The Texas Valentine Twins. Cathy Thacker Gillen
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forced herself to ignore it, lest she too become caught up in an out-of-control emotional maelstrom. “I wanted to go home to Texas, finish our senior year of high school. And I wanted everything we had done, undone, without our families or anyone else finding out.”
Wyatt, bless his heart, had agreed to let her have her way.
Unlike now.
Exhaling, he continued, “We went back to the wedding chapel and asked the justice of the peace who married us if he could pretend we had never been there. He refused. But he gave us the name of someone who could help us.”
Adelaide remembered the relief she had felt. “So we went to the attorney’s office the next day and asked him to file an annulment.”
“I had a rodeo to compete in that evening, in Tahoe, so I signed what the attorney told me to sign and took off, leaving Adelaide behind to wrap things up.”
“Which I did,” Adelaide said hotly.
Wyatt lifted a brow. “You have a canceled check to prove it?”
His attitude was as contentious as his low, clipped tone, but she refused to take the bait. “No. I paid his fee in cash.”
Wyatt rocked back in his chair, ran the flat of his palm beneath his jaw. Finally, he shook his head and said, “Brilliant move.”
Resisting the urge to leap across the table and take him by the collar, Adelaide folded her arms in front of her. “I was trying not to leave more of a paper trail than we already had.”
Wyatt narrowed his gaze at her in mute superiority. “Learned from the best, there, didn’t you?” he mocked.
Adelaide sucked in a startled breath. “Do not compare me with my father!” she snapped, her temper getting the better of her, despite her desire to appear cool, calm and collected. “If not for me, and all the forensic accounting work I did, people still might not know where all the money from the Lockhart Foundation went!”
An angry silence ticked out between them. Broken only by his taut reminder, “If not for your father, the foundation money might still all be there. My mother would not have been put through hell the last year.”
Their gazes locked in an emotional battle of wills that had been years in the making. Refusing to give him a pass, even if he had been hurt and humiliated, too, she sent him a mildly rebuking look, even as the temperature between them rose to an unbearable degree. “Your mother knows I had nothing to do with any of that. So does the rest of your family.” Ignoring the perspiration gathering between her breasts, she paused to let her words sink in. Dropped her voice another compelling notch. “Why can’t you accept that, too?”
* * *
THE HELL OF it was, Wyatt secretly wished he could believe Adelaide Smythe was as innocent as everyone else did. He’d started to come close. And then this had happened.
He had seen Adelaide taking advantage of his mother’s kindness and generosity, decided to investigate, just to reassure himself, and found even more corruption.
Claire and Gannon exchanged lawyerly looks. “Let’s all calm down, shall we?” Gannon said.
Claire nodded. “Nothing will be gained from fighting.”
Adelaide pushed her fingers through the dark strands of her hair. It spilled over her shoulders in sexy disarray. “You’re right. Let’s just focus on getting the annulment, which should be easy—” she paused to glare at Wyatt “—since we never consummated the marriage.”
Once again, she was a little shady on the details. “Not then,” Wyatt pointed out.
Adelaide paled, as if suddenly realizing what he already had.
Claire’s brow furrowed. “You’ve been together intimately in the ten years since?”
Wyatt nodded, as another memory that had been hopelessly sexy and romantic took on a nefarious quality. “Last spring. After a destination wedding we both attended in Aspen.”
A flush started in her chest and moved up her neck into her face. In a low, quavering voice, Adelaide admitted, “We have a penchant for making terrible mistakes whenever we’re alone together. But since we didn’t know we were married at the time, that can’t count as consummating the marriage.” She gulped. “Can it?”
Stepping in, Gannon stated, “Actually, whether or not you slept together really doesn’t affect the marriage’s legality in the state of Texas. Hasn’t for some time.”
Wyatt and Adelaide both blinked in surprise.
“Emotionally, it might have ramifications,” Claire interjected.
No kidding, Wyatt thought. Their one and only night together had sure left him feeling as if he had been rocketed to the moon, his every wish come true, and then...as soon as Adelaide had come to her senses...sucker punched in the gut by her. Again.
“Unless, of course, one of you is impotent and concealed it, which is clearly not the case,” Gannon continued.
No kidding, Wyatt thought, remembering the sparks that had been generated during his and Adelaide’s one and only night together.
“You’re saying we can’t get an annulment?” Adelaide asked.
“Too much time has elapsed—nearly ten years—for you to request one from the court,” Gannon said.
Claire soothed, “You can, however, get a divorce.”
Wyatt knew what Adelaide was thinking. An annulment was a mistake, quickly remedied. A divorce meant being part of a marriage that had failed. That didn’t sit well with her. He hated failing at anything, too.
“But we went to a lawyer at the time!” Adelaide protested.
Claire looked up from her computer. “Who, according to public record, has apparently not been a practicing member of the Nevada bar for nearly a decade.”
Wyatt nodded. “The private detective agency said Mr. Randowsky had quit his practice and left the state shortly after we saw him. His practice dissolved accordingly.”
Adelaide looked both shocked and crestfallen. “So there’s no record of us ever being in his office? No real proof we ever tried to get an annulment?”
“None,” Wyatt confirmed irritably. He had already been down that avenue with the private investigators. “I couldn’t even locate anyone who worked in his office at the time.”
Adelaide buried her head in her hands. “Which means that getting Mr. Randowsky or his former staff to testify on our behalf is a lost cause.”
“Plus, there are children involved now,” Claire pointed out.
Adelaide sat up abruptly, her pretty face a mask of maternal ferocity. “My children,” she stated tightly. “I went to a fertility clinic and was artificially inseminated two weeks before I saw Wyatt in Aspen.”
Gannon looked at Wyatt. “You knew about this when you were together?”
Even as Wyatt shook his head, he knew it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had. When he had seen her again that night, so happy and glowing and carefree, he had wanted her. She had wanted him, too. Recklessly. Wantonly.
And the rest was history.
“Adelaide didn’t tell me she was starting a family until after I slept with her in Aspen.” “Nice as this was, and it was nice, nothing else can happen, Wyatt. I’ve got other plans...”
She tossed her mane of glossy dark hair and gave him a defensive look. “It was a one-night stand, Wyatt. A kind of whimsical ‘what if’ for both of us ten years too late. I didn’t think my pregnancy was relevant.”
He hated her habit of downplaying what they had once meant to each other. Even if she hadn’t had the guts to follow through. He looked her up