Bedded Then Wed (8 page)

He’d thought that marriage to Emma would be easy and uneventful. One of those things that simply was and wouldn’t require too much of his input or attention.

He’d been willing to marry her because her father had asked, but his decision had been underlined by the knowledge that they’d been friends since childhood and cared for each other already. Maybe not in the way most married couples cared for one another, but in his estimation it was a decent enough basis for a relationship.

It didn’t hurt, either, that the sex was phenomenal. To him, that was an added bonus and one more sign that a marriage between them could work, even if there was no love involved.

When he’d pictured their future as man and wife, he’d seen them sharing a house, sharing a bed, working his ranch—and then someday her father’s, too—together.

But nowhere in those pictures had he ever imagined children.

He probably should have. With all the sex he’d intended to have with her, the topic of pregnancy was bound to come up eventually. Emma might even have wanted children, which was another possibility he’d never considered.

In retrospect, he realized just what an oversight that had been. Of course, she’d have wanted children. Emma was a woman, and women loved kids.

But even if that had been the case, he’d have fought her on it. He had no idea what kind of father he’d make. The very idea terrified him. And having a child with her would only have risked evoking stronger emotions on Emma’s part than he was ready to deal with, making more of their marriage than there was meant to be.

He scraped a hand over his face, stale air leaving his lungs in a huff of breath. The shock of her announcement was still reverberating through his system, chilling him down to the bone.

The Fates, it appeared, were having a field day. At his expense.

He’d been ready to marry her with no thought of children, even though they were a normal progression of an average marriage. Yet the minute they split up and despite all the precautions they’d taken to prevent this very thing from happening—at least after those first two hurried, spontaneous couplings—she wound up pregnant with his child.

Good God, what the hell was he going to do?

“Well,” Emma prompted in a less-than-polite tone, her fists propped angrily on her hips. “Don’t just stand there. Say something.”

If only he could think of something to say…other than asking again how the heck this had happened.

But then, he knew. The only question was how they planned to deal with it.

Clearing his throat to be sure it would work, he said the first thing that came to mind. “Why don’t you come on in the house. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”

He held the screen door open and waited for her to precede him inside. She did so reluctantly, her movements stiff, a mutinous expression on her face.

They headed for the kitchen and Emma took a seat at one end of the wide oak table while he took down two glasses from the cupboard and opened the refrigerator.

“What would you like?” he asked, leaning on the door to look inside. “I’ve got milk, orange juice, tea. Although you probably shouldn’t have tea. I’m pretty sure it’s caffeinated.”

When he turned his head to glance in her direction, he found her arms crossed beneath her breasts and a frown marring her brow that was definitely aimed in his direction.

The problem was, he couldn’t blame her. If she was half as mixed up about this new predicament as he was, then she had to be confused, scared, angry…basically tied in knots with no clue of how to untangle them.

He grabbed the jug of milk and poured her a glass, then poured tea for himself. But before he carried the drinks to the table, he opened another cupboard, pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and topped off his tea.

“Sorry about this,” he told her, replacing the cap and returning the bottle to its spot at the back of the shelf. “You could probably use a shot of this as much as I can, and it’s not fair that you can’t have any. But this is just going to have to be one of those things you hold against me, because if I don’t get some liquor in me soon, I doubt I’ll be much use to you at all.”

Setting the milk down on the table in front of her, he pulled out another chair and took a seat, already downing half of his own drink in great, gulping swallows.

Not bothering to touch her own glass, she shifted slightly on her seat and said, “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

He set his glass aside with a small clunk and met her bright, steady gaze. “Ask you what?”

“If you’re the father.”

The words hit him like a punch to the gut. Deservedly so, he supposed, after the way he’d acted at their engagement party.

He’d had no reason to suspect she was fooling around on him, especially with his own brother. But then, he’d never suspected Suzanne of cheating on him either, even though she’d been sleeping around almost the entire time they were married.

It was that knowledge, the realization that he could be blind to a woman’s betrayal, that put him on his guard. No way in hell was he going to wind up married to another liar, another unfaithful woman.

So, yeah, he had trust issues. Anyone who knew him—or had known Suzanne was cheating on him, while he was left standing in the dark like an idiot—was aware of that.

But even with all of that hanging over his head, when Emma had told him she was pregnant, it had never once occurred to him that it might be another man’s baby.

He didn’t know why, except that just because a woman was capable of cheating didn’t mean she had, and he simply didn’t believe Emma had been sleeping with anyone else at the same time she’d been sleeping with him.

“No, I’m not going to ask. I don’t think I need to.”

If she found his behavior now odd as compared to the night of their broken engagement, she didn’t say so. Instead, some of the tension seemed to seep from her body and her rigid posture began to relax. She sat up a bit straighter on the chair and leaned against the table, lifting her glass of milk to take a small sip.

Mitch took the opportunity to take another drink of his own odd mix, wishing it could be straight whiskey, even as the small amount in his tea warmed its way down his throat to his stomach.

“So how long have you known?” he asked quietly, concentrating on putting his glass back directly over the water ring it had left the first time.

She looked at her watch, then said, “About forty minutes.”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. Somehow he’d thought she’d had a few days to come to terms with this new turn of events.

“I haven’t been feeling well,” she explained, in answer to his unasked question. “After I’d been sick three or four mornings in a row, I started to think maybe I wasn’t suffering from just a cold or a touch of the flu. I drove into town this morning, bought the home pregnancy test and took it in the bathroom of the library. Then I was on my way home and thought I should stop by to let you know…what was going on. It’s bound to be all over town before long, anyway.”

Her blue eyes flitted to the side, away from him, her fingertips worrying the rim of her glass. Then, without warning, the legs of her chair scraped the floor as she got abruptly to her feet.

“I don’t want anything from you,” she told him, backing through the kitchen and toward the door. “I didn’t come here to make you feel guilty or rope you into anything. I just…thought you should know.”

She’d reached the front of the house and stood with her back to the screen, one arm behind her, already pushing the door open a fraction.

“So I’ll see you later. Have a good day.”

Have a good day? Did she really think she could waltz up to his house, say, “Hey, I’m pregnant. Just thought you should know,” and then waltz off again with a simple have a good day?

Uh-uh. Not with his child. Not while he still had breath left in his body.

“Emma,” he called out, rising and moving to stand close enough that he could have reached out and touched her. To keep himself from doing just that, he stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. His heart was pounding a mile a minute, sweat breaking out across his brow at the thought that was echoing through his brain.

“Yes?”

He blinked, bringing his attention back to Emma’s face. Her soft complexion, bachelor’s button eyes and wavy, strawberry-blond hair.

It might not be ideal. It might not even be what he really wanted. But it was right, and it was a necessary.

Lifting his gaze, he met her eyes, took a deep breath through flared nostrils and uttered the six words he knew would change his life forever.

“I think we should get married.”

“We tried that once already, remember?” she muttered tiredly. “It didn’t work out.”

She saw the flash of memory cross his face and was struck with a fresh wave of pain at their short-lived engagement.

The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed. “I think we should try again.”

Closing her eyes for a brief second in weariness, she let her chin fall to her chest and then lifted it again. “Why?”

“Because you’re pregnant, that’s why.”

Yes, because she was pregnant. Not because he was in love with her or wanted to be married to her but because she was pregnant. And, judging by the determined expression hardening his eyes and flattening his mouth, he wasn’t going to listen to reason.

“This is my baby, too, Emma,” he continued, apparently reading an equal amount of determination on her own face. “He—or she—should have my name and grow up with two parents who love and care for him. Or her.”

He was trying, she knew that. And yet…“That’s no reason to get married, Mitch.”

“Around here, it is. You know how fast word will get around town that you’re pregnant. You’ll be labeled an unwed mother, and the baby will be labeled a bastard.”

He pulled a hand from his pocket and moved it to the back of his neck, kneading as though trying to work out a particularly stubborn knot.

“Gabriel’s Crossing is a good town, with good people living here, but we both know they can still be an opinionated, judgmental lot. They might never say anything to your face, but you know they’ll whisper behind your back. Behind our child’s back. How fair is that, to bring a child into this world with baggage like that to deal with?”

She shook her head, not because he was wrong, but because he was right…and the guilt trip was working.

Gabriel’s Crossing was a good town, but it was also filled with citizens who held old-fashioned beliefs and values. And even though she didn’t think any of them would truly treat her or an innocent child badly, Mitch was right about the gossip and the whispers. Eventually, in some way, their child would hear the word bastard or illegitimate and want to know what it meant.

Even if Mitch maintained an active role in their child’s life, the stigma would still be there. And there was a difference between a father who was married to a child’s mother and a father who dropped by once a week or picked the kid up for the occasional weekend visit.

“We can make it work,” he pressed on, reaching a hand out to touch her arm. “A lot of the wedding arrangements have already been made, and, unless you told people we broke up, no one even knows we called it off. We can go right back to being engaged and just move the date up a bit, if we need to.”

He said it all so matter-of-factly, as though he were discussing his plans to buy a few more head of cattle. There was no emotion there, no eagerness or true desire to spend his life with her, merely his deep-rooted sense of responsibility that told him two people who were planning to have a child together should be married first.

She wished she could argue with him, offer a list of reasons his proposition was inferior to simply going on with their lives—separately, but sharing a child. The problem was, she had been raised the same way he had, with the same beliefs.

She didn’t want to be a single mother. She didn’t want to go home and tell her father that she was pregnant with Mitch’s baby—but rather that the wedding was off. She didn’t want to be the butt of gossip and condemnation, and she didn’t want to raise her child on her own.

Mitch’s thumb was making small, mesmerizing circles on the inside of her arm, distracting her even as his intense gray gaze burned into her, silently urging her to make the right decision.

If only he loved her, even a bit. The way she still loved him, despite everything. Childhood crushes, she supposed, were slow to die.

The worst part, though, was that she suddenly realized he’d never really felt anything for her. Not the way she’d hoped, at any rate.

Why he’d bothered to propose to her at all was a mystery. And she felt more than a little stupid for ever thinking she could help to heal his bitter, wounded heart.

Not that it mattered any longer. Necessity had taken the place of what either of them might have felt or wanted before. Now it had to be about the baby, about the best interest of their child.

As much as she hated the idea of being married to a man who didn’t love her…or being married to a man who didn’t want to be married at all…he was right about the need to give their child a name and let him or her grow up with a reputation free of labels or scandal.

Closing her eyes and feeling her shoulders slump slightly, she resigned herself to what she knew had to be done. She would sacrifice her own happiness, her own peace of mind for that of her unborn child.

Opening her eyes, she raised her gaze to Mitch’s and prayed she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of both their lives.

“All right,” she said softly. “We’ll go through with the wedding.”

He didn’t smile, but she felt the tension leave his body, loosening his muscles and lightening the rigid lines of his face.

“Good,” he said with a firm nod. “We’ll set the date as soon as possible and won’t mention the baby to anyone before then. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

With that settled, she pushed backward through the screen door and stepped onto the porch. “I’ll be seeing you, then,” she said, heading toward her car.

He followed her across the yard. “Let me see you home.”

“That isn’t necessary,” she told him, shaking her head and climbing behind the wheel.

Before she could slam the door closed, he caught it, rested an arm along the window frame and leaned over. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked quietly. “You know, about…” He waved a hand up and down to indicate her midsection. “Anything?”

She warmed a little at his offer and the obvious awkwardness that accompanied it. “No, thank you. I think we’re okay for now.”

“You’ll let me know if that changes?”

“I’ll let you know,” she said, cocking her head to look at him, giving a small smile.

With a silent nod, he stepped back and closed the car door, then stood where he was while she started the car, turned around and drove off. She watched his unmoving form grow smaller in her rearview mirror as she headed down the long dirt driveway toward the main road.

She was engaged again, she thought, not sure whether to be relieved or disheartened. She was going to marry the same man she’d been set to marry before, the same man she’d fancied herself in love with.

Only two things had changed—she was pregnant, and this time she knew it was all for show.

Emma spent the next several weeks fighting morning sickness and making hurried wedding plans. Where they’d once intended to wed a few months or even a year down the road, the date had now been moved up significantly, the guest list whittled down to only family and very close friends.

Instead of getting married in the church, they were now going to exchange vows in his parents’ backyard. They had made arrangements with the minister and rented a gazebo, folding chairs and most of the decorations that would make an outdoor ceremony complete.

Yet all of the things she should have enjoyed—deciding on flowers, addressing invitations, picking out a dress—were merely duties to be done while pretending she was both nervous and excited about her upcoming nuptials.

In reality, she was just plain nervous. She was about to walk down the aisle in front of her father and friends and promise to love, honor and cherish a man she was marrying only to protect her unborn child.

She’d seen Mitch a handful of times since that day at his ranch when she’d told him about the baby. He was checking up on her, she knew, even though he’d never said as much, and they’d also agreed that they needed to be seen together both by their families and in town at least occasionally to keep up the pretext of being the happily engaged couple.

It hadn’t been easy, and Emma was keenly aware that the rest of her life would be much the same—an act put on in public to convince people she was happier than she really was.

But she would have her child, she reminded herself.

Her hand slipped down to cover her still-flat abdomen. They would have each other, and she would do all she could to make her child’s life a joyous one.

As for the rest…she would simply have to make the best of it.

A soft knock at the guest room door brought her head up, dragging Emma from her deep, dismal contemplations. She inhaled sharply and glanced in the mirror above the vanity table to be sure there were no telltale signs of her reluctance to walk down the aisle.

The door opened and Mitch’s mother poked her head in.

“It’s nearly time,” she said with a gentle smile. “Your father is just outside, waiting to walk you down the aisle. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Not for the first time, Emma noticed in Theresa’s face where Mitch had gotten his soulful eyes, high cheekbones and several shades of his dark, dark hair. The rest had come from his father, which only meant that he’d been twice blessed.

If all else failed, Emma thought, at least their child would benefit from the attractive gene pool on Mitch’s side of the family.

Theresa stepped forward to fuss with the flowers in Emma’s hair. Emma was wearing a plain white dress with no straps or sleeves, and more flounce in the knee-length skirt than she’d have liked. But there were only so many wedding dress options in downtown Gabriel’s Crossing on such short notice.

She felt guilty enough even wearing white, considering her current condition and the things she and Mitch had done to get her there.

“I think I’m ready,” she said, her voice somewhat scratchy with emotion and disuse.

Her future mother-in-law took a step back, still fingering the ends of Emma’s reddish-blond hair, left loose around her shoulders.

“You look beautiful,” she said, gazing at Emma with undisguised love and happiness. “My son is a very lucky man.”

Unshed tears clogged Emma’s throat and she fought to swallow them back. If Theresa only knew what a sham this entire ceremony was, she wouldn’t be nearly so eager to see this wedding take place.

“All the guests are here and seated, and everything else is set. The only thing left is for the bride to make an appearance.”

Taking a deep breath, Emma got to her feet. She smoothed the skirt of her dress, tugged the bodice up a fraction and reached for the bouquet of flowers at the edge of the vanity table. An assortment of simple wildflowers to match the blossoms in her hair, tied together with long strips of pale yellow ribbon.

“I’m ready,” she murmured with a determined nod.

Theresa beamed, then opened the door and rushed out, leaving Emma to follow.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, fast and erratic, and her feet felt like bags of sand, dragging her down and slowing her steps.

As she rounded the corner from the guest bedroom, she spotted her father at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in a dark gray suit and grinning widely. She offered him her best reassuring smile and carefully descended the steps to meet him.

“I can’t believe it’s my little girl’s wedding day,” he said, his voice sounding suspiciously thick. Taking her hand, he lifted it to his mouth for a brief kiss. “You’re just as pretty as a picture.”

“Thank you.”

“You remind me of your mother on our wedding day. She’d be so proud of you.”

The mention of her mother immediately brought tears to her eyes, and she tipped her head back, hoping to keep her mascara from running.

She so wished her mother could have been there. Not just to see her get married, but as someone to confide in about everything that was going on in her life right now. Her mother was the one person she knew she could have talked to about Mitch, her unexpected pregnancy and this wedding that she knew neither she nor Mitch were a hundred percent ready to go through with.

But her mother was gone, and there was no one else to turn to. She had to do this, and she had to do it alone.

Forcing a smile to her face that she didn’t quite feel, she let her father lead her to the rear of the house, with its wide-open back door. She could see the cloth aisle laid across the grass-sprigged yard and the rows of chairs covered with white fabric, filled with guests dressed in their Sunday best.

And there, at the end of that long aisle running between the two clusters of seats, stood Mitch beneath a white latticework trellis climbing with pink and white wild roses.

Her racing heart stuttered for a second as she studied him. He always had that effect on her—stopping her heart, slowing her breathing, sending her senses on red alert.

And today, he looked exceptionally handsome in his black suit and newly shined black boots. His black hair gleamed almost blue in the midmorning sunlight, and he’d spotted her. His intense gaze pinned her in the doorway, making her shiver.

Even though they weren’t marrying for love, she had to admit that the lust was still there, at least on her part. One glance from those smoldering gray eyes, one touch of his strong, callused hands, and she was putty.