The Millionaire's Cinderella Wife

Her giggly, suggestive tone reminded him of the recent and unfortunate sailor suit woman who wanted to be “handled personally.” His heart sank.

Gina appeared again, leading two women to the adjacent table, from which Lucy had stolen her chair. She stood, apologized and slid it back. The two women sat down in a flurry of bag rummaging and menu shuffling and questions to each other about their sunglasses, all of which somehow managed to give them several long and unsubtle opportunities to look in Ty’s direction.

Gina mouthed at him, “Sorry. Last table,” and he realized that the place had filled up without him noticing.

There were a few regulars and a couple of tourist families, but most of the clientele was female, aged somewhere between twenty and forty, and every single one of them had either his Garrett Marine Sailing School brochure or his Stoneport Seafront Gallery brochure or his Nautilus Restaurant brochure in their hands.

He’d had each brochure printed with his own scrawled handwriting and signature. “Welcome to my world! Ty Garrett.” An astonishing number of women had taken him at his word.

“I should catch you later when we’ll have more time,” Lucy said.

Deprived of her seat, she obviously felt that she lacked panache, standing there. People were craning past the fish tank to look at her. And at Sierra and Ty. And he was by this time a lot more familiar with this neck-prickling awareness of public attention than he’d ever wanted to be.

“Here’s where I’m staying.” Lucy flipped him a card with the address and phone number of an upmarket bed-and-breakfast. “But I’ll call you, so we can set something up.” She gurgled her laugh once more. “Maybe I’ll even take a private sailing class.”

No.

This whole thing had to stop.

Now.

And he had to stop it at the source with something that neither Lucy nor anyone else in Stoneport could ignore.

Across the table, Sierra had quirked her mouth into a variation of the lemon thing that Ty couldn’t interpret beyond a general sense that she wasn’t impressed, and he realized that she represented the only obvious, tangible, workable solution to his current problem. If he didn’t act at once, though, it would be too late. It wouldn’t carry conviction.

He had to say it now, or not say it at all.

“Before you go, Lucy,” he said, his voice as smooth and casual as he could make it. “I want you to meet Sierra, the most important woman in my life and, I should tell you, the reason you won’t be able to call the next article Bachelor of the Year II.”

“Oh, really?” Lucy cooed, with a dazzling, clueless smile. Clearly, she was still a couple of steps behind.

“Yes, really.” He reached across the table and covered Sierra’s smooth, pretty hand with his. He would have caressed her if he hadn’t been so sure she’d snatch her hand away. “Because Sierra is my wife.”

Chapter Two

“Just tell me, if it’s not too much trouble, what that was for, Ty Garrett!” Sierra said to her soon-to-be ex-husband, through clenched teeth, as soon as the A-list journalist had gathered her shredded composure—her big-selling, drop-dead gorgeous Bachelor of the Year already, excuse me, had a wife?—and managed a more or less upright exit.

“Shh! Not yet,” Ty answered. “Not here. Let’s go.”

He stood up and grabbed tighter onto the hand Sierra was trying to snatch away. Then he gave a quick tilt of his head to Gina to say they were leaving, and began to weave his way confidently between the tables toward the café’s kitchen door. At least a dozen pairs of female eyes tracked their progress, and as she followed him Sierra heard several whispered comments.

“That’s him!”

“Lordy, what a body!”

“I have a private two-hour sail-boat cruise with him tomorrow…”

“Not here?” Sierra echoed, as the swing door closed behind them, shutting off the whisperings and the looks. The sounds and sights of a busy kitchen took their place. “Okay, Ty, we’ve tried your office, we’ve tried your café. What’s next down the list?”

“Have to be my place, I guess,” he said.

Well, I walked right into that one, didn’t I?

She didn’t know why it bothered her to think of continuing this confrontation with Ty on what was indisputably his own personal turf, but somehow it did. Maybe because she was too curious. She wanted to know what kind of a home he had set up for himself.

Sierra had gone back to live with Dad and her brother and sisters after the split and, because of their various needs, she was still there. In contrast, with no family ties and no budget constraints, Ty had only his own taste and lifestyle to consult. Did he inhabit a sterile bachelor pad? A designer decorated mansion? A permanent hotel suite?

She didn’t want to feel so curious about him, when they’d just agreed on a divorce. Still less did she want to think that there might be any threat to her emotional health in being alone with him. She was over all that. She had to be, for her own well-being.

So why this sense of nerves jumping in her stomach, and pulses jumping everywhere else? Purely because this morning had been so much more complicated than she’d initially hoped?

The best solution would be to discuss everything they needed to discuss in private at Ty’s, then get back to her motel, check out and leave town.

Still following in his wake, Sierra exited through the café’s service doors and found herself in the access lane that backed the waterfront buildings. Since the lane largely serviced the various Garrett Marine businesses, she wasn’t surprised to find it comparatively clean and well ordered.

The only item out of place was an ancient mud-brown sedan, parked crookedly so that it almost grazed the back wall of the next building and just left room for the delivery truck nosing its way past. The vehicle seemed to be one small step above a junk-heap shell, with dented panels, rusted bumpers and a silhouette that was thirty years out of style.

She nearly gasped out loud in disbelief when Ty aimed a key right for its passenger side lock.

“Decoy and get-away car,” he explained, so apparently she actually had gasped out loud.

“This is—”

“The car I was driving when I left Ohio, yes.”

“It looks—”

“Even worse. First three years here, it was the only car I could afford. I was plowing every cent that I could into the business, back then.”

He opened the door for her and nudged her into the front seat with a gentlemanly gesture. She would have resisted, except that a glance at the interior told her it was neat and clean and—good grief!—upholstered with glove-soft taupe leather seats.

“Appearances can be deceiving, I guess,” she drawled.

“Yeah, well, the original upholstery cracked and tore, and it seemed like I might as well replace it with something decent.”

“I don’t know why you kept this car at all.”

Loyalty? Sentimentality? Was Ty like that?

“Told you, as a decoy,” he said, as he arrived in the driver’s seat. “Don’t always want the whole town to know my movements. Which tend to be fairly obvious when I’m driving the Porsche.”

“I wish you’d been as concerned for your privacy when A-list approached you about the article.”

“Damn straight!” he drawled. “One issue we agree on, at least. Hindsight is a beautiful thing.”

“So why that ridiculous announcement to the journalist, just now? If you want privacy in your personal life, why tell the world that you have a wife, especially when we’re not going to be married a day longer than we have to be?”

“You saw what it was like, back there. And I’m sure your ears are as good as mine, so you heard, too. I’ve had it up to here, seriously, and notifying a very vocal journalist of the truthful fact that you and I are married seemed like a handy tool for dealing with it. You’ll notice she didn’t hang around.”