The Millionaire Bachelor Read online

  “Cathy?” he murmured. “Can you hear me? Mary, the night nurse, said you were awake. How are you feeling?”

  She didn’t want to open her eyes. If she kept them closed, then he wasn’t real.

  But he was. Shame filled her. For the deception and the lies, and for the truth he must now know about her. She wasn’t sure which would be worse. His contempt or his pity.

  “Please go away,” she whispered.

  “Not exactly the greeting I was hoping for. You could at least put a ‘hi’ in front of it. As in, ‘Hi, Stone. Nice to meet you. Now please go away.’”

  Her eyes burned with unshed tears. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “No, I’m trying to make us both feel a little better. Come on, try it. ‘Hi, Stone.’ How hard could it be?”

  He had no idea, she thought, turning away from him. A single tear trickled down her temple and got lost in her hair. She moaned softly. Her hair. It wasn’t enough that she didn’t have the friends she’d told him, but she didn’t look like he thought, either. He was expecting a leggy blonde with a beauty-pageant figure. Instead, she was a dumpy, overweight pale woman with plain features and mousy brown hair.

  “I thought you might like some company,” he said. “Am I wrong?”

  “Not you,” she managed to answer as tears thickened her throat.

  “I see.”

  He released his hold on her hand. She was suddenly cold.

  Silence filled the room. Finally he cleared his throat. “I thought we were friends.”

  That got her attention. Involuntarily her head swung toward him, and she opened her eyes.

  Stone Ward was really in her hospital room. She saw the outline of him in the shadows. She couldn’t make out individual features, but she saw he was a powerful man, tall with broad shoulders. His hair looked dark.

  “How can you say that?” she asked. “You have to know the truth about me. About what I told you.” She sucked in a breath and caught at the hem of her sheets. “About the lies.” The last three words came out as a whisper.

  He moved toward her, captured her hand and laced his fingers with hers. She felt warm again. Warm and comforted, not to mention confused. She squinted, wishing the room weren’t so dark so she could see him.

  “None of that matters,” he told her.

  “But—”

  He cut her off with a quick shake of his head. “I mean it, Cathy. No distressing subjects for conversation. What matters is that you’re getting better. The rest of it can wait. How do you feel?”

  She wasn’t sure how to answer the question. She felt lost and uncertain. Her entire world had shifted, and she couldn’t find her balance. Stone Ward was here, talking to her, holding her hand, acting as if she was important to him. He didn’t seem to care that she’d lied about who and what she was. But he had to care. She’d misled him and—

  “I don’t understand,” she said softly. “Why are you being so nice to me? You should hate me or at least despise me.” She blinked, trying to see him more clearly. “Or did you always know it wasn’t true? Were you laughing at me?”

  The grip on her hand tightened. “Cathy, no. Don’t think like that. I didn’t know anything. But that’s all right. Don’t you see? It was never the places you went or what you looked like that made me want to talk to you on the phone. It was how we always had a good time together.”

  She wanted to believe him. The edges of her brain felt fuzzy and she supposed it was the painkillers they’d given her. Suddenly she was too tired and out of it to argue. Later, when she could really think, she would find a way to make sense of all this. For now it was enough that he was here and she wasn’t alone. “All right. Thank you for understanding.”

  “My pleasure. Now, how are you feeling?”

  “Sore.”

  “Your knee?”

  “And my head.”

  “According to your doctor, you’re going to need surgery on your knee.”

  She rubbed her temple. “He said something about that when he was here earlier. He said it won’t be any big deal, but I’ll be on crutches for a while afterward.”

  Crutches. She didn’t want to deal with that, or the physical therapy he’d talked about. She had insurance through her work, but she wasn’t sure how good it was. Maybe the building owners would cover some of the expense, or their insurance would, because of the fire. Or maybe—

  She bit her lower lip. She didn’t want to think about any of this now. Everything hurt too much, and she was too confused.

  “Cathy?”

  That voice. She still couldn’t believe that Stone was actually here, that he’d seen her and didn’t seem angry about her deception.

  “Yes, sorry. I’m kind of out of it.”

  “I understand.” He leaned close, but not close enough that he moved out of the shadows. “I don’t want you worrying about anything,” he said. “Everything is taken care of. The doctor, the surgeon, the physical therapy.”

  “But it can’t be.”

  “It is. I’m taking care of all the details. All you have to worry about is getting better.”

  She looked at him, at the shape of him, and tried to figure out why he was being so nice to her. “I don’t understand.” Any of it, including him.

  “It’s very simple. When they release you in a couple of days, I want you to come stay with me. My house is large, and you’ll have plenty of room. I’ve already arranged for a physical therapist to come by and help you. My housekeeper will be there, too, and she’ll make sure you’re completely taken care of. I want to do this, Cathy. The fire really scared me. I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  She couldn’t have been more stunned if he’d suddenly started speaking a foreign language while performing a folk dance. “You want me to stay at your house?” Her voice was a squeak.

  “Yes. The doctor said you shouldn’t be alone for a few days. Unless you have someone else who can look after you, you’re coming home with me.”

  Someone else, she thought dully. As in family or friends. She had neither. “I can’t,” she told him.

  “Of course you can. We’re friends. Friends look out for each other. You’d do the same for me if you could.”

  He sounded confident, but she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t imagine having anything that someone like him wanted or needed. She was just boring Cathy Eldridge. Nothing about her life was exciting or even the way it was supposed to be.

  “My housekeeper will be there all the time,” he said. “So you don’t have to worry about being alone with me.”

  Oh, yeah, that was her big concern. That Stone would suddenly lose control and want to attack her in the night. If she hadn’t felt so weak and tired, she might have smiled.

  “It’s not that,” she managed to say.

  “Then what is it? You’ll like the house. It has a nice view of the ocean. Think of it as a vacation.”

  Something she’d never been on in her life. A vacation. Just like those lies she’d told him. She averted her gaze and turned her head away. “I didn’t really go to Mexico a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I know.”

  “Or Paris.”

  “I figured that out, too.”

  “I just thought—”

  “I understand,” he said. “Please believe me. I don’t want to talk about this now. It’s not important.”

  Not important? How could he say that? She felt as if every layer of her being had been stripped away, leaving her flaws bare to inspection. He would study her and find her very wanting.

  “Cathy, please. Just trust me. We’ve known each other two years. Surely I deserve a chance.”

  She turned toward him and raised the bed so that she was more sitting up than lying down. Then she pulled her hand free of his touch and reached for the light switch.

  Instantly he took hold of her wrist. “Don’t,” he said.

  “I just want to turn on the light.”

  “I know. You can’t.”

 
“Why?”

  “I’m—” He shook his head. “I was in a bad car accident about three years ago. My face is scarred, and I would rather you didn’t see me just yet.”

  Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t speak. Nothing was what she’d thought. Was this the reason he hid away in his house? Did he think she would find him hideous?

  “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, confirming her thoughts.

  “You couldn’t.”

  “You don’t know that. It’s pretty bad. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

  How bad could it be? she wondered. But she didn’t have the energy to pursue the subject. For now she would trust him. And there was a bright spot in the situation. Stone couldn’t see her, either. He wouldn’t know how plain she was. Not ugly, just not pretty at all. If only she were the leggy blonde she’d told him about. If only she had been to all those places.

  “Cathy, don’t,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I understand why you said those things to me. It doesn’t matter.”

  How could he read her mind? Before she could ask, a nurse came in to give her a shot. They briefly discussed the morning schedule. She would be having her surgery first thing. When the woman was gone, Cathy turned to look at Stone.

  “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure you have things to do. Important things.”

  “Right now you’re the most important part of my life.”

  He took her hand again and laced his fingers with hers. The touch comforted her and made her want to move closer to him.

  “You never said that you’d come stay at my house,” he reminded her. “Say yes.”

  The shot had been powerful. Cathy could feel herself fading. It was an effort to talk, but even as the edges of her mind began to fold over on themselves, she managed a whispered “Yes.”

  *

  Two days later, Cathy found herself half sitting, half lying down in the back of an ambulance.

  “The ride’s going to be about forty minutes,” the driver told her as his assistant checked the straps on her gurney.

  “I’ll be fine.” She gave the men a reassuring smile.

  “Mr. Ward said we were to bring a nurse along if you thought there might be a problem.”

  “That’s not necessary.” Over the past day or so, her headache had faded. The only pain came from her knee, but as she’d had surgery on it yesterday, that was to be expected. In the small bag that contained the few items of clothing she’d been wearing the night of the fire was a prescription for painkiller. According to her doctor, physical therapy would start in a few days. Everything was going according to plan.

  The driver slammed the rear door of the ambulance, then the men walked around to the front and slid into the cab. Cathy clutched the metal rails on either side of her gurney, not because she was afraid of falling out, but to touch something real and reassure herself that this was really happening. She was actually leaving the hospital to go stay with Stone.

  Even as she smiled, she knew tears weren’t far behind. She wasn’t sure if she was living a dream or a nightmare. Last night after the surgery, Stone had stopped by. She remembered going to sleep wondering if he would visit her again, then she’d awakened some time after midnight and he’d been sitting at the side of her bed.

  They’d talked in the darkness, and for a few minutes she’d allowed herself to pretend it was just like it had been when they’d talked on the phone. But it wasn’t the same. For one thing, he’d asked her for the key to her house. The request made sense. After all, someone had to go collect her things, pick up the mail and arrange for the new mail to be held. But she hated the thought of him finding out where she lived or what her house looked like even as she told herself the fact that it was small and old didn’t matter. She kept the place clean. The garden was tidy, the hedges neat.

  But it wasn’t about cleanliness or tidiness, she thought as the ambulance pulled onto the freeway and headed west. It was about being poor. She’d told Stone she lived in a modern condo. Very trendy, well decorated. It had been another part of the fantasy.

  “‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave…’” she said softly, knowing that the old quote was still applicable today. At least in her life. She’d tried to deceive Stone and now she was facing the consequences of her behavior. What she didn’t understand was why he wouldn’t talk about it.

  She’d tried to bring up the subject several times, but he always dismissed it, saying it didn’t matter. She frowned. It had to matter. He had to loathe her. Except he didn’t act as if he did, so nothing made sense. It was starting to hurt to think this hard.

  So instead, she concentrated on the view out the window. They took the 405 freeway south, over the pass and into West Los Angeles. From there, they continued south. She saw large passenger planes fly low over the freeway as they landed at the airport. A few miles past that, the ambulance exited and headed west again.

  Her heartbeat increased slightly. They must be getting close. Stone had said his house had a view of the ocean. She’d never lived close to the water before. That would be a nice change. Maybe he was right. Maybe she should think of this as a vacation—a brief chance to visit a world very different from her own.

  They drove for several miles, then the road narrowed and they started to climb. Cathy caught glimpses of houses, trees and beyond them, flashes of the blue ocean.

  The ambulance pulled into a long driveway. She turned so she could see over her shoulder. Two wide gates kept out the curious. The driver spoke into a small box. A couple of seconds later, the gates slowly opened and they drove onto the property.

  Cathy ducked low enough to be able to see out the side window. The house was huge. At least three stories and designed more like a castle than an actual house. The facade was stone, the windows different shapes. Many were beveled. The grounds seemed to stretch on forever. Stone had to have a couple of acres up here, and at the price of real estate in this neighborhood, he’d obviously sunk millions into his home.

  She’d always known they were different, but it was intimidating to see those differences played out in such a clear way. No doubt there was a staff in residence. She swallowed. Maybe this had been a bad idea, she thought. Was it too late to change her mind and have the driver take her home to her tiny house in the valley?

  Before she could decide, they came to a stop. The driver opened the rear of the ambulance. He glanced from her to the house.

  “There are stairs up to the front door, and I’m gonna guess there’s a bunch more inside.”

  “I can use crutches,” Cathy said. She’d practiced on them that morning. She wasn’t good, but she had managed.

  “Naw. That’s why I brought help.”

  His assistant climbed out of the passenger’s side of the vehicle. Both men were strong and obviously used to carrying around patients. Together they slid the gurney out of the back of the ambulance and wheeled her toward the front of the house. As they approached, one side of the double front door opened and a small woman stepped out.

  She looked to be in her mid-to-late fifties, with graying hair and coal black eyes. She wore a pale gray dress that looked like a cross between a nurse’s uniform and a dress for a maid, and sensible white shoes.

  “Miss Eldridge,” she said, and smiled. “I’m Ula, the housekeeper. Stone said you’d be arriving this morning. Welcome.” Her smile faded as her gaze focused on the two men. “You two be careful with her. She’s had quite a shock, and we don’t need her dropped on top of everything else.”

  The two men exchanged an exasperated glance. This was not the first time they’d heard this particular admonition. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll make sure the young lady arrives safe and sound.”

  “Through here, please.”

  She led them into the house. Cathy had a brief impression of a foyer large enough for a hotel, marble floors and doors and hallways leading to other parts of the house. Before she could absorb anything, they were moving up the stairs, then d
own a corridor. Ula open a door and stepped aside. The men followed.

  Cathy was placed next to a four-poster queen-size bed. She’d barely caught her breath when the men physically lifted her onto the mattress.

  “We’ll be right back with her things,” one of them said as they left.

  Ula crossed to the windows and pulled back the thick drapes. Instantly bright sunlight filled the huge room. From her place on the bed, Cathy could see well-kept grounds, the corner of what looked like a swimming pool and an incredible view of the ocean. The water stretched out to the horizon, all glinting and vast. To the right was distant land, probably Malibu, she thought.

  “It is pretty, isn’t it?” Ula said, drawing her attention back into the room.

  Cathy nodded, not sure what else to say.

  “Stone told me about the accident,” Ula went on. “You were very lucky. He said it could have been a lot worse.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Ula started moving around the room. “Here’s the television and video player,” the housekeeper said, opening an armoire against the far wall. “We have a satellite dish, so you can get any channel you want.” She stepped to her left. “The closet. Your things were brought over and unpacked.”

  “Thank you,” Cathy said, grateful Ula didn’t open the door. She didn’t want to see her meager, worn possessions hanging in the huge open space. She felt out of place as it was.

  “This is the bathroom.” Ula did open that door. Cathy caught a glimpse of gleaming tile and a shower big enough to house a football squad. “Let me get rid of those men and I’ll be right back.” She left the room.

  Cathy took a minute to catch her breath. Everything was happening so quickly. From the moment the fire alarm had gone off in her office building until now, she felt as if she’d been spinning out of control.