A Family Circle 1 - A Very Convenient Marriage (3 page)

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Nikki heard the rapid tap of her heels against the tile entryway of the office building and realized she was almost running. She forced herself to slow down as she exited the building and stepped out into the bright sunshine.

She wasn't running, she told herself as she pulled open her car door and slid onto the genuine imitation sheepskin-covered seat. Sam Walker might be a bit larger than life, and some women—susceptible women—might even find him wildly attractive, but she herself hardly noticed such things, and they certainly wouldn't send her fleeing from her lawyer's office.

She had an appointment with her mother, that was all. The fact that she wasn't meeting Marilee for three hours and that Marilee would probably not arrive for another forty-five minutes after that was irrelevant. She'd concluded her business here and she was leaving. Nothing odd about that.

Nikki's hands weren't quite steady as she put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. She'd done it. She'd actually agreed to marry a man she'd just met. A man she didn't know and wouldn't like if she did. Her mind reeled at the thought.

When Max had suggested the idea as a way to get her inheritance, he'd made it sound so simple, so businesslike that she'd had no hesitation in agreeing to meet with his friend. But she hadn't been expecting Sam Walker and she hadn't been prepared for the jolt of awareness she'd felt when they shook hands. What had sounded like a simple business arrangement suddenly seemed much more complex.

Nikki turned the car onto the Glendale Freeway and headed north. She'd planned to do some shopping before meeting her mother for lunch, but that was before she'd met Sam Walker, before she'd agreed to marry him. Right now, she needed to talk to someone she could trust, someone who had no ax to grind.

Twenty minutes later, she parked the scruffy ten-year-old Chevy in front of a neat little house on a street lined with other neat little houses. The front door opened as she walked up the driveway and a short, thin man of about thirty came out. Bill Davis had married Nikki's best friend four years ago, right after Liz graduated from UC Santa Barbara. They had little money, a house made chaotic by a toddler and all the attendant problems of raising a family, but they loved each other deeply. Nikki was unabashedly envious of their happiness.

"Hello, Bill."

"Nikki." His plain face creased in a smile when he saw her. "Isn't it a little early for the idle rich to be out slumming?" he asked as he hugged her.

"I like to get started early. Slumming, properly done, takes more time than most people realize. Is Liz around?"

"In the kitchen, feeding the holy terror."

"Don't call my godchild a terror. He's adorable."

"You don't have to live with him," he said darkly. "When I left, Michael had just tried to put the goldfish in his oatmeal and Liz was trying to convince him that Oscar didn't need a hot breakfast."

''And you fled in the midst of that?"

"Like a coward," he admitted cheerfully. "I've got cars stacked up like cordwood, waiting for work."

"Nice to be busy." Bill was manager and chief mechanic at an auto repair shop in Montrose. He and Liz were saving money in hopes of buying the business when the current owner retired in a couple of years.

"Bring that junk heap by and I'll take a look at it," he said, nodding toward her car. "I still think you ought to sell it for scrap and buy a real car."

"Barney is a real car," she protested. "It had been Bill's four-year-old son who'd named Nikki's car, thinking the faded purple paint job was reminiscent of the dinosaur he watched every day on television.

They spoke a moment longer before Bill left for work. Nikki let herself in the house with the familiarity of an old friend. She called out Liz's name and received a frazzled-sounding response from the kitchen. Picking her way across the mine field of toys strewn across the living room floor, she could hear Liz telling Michael firmly that Oscar did not want his fishbowl filled with milk, any more than he wanted to swim in Michael's oatmeal.

"Aunt Nikki!" Michael's greeting was enthusiastic as only a four-year-old's could be. He scrambled off his chair and hurled himself at her, oblivious to his mother's command not to touch anything until his face and hands were washed. An instant later, Nikki had an armful of four-year-old boy and smudges of oatmeal and jelly on her silk suit.

"You have to learn to dodge," Liz said as Nikki stood.

"I don't want to dodge. The suit will clean." Nikki grinned down at the little boy, who was rifling through her cavernous purse, looking for the small treat she never failed to bring him. Today it was a palm-size dump truck, and Michael immediately began scooting it across the kitchen floor, making engine noises.

"You spoil him."

"He's too sweet natured to be really spoiled," Nikki said.

"Sweet natured?" Liz repeated disbelievingly. "Ask Oscar how sweet natured he is."

Nikki followed her gesture to the goldfish bowl perched on top of the refrigerator beyond the reach of four-year-old fingers. Oscar swam lazily around his small home, undisturbed by his close encounter with Michael's breakfast.

"Oscar looks none the worse for wear. I can't say the same about you, though." She gave her friend a critical look as Liz collapsed into a chair. Liz's hair stood out from her head in springy carrot-red curls and her hazel eyes held the dazed look of a disaster survivor.

"Michael woke us up at four-thirty. Then the toilet stopped up. Bill spent half an hour working on it and finally pulled out one of Michael's action figures. Apparently Michael wanted to send him on a diving mission. The remains were so mangled, there wasn't even enough left for a decent burial. I didn't get to the laundry yesterday, so the only clean underwear Bill could find is a pair of tiger-striped bikinis I bought him as a joke. He's convinced he'll be in some kind of accident and be rushed to the emergency room where the doctors will find him wearing kinky shorts. The bread was moldy, there was only one egg, which I cooked for Bill, and Michael has spent the morning trying to introduce Oscar to the joys of breakfast."

Nikki let a few moments go by at the end of Liz's recital of the morning's disasters and then lifted her brows in surprise. "Is that all?"

"Get out." Liz threw a paper napkin in her direction, watching as it drifted into Michael's half-eaten bowl of oatmeal. "If I had the energy, I'd throw something more lethal. Worse, I'd send the holy terror home with you."

Grinning, Nikki lifted the kettle off the stove and carried it to the sink. "A cup of tea will restore your energy. And anytime you want a couple of days off, you know I'd love to have Michael." She set the kettle on the stove.

"Friendship only goes so far," Liz said broodingly as she watched her son crawling across the floor with his new truck. "I may hit you up for enough money to run away from home instead."

"Yeah, right." Nikki found the tea bags and two cups. "You wouldn't give up your life for anything, and you and I both know it."

"This morning I'd sell it for a wooden nickel and consider myself lucky."

"Liar." Nikki poured the water over the tea bags before carrying the cups to the table. She sat down across from Liz. "You adore Bill and Michael."

"Maybe." Cradling her hands around the mug of tea, Liz looked as if she might be getting her second wind after her hectic morning. "Enough about my miserable existence. What's up with you?"

Nikki took a sip of tea and considered possible responses to that question. In the end, she chose the simplest and most direct. "I'm getting married."

The stark announcement brought Liz's head up so fast Nikki had visions of whiplash. "You're what?"

"I said I'm getting married." Repeating the words didn't make them sound any more real. "In a few days," she added, feeling a flutter of panic at the thought.

"Who?" Liz looked bewildered. "I didn't know you were even dating anyone."

"I'm not."

"But you're getting married?"

"Yes."

Liz stared at her, and then her eyes widened in understanding. "Your grandfather's will? You're getting married because of that?"

Nikki nodded. "Max set it up. It's a friend of his. A police officer."

"Have you met the guy?" Liz's tea was forgotten as she leaned forward, her eyes bright with interest.

"This morning." Nikki shifted uncomfortably, remembering that meeting. "In Max's office."

"What's he like?"

What was he like? Sam Walker's image sprang into Nik-ki's mind, far more vivid than she would have liked. Why couldn't Max have found her the kind of guy you forgot as soon as they were out of sight?

"He's tall," she said slowly.

"How tall?"

"I don't know. Six-one, six-two. I didn't have a tape measure with me.''

"Skinny, fat, somewhere in between?" Liz asked briskly.

"Somewhere in between." The lackluster description hardly did justice to Sam Walker's broad shoulders and narrow hips, but it was close enough.

"Is he handsome?"

"No. Yes. Sort of." Nikki flushed as her friend's eyebrows rose.

"Nice to hear you sounding so decisive," she commented.

"If I'd known you were going to be so interested, I'd have taken a snapshot." Nikki winced at the defensive sound of her own voice. She had to get a grip. "He has... dents in his face."

Liz choked on a mouthful of tea, coughed briefly and then stared at her friend. "Dents? You mean a birth defect or scars of some kind?"

"No." Nikki waved one hand to dismiss that idea. As far as she could see, Sam Walker was as close to perfect as it was possible for a man to be. If you liked that type, anyway. She'd never really seen the appeal of shaggy dark blond hair, blue eyes, a smile to die for and muscles like a Greek god. No appeal at all. "He's got a cleft chin and creases when he smiles," she said, aware that Liz was still waiting for her to explain what she'd meant by dents.

"Creases?" Liz frowned, "Dimples? You mean the guy has dimples?"

"Yes." She didn't want to think of them that way. Dimples sounded... attractive, and she didn't want to find anything about Sam Walker attractive. Not his dimples, not anything.

"So, is he good-looking or not?" Liz asked, her frustration clear in her voice.

"What difference does it make? I don't care if he looks the way Danny DeVito did in Batman Returns. All I need is a husband for the next year so I can get my hands on my money."

"That's true. Still, if you have to spend a year married to some guy, it wouldn't hurt if he was attractive and pleasant to be around. Is he nice?"

"Nice? I guess." Nice wasn't the word she would have used, but she supposed he hadn't exactly been un-nice. Or, at least, no more un-nice than she herself had been.

"And the two of you hit it off?" Liz pursued anxiously.

"Well enough," Nikki temporized. There was no reason to mention that they'd hit it off about as well as oil and water. "Since this is just a business arrangement, we don't have to be bosom pals."

"True." Liz took a sip of her tea, her expression thoughtful. Michael was scooting his hew toy up and down the wall, making engine noises more suited to a 747 than a three-inch-long dump truck. "It's ridiculous that you should have to go to these lengths to get your inheritance. Your grandfather didn't make your brother get married before he got his money."

"Grandfather didn't think much of women and their ability to manage money." Nikki got up and refilled the teakettle, more for something to do than out of a desire for more tea. "I gather Grandmother had feathers for brains, and I can't say Mother is much better."

"There's nothing wrong with your mother's ability to manage money. Every time she starts running out, she marries someone rich. Efficiency itself."

Nikki snorted with laughter at this blunt summation of her mother's money management techniques. They'd known each other long enough and well enough for Liz to speak her mind without fear of offending.

"I don't think Grandfather had your appreciation for Marilee's methods." Nikki glanced at her watch. "I'm supposed to be having lunch with her today. She's on her way to Europe tomorrow to look for husband number five. Or is it six? If I'm lucky, she'll marry another count or earl or something and stay in Europe for the next year. If I'm really lucky, I can be divorced before she even knows I'm married. Let's face it, my mother is a ditz, my grandmother was a ditz. Ergo, according to my grandfather, I must be a ditz. He figured he was protecting me by forcing me to get married because everyone knows men are better at managing money." There was more resignation than anger in her voice.

"Yeah, right. Bill couldn't balance a checkbook if his life depended on it. And look at your brother. He ran through the money your grandfather left him in a couple of years. Why didn't Alan have to get married to inherit his half of the money? I know, I know." Liz waved one hand, forestalling Nikki's response. "We've had this discussion before. Alan's a man and the last of the Beauvisage name. Therefore, he gets his inheritance up front instead of being forced into marrying some total stranger."

"I don't have to get married," Nikki said as she poured fresh hot water into both of their cups. "I could just let the money go to Alan, which it will do if I'm not married by the time I'm twenty-seven. I do have a trust fund that's mine whether I marry or not. It's not like I'D starve without it."