The Marriage Experiment

“Your memory’s either very short or very convenient,” he said, surprised at how ticked off he was at the way she just shovelled their marriage aside as if it had been of no more consequence than a dust ball. “The sex was magnificent.”

She almost blushed then. Just a hint of peach suffused her pale and flawless skin. But her gaze, like her voice, remained annoyingly steady. “You didn’t need to marry me to have that, though, did you, Grant? You got that after just three dates.”

“You make it sound as though I had my wicked way with a reluctant virgin, when we both know that wasn’t the case. Virgin you undoubtedly were, honey, but the word ‘reluctant’ doesn’t exactly spring to mind when I remember how eagerly you—”

“I was nineteen,” she cut in, a tiny crack marring the surface of her polish at his crass reminder. “Young and innocent enough to believe that love and sex always went hand in hand and were strong enough to survive anything.”

“Anything but your father,” he said, snagging a couple of flutes of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and handing one to her.

The edge in her voice could have sawn through steel when she replied, “Leave my father out of this, Grant.”

“Pity you didn’t feel that way eight years ago, Olivia,” he said, tipping the rim of his glass against hers. “Perhaps if you had, instead of our standing here now exchanging trite unpleasantries, we’d be looking for a way to sneak off and enjoy a little afternoon delight.”

The ventriloquist’s dummy chose that moment to return, thus sparing Olivia having to weather more damage to her image as the perfectly-in-control divorcee facing off with her obnoxious ex. “Oh, I see someone already brought you another drink, Pussycat,” he warbled, his pale blue eyes swinging from her heightened color and fixing themselves suspiciously on Grant. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Henry Colton, a very good friend of Olivia’s.”

It was a combination of things—her snotty hauteur, the man’s proprietary attitude, the “pussycat” business—that stirred Grant to further mischief. “I’m Grant Madison, former lover and ex-husband of Olivia’s.”

“Grant!” Olivia sort of snuffled into her glass and aspirated on her champagne.

Relieving her of the drink, he thumped her gently between the shoulderblades and smiled affably at Henry Colton. “So tell me, Henry, exactly how do you define being a woman’s ‘very good friend’?”

“You don’t have to answer that question, Henry,” Olivia spluttered. “It happens to be none of Grant’s business.”

“It’s all right, Olivia, I’ve got nothing to hide.” Squaring his perfectly tailored shoulders, Henry stretched his neck as if he hoped that would bring his height up to six feet and put him more or less on a par with Grant’s six-two. “We met at the bank. I’m the manager of Springdale Savings and Loan, you know—”

“I didn’t know,” Grant said. “Should I have?”

Olivia shot him a glance, part-pleading, part-loathing. “Please don’t do this, Grant!”

“I’m merely being polite, sweet face,” he said, massaging her shoulder soothingly. Her cream dress was sleeveless and held up by wide straps which dipped to a fetchingly low neckline. Even if he’d wanted to, he could hardly have avoided contact with her warm, smooth skin. “Go on, Henry. I’m fascinated.”

Henry was fascinated, too—at the way Olivia’s ex was openly pawing her. Visibly trying not to stare at Grant’s trespassing hand, he cleared his throat. “She sought me out when she was looking for sponsors for one of her fundraising efforts.”

“Sought you out?” Grant tried to hide his snigger in a cough. Sam Whitfield deserved a medal for the job he’d done on this candidate!

Undaunted, Henry plowed on. “Neither of us was seeking a relationship at the time but…” He looked fixedly at the hand draped casually over Olivia’s shoulder and a spark of something approaching outrage colored his voice. “How shall I put it to give you a clearer picture? There was a meeting of minds, as it were. We connected—strongly—and the rest, as they say, is history. We are an item. It’s as simple as that.”

The only simple thing around here is you, pal! Grant thought, unable to take the man seriously. “Funny how things happen sometimes, isn’t it?” he said. “You think you’ve got life neatly figured out and, wham! In the blink of an eye, everything changes.”

“When the right woman comes along, it’s worth the upheaval,” Henry declared so smugly Grant almost upchucked.

“And Olivia certainly knows how to generate upheaval,” he said.

She didn’t drive her high heel into his foot as she stepped past him but it wasn’t for want of wishing she could. Talk about giving a guy the evil eye!

“Henry,” she purred, sidling up to him and laying a manicured hand on his arm, “would you be a dear and get me a glass of water? Something around here is giving me a headache.”

“Of course, Pussycat,” he meowed back.

She watched as he wove a path among the other wedding guests, a small, serene smile on her face. “What a perfect ass you still are, Grant Madison,” she cooed venomously.

“People don’t change, Olivia,” he said, wondering how long she could keep up with the china doll act, “no matter how hard others try to make them. I’d have thought it was a lesson too well learned for you to have forgotten it, considering how hard you tried—and failed—to shape me to fit your idea of what a husband should be.”

“This might come as a crushing blow to your ego, Grant, but very little of the ten months we spent together is engraved on my memory. The seven years since have been more than enough time to erase you completely. That being the case, your harking back to our marriage is about as futile as sifting through cold ashes in the hope of stirring up a fire. Furthermore,” she finished, giving her facial muscles a real work-out in order to preserve that phony smile, “you surely didn’t come all the way back here just to dig up a past we both know is better left buried.”

“You’re right, sweet face. Autopsies never did hold much fascination for me. I’m far more interested in the living than the dead. So tell me, what’s new with you since we parted company? Do you still live with Daddy? Does he monitor your every move? Is he grooming Henry to become the next Mrs. Olivia Whitfield? And is old Henry good in the sack?”

That wiped the smile off her face! “I have my own place, my own life and, as Henry already made perfectly clear, he and I are just friends,” she spat, splashes of angry color flaring across her cheeks.

“You mean to tell me,” he exclaimed, rearing back in feigned astonishment, “that he hasn’t—that the pair of you don’t—? Olivia, why the hell not? Can’t he manage it? Because if that’s a problem, there’s treatment available that’s rumored to be amazingly successful. Not that I’ve got personal knowledge, you understand, but I do keep up with the medical journals and—”

“Oh, shut up!” she practically wept, her composure collapsing like a house of cards. “Just shut up and go away!”

Since he’d been needling her precisely in the hope of stripping away all the lacquered perfection that made up this new Olivia Whitfield, success should have tasted sweet. Instead, it left a bitter taste on his tongue and filled him with a strange remorse. None of the things he’d thought he wanted—to have the last word, to be the one who walked away and left her standing—were nearly as tempting as the urge to wrap his arms around her and hold her close the way he had in the early days, when love was new and a kiss could work miracles.

Fortunately, a less welcome ghost from the past barreled onto the scene and put paid to any such nonsense. “So it is you,” Sam Whitfield huffed, panting to a standstill in front of him and glaring at him from eyes embedded in too much florid flesh. “I was hoping I’d been mistaken. What persuaded you to slither back into town?”

“Same thing that brought you out from under your personal rock, Sam. Attending a wedding.”

“Is that a fact? And how soon will you be leaving again?”

“Not for quite some time.”

Sam assumed his familiar bulldog stance, legs planted a yard apart, jaw thrust forward pugnaciously. “I wouldn’t have thought even you had the brass nerve to stay where you’re so clearly not wanted. We’ve got a fine, well-staffed hospital here, and we don’t need the likes of you hanging around, so take my advice, Dr. Madison, and go back to wherever it is you came from.”

The chance to inflict a little torture on the man Grant despised above all others was too delicious to squander. Savoring every moment, he said, “But you do need me, at least for a while.”

“What in the name of Hades are you talking about?”

“I’m standing in as Justin Greer’s locum while he and Valerie are away on their honeymoon. I’m going to be in your face every day for the next two months, Sam, running his practice. Naturally, I assumed you already knew that, seeing you’re chairman of the hospital board and a take-charge kind of guy.”

Sam turned faintly purple. “You’re delusional, Madison. I would never sanction any move that allowed you to cross the town limits, let alone set foot inside Springdale General again.”

“Well, gee, Sam, then someone else must have okayed it when you weren’t looking. Maybe you were on the ninth hole with your good buddy John Polsen at the time?”

It was a bone of contention that had lain buried for over eight summers, but it still raised Sam’s hackles. Grant’s internship hadn’t been more than a month old when a freeway accident had swamped the emergency unit with casualties. One of them had happened to be John Polsen and, although his injuries hadn’t been serious, Sam had pulled rank and had him bumped to the head of the line for treatment.

Brash, and as politically naive as they came, Grant had done what no one else had dared do: told the chairman of the board to stick to what he knew best—managing the hospital budget—and to leave the medical decisions to those who could recognize one end of a stethoscope from the other.

The fact that Sam had been indisputably in the wrong hadn’t altered the fact that he’d been publicly humiliated by a lowly intern. The new Dr. Madison had needed to be taken down a peg or two, and Grant had known from then on that he didn’t have a hope of serving his residency at Springdale. From that day forward, Sam had seen to it that Grant always wound up at the end of whatever line he chose to stand in.

Rubbing the man’s nose in the fact that he’d been out-maneuvered yet again by his old upstart of an enemy gave Grant a special kind of satisfaction now. In his view, no amount of punishment he could dole out would ever even the score between him and Olivia’s father. The bitterness ran too deep. On both sides.

“Even with the ink on your diploma barely dry you were an arrogant bastard, and nothing’s changed, obviously,” Sam growled. “It’s no thanks to you that John Polsen didn’t die, the day they brought him into Emergency.”

“Bull, Sam!” Grant said cheerfully. “John Polsen’s like you—too mean to die.”

“Stop it, both of you!” Olivia begged, observing the old warhorse fearfully. “For heaven’s sake, Grant, can’t you see my father isn’t a well man? This kind of strain is bad for his heart.”