The Millionaire Claims His Wife by Sandra Marton

Author:Sandra Marton [Marton, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460398500
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1997-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANNIE TOLD HERSELF to calm down.

Count to ten. To twenty. Concentrate on finding the peaceful center within herself. Wasn’t that what she’d spent six weeks trying to learn when she’d taken that Zen philosophy course last winter?

Take a deep breath. Hold it. One. Two. Three. Four.

Annie let out her breath. It wasn’t working. All she could see was the bed. All she could think about was Chase, standing next to her with a look of bland innocence on his face.

“Damn,” she said, and when that clearly wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to relieve her anger, she gave up Zen for reality, swung around and punched her ex-husband in the belly. It was a hard belly—he’d always had a great body, and apparently that hadn’t changed, which somehow only made her more furious—and she felt the jolt of the blow shoot straight up her arm and into her shoulder. But it was worth it to see the look of shock that spread across his face.

“Hey,” he said, dancing back a step. Not that Annie’s reaction entirely surprised him. She looked as if she could have happily murdered him. Well, hell, he understood that. He’d have happily murdered good old Kichiro Tanaka, given the opportunity. “Hey, take it easy, will you?”

“Take it easy?” Annie slapped her hands on her hips and glared at him, her chest rising and falling with each quick, huffy breath. “Take it easy?” she repeated, her voice shooting out of its normal range into a ragged soprano.

“Yeah.” Chase rubbed his midsection. “There’s no need to get violent over what’s obviously a mistake.”

“Oh, it’s a mistake, all right.” She blew a breath that lifted the curls dangling over her eyes. “A big mistake, Cooper, because if you think, even for one minute, that I—that you and I—that the two of us are going to share that—that bed, that we’re going to relive old times—”

“Babe...”

“Don’t ‘babe’ me!”

“Annie, you don’t think...”

“But I do. I think. I always have, even though you never credited me for having a brain in my head when we were married.”

Chase almost groaned. Here they went again, plunging right into deep water.

“Listen,” he said carefully, “I know you’re upset. But—”

“That’s it. Tell me I’m upset. That way, I’ll shut my mouth and you won’t have to listen to the truth.”

“Annie...”

“Let me tell you something, Chase Cooper. That might have worked years ago, but not now. I am not the dumb little thing you always thought I was.”

“Annie, I never thought—”

“Yes, you did, but it doesn’t matter a damn anymore.”

“I swear, I didn’t.”

‘“Oh, Ba-aabe,”’ she said, cruelly mimicking his voice, “‘I’m so sorry, but you don’t mind if I go out, do you? I’ve got to attend a meeting of the—the Sacred Sons of the Saxophones tonight.”’

Despite himself, Chase laughed. “The what?”

“Don’t try and joke your way out of this, Cooper!” Annie took a step forward, her index finger uplifted and wagging an inch off his nose. “You can’t change the facts.”

“What facts?”

“I’m talking about

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