Thats my nephew or niece youre carrying. Blood kin. And it could be the closest to a child Ill ever have. Making sure that relationship was a legal tie
Would give you the right to interfere in his upbringing?
Mac hadnt ducked any blunt questions shed asked him before, and he didnt evade this one. To a point. Yes. I wanted a vote in all those million things that come up when youre raising a childschools, health care, security, the chance to give the kid some coaching and time from the male gender side of the fence
Mac, for heavens sake, Id have let you have those things, anyway. And down the road, if we dont agree on issues like that, I assume well fightbut 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 havent you married?
She caught a flash of humor in his eyes. Um...is this where the nosy part of those questions kicks in?
Mac, Im not just asking to be nosy. She struggled to find the right words to explain. Im trying to figure out how to make this work for you, not just me. I look around this place and its a bachelors paradise. Suddenly youre 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 dont know how two people could be more different. And if you never really wanted to be married
All right, I can see where youre headed with this now. And the truth isI never did plan to marry. Mac scratched his chin. The whole familys pushed hard for me to tie the knot. Im not sure I can explain why I havent. Maybe a wariness just built up over time. Although there are plenty of happy marriages in the family, those arent the ones I see. If someones coming to me, its because theres trouble. Everyone always starts out talking about how much theyre 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 dont 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 shed 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 weve got freedom in this relationship that other couples never have. We can make our own rules. We dont have to do one thing that doesnt work for the two of us. You want to do the whole house in pinkbelieve me, Kelly, I dont care, go for it. If you dont like anything, all you have to do is say. Im sure well have to compromise on all kinds of thingsbut 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, hed go nuts with a high-maintenance mateor even a friendwho demanded constant attention. And as always, his expression was self-contained, those wonderful dark eyes of his unreadable. He didnt seem lonely. Yet his settling for so little sounded terribly lonely to her. You dont 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 funbut if one of the things youre worried about is whether Ill be faithful to you, rest your mind. I cant say Im fond of a celibate lifestyle, but right now...hell, it seems to me we both have our hands full and will for some time. Itd go against my grain to cheat while I was wearing a wedding ringand whether were sleeping together doesnt change that. However...
However...?
However... Chad could come back. Or you could find someone. So could I. Thats why we worked out all those prenuptial legal papers, to protect you and the baby no matter what happens to us. Theres no such thing as an overnight divorce, Kelly, but weve made it as easy as possible to sever the tie if either of us wants to. As long as were careful to build this right, we wont have the hurt and ange and emotional baggage that usually goes with a split up Either we make this work or weve lost nothing. Weve still done the right thing for the child. Weve 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. Hed asked for nothing from herexcept honesty. Maybe Mac didnt 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 were 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 daythanks to the brides 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 Im stuck. should have known better than to sit in this chairthe 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 didnt release her hands for another whole millisecond. His grip was warm and strong, his touch sparking an electric rush in her pulse.
Shed felt the same sizzle when hed kissed her at the wedding. She was positive, then and now, that she was imagining it. He was being kind. Hed frankly brought up sex with her, several times now, with the same ease hed mentioned having macaroni and cheese for dinner. He thought she was in love with his brother. There wasnt a single rational reason in the universe to think he felt an ounce of attraction for her.
And she didnt. She really didnt.
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 realizedas she didthat 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 didnt want to give her new groom a stroke, and hugs werent part of their deal. Maybe a hug was presumptuous, but she didnt 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 hed 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...
Three
Mac poured another mug of coffeehis fourth that morningand carried it to the window. The sun hadnt even thought about waking up until past eight. The horizon still had the pink-pearl luster of dawn, making the snowy landscape look as pretty and innocent as a Christmas cardbut thered sure been nothing innocent about the blizzard winds last night. He estimated there were two fresh feet of snow on a level, which wouldnt be that hard to plow out, except that nothing was on a level. Some of the swirling, eddying drifts were taller than him.
With Kel pregnant, he got antsy at the thought of her being cut off from doctors and civilization, even if the city was as shut down as they were. Still, he had a pickup with a blade. He could have their country driveway cleared in a few hours, but for damn sure no one was going anywhere this morning.
Hearing the thump of a distant footfall from upstairs, Mac immediately spun around. The kitchen was lit up brighter than a hospital surgery. Granted, the teal blue counters and Italian-tile floor were a tad littered, but hed been working like a dog. Four pans jostled for space on the stove, one for eggs, one for bacon, one for muffins and the last for pancakes. The table was crowded with lined-up boxes of cereal and bowls heaped with apples and oranges and melonshed been challenged to find space for silverware, particularly after hed added pitchers of both orange and cranberry juice.
Mac scratched his chin. Possibly hed overdone it just a little. Hell, somehow he seemed to have enough food for a battalion of marines, but pregnant women were a completely alien species. He didnt know what Kelly was supposed to eat or what appealed to her, either.
Mac hated being unprepared.
When he heard another footfall, his heart started banging in his chest. Swiftly he shoveled a hand through his hair, checked his jeans zipper, then glanced at his black sweatshirt to make sure there wasnt as much pancake batter on him as there seemed to be on the floor. The sound of footfalls moved to the stairs. He braced as if he were imminently facing a firing squad of Uzis.
Thats exactly what went wrong the night before, Mac figured. He hadnt been braced. He hadnt been prepared. Technically there was nothing wrong with a hug, but hed just never expected Kelly to suddenly wrap her arms around him. He still had no clue why shed done it. Maybe every pregnant woman got a wild hair. Maybe she was tired and not thinking. Maybe she needed reassurance. Maybe shed forgotten she was in love with his brother.
Mac hadnt. Even if hed tried, the family must have asked him forty times what would happen if Chad came home. They didnt get it. Of course Chad was going to show up sometimehe always did after one of his playboy disappearing acts. Mac knew that perfectly well when hed asked her to marry him, known shed loved his brother, too. Those sticky complications didnt erase the reasons for the marriage, but the opposite. Kelly had been in danger. Cut-and-dried. And Mac loved his brother, but he knew him. Painfully well. Whether Chad was snoozing on a beach in Jamaica or right here made no difference. Mac couldnt trust his brother to protect Kelly or to do right by the child. Keeping her safe was up to him.
And that was precisely why his response to that damn hug was so inexcusable. Mac shoveled a hand through his hair. He remembered folding his arms around her, because he couldnt just stand there like a lump, and hell, he didnt want her feeling rejected or scared. Returning the hug seemed an okay thing to do, but after that it all got hazy. Sensations had bombarded him like bullets. Soft bullets... like her hair tickling his nose, and the feel of her tummy pressing against him, and the way her skin glowed so vulnerably in the firelight. She smelled like peach shampoo and soap and that teasing, illusive perfume she wore. It bugged him, those self-deprecating comments she made about being graceless and as big as an elephant. She wasnt. Shed felt so small in his arms, so warm, so real. He remembered closing his eyes, remembered feeling gutpunched with a stupid, alien, childish wave of longing...he also remembered, too well, being aroused faster than a trigger-hot teenage boy.
Hed jerked back faster than a whiplash, hoping she hadnt noticed. But all night long hed seen the bathroom light go on and off. Hed worried about her pregnant kidneys, worried she was sick. But mostly hed worried that she couldnt sleep because she was in a strange house with her whole life turned upside down, and now hed become a new kind of unknown worry in that picture for her, too.
He was just going to have to fix it, that was all. Hell, hed handled multimillion dollar mergers, European stock crashes, hiring and firing staff in four countries. How much trouble could one pip-squeak-size pregnant woman be?
And then suddenly she was in the doorway. Morning, Mac. Youre up so early. Whew, can you believe all this snow?
Good morning back and yeah, some of those drifts outside are really something. Oh, God, one look and he could feel a sinking. Give him a stock crash anytime. He knew what to do about that kind of thing.
No matter how glaringly lit the kitchen was, she was still a brighter shock of color. She smiled at him through a sleepy yawn. Her hair was brushedhe was pretty surebut it still fell around her shoulders in tumbled swirls. An oversize red sweatshirt burgeoned over her tummy, the color matching the two dots of color on her cheeks and her pants both. Unless he was mistaken, she was wearing fat fluffy hound dogs on her feet. It occurred to him that they must be slippers. And that five-hundred-watt sleepy smile suddenly disappearedhell, had he already done something wrong?
She motioned around the kitchen. Oh, Mac. Youve gone to so much trouble
No trouble at all, he said swiftly. I just figured you might be hungry for breakfast
Im always hungry, but Im afraid I get a queasy stomach first thing in the morning. The most I can handle is a little juice and toast
Toast. The one thing, naturally, that he hadnt thought of. No problem, I know weve got bread around here somewhere