His Chosen Wife. Anne McAllister
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of the morning after the night they’d spent together, the view from his window toward the sea, the sand, the sunrise, the lone surfer on his board riding toward shore.
All the longing she’d felt that morning had gone into that piece. It had accompanied her everywhere. She’d shown it in several galleries, had had offers to buy it, had never sold. Couldn’t bring herself to do it.
But she’d offered it for sale at Gaby’s. She’d carried it with her too long. Like the marriage she was ending, it was time to part with it. So she’d told Gaby all the pieces she’d brought were for sale.
“I’m sending her more when I get home, and she’s going to do a whole show—we’re calling it Fabric of Our Lives.”
PJ whistled. “That’s fantastic.” He seemed genuinely pleased. “Where is the gallery? What’s it called?”
“Sol y Sombra Downtown. To distinguish it from another called Uptown she has on Madison Ave. Downtown is in Tribeca. The original is in Santa Fe.”
Once she got talking about it, she couldn’t seem to stop. And PJ encouraged her. He asked questions, listened to her replies, drew her out, seeming genuinely interested. And maybe because he was the only person to have shown any interest at all, she kept on going.
She told him about the other artists whose work she’d seen there. Gabriela del Castillo represented artists in a variety of mediums.
“I know what I like,” she’d told Ally, “so that’s what I represent.”
She represented all sorts of oil and watercolor and acrylic artists as well as several photographers and a couple of sculptors.
“And she’s just hung one room with work by a very talented muralist named Martha Antonides.” It was her turn to flash a grin at him now. “I recognized your sister’s work right away.”
She had been as astonished to turn the corner in the gallery and find herself staring at an eight-foot-by-eight-foot painting that essentially took up a whole wall, a painting that captured summer in Central Park.
It was as if the artist had distilled the essence of New York’s famous park—its zoo, its boats, its ball diamonds, fields, walkways and bike paths. The detail was incredible. Every person—and there were hundreds—was unique, special. Real.
And studying it while Gabriela went on at length about its talented creator, Ally wished she’d gone back to look at the mural in PJ’s apartment to find herself in it.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Gaby had asked eagerly.
“I have, actually,” Ally had said. “I saw a couple of her murals earlier this week. She’s amazingly talented.”
“You can tell her so,” PJ said when Ally repeated her comment to him. “She’ll be delighted to hear it. I’m glad she’s painting on something smaller than buildings these days. Easier for her, now that she’s staying home with a kid.”
It was easy to talk to PJ about her work and about his. And since his family figured largely in the company, she found that it was easy to ask about them. He talked readily, telling stories about growing up in a large boisterous family that made her laugh at the same time that she felt twinges of envy for the childhood he had known. It was so different from her own.
And while the thought of meeting a host of Antonideses was unnerving under the circumstances—she felt like a fraud—she found that the more she heard, the more eager she was to meet them.
More than once she said, “You’re making that up,” when PJ related some particularly outrageous anecdote, many of them having to do with things he and his brothers did or pranks he played on his sisters.
And every time he shook his head. “If you don’t believe me, ask them.”
“I will,” she vowed.
The stories he told surprised her because PJ had always seemed distant from his family in Hawaii, determinedly so. But now he seemed to actually relish the time he spent with them.
“I thought you wanted to get away from your family,” she remarked as they headed east through one suburb after another until finally they got far enough beyond the city that there were actually cultivated fields and open spaces here and there.
The sun was shining. A breeze lifted her hair. The summer heat that had been oppressive in the city was appealing out here.
“I did,” PJ said. The wind was tousling his hair, too. “They’re great in small doses. Like this weekend. But I needed to be on my own. So I left. To find myself. Like you did,” he added, glancing her way.
She hadn’t thought about that before. She’d been so consumed by her own life in those days that she hadn’t really thought about what motivated anyone else. PJ’s proposal had been a favor, but had always seemed more of a casual, “Oh well, I’m not marrying anyone else this week,” sort of thing.
She hadn’t realized that he’d equated her situation with his own.
“Did you realize that then?” she asked.
“It occurred to me.” He kept his eyes on the road.
Ally turned her eyes on him, understanding a bit better what had motivated him. Which should, she reminded herself, make it easier to resist the attraction she felt.
She’d been a “cause” for him then. Nothing more, nothing less. And this weekend her chance to pay him back. On Sunday he would take her back to the city. Monday she would catch a plane back to her real life.
And what PJ told his family afterward was not her problem. But the weekend could be a problem unless they discussed it ahead of time.
She turned to PJ. “Before we arrive, we need to get a few things straight.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WHAT sort of things?” PJ slanted her a wary glance.
She had seen signs for various Hamptons—West Hampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton—so she knew they were getting near now. She didn’t know which PJ’s parents lived in, but the knowledge that she’d be meeting them soon banished her pleasure at the surprising ease of the journey and was replaced by jittery nerves and a definite edginess.
“Rules,” she said.
“Rules?” he repeated, sounding incredulous. “What sort of rules?”
“No kissing.”
His head jerked around. Disbelieving green eyes stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said, feeling her cheeks begin to heat.
“Not right, I didn’t,” PJ muttered under his breath. “I’m your husband,” he reminded her.
“Only for the moment,” she said primly.
“You can kiss me like you did and still want a divorce?”
Now her face really was burning. “You caught me off guard. And I never said you weren’t appealing. It’s just …” she hesitated. There was no way she could discuss this with him. They weren’t speaking the same language. “I won’t say that I’m filing for divorce. I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Big of you,” he muttered. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.
“I just—” she plucked at the hem of her skirt “—don’t think we should lead them to expect that we’re a couple.”
“Ally, in their eyes we are a couple. We’re married.”
“I shouldn’t have come.”
“Well, too bad. You’re here now,” PJ said as he flipped on the turn signal and, the next thing Ally knew, they were off the highway and heading south. She clenched her fists in her lap and tried