Society Wives: Love or Money: The Bought-and-Paid-for Wife

He strolled farther into the room and inclined his head toward the marble island. “You bake?”

So. He didn’t want to talk about the letter or his father. Vanessa’s stomach dipped with disappointment. But what could she do? Perhaps if he stayed a while, perhaps if she went along with the teasing note to his question and kept it light, she could steer the conversation back.

“Yes, I bake.” She arched her eyebrows at the racks of cooling muffins. “Behold the evidence.”

Palms flattened on the countertop, he leaned over to breathe the rich aroma. His eyes rose up to hers, and the look of sybaritic pleasure on his face turned her knees to jelly. “Chocolate chip?”

“Chocolate cherry. With coconut.”

“Are they as good as they smell?”

Showing off a bit, she deftly loosened the first batch of muffins and turned them onto the cooling rack. A dozen, each one perfectly formed. She looked up and smiled. “Better.”

“Do you cook anything else?”

“I know my way around a kitchen.”

He chuckled, and that unexpected appreciation did nothing to help strengthen Vanessa’s jelly-knees. “Maybe I should have taken Frank’s prompt and angled to come stay here instead of the Marabella.”

“Oh, I don’t think that would have been a good idea,” she countered. “The two of us trying to share a house.”

It was only banter, deliberately lighthearted as they danced around the reason for his visit and the topic she desperately wanted to address. But in the short hesitation before he answered, Vanessa caught the glimmer of heat in his eyes and the mood changed. An unspoken acknowledgment of their attraction stretched between them, as palpable as the rich scent of oven-warm chocolate.

“No,” he said, much too seriously. “Not a good idea.”

To break the tension, she offered him coffee. Perhaps, then, she could broach the question of what next.

“Do I get anything with the coffee?”

Muffins, Ms. Pragmatist muttered in her ear. He’s talking about muffins. “I guess I can spare you one.”

“The rest being for …?”

Fussing with the coffee making, she answered automatically. “The guys at Twelve Oaks.”

“This is the place where you volunteer? Where your friend Andy works?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting name. Twelve Oaks.”

Vanessa looked up sharply. Nothing showed in his expression beyond curiosity but, still, she was so used to not talking about Twelve Oaks, to protecting this part of her life from scrutiny. “That’s the name of the estate,” she explained carefully. “A grand old Georgian home with separate servants’ quarters and stables and a small farm. The owner willed it to a foundation that worked with the developmentally disabled and they developed it into a residential facility.”

“What do you do there?”

“I help the therapists. Tuesdays it’s with arts and crafts. On Thursdays we cook.” She rolled her eyes. “Chick stuff.”

He didn’t counter with a teasing quip as she’d imagined, and she felt him looking at her differently, with a new respect or admiration that she did not deserve. If not for Lew, she would never have known about Twelve Oaks. She would never have gotten involved.

“I don’t do very much, as it happens, and what I do is not exactly selfless.”

“How long is your session this morning?”

Frowning at his question—where had that come from?—she looked up and got tangled in the intentness of his blue, blue eyes. “Does it matter?”

“I had this idea of going with you.” He let go a huff of breath. “Bad idea.”

“Why?”

“I have a plane to catch this afternoon.”