The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

hell’s going on that no one’s given me a straight answer before this.”

Garrett didn’t move. His brother-in-law’s responding with anger was just what he’d have done if someone had dared to keep him in the dark. But he still worried how to handle the situation because he knew tact had never been his strong suit.

“I said, tell me. What’s going on? I demand to know.”

“And I want to tell you because I believe your knowing the whole picture could be a matter of my sister’s life. Otherwise I’d never consider breaking her confidence. But I can’t give you the whole picture at this exact minute.”

“The hell you can’t.”

Garrett didn’t smile, but he almost wanted to. It was so easy to deal with another man. Men understood each other. Men responded in predictable ways.

Men were nothing like Emma.

“This is what I want to do, Griff,” he said bluntly. “I need to give my sister a chance to tell you the situation herself. If you still have any questions two days from now, then call me. I promise to fill you in.”

“Not good enough,” Griff snapped.

“It has to be. Because I won’t betray her trust if I don’t have to. And right now I don’t want to even take you back to her unless I’m damn sure you’ll be good to her.”

“I love Caroline, for God’s sake! Why on earth would you think I wouldn’t be good to her? Because we had some trouble a couple years back-”

“No, that’s not it.” Garrett rolled down a window. Rain whisked in, but it was too hot and too tight in the car without fresh air. For that matter, right now his whole life felt too hot and too tight to breathe. And his sister’s mess was only part of it. “It took a long time for me to trust you-”

“That’s a likewise. I always thought Caroline loved you more than me.”

“She doesn’t. She loves you more than anyone or anything in the universe.” Garrett said it bluntly, to see Griff’s reaction.

“I feel the same way about her.” No hesitation. Only increased anxiety. “I need to know what’s wrong or how can I possibly know what to do or how to help her-”

“And one way or another, you will. I promise. But…Griff, you know our background. Our parents. You know Caroline never had the security of feeling wanted or needed.”

“You’re not telling me news.”

“I’m just saying…she was always more likely to make some mistakes that maybe another woman wouldn’t. Not because of lack of character. But because of lack of security, on the inside. And if you can’t deal with that, then I’d just as soon take you back to that plane. Fly you anywhere you want to go. Pay your way-”

“Shut up, Garrett. I’m not bribable. I thought you knew that.”

Finally Garrett’s pulse eased. “I hoped you wouldn’t be.” He added, “She’s scared to see you. Know that. And ashamed of this suicide attempt. Know that, too. And if you didn’t guess, our parents heaped more stress-and guilt-on her head rather than less.”

“Nothing new there, huh?” Griff said wryly and then sank against the passenger seat as if trying to process all the information and implications just given him. “Get me home, would you?”

“Yes.” Garrett, reassured, started the car and aimed toward their house. Barely another minute passed before Griff piped up again.

“What’s wrong?”

Garrett glanced at him. “You don’t think the scenario I laid out for you was enough?”

“I meant…what’s wrong with you? You look as if you haven’t slept in a week. Business troubles?”

“No.” Garrett hesitated. Normally he’d never have confessed a personal problem to anyone. But because he wanted a stronger bond with Griff-and because he felt so damned shattered he couldn’t think clearly anyway-he admitted, “It seems that my love life has a lot in common with a train wreck.”

“Someone in New York?”

“No. The where of it doesn’t matter. The thing is…hell, I guess I just assumed it would never happen to me. That I’d fall, like in the storybooks. I thought the whole thing was a myth. Until…her. I can’t believe how the whole world changed, that fast, that completely. Only…”

When Garrett didn’t immediately fill in that blank, Griff guessed, “She cheated on you?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“She doesn’t care the same way you do?”

“I thought she did.” Garrett stopped at a red light, stared dead ahead until it changed. “Now I don’t know. I just found out that our getting married could mean a ton of money for her. I understand money. Believe me. And I’d marry her any way she’d have me, to be honest. It’s just…I thought her being with me was about-” He couldn’t, didn’t, say the word love. Not to another man. “I thought we were clicking. That we both felt the same thing exploding between us. So it hit me in the gut hard. That there was money behind it.”

“You’re sure there was?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure. She came out and admitted it.” Garrett kept replaying the whole thing in his mind. Her sitting there on his chair, wearing his shirt. His feeling so full of emotion for her, love, caring, protectiveness, lust, all of it. And then her so guilelessly spilling the whole story of her suddenly lost inheritance. Her knowing-because she had to know-that he was so wrapped up in her that she could have said anything in the universe to him at that moment.

He could feel Griff’s eyes on him. They were only a pinch away from pulling into his sister’s driveway. “Hell, that’s rough,” his brother-in-law said quietly and then slowly added, “It seems ironic that we were just talking about the issues that affect Caroline…and that you’re going through something the same way.”

“Come again?”

“I meant…I know how you two grew up. That cold household. Your parents into status and the prestige of their social life a ton more than they seemed to care about either of you kids.”

Garrett pulled into the driveway, braked. “That’s exactly why I need you to be extra good to Caroline. Need you to give her more rope than someone else. She has a ton of love in her, Griff. But I think, coming from where we did, it’d be unrealistic to think she could make a marriage work without getting lost now and then. I don’t mean that anything’s your fault. Or hers. Just that for sure the two of us are stuck with a longer learning curve than most people.”

“Yeah,” Griff agreed. “That’s exactly why I asked if you were positive about that woman’s feelings for you. Because possibly the Keating background influenced how you saw the situation.”

Garrett saw his sister’s face in the living room window, saw Griff’s eyes light up when he saw her. When Griff shot out of the car-completely forgetting his luggage-Garrett had to smile, had to believe those two had a real chance at making things right together.

But his smile disappeared as he backed out of the driveway.

His brother-in-law’s insight started clawing on his nerves-about his having the same dysfunctional background Caroline did. Garrett knew exactly how relationship-challenged he was. But that sure as hell didn’t mean he knew how to fix the shattering mess he’d made with Emma.

Before he could panic, though, he pulled over the side of the road and dialed her cell.

She answered-which was good. But he could hear heaps of noise and other people’s voices in the background, as well as the chill in her voice-which wasn’t so good.

“Look,” he said and then stopped. “I upset you.”

“More than upset me.”

“I was in the wrong,” he said immediately but couldn’t very well elaborate because he didn’t know exactly what he’d done.

“Not wrong,” Emma corrected him. “Not if that was honestly how you felt.”

He sensed a terrifying trap and shifted to what mattered. “I want to marry you. That’s how I feel. That’s what I thought you wanted, too…maybe not that very minute? I assume you’d have wanted to spend more time, have a chance to be more sure. But right then was when the money problem came up.”

“Garrett, I didn’t tell you about the problem because I was expecting you to solve it. I told you because it was something traumatic that happened to me and I thought-hoped-that you’d become someone I could honestly talk to