“You-”
“It was the easiest way I could see. I want family around me, boy, and you’re not here.”
More guilt came slamming down on Hunter until he was half surprised he could breathe under the weight of it. Still…“You just can’t marry me off without even mentioning it.”
“I’ve got two words for you, Hunter,” his grandfather said, “-proxy marriage.”
“Proxy? How can you even do that without my signature?”
“I got your signature,” Simon told him with a sly smile. “And if you’d bother to read the Cabot financial papers I send to you for your signature, you’d have noticed the proxy marriage certificate.”
Damn it. Simon had him there. Whenever the packets of papers arrived for him, Hunter merely signed where indicated and sent them back. The family business wasn’t his life. The Navy, was. And he kept his two worlds completely separate. No doubt his slippery grandfather had realized that and exploited it. Admiration warred with irritation.
“Ah, good. You realize I’m right.” Simon’s fingers quickened, and the tapping on the old leather came fast and furious, belying the old man’s attempt at a casual pose. “I stood in for you in the marriage ceremony. I knew that since you couldn’t get home for my heart attack, you wouldn’t have been able to get home for your own wedding-”
“-not that I was invited…”
“-my friend Judge Harris did the deed, and we kept it quiet. I sent Margie off on a week’s vacation once I got better, and we put out that you and she eloped.”
“Eloped.”
“Worked out fine. Figured there was no rush in telling you.”
“Especially since I didn’t want a wedding.”
Simon frowned at him and Hunter remembered being thirteen years old and standing in this very study, trying to explain why he’d hit a baseball through the study window. The same sense of shame and discomfort he’d felt then washed over him now. The only difference was he was no longer a kid to be put in his place.
“How’d she talk you into this, Simon?”
In answer, his grandfather pushed himself out of the chair, drew himself up to his full height and gave Hunter a look that used to chill him to his bones. “You think I’m some old fool taken in by a pretty face and a gold-digging nature? You seriously believe I’m that far gone, boy?”
“What else am I supposed to believe?” Hunter stood up too and met Simon’s hard stare with one of his own. “I come home for a visit-”
“After two years,” Simon threw in.
“-and you tell me you arranged to marry me off to someone I’ve never met just so you can have family close by?”
“You can watch your tone with me, boy. I’m not senile yet, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You were thinking it.” Simon turned, walked to his desk and sat down behind his personal power center. From that very chair, Simon had run the Cabot family fortunes for more than five decades. “And I’ll tell you something else. Margie didn’t want any part of this. It was all my idea.”
“And she went along out of the goodness of her heart.” Sarcasm was so thick in Hunter’s tone that even he heard it.
“’Course not. This was business, pure and simple. I’m paying her five million dollars.”
“Five-” Hunter sucked in a gulp of air. “So she is in it for the money. And you said she’s not a gold digger?”
“She damn well isn’t, and you’ll figure that out for yourself after you spend some time with her.” Simon picked up a pen from the desk and twirled it absentmindedly between his fingers. “Had to browbeat her into taking the money and doing this for me. She’s a good girl and she works hard. She’s done a lot of good for this town, too, and she’s done real well by your name.”
“How nice for me.” Hunter shook his head at the sensation of a velvet-lined trap snapping shut around him.
“You should be grateful. I picked you out a wife who’s a hard worker, and she’s got a big heart as well.”
“Grateful.” Hunter moved in, leaned both hands on his grandfather’s desk and ground out tightly, “What I’ll be grateful for is a damn annulment, Simon. Or even a divorce. As soon as possible.”
Disgusted, his grandfather muttered, “I should have known you wouldn’t appreciate this.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.”
“If you’d open your eyes and see her as I do, you’d change your tune.” Simon looked so damn smug, so self-satisfied that Hunter felt a surge of temper rise up and grab the base of his throat. For his whole damn life, Simon had been the one he could count on. The man who had taught him what duty and honor meant. The one who’d instilled in Hunter a sense of right and wrong. Now, he was blithely explaining how he’d set Hunter up with a marriage he didn’t want all for Simon’s own convenience.
“My ‘tune’ doesn’t need changing,” Hunter told him. “Just why the hell should I ‘appreciate’ having a wife I didn’t want in the first place? One you’re paying.”
“I told you. She didn’t want the money. Had to talk her into accepting it.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll bet she was really hard to convince, too. Five million dollars? Damn it, Simon, what were you thinking?”
“You weren’t here,” the older man said softly. “I’m getting on, Hunter, and you weren’t here. Margie is.”
Again, he felt that soft, swift stab of guilt-then he buried it. “She’s your secretary.”
“She’s more than that.”
“Sure, now,” Hunter allowed.
“You don’t know her,” Simon said, and his voice was whisper soft. “She came here to build a life for herself and she’s done it. And she’s been a good wife to you-”
“I haven’t been here!”
“-and a good granddaughter to me.”
All right, he could at least admit that much to himself, Hunter thought. Gold digger or not, the curvy redhead had at least apparently been good to Simon. When Hunter had finally heard about his grandfather’s brush with death, guilt had gnawed him for not being there when the old man had needed him. But the nature of his job meant that he couldn’t always be around. He lived and died according to orders.