Читать книгу The Honor Bound Groom - Jennifer Greene, Jennifer Greene - Страница 10

Two

“How much farther?”

“About five miles.” Mac scratched his chin. “About a quarter mile less than the last time you asked me. Is there a problem?”

Now there was a hysterically funny question, Kelly thought dryly. She was freshly married to a stranger. The kiss that sealed their vows had shaken her socks off. The snowstorm had escalated to a mean-cold, wind-howling blizzard, with snow slooshing down so hard that even Mac’s elegant Mercedes’s windshield wipers could barely keep up. They’d turned off the highway a while back, and she hadn’t seen a single car on the road since, much less buildings or lights or any sign of civilized rescue potential if they got stranded—assuming they found anything open this late on a New Year’s Eve.

Offhand, yeah, she thought they had a few problems. Yet all those details seemed itsy bitsy compared to the serious problem troubling Kelly at the moment. “How long does it usually take you to drive home from the Fortune headquarters?”

“Fifteen minutes, twenty max. But it’s pretty hard to move faster than a crawl pace with this snow.”

“I know, Mac. I didn’t mean to sound impatient.”

“You’re not cold, are you? Because I could turn up the heat—”

“No, I’m fine.” He’d already cranked up the heater and defroster to full blast. She couldn’t be warmer if she were curled up in front of an oven.

“If you’re tired, you can put the seat back—”

His concern touched her, but the subject of exhaustion again teased her sense of irony. If anything in life were normal, she’d be snoozing right now. From the beginning of the pregnancy, she’d been prone to nap at the drop of a hat. And after all the stress of the wedding and reception, technically she should be as comatose as a zombie. But that kiss from Mac had shaken her whole equilibrium.

She knew he’d meant nothing by it. She knew she was imagining a potent, sizzling connection that had never happened. It was just hormones again. Kelly had had seven months to discover that pregnancy made a woman emotionally goofy. Impatiently she twisted in her seat. “I’m fine, not the least tired. And the car couldn’t be more comfortable,” she assured him.

Mac glanced at her again as if unconvinced, but of necessity his gaze zipped swiftly back to the road. She could barely see his face in the pitch-dark car—just a glimpse of his patrician profile and a flash of his dark eyes now and then. There simply wasn’t enough light to judge from his expression what he might be thinking—about the wedding or the weather or anything else. From the tone of his voice, though, Kelly understood he was deliberately trying to sound calm and quietly reassuring. “If you’re worried about the weather, try to take it easy. I’ve lived here all my life, which means I’ve driven in a hundred blizzards. This one has the makings of a doozy—I think we could be socked in for a couple of days—but we’ll be under cover before the worst of it hits. The roads are rough, but the problem is snow, not ice. Trust me, we’re not going to have any trouble making it home.”

“That’s good to hear.”

But when Mac caught her shifting in her seat again, he seemed to think his previous reassurances hadn’t been enough. “Kelly... this whole day’s been a pressure cooker, and I know you have to be worried about things. All kinds of things. But we were both honest with each other going into this, and we both want the same thing—to make this work out. I think if we just take it slow and easy, we’ll find answers for whatever we need to, one problem at a time. Try and believe it’s going to be okay, all right?”

Kelly clipped back a sigh. Mac was not only trying to be considerate and reassuring—he was doing a damn fine job of it. He’d been downright wonderful at the wedding reception, sticking to her side, anticipating problems before they developed. Something had upset her maid of honor, because Renee had turned stark white after a conversation with her father and disappeared almost immediately after. That wouldn’t have mattered except that Kelly had counted on Mollie to stay close during the reception, and her closest friend had suddenly left early, too. Both had left without a word, which was so unlike either woman that Kelly had worried...but at the time of the reception, she’d really had her hands full.

Mac’s family was unquestionably supportive for this wedding, but there wasn’t a shy Fortune in the bunch. Their nosiness came from caring, but she’d felt painfully stranded with the now-you’re-family-you-can-tell-me questions. What kind of relationship did she and Mac actually have? How well did she really know Mac? Had either of them heard from Chad? Did Chad even know about this marriage?

Kelly had been heart and soul in love with Chad, but it took sleeping with him to understand that his interest in her was purely seduction, the new conquest. Since then she’d heard rumors that he had taken off with another woman—also some scandal about a paternity suit with another girl. But she’d figured out the measure of Chad long before the first pregnancy test—and her own naiveté in the relationship as well. She’d never have married him, but neither did she want to air the personal details of a painful mistake to anyone, much less publicly. And every time one of those awkward, prying questions surfaced, Mac had shown up like a magician. He never cut anyone off. He was always nice. But no one even tried to misbehave when Mac was around—cripes, even Kate seemed to instinctively defer to him.

Kelly had the humorous impression of a wolf watching out for his lamb—and that rare feeling of being protected had been welcomed. Then. But not now. Now that they were totally alone together, she remembered how much he intimidated her, too. His being a sexy hunk only made her feel more awkward. That velvet-soft baritone of his was curling her toes—but not because of some hormonal response. She just couldn’t face bringing up an indelicate problem with the formal, elegant, dauntingly sexy and formidable Financial V.P. for the whole darned Fortune empire. Kelly squirmed in her seat again.

“With road conditions this rough, I really think the seat belt’s essential, but they can’t have made those things for a pregnant woman. If you’re uncomfortable—”

Well, spit. Apparently Mac had perceived there was something wrong and he wasn’t going to let it go until she confessed the reason. And it wasn’t as if she had a choice about staying silent more than another two seconds, anyway. “Mac, I am uncomfortable. But the problem isn’t the seat belt or being married or the heat or the weather. It’s that I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh. Um—right now? We really should be home within twenty minutes—”

“I realize this is hard to believe if you’ve never been seven months pregnant. But twenty minutes from now, I’ll be desperate to go all over again. So that won’t exactly solve the immediate problem.”

“Okay. No reason to be embarrassed. Everything’s fine. It just may take me a few minutes to find a gas station. There isn’t much open on New Year’s Eve, and I’m afraid we’re a little removed from—”

“Mac.”

“What?”

“Pull over.”

“Pull over? Honey, we’re in the middle of a blizzard in subzero temperatures—”

She heard the “honey” and felt a wave of sympathy for her poor groom. She’d never seen MacKenzie/Mac Fortune flustered before—even by the threat of a company takeover. “Yeah, well, I should have told you before I got desperate. But I didn’t. And I won’t survive, Mac. If I had an accident on these incredibly luxurious leather seats, I’d be so mortified I’d never be able to face you again as long as I lived. You’d have my death-by-mortification on your conscience. And we’d have gone through the whole marriage for nothing. We can solve all this if you just pull over, okay? Like...pronto.”

Mac pulled over. Pronto. “Do you need, um—”

Before he was reduced to using any more wild endearments, she filled him in. “I’ve been carrying toilet paper since I was four months pregnant. Believe me, I figured out a while ago that I needed to be prepared.”

The winds were gale force, the snow biting like icy teeth, and Kelly thought glumly that this was a hell of an auspicious way to start a marriage. But when she climbed back into the car with wet feet and wet hair and snow sticking to her nose and eyelashes, she caught the hint of a quicksilver grin from Mac.

“I don’t think we’d better take you out in too many blizzards for the next couple months,” he said dryly.

A startled chuckle escaped Kelly. Holy kamoly. Mac had actually teased her. Who’d a thunk it? And it seemed a crazy thing to be just discovering that her groom had a sense of humor... but she suddenly realized how many things she’d been judging about Mac on limited evidence. She’d assumed he was formal and serious by nature because that’s all she’d been exposed to. But their personal conversations over the last couple of weeks had been dead serious because they needed to be. And no, she’d never seen him casually joking around with staff at work before that, but really, how could he? His job was tough and required toughness. If someone had to make an unpopular decision, it always fell on his shoulders.

Maybe authority and toughness came naturally to him, Kelly mused, but the point was that she’d had no opportunity to know any other side of Mac... what he wanted, what he dreamed of, what he was like when the suit and tie came off. Who was there for him when he needed to vent that chestload of endless responsibilities? Heaven knew, she could imagine all kinds of women in his life. But by the farthest stretch of her considerable imagination—none of them remotely resembled the bride he was stuck taking home tonight.

And it seemed only moments later they were there. She barely caught sight of the tall, wrought-iron fence, before Mac was pushing a button that made the double gates electronically swing open. “There are a ton of things I need to show you—like how the security system works. But there’s time enough to talk about all that in the morning. I suspect you just want to get settled in and get your feet up. I want you to know, though, that the security system’s state of the art. You’re safe here, Kel.”

“I know.” It was the one thing she hadn’t worried about in the last two weeks. Since the night she’d been attacked in the parking lot, Kate and the family had cosseted her nonstop, but the security she felt with him was a world apart. She’d feel safe with a lion if Mac were around. It’s just the way he was. At this precise moment, though, she suddenly discovered that feeling safe from criminals and feeling safe with her new groom were two entirely different things.

Her pulse started skittering. Once the gates closed behind them, the look of anything civilized disappeared, and the drive seemed to go on forever. Even with the blinding, slashing snow, she could make out certain things. The private road twisted around a creek bed. Pines nestled around one turn, their branches bowed with heavy skirts of snow; a stand of virgin hardwoods stretched in another direction, then a field that rolled and curved and looked as if it was blanketed with whipped cream—there were no footprints in the snow, no sign of man. But up and around a sloping knoll, the house came into view.

The baby suddenly kicked, and Kelly’s hand instinctively covered her abdomen. Even with the dim visibility, she recognized the property and house.

Mac had brought her here once, a few days before. Two weeks was an incredibly short time to upend your whole life. He’d insisted she see it to decide if she could live here. Possibly he really meant to give her one last-ditch chance to say no to the whole marriage idea, but truthfully, Kelly never felt as if she had a chance or a choice. The attack had petrified her. She had to protect her baby. Nothing else mattered, but the last two weeks had still felt like a fastmoving train. There hadn’t been time to catch her breath, much less figure out what all these monumental changes and decisions really meant.

She still hadn’t had that time. But her first look at the house had touched something inside her. And it did now, even more.

The place was lit up. Snow spiraled in the outside porch lights, and inside lamps shone in the windows like welcoming beacons. Kelly remembered the first time she’d seen Kate Fortune’s house. She’d grown up on a struggling single mom’s budget, and the opulence of the home base Fortune mansion had her bug-eyed. It just went on and on—the landscaped grounds, objets d’art, priceless rugs, loot and luxuries she’d never seen outside of movies. Kelly remembered thinking God, how easy it would be to develop a lust attack for material possessions. But working with Kate had somehow sabotaged her developing that vice. She’d seen firsthand what a life of privilege was about, and she’d choose a mortgage anytime over having to live in a museum.

But Mac’s place was no museum. The house was stone. Two sturdy stories, with gleaming casement windows and gables and arched doorways. Compared to her three-room apartment, it was monster-size—and she hadn’t seen all of it—but the place had so much character and personality that it looked like... well, it looked like a home. Smoke chugged out of the chimneys and snow cuddled in the windowsills. Whoever had cleared the walk had left the shovel in the porch overhang. Maybe an ordinary person could live here. Like the kind of person who would forget to put away the shovel. Like her.

She only glimpsed the front for a second, then Mac punched a button and the garage doors opened. A Jeep already took up one parking place—not a fancy Jeep, but one with mud-crusted tires and a little dent in its fanny. It wouldn’t particularly have startled her, except that Kelly had never seen Mac dressed less normally than a suit, formally ready for a shot in GQ. “The Jeep is yours?”

“Yeah.” Mac was already climbing out, the Jeep obviously the last thing on his mind. If he hadn’t suddenly rolled his shoulders, she wouldn’t have realized that he was whip-tired from the challenging drive—not counting everything else that had happened that day. “Just head inside, Kelly. No one’s here—I can’t remember if you met Benz and Martha the other day. They live on the far side of the property, do some housekeeping and chores for me, and I’ve lined them up to come in more often. While I’m at work, I don’t want you here alone, especially when you’re this far pregnant. But for a few days, I thought you might want to explore the place on your own and not feel like strangers were hovering over you. If you don’t remember the layout, that door leads to the kitchen—just settle in wherever you want. I’ll follow you in two seconds—I just want to check a few things out here first. The house has a generator if we lose power, and the way this storm’s building we could be holed up for a couple of days—oops.”

“Oops?” Somehow Kelly didn’t think that expression got much of a workout in Mac’s normal vocabulary, and suddenly there was that potent quicksilver smile again.

“Yeah, I don’t know where my head was. Here I’m rambling on about silly subjects like blizzards, when I should have remembered there are bigger priorities. The bathroom is the first door on the left,” he informed her.

She chuckled, and for the craziest moment they shared a smile. A real smile. For an instant she forgot he was a sexy hunk, forgot he was the formidably powerful Mac Fortune, forgot he’d been sucked into protecting the woman his brother got pregnant. For that instant, Mac was just...a man. A man with rumpled dark hair and the shadow of whiskers on his chin and a smile that warmed up those cool green eyes. A man she wanted to know. Not had to get to know.

But he had that generator thing he wanted to look at, so she hustled inside. After shedding her coat on a kitchen chair, she kicked off her shoes and peeled promptly for the teal-and-white bathroom she saw off the kitchen.

When she washed her hands, she caught sight of herself in the vanity mirror and immediately considered hiding out in the bathroom—like for the next two weeks. She’d looked worse. She just couldn’t remember when. Her fine blond hair was tumbling down, her makeup long gone and the elegant cream satin dress just looked silly over her basketball-size tummy. The bride of Frankenstein surely looked more put-together than this... but objectively Kelly knew that vanity was a pretty silly thing to worry about. Mac had no reason to care what she looked like.

It was just that this was the part of the day she’d dreaded a hundred times more than the ceremony. Facing her new husband. Alone. There was no question or worry about intimacy—even if she weren’t seven months pregnant, she couldn’t imagine being the kind of woman who would remotely attract Mac. Besides, he’d already broached that lion in its den, and so had she. They had reasons to marry. They had no reason to sleep together—or to feel awkward about that. But the average new bride would undoubtedly be flying into her lover’s arms by now...and Kelly didn’t know what to do, what to say, or even how to start the whole business of living together.

Well, postponing it wasn’t getting the job done—or making it any easier. After running a quick brush through her hair, she charged out. Immediately she noticed that the back door was bolted and the outside lights shut off—and Mac must have hung up her coat because it had disappeared—so he was obviously in the house somewhere.

She padded through the kitchen, trying to remember the downstairs layout. The east side of the house held the kitchen, a long dining room with cushioned window seats and then a library/study kind of room with a fireplace and ceiling-tall bookshelves and a fat, plush, Oriental carpet in a million colors. She half hoped to find Mac there—she’d already identified that room as a great private haven—but no dice.

Across the hall was a polished staircase leading up, and although she didn’t remember much about the west side of the house—she didn’t have to. She promptly found Mac in the giant living room. And one look from the doorway was enough to make restless nerves prowl through her pulse again.

The room was ... stupendous. The ceiling and walls had all been paneled in heart-of-redwood. A stone fireplace arched to the beamed ceiling and was big enough to roast a boar. None of the furnishings were exactly fancy. They were just ultracool guy stuff—a ten-million-button entertainment center, throne-size chairs, two long couches, sturdy antiques with a western flavor, fabrics in a forest green that complemented the rich redwood. The whole darn room was perfect—at least for a guy—except for the pile of battered suitcases and boxes all over the place.

Mac had shed his tux coat and unlatched the buttons at the top of his shirt. Until he saw her, he was hunkered down by the hearth, getting a fire going. Flames were already dancing, licking the kindling, warming the whole room with the tangy scent of pine—but all she could see were her waiflike suitcases cluttering up his elegant room.

He stood up with a smile. “I was wondering if you got lost.”

“I’d probably better tell you now—I’ve got the geographical sense of a deaf bat. I can get lost in a room with one door. You’ve got a beautiful home, Mac.”

“Your home now, too.” He motioned to the piled suitcases. “I had your things moved this afternoon so you wouldn’t have to be carrying anything on your own—but I couldn’t guess on the bigger items like furniture. I thought we could go over to your apartment in a few days? And then you could choose whatever you wanted to bring here—”

“Um, most of my stuff is pretty much early-attic. I don’t think anything is exactly going to fit in here too well.”

“We’ll find room. Or just move some of my things out. For that matter, if you want to redecorate or change something, all you have to do is say. And in the meantime, I didn’t mean to dump everything here—or leave it for you to carry. But without asking you first, I didn’t know where you wanted to sleep. Do you remember the upstairs?”

“To be honest, no.” Actually she remembered the master bedroom—Mac’s bedroom—with embarrassing clarity. But she’d been too nervous that day to pay much attention to anything specific about the house.

“Well...upstairs there are five spare bedrooms. I figured you’d want to choose two—one to fix up for the baby and one for you? But I didn’t know which ones would suit you without asking. I also thought, you must be exhausted after this long day—maybe you’d just like to pick a bed to sleep in tonight, and save any other decisions until tomorrow or when you feel up to it.”

“That sounds fine. I really don’t care where I lay my head tonight.” Kelly thought this was going like a dream—only too much so. He didn’t seem to notice that her suitcases looked like Little Orphan Annie had come to visit. A small tray on the coffee table held two glasses—the one with milk was obviously considerately meant for her. He’d eased into discussing the sleeping arrangements the same way he’d handled the wedding, the drive, everything—Kelly didn’t know what she expected, but it was never this level of perception and thoughtfulness. He was taking care of her as if she was precious china, for Pete’s sake, when he’d been stuck with this marriage no different than she had.

“We can either go upstairs now and get you settled in...or maybe you’d like to just put your feet up in front of the fire and unwind for a while—”

“Mac.” She reached for the glass of milk and gulped down a slug. “Don’t you dare say one more kind thing. You’re just making me miserable.”

“Miserable?” Instantly he quit messing with the fire and surged to his feet. “Hell, why didn’t you say something? It is the baby? Are you sick—?”

“No, no, it’s not that kind of miserable. I just feel...look, I’m disrupting your whole life. It’s one thing to believe we had good reasons for doing this, and another to figure out how to be comfortable together. Everywhere I look you’ve got this great house all set up for a bachelor, and suddenly you’re stuck with a woman who goes in for lace curtains and a pink couch. Somehow we’ve got to figure out how to talk the same language.”

Mac looked confused. “There’s no problem, Kelly. If you want lace curtains in here—”

“No. Holy kamoly. No. They’d look awful.” The mental picture of frothy curtains against the rich, dark heart-of-redwood almost made her laugh. “I didn’t mean I cared about anything like that. I just...would you mind if I asked you some blunt, nosy questions?”

“Of course not. Shoot.” He settled in one of the massive forest green chairs and motioned her to take the other.

She considered a straight chair—knowing how hard it was to get in and out of anything these days—but the only straight chair in the room was a mile from Mac. So she sank into the luxuriously fat cushions of the chair across from him and started in. “There are so many things we talked about before. I know you realized how frightened I was the night I was attacked—”

“I know. And I just wish I could change things, Kelly, but I’m afraid criminals tend to prey on a family like the Fortunes.”

“I understand that now. But when I fell in love with your brother, I’m afraid I never even thought about his being a Fortune—or how that could affect me or my child.” She chugged another gulp of milk. “What I’m trying to say, though, is that your asking me to marry you solved so many things. Just from the angle of protection alone, I’ve got you behind me, and the Fortune family and those nice big, tall gates.”

“And your baby will have a name.”

She nodded. “Yes. He—or she—will have the last nam he’s entitled to, and the family relationships that go with that. Securing a future for my baby—Mac, that’s everything to me. But we’ve been through all that, too. All those pa pers you had me sign. They were all a benefit to me. To my child. You even built an easy out for me into all those legalese papers—”

Mac cocked a black-stockinged foot on the coffee table From his quizzical expression, he still didn’t understand where she was leading this conversation. “The trust we se up for the baby was to secure his future no matter what we choose to do down the road. And we talked about this Kelly. You’re especially vulnerable now, this late in a preg nancy—and right after the baby’s born, too. But those cir cumstances aren’t going to be the same, down the pike, and that means you could want to make different choices. We both agreed there’s no reason this marriage has to last if i stops working at some point.”

Kelly again made a gesture of frustration. “Yes. Al that’s great. I know all the advantages for me and the baby But that’s just it. It’s so one-sided. What on earth is in this arrangement for you?”

Mac’s eyebrows arched as if the answer to that question should have been obvious to her. “It was because of my brother that you were put in danger. We may never know if that jerk meant to kidnap you, but there’ve been kidnap pings in the family before. Con artists, thieves, blackmai schemes tried on us. And your relationship with Chad mad the society columns often enough to make the public awar that you’re pregnant with a Fortune child.”

“But it was Chad who put me in that situation. Not you None of it was your fault, Mac.”

“Fault, no. But responsibility is a different thing. We had a problem on the table that had to be solved—keeping you and the child safe. If fixing that were as simple as hiring security for you, anyone in the family could have done it. It wasn’t that simple. You weren’t raised in this kind of family. There were risks you had no possible experience to know how to cope with. And money alone was no way to do right for the baby, either.” Mac hesitated, and then reached for the glass of scotch from the tray. “Did Chad ever tell you much about our family?”

“Some. Not much. I know your mother died when you were around ten—which had to be terribly hard for you. And I know you’re the oldest, that there’s a big age gap between you and the twins. I’ve met Chloe, because she and Chad were so close—”

“Thick as thieves,” Mac concurred. “And much as I love them, both of them are hell on wheels—my father just seemed to lose heart after Mom died, let them run wild. But Chad has had the hardest time finding his way. I know his good qualities, and I know you do, too. But growing up, I was so much older that I really felt to blame for not being a stronger influence.”

She shook her head. “I understand what you’re saying. You felt extra responsible because the baby was Chad’s. But this was still your brother’s mistake. And mine. Not yours.”

“That’s my nephew or niece you’re carrying. Blood kin. And it could be the closest to a child I’ll ever have. Making sure that relationship was a legal tie—”

“Would give you the right to interfere in his upbringing?”

Mac hadn’t ducked any blunt questions she’d asked him before, and he didn’t evade this one. “To a point. Yes. I wanted a vote in all those million things that come up when you’re raising a child—schools, health care, security, the chance to give the kid some coaching and time from the male gender side of the fence—”

“Mac, for heaven’s sake, I’d have let you have those things, anyway. And down the road, if we don’t agree on issues like that, I assume we’ll fight—but no silly legal piece of paper would stop me from telling you if I thought you were overinterfering. But back to what you said a moment ago...why on earth would you think this is your only chance at a child? Why haven’t you married?”

She caught a flash of humor in his eyes. “Um...is this where the nosy part of those questions kicks in?”

“Mac, I’m not just asking to be nosy.” She struggled to find the right words to explain. “I’m trying to figure out how to make this work for you, not just me. I look around this place and it’s a bachelor’s paradise. Suddenly you’re stuck with a woman who likes clutter and lace and flowers. For that matter, the house I grew up in would probably fit in this living room. I don’t know how two people could be more different. And if you never really wanted to be married—”

“All right, I can see where you’re headed with this now. And the truth is—I never did plan to marry.” Mac scratched his chin. “The whole family’s pushed hard for me to tie the knot. I’m not sure I can explain why I haven’t. Maybe a wariness just built up over time. Although there are plenty of happy marriages in the family, those aren’t the ones I see. If someone’s coming to me, it’s because there’s trouble. Everyone always starts out talking about how much they’re in love, but I see what happens when the chips go down, how lives are torn up in the name of love, how the kids are ripped apart when things don’t go right. To be honest—”

A log tumbled to the hearth, sending sparks shooting up the chimney. Mac leaned forward as if he were going to promptly go over and tend the fire, but Kelly was afraid she’d never get him talking this way again. “Please. Finish saying whatever was on your mind.”

“Well, you might find this hard to believe, but this marriage you and I put together is the first one that ever appealed to me.”

“You have to be kidding. Why?”

“Because I think we’ve got freedom in this relationship that other couples never have. We can make our own rules. We don’t have to do one thing that doesn’t work for the two of us. You want to do the whole house in pink—be—lieve me, Kelly, I don’t care, go for it. If you don’t like anything, all you have to do is say. I’m sure we’ll have to compromise on all kinds of things—but neither of us have love or emotions tangled up in this. We can be honest with each other.”

Kelly fell silent, studying her new husband. She could have guessed Mac would value honesty and freedom in a relationship. With his heavy responsibilities, he’d go nuts with a high-maintenance mate—or even a friend—who demanded constant attention. And as always, his expression was self-contained, those wonderful dark eyes of his unreadable. He didn’t seem lonely. Yet his settling for so little sounded terribly lonely to her. “You don’t believe in love, Mac?” she asked softly.

“Sure. I believe in all kinds of love. Love, loyalty, family, taking care of your own—”

“But not the other kind of love? Between a man and a woman?”

Mac finished the last of his scotch in a gulp, and met her eyes squarely. “I believe the power of hormones can be a hell of a lot of fun—but if one of the things you’re worried about is whether I’ll be faithful to you, rest your mind. I can’t say I’m fond of a celibate lifestyle, but right now...hell, it seems to me we both have our hands full and will for some time. It’d go against my grain to cheat while I was wearing a wedding ring—and whether we’re sleeping together doesn’t change that. However...”

“However...?”

“However... Chad could come back. Or you could find someone. So could I. That’s why we worked out all those prenuptial legal papers, to protect you and the baby no matter what happens to us. There’s no such thing as an overnight divorce, Kelly, but we’ve made it as easy as possible to sever the tie if either of us wants to. As long as we’re careful to build this right, we won’t have the hurt and ange and emotional baggage that usually goes with a split up Either we make this work or we’ve lost nothing. We’ve still done the right thing for the child. We’ve still done the right thing to protect you at this moment in time.”

And doing the right thing was obviously a critical thing to her husband, Kelly mused, but there was still a gaping hole in this discussion. He’d asked for nothing from her—except honesty. Maybe Mac didn’t want her to have any real place in his life, but she was living here now. There had to be needs she could fill, things she could do for him to at least balance all the things he was doing for her.

But before she could say anything else, she heard a clock chiming in the front hall. One, two, three...abruptly she realized that the clock was going all the way to twelve. In seconds it was going to be the new year.

Mac was diverted by the clock chimes, too, and suddenly stood up with a chuckle. “It looks like we’re both running on empty, but do you have enough milk there to toast the New Year?”

“You bet.” She leaned forward to grab her milk glass.

“We made it through one incredibly unusual day—thanks to the bride’s willingness to kick the groom in the shins when he forgot his lines. Did I remember to say thank you for that?”

“No, but, um...you could pay me back now with a little help.”

His eyebrows lifted. “What?”

She rolled her eyes with an embarrassed laugh. “I was trying to stand up for this toast. Only I think I’m stuck. should have known better than to sit in this chair—the cushions are so deep, and the only thing I can get gracefully out of these days is a straight chair. I feel like an ungainly elephant—”

Before she could even try to scooch forward again, Mac swiftly hooked both her hands and pulled her up. The serious mood was obviously broken, Kelly thought, and they could talk another time. Right now she just figured on toasting the New Year with him and then packing it in. But for just that instant when he helped her up, her protruding tummy grazed against his flat abdomen. And her hands...for some reason he didn’t release her hands for another whole millisecond. His grip was warm and strong, his touch sparking an electric rush in her pulse.

She’d felt the same sizzle when he’d kissed her at the wedding. She was positive, then and now, that she was imagining it. He was being kind. He’d frankly brought up sex with her, several times now, with the same ease he’d mentioned having macaroni and cheese for dinner. He thought she was in love with his brother. There wasn’t a single rational reason in the universe to think he felt an ounce of attraction for her.

And she didn’t. She really didn’t.

But for that miniscule second, the muscle in his jaw tightened and some kind of emotion flashed in his eyes. Something bleak and stark. Loneliness. Aloneness. As if he realized—as she did—that a normal bride and groom would never be ending their wedding night this way.

It was just an impulse, while he was already standing as close as a heartbeat, to wrap her arms around him. She didn’t want to give her new groom a stroke, and hugs weren’t part of their deal. Maybe a hug was presumptuous, but she didn’t care. That look of stark loneliness got to her. Everyone needed a plain old affectionate hug sometimes, the warmth of a connection to someone else. If he had a heart attack, then he’d just have to have a heart attack.

He stiffened like a poker when her arms curled around him.

But then he unbent.

Holy cow, did he unbend...