Gorgeous Grooms: Her Stand-In Groom / Her Wish-List Bridegroom / Ordinary Girl, Society Groom. Jackie Braun
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it was her pleading stare, or the fact that her mother preferred entertaining to arguing, but her parents seemed to thaw a little. Resignation, Catherine decided, would be a welcome substitute for acceptance at this point.
“I’d love some champagne,” Deirdra said. “Fetch a bottle from the cellar, would you, Russell? Felicity can get the glasses.”
She waved Catherine and Stephen toward the settee. “Come and sit.”
Catherine had barely settled onto the brocade upholstery when her mother added, “One day, you know, that settee will be yours.”
Chapter Six
“THAT went well,” Catherine said as they drove home after one of the most excruciatingly long and awkward hours of her life.
“Yeah. I’m sure they won’t go into mourning when our marriage ends.”
“Sorry about that.”
“We are what we are, Catherine.” And she knew he was talking about more than her parents.
Neither one spoke again until they arrived at the house. He parked the car in the garage and then held the back door for her.
As they passed through the kitchen, Catherine said, “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
The way he looked at her when he said it had her mouth going dry. Something simmered in his dark eyes, and the memory of their last kiss stirred her blood.
“I could fix you a sandwich.”
“A sandwich?” He smiled as if she’d told a joke. “Why not? But I’ll fix it myself. Is there anything you want?”
His question went beyond cold cuts, she was sure. She shook her head. “I’ll keep you company, if you’d like?”
“I’d like.”
She sat in the nook and watched him, the wealthy head of one of the most recognizable store chains in America, move around in the well-planned room in his stockinged feet.
When he was seated across from her, a huge sandwich and generous wedge of cake filling his plate, she said, “It looks like someone remembered your birthday.”
“Rosaria made it.”
Relief had her grinning. “I met her the other day.”
“Yes. She mentioned it.”
“She seems very nice. Does she just work for you the one day a week?”
Sandwich half way to his mouth, he paused. “Excuse me.”
“She mentioned that she does the grocery shopping for you.”
He dumped the sandwich back onto the plate. His tone angry, glacial, he said, “And you want to know what days she works for me?”
“I believe that’s what I asked.”
“Because someone who looks like her would of course be the hired help?”
“Stephen, did I miss something here? You’re suddenly angry and I have no idea why.”
“Of course you don’t. I don’t know why I expected you to. We are what we are,” he said, echoing his words from the drive home.
“If I’ve said something to offend you, please tell me so I can apologize.”
“Drop it. It’s not important.”
“It seems important to you. I’d like to know—”
“Rosaria is my aunt,” he interrupted. “You assumed she was the hired help.”
It was her turn to be angry. “Yes, I assumed. I saw a woman, wearing a uniform, putting away groceries in your kitchen. I put two and two together and came up with four.”
“Because that’s the stereotype.”
“Because no one told me differently.”
“And it never occurred to you that I would have family?” His voice rose and he said something in Spanish that she decided was not at all pleasant. “I do. A family that looks a hell of a lot more like me than I look like the Danburys. It is because of them that I know how to speak my mother’s language, even though my grandparents forbade me from doing so in their home. That only made me all the more determined to become fluent, which I was by the time I was thirteen.”
“Did you see them regularly, then?”
“I saw my maternal grandmother every day. When the Danburys wouldn’t allow her to visit me she offered to clean their house. She hired in as their maid so that she could be near me.”
His voice shook with emotion—anger, and something else that caused Catherine’s heart to ache for the little boy who had been denied so much.
“It’s because of mi abuelita that I have pictures of my mother. My grandparents would not allow a single snapshot of her to be displayed. They were ashamed of her, ashamed that their Harvard-educated son had married a Puerto Rican maid who spoke broken English.”
“Oh, Stephen. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She reached across the table to touch his hand. But he pulled away.
“Now you do.”
The silence stretched, before she asked in a quiet voice, “Do they know about me? I know Rosaria does, but do the others?”
“I’ve told them about our arrangement, yes.”
“Oh.” He’d told them about their arrangement. She could only wonder what they must think of her.
“Will I meet them?”
“No. I see no point in that. You talk a good game when it comes to acceptance and equality, but the first time you run across a brown-skinned woman in a kitchen you automatically assume she’s there because someone has paid her to tidy up. You disappoint me, Catherine. I didn’t think you were so much like your mother.”
Stephen said the words, and in his anger he meant the words, but then he watched her face pale and he wished he could snatch them back.
She scooted off the bench seat, eyes overly bright. Her voice was a shaky whisper when she said, “I’m sorry.”
And then she was gone.
Stephen’s appetite fled as well, taking with it all his anger. Now he just felt like a heel. Catherine had had a stressful and not entirely pleasant day, and he’d just made it worse. He tossed his uneaten sandwich down the garbage disposal, along with the cake, and turned off the kitchen light. The house was quiet, and even though for the first time since he’d bought it six years earlier someone else was sharing it with him, it still felt empty.
And he still felt alone.
The rest of the week passed much as Stephen had expected it would. He and Catherine rarely saw one another, and yet they each managed to evade or else lie convincingly to the handful of persistent tabloid reporters who dogged their steps, hoping for confirmation of rumors of a Vegas wedding. An Oscar-winning star’s brush with the law thinned the ranks of the vultures, but the speculation continued. Celebrity Spyglass featured the couple inside, along with a reprint of the photograph that had been taken of them aboard his sailboat in July and then been run prominently in the tabloid the following week, with the headline: Is this why the wedding is off? This time the headline asked, Are they or aren’t they?
Even he wasn’t sure he had an answer to that one.
At home each night, the only evidence that Stephen shared his house with someone else was a small sliver of light from beneath Catherine’s tightly closed bedroom door. She closeted herself inside before he arrived home and, to his surprise, was gone each morning before he left at seven.
Saturday morning, however, she was seated