The Tycoon Takes a Wife by Catherine Mann Read Free Book Online

Guilt?
    “You didn’t tell me about your father, a pretty major part of your past. You may have done a damn fine job hiding the truth over the years. But when my divorce attorney compared the information you filed on our marriage license at the church registry with your passport information, he found a red flag in the slightly different way you listed your name and your parents. He dug deeper and found your birth certificate. The original one, not the one reissued when Harry Taylor adopted you.” The shock he’d felt upon discovering the whole mess roared back to life inside him. “With a little help from a private detective, the rest of the pieces fell into place about your real father. I’m surprised you got away with it for this long.”
    “You had no right to send private detectives snooping into my private business.”
    Her words stoked his barely banked anger. “I’m your husband. I think that gives me a little latitude here. For God’s sake, Eloisa, what if I’d gotten married again, thinking we were divorced?”
    “Are you seeing someone else?” Wow, she sure hadthat prim librarian gig down pat. She could have stared down an armed gang.
    “Hell no, I’m not seeing anyone else.” He couldn’t keep himself from comparing other women to her and they all came up short. “Bottom line? Like I said, I don’t trust you. You ran once before. I intend to stick close until we have this settled.”
    She pointed to the binder. “I have my sister’s wedding. I’m not going anywhere.”
    “There are a lot of ways to lock a person out of your life.” He’d seen his brother Sebastian and his wife put a massive chasm between each other while living in the same town.
    “You can’t really expect to stay here, in my town house.”
    He would have preferred they stay in his suite where he could have wooed her with all the resort offered, but sleeping under the same roof would suffice.
    Jonah picked up her keys from the island and held them up so the Spanish charm caught the light. “We both have a lot of unresolved business to settle in two weeks. We should make the most of every minute.”
    She stared at the keys in his hand for so long he wondered if she was halfway hypnotized.
    Finally, Eloisa pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Fine. I’m too tired to argue with you. You can stay, but—” she held up a finger, the stern glint in her eyes relaying loud and clear she was done compromising for the night “—you’ll be sleeping on the sofa.”
    All the same he couldn’t resist teasing her, suddenly needing to see if her smile was as blinding as he remembered. “No welcome-home nookie?”
    She frowned. “Don’t push your luck.”
    “A guy can still hope.” He turned on a lamp, his gaze dropping to the glass paperweight sealing off a dried rose and seashell. He scooped it up, tossed it, caught it, tossed, caught…
    “Could you put that down, please?” she snapped with an edge to her voice he hadn’t heard since the morning she’d left.
    He looked back at the paperweight in his hand. Was it something sentimental? A gift from another guy perhaps? He didn’t like the swift kick of jealousy, but damn it all, she was his wife, for now at least. “Should I be worried about a boyfriend showing up to kick my ass?”
    “Let’s talk about you instead. What have you been up to over the past year, thinking you were a bachelor?”
    “Jealous?” God knows he was because she hadn’t answered his question. Except if there had been another guy, surely he would have been at the party with her tonight.
    His conclusion wasn’t proof positive, but he took comfort in it all the same.
    She snatched the paperweight from his hand. “I am tired, not jealous.”
    Did he want her to be? No. He wanted honesty. So he settled for the same from himself. “I’ve spent the past twelve months pining for my ex-wife.”
    As much as he’d meant to be a sarcastic joke, it hadn’t come out of his mouth the way he’d