Yesterday's Bride by Susan Tracy Page B

of her heart. Jason was so good with the little girl. He would make a wonderful father. Suddenly, without warning, a thought struck Leigh. Jason must be planning to get married again. Why else would he be redoing the house, if not for a bride? He had agreed to the annulment readily enough.
    Shaken, Leigh leaned back against the rough trunk of a tree. One thing was sure, she shouldn't be the one to help decorate the house for his next wife.
    Before she could find a way to voice her objections, however, Jason had turned Jody over to Smitty, now in the kitchen preparing dinner, and bundled Leigh up the stairs.
    The kitchen was the only room downstairs that had needed major modernization, he explained, and it was finished. The addition of a glassed-in sun-room facing the terrace and the new pool were almost so. Upstairs was where the work would now be concentrated, primarily the addition of a bathroom to each of the six bedrooms.
    "We've tried to let in more light and add modern conveniences without sacrificing the character of the rooms," he told Leigh who Was inspecting a high-ceilinged bedroom, complete with fireplace. "There is quite a lot of Victorian woodworking in some parts of the house that we've preserved."
    Her face alight with interest, Leigh smiled at him. "You have a beautiful home, Jason," she said sincerely.
    "I'd like you to pick out paint colors or wallpaper, let me know what furnishings need to be replaced, that sort of thing," he said after a moment. "Expense is no object."
    "Did, ah, did the house actually need all this work? I mean, was remodeling structurally necessary?"
    Jason cast her a studied glance. "No, the house is sound. I suppose you could call it a whim of mine." He put out a lean, brown hand to touch a wooden mantle shelf above the fireplace. "The time had come for a change of life style. I wanted to live more—comfortably, let's say."
    He guided her into another room, done in shades of brown and mushroom beige.
    Leigh looked around the spacious, airy bedroom that was filled with lustrous oak furniture. Moving from the large four-poster bed, she went to a love seat and several matching chairs grouped around an imposing fieldstone fireplace.
    "Oh, how lovely," she exclaimed impulsively. "What a cozy spot to curl up and read."
    "I take it you like my bedroom, Leigh." Jason's voice was dry as he joined her by the apricot velvet love seat. "Would you have enjoyed long, quiet evenings here beside the fire with me?"
    Yes, yes, screamed Leigh's senses silently, his words creating a forbidden image. Jason, who stood suffocatingly near, stretched out his hand to tip her face up to his. Leigh couldn't have moved if someone yelled fire. It was all she could do to keep the sudden longing she felt from showing on her face, from being revealed to the keen, tormenting eyes watching her so closely.
    In self-defense she stepped back, away from him, her wariness intensified.
    She knew exactly what he was up to. He was playing with her, showing her what she could have had if she hadn't run away.
    With as much composure as she could dredge up, she walked over to a door set into the wall at the side of the room.
    "What's in here?"
    Jason came and opened the door for her.
    "The bathroom and beyond that, the dressing room. Both are going to be enlarged," he added indifferently.
    He seemed to lose interest in the tour and motioned Leigh out.
    Leigh led the way, but she was trembling inside, afraid of the cold purpose she had sensed in Jason, a man who could create a taunting moment of intimacy between them, deliberately, and then walk coolly away from it. She knew she had to keep her wits about her if she was to emerge unscathed from her relationship with Jason. If she could just keep in mind what he had done, how he had coldly and calculatedly picked her out to be his wife of convenience while letting her think he cared for her. She couldn't trust him an inch.
    Downstairs, Leigh discovered that Smitty had cooked dinner