She’d hardly had any breakfast or lunch. Now, though, her color was returning and she looked as if she might be able to face the world again.
“We’ll stay here tonight,” he told her. “Drive back tomorrow.”
“I don’t mind when we go.” She didn’t, she decided. She felt light-headed and free. It seemed the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. Or at least most of it.
“I guess,” she began, then looked across the table at her new husband. He really was impossibly good-looking, she decided, with his dark coloring and wonderful red hair. There was a trace of chest hair showing at the throat of his open-necked shirt, and she felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch it. To trace it downward.
Too good-looking…
Strange how she’d hardly noticed it before, but she did now. He’d gone out and bought a casual shirt for their wedding because he always wore a shirt and tie for work and decided he wanted his wedding clothes to be different. She wouldn’t buy anything new-it was a total waste when she was this pregnant-but she loved his casual look. And she loved the fact that he’d bought something special for their wedding.
He really was…special?
“You guess what?” he asked, and she had to drag her thoughts back to where they’d been. Or to where they should have been.
“I guess we’ll have to face your family.” She frowned into her lemonade. “Will you explain things? That our marriage is just a formality? We don’t want them thinking…”
“That we’re really married?” Michael frowned. “We are really married. We need to be, Jen.”
“But we won’t be living together.”
“Yes, we will. She said they’d check.”
“She also said they’d give us notice.”
“That’s true. Still…”
“So we tell your family the truth. Otherwise…” She ran her finger around the rim of her glass, troubled. “They might accept me as part of the family.”
“So?”
“So it wouldn’t be honest. Or fair.”
“Jenny, you’re my wife,” Michael said firmly, so loud that people turned to stare. He grinned and lowered his tone. “Okay, our marriage isn’t what most people think of as a marriage. We don’t love each other and we’ll lead independent lives. But it’s still a marriage. We’ve signed a contract, and we play by the rules.”
“But…”
“If either of us decides we want out sometime in the future, then that’s okay. People understand divorce, even if they don’t like it. But for now, we tell people we’re husband and wife and let them decide what to make of it. I guess my brother and sisters might have to be told the truth-they’d guess anyway-but for the rest…”
“The rest?”
“The rest as in everyone else,” he said. “They need to know as much as Gloria needs to know. We’ll send a notice to the local paper. We won’t tell people that we fell in love, but we won’t tell them that we didn’t. Love has many different faces. There are lots of couples who don’t stay tied to each other. Who travel independently. Sleep independently.”
“Watch separate TVs?”
He grinned. “That, too. I bet you don’t like watching football.”
“I do, actually.” She smiled, but the trace of uncertainty remained. “In moderation. Like once a year for half an hour with plenty of chocolate on the side. But I see what you mean. It’s only…”
“Only what?”
“I don’t like telling lies.”
“We’re not. We’re married, Jenny. How hard is that to accept?”
It sounded totally reasonable.
But still the worry remained.
“At least let’s insist on a few basics. Like no presents. No party. This really is crazy.” Her brow furrowed. “I mean, if people think it’s romantic, well, we’ll be in for all sorts of things.”
“Then we say-firmly-that we don’t want it. No fuss. But otherwise, we treat each other as husband and wife. An independent couple, but a couple for all that.”
She smiled then, though her doubts remained. “You might not know what you’re saying. When I tell you off for the sixtieth time for drinking beer out of the can… Speaking of which.” She reached forward to grab his can, which had been supplied with a glass beside it. He’d elected not to use it.
He was faster than she was, hauling the beer out of reach. “Not so fast, woman. Have you no respect? I might have asked you to marry me, but if you start interfering with my beer-drinking habits…”
“There’ll be all sorts of things I’ll want to interfere with,” she said, her worry returning. “I wonder… Maybe we went into this too fast.”
“We didn’t have a choice.”
“I know that, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t want to cause trouble for you, Michael.”
“You won’t.” He smiled. “Hey, I was brought up with two sisters and a brother. I’m accustomed to leading my own life surrounded by chaos. Family doesn’t touch me.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just easier to turn off. I always have. That’s what makes this whole thing feasible.”
Somehow that only made her feel worse.
THAT NIGHT was difficult.
Once again they shared a hotel room. “After all, the authorities would be surprised if we didn’t sleep together tonight,” Michael told her, and Jenny had to agree. Tonight, however, he didn’t pull the bed across the door.
“If Gloria’s as smart as you think she is-and she’s obviously paying a bundle to keep informed-then she’ll know what’s happened by now. The officials in Austin will have been called off, and they’ll have told Gloria why.”
“I guess.”
“She can’t touch you, Jenny,” Michael said, and he stroked her face gently as she sat on the bed. “Don’t start looking for threats. You’re safe.”
Safe, but at what price?
She climbed into her appalling cotton pajamas and snuggled under the bedclothes, then lay in the dark with Michael three feet from her side. He went straight to sleep, his low, even breathing sounding softly across the room.
It should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. It was unsettling, strange.
What had Michael said?
It touched her. People touched her. What Michael had done for her, what he intended to do for her-it moved her to tears.
She was so indebted.
She should never have agreed to this. She knew better than Michael what sort of reception would greet them in Austin when people found out. How would his family react to her? She could guess. They’d react with horror-and they’d be right. His sisters would want a nice local girl to marry their wonderful brother. Someone he loved, not someone he felt sorry for.
The baby stirred within her, and she was achingly aware of the new little life waiting to be born.
“I’ve done this for you,” she whispered into the dark, her hands resting on her belly. “I’ve married Michael for you.”
It wasn’t totally true.
She stared at Michael’s silhouette in the dark and felt emotions that had been repressed for a very long time.
He was letting her close. Not too close, but closer than he’d ever let anyone else. He’d married her.
“For better or for worse,” she whispered into the night. “Well, Michael, this is my worst, and this is your best. I just hope that sometime in the future we can balance things out a bit.”
AT THREE in the morning she scared the living daylights out of him.
He’d been solidly asleep, dreaming, and his dreams hadn’t been half bad. Jenny was in there somewhere, and her smile.
