. No right at all. It was common sense to settle their financial matters before they married. It made no difference to their relationship. Couldn't she see that?

Larry finished his explanation. He flipped to the back page of the doc.u.ment and showed her the signature line. "You just need to sign here," he said, holding out his pen.

Ellie didn't take the pen. Instead, she rose to her feet and gathered up the pages.

"Is something wrong?" Larry asked.

"No, not at all," she said calmly. "I just want to take it home and read through it."

Larry frowned. "But I explained all of the clauses to you."

"Yes, I know. I still want to read them over on my own."

Garek frowned also. "Is there something you don't understand?"

"No, not really."

"Then there's no reason to delay signing," the lawyer said, his voice a trifle chilly.

Her voice was equally cool. "I disagree. You've explained to me the necessity for this. Your reasons were practical. But I must be practical, also. It's only common sense to read something before I sign it, perhaps have my lawyer look it over."

Larry gaped at her.

She gave Garek a slightly shaky smile. "Do you mind if we skip lunch? I'm not very hungry..." She turned and walked out of the room.

Garek went after her.

"Ellie," he said, catching her elbow in the hall outside Mrs. Grist's office. "Dammit, it doesn't have to be like this-"

"Like what?"

Her expression was cool and remote-except for her eyes-her eyes were big blue pools of pain. Releasing her, he shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped back. "I can't take chances with the business."

"I know. I'm not mad, honestly. It's just that...oh, why does money have to ruin everything? Why does it make everything corrupt and ugly?"

He frowned at her. "You're exaggerating."

"I know. I know. I guess I'm still in shock. I wish you'd told me about this sooner."

"I've been busy." It was difficult suddenly to meet her gaze. "I just signed the Lachland buyout this morning. It means a lot to Wisnewski Industries."

"Does it? I'm happy for you, then." She turned her face away, brushing the dampness from her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I have to go." She hurried out the door.

"Ellie..." He started after her again, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

It was Larry.

"Let her go," the lawyer said. "Don't fall for the tears."

Garek glared at him. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"The tears." Larry shook his head. "Men fall for it every time. I fell for it four times myself. Leave her alone-she'll sign the prenup and she'll forget about it, believe me. Until the divorce. Um, if if there's a divorce," he added hastily. there's a divorce," he added hastily.

"Get the h.e.l.l out of here," Garek snarled.

Larry beat a hasty retreat.

For the next several hours, Garek tried to concentrate on his work. He had plans to make now that the Lachland buyout had taken place. He could easily spend the next six months working out all the details. This was an exciting, challenging time for Wisnewski Industries. He should have had no trouble focusing on his work.

But then, he'd never been in as ituation like this before.

He pushed away the profit-and-loss statements he was studying and leaned back in his chair. He wanted to marry Ellie. He'd made the decision impulsively, but he'd thought it was the right one. Only now he wasn't so sure.

Ever since Larry had brought up the subject of the prenuptial agreement, needles of doubt had poked at him. This whole marriage thing was more difficult than he'd thought it would be. He didn't like having demands put on him. And in her own way, he realized suddenly, Ellie was more demanding than Doreen and Amber combined.

He almost wished she did want money-that would have been easy to give. But Ellie wanted something more complicated than that.

He wished he'd just slept with her.

Only somehow, that wasn't enough. He wanted more, also. He wanted...what exactly? He didn't know. What the h.e.l.l was the matter with him?

He frowned at the painting on the wall across from him.

Woman in Blue.

He'd disliked it at first. He'd thought it was silly and stupid and pointless. But somehow, over the last few months, it had begun to grow on him. It brightened up his office, made the room seem less dull, less enclosed. It was like having a window into an alternate reality.

As he looked at it now, he saw how the colors moved in sinuous tendrils and rhythmic scalloped patterns and how the blue became more and more intense as it moved toward the center of the painting. There was no one spot where you could see a change in hue, but the blue slowly, gradually, became brighter and brighter until in the very center it was an intense, bright sapphire...

And suddenly he understood.

Garek tried all afternoon and all evening to reach Ellie, but she seemed to have disappeared from the city of Chicago. Her phone had been disconnected and when he went to her apartment, the windows were dark and no one answered the door. He went to the gallery, but the idiot girl there said Ellie was on vacation. He even went to her aunt and uncle's house, but they only looked at him coolly and said they had no idea where she was.

The coolness made him think they were lying, that they knew something. He parked at the end of the street and lurked there for several hours, but there was no sign of Ellie.

He drove back over to her apartment and waited...and waited. Finally, at 3:00 a.m., he pounded on the door of the downstairs flat where Ellie's landlord lived, and convinced the man to unlock her door in case she was hurt. Squinting in the glare from the kitchen lights, Garek looked at the bare walls, the packed suitcases.

"She said you two were getting married tomorrow," the landlord said. "You think she's changed her mind?"

Garek's gut twisted, squeezing the air out of his lungs and making it difficult to breathe. "No," he said more sharply than he'd intended.

"Uh-huh." The landlord looked pityingly at him.

Garek felt a sudden, strange sense of disorientation. The cramped, dark apartment faded from his consciousness, replaced by a memory of a different place-a brightly lit place with stark white walls. He'd been standing outside the hospital emergency room where the surgeons were operating on his father, waiting for someone to come out and tell him what was going on. The minutes had ticked by, turning with agonizing slowness into hours. He'd alternated between trying to calm his mother's and sister's hysterical crying, a.s.suring them over and over again that the hospital had the city's finest doctors, that everything would turn out all right. They'd both finally fallen asleep on the couches in the waiting room. So he'd been the only one to see the expression in the doctor's eyes when he'd come in to talk to them-an expression very similar to the one in Ellie's landlord's eyes.

"No," Garek said again.

But this time his voice emerged a harsh, cracked whisper.

"I always thought he was a jerk," Robbie growled. "You should have let me smash his face that first time-"

"Robbie!" Ellie shifted on the dingy couch in his apartment. Her back still ached from sleeping on its springless cushions and she had a headache from Robbie's cologne, which he had a tendency to apply too heavily. She was in no mood to listen to his threats. "I need advice, not violence. I need logic and common sense."

"And you came to me?" Robbie, sitting on the couch next to her, dumped some more salsa on the cold taco he was eating for breakfast. A diced tomato flew into the air and landed on the prenuptial agreement lying on the coffee table next to his plate. "Hmm, well..." He grimaced. "You need to talk to your grandfather. He would know about this kind of stuff."

"No." Ellie brushed the tomato off the doc.u.ment and frowned at the slight red stain left on the paper. "I can handle this myself."

"But you can't," Robbie pointed out with impeccable logic. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have asked me for advice."

Ellie glared at him while he chomped on his taco. Yesterday, she'd just wanted a place where she could think without having to explain everything. But this morning, she wanted to talk about it-she wanted advice.

"You know, Ellie," Robbie said, swallowing a large bite, "I don't think you can really blame the guy for trying to protect his company."

"I don't. Not exactly. It's just..." She paused, struggling to put her feelings into words.

"It's just what?" Robbie asked.

"It's just that Garek has obviously put a lot of thought and time and consideration into his company." She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. "I just wish he'd spare the same thought and time and consideration for me."

Robbie sighed. "Look, if the guy doesn't love you, he's an idiot and you should dump him."

"I think he does love me. I just don't think he knows how how to love me." to love me."

"He's a virgin?" Robbie glanced down at his limptaco. "Well, if you want me to give him a few pointers-"

"No, that's not what I mean," Ellie said. "I mean he doesn't know how to have a relationship. I don't think he knows how to discuss things, how to compromise, how to allow himself to be vulnerable."

A doubtful look crossed Robbie's face. "Does any guy know how to do those things?"

"Maybe not." Ellie felt aburning behind her eyes. The sad thing was that she suspected that if Garek ever let down his guard, he would be more than capable of all those things-and much, much more. But it would take a long time for her to breach the walls he'd erected around himself. If she were lucky, in five or ten years, maybe-maybe-he would actually admit that he loved her.

Was she just wasting her time?

That's what she needed to know.

She never should have come to Robbie. She should have called Martina. Or Aunt Alma. Robbie was hopeless when it came to advice. He'd never had the least bit of common sense. He never let logic, or anything else, get in the way of his feelings.

But then again, maybe that was exactly the answer she was looking for.

Chapter Sixteen.

Garek sat at his desk, staring blearyeyed at the paper in front of him, the words running together in an unintelligible mess. He'd been trying to read it for the last hour, but his aching eyes and pounding head refused to cooperate. It was almost four o'clock in the afternoon and he still hadn't heard from Ellie. He'd told Mrs. Grist not to put any call through unless it was from her. So far, the phone had been completely silent.