Adopt-a-Dad

by Marion Lennox

  “I’m not in Austin,” he told her obscurely. “I’m out of town on business.”

  “And would this business have anything to do with Jenny Morrow?”

  “It might.”

  “Then don’t tell me,” she said hastily. “I don’t need to know. What I don’t know I can’t be forced to tell.”

  “We’re not talking torture here, I hope, Ellie,” he said, startled, and she gave a reluctant chuckle.

  “Not quite. But the people asking questions…they have all the right authority and they’re very insistent. They say Jenny’s taken off and plans to stay in the country illegally.”

  “Ellie, how many illegal immigrants do you guess are in the U.S.?” Michael asked slowly. “Rough guess? Ballpark figure?”

  “I don’t know. Thousands?”

  “That’d be my guess.” He frowned into the phone. “So why do you think there’s all this interest in our Jenny?”

  “Our Jenny?”

  “She’s my secretary,” Michael said, stifling the impulse to lay claim to a closer relationship. That could wait. “I’d like to know what the heck is going on.”

  “I thought you might know,” Ellie said thoughtfully. “Being away from work and all.”

  “Ellie, when did I last have time off work?”

  “Beats me,” she said. “I don’t think you have. Not since you started here two years ago.”

  “Permission to take the rest of the day off, then? With that and the weekend… That should do it. I’ll be back at work on Monday.”

  “Should do what?” Her voice rose. “No. Don’t hang up. I take back what I said about not wanting to know. I do. Michael, what’s going on?”

  “I want you to find out. You’re closer to the action than I am.”

  “There’s a strange woman here,” Ellie said suddenly, as if she was looking around reception as she spoke and her gaze had rested on someone. “Not a bureaucrat. English, upper crust. Mid-sixties. Looks like Wallace Simpson on a good day. Not a hair out of place. Expensively dressed and smooth as silk. You know the type-or maybe you don’t. It’s a female thing-on the surface polite and sweet and a little bit helpless, and underneath as tough as nails. She’s questioning all the staff about where Jenny might be-says she’s Jenny’s mother-in-law, and she’s worried sick.”

  “Is she now?” Michael turned away so Jenny couldn’t hear him. “What’s she saying?”

  “She thinks Jenny’s run away because the immigration officers have come. She says Jenny’s pregnant and alone, with practically no money. She told me the immigration officials are trying to deport Jenny, and she’s desperate to help her daughter-in-law and her poor little unborn grandchild. So do I know anything I’m not telling the immigration people?”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything,” Ellie said frankly. “When she asked the staff in accounts where Jenny might be and they didn’t know, she offered them money. A heap of money. To be honest, she gives me the creeps. So no, she has nothing from me except blank stares. I can be a real dope when I try.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Don’t patronize me, you toad. Just tell me-”

  “Watch her, Ellie,” Michael interrupted. “You’re right not to trust her. I don’t understand yet if there’s just cause, but Jenny’s frightened of her, and Jen doesn’t scare easily. And don’t worry. I’ll see you at work on Monday.”

  “Michael!” Ellie’s voice rose in a wail, and Michael grinned and disconnected.

  For a change, it wouldn’t hurt Ellie not to know what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning.

  Or that he was married…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “R IGHT . That all appears to be in order.” The gray-haired woman pushed her glasses down her nose and stared across the desk at Jenny and Michael. Her eyes bored right through them. “But there are a couple of questions I need to put to you both.”

  “Yes?” Michael took Jenny’s hand and exerted gentle pressure. Leave the talking to me, his hand said, but he didn’t mind admitting he liked the feel of her fingers in his.

  “Why did you delay marrying for so long?” she asked. She fixed Jenny with a stern look. “You’re aware your permit to stay in this country expires on Monday.” She glanced at her computer screen. “We’ve been given advice that you didn’t intend leaving the country. On the basis of information received, we have officers checking your whereabouts right at this minute.”

  “Who gave you that information?” Michael asked, as though surprised, and the woman shook her head.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “If it’s Jenny’s family in England, maybe we can understand it.” Michael smiled, and his grip on Jenny’s hand tightened. She was so tense. “They wanted her to come home when her husband was killed but she thought she’d get over his death better if she stayed out of sympathy range. And now… Maybe Jen’s thrown out a few hints that she was thinking of staying here after the baby’s born and that’s what’s worrying them. I guess they have reason to worry. Jenny’s a young widow, she’s alone, she’s vulnerable, and they don’t know me.”

  “I’m not vulnerable,” Jenny said, but no one was listening.

  “So you’ve been thinking about marriage for a while?”

  “We’ve been working side by side for the last five months,” Michael said easily, as if pulling the wool over official eyes was something he did every day. “Jen applied for her work permit and came to me as a temporary secretary, trying to keep busy to get over her grief at Peter’s death. The arrangement was to have been for only a couple of months, but it kept being extended. By me. It didn’t take me long to realize Jen was special.”

  That much at least was true. She was the best secretary he’d ever had.

  “But Jenny was newly widowed,” he went on smoothly. “It’s taken time to convince her to look at anyone else.” He grinned engagingly at the woman behind the desk. “Five months, in fact. I must be a very slow convincer.”

  The woman didn’t smile back, but she glanced again at the computer screen, as though what it told her conflicted with Michael’s story. Then she looked again at Jenny.

  “My information says that you are desperate to stay in this country,” she said, ignoring Michael’s charm completely. “Maybe desperate enough to consider marriage as a means to staying?”

  “Hey, am I someone you’d have to be desperate to marry?” Michael was all ready to feign outrage, but Jenny returned the pressure on his hand to tell him she was capable of answering the question herself, thank you very much. Vulnerable? Ha!

  But she didn’t remove her hand from his.

  “I nearly went crazy after my husband’s death,” she said softly. “That’s why I wanted to stay here for a while-to be close to where he died and to avoid the crushing sympathy of friends and media back home. You know that my husband-my late husband-came from a titled family in Britain? My baby will inherit that title, and my mother-in-law has promised to support us both in luxury for the rest of our lives. I’m not under pressure to stay in America. On the contrary, my family, my wealth, my son’s inheritance, all those things are pressuring me to go home. So it’s been a very hard decision to stay here, to stay with Michael.”

  She smiled, and reluctantly the lady behind the desk smiled back. It seemed Jenny’s charm worked better than Michael’s.

  “I’d be guessing the person worrying about me-putting pressure on your officials-is my mother-in-law,” Jenny continued, pressing her advantage. Speeding up the thaw. “She wants me to return home, and she’s a very strong lady. Maybe if she’s spoken to you then you know that already, and that she thinks I’m a fool for staying. I intended to go home-after all, there’s a lot to be said for living on my ex-husband’s inherited wealth-but when I went to the travel agent to book my return ticket I realized…I realized just how much I wanted to stay.”

  “And why was that?”

  Jenny cast a sideways glance-a loving
look that almost shattered Michael’s composure-at her new husband. If she was acting, she was sure good at it! “It was knowing how much I wanted to stay with Michael,” she said in a voice that was no more than a whisper.

  “So you didn’t buy your return ticket?” the woman pressed her. “But you thought about it. That would be how long ago?”

  “A month ago,” Jenny said, unruffled. “Nearing the end of the time I could fly.”

  “So you’ve been planning this marriage for a month?”

  “I have,” Jenny said serenely. “I just delayed telling Michael.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “I wanted to make him sweat.” Jenny’s eyes twinkled, and she gave Michael an affectionate grin, for all the world as though they were longtime lovers and she was teasing him. Then she turned to the woman, and her smile died.

  “No.” She hesitated. “That’s not the truth. To be honest… I don’t know if you can understand, but… Peter’s only been dead for seven months. It’s soon. Maybe too soon. That was why we haven’t told anyone of our relationship. We’ve kept it quiet. Though it seemed so right, it still seemed a betrayal. It has been very hard to say yes to Michael. I only know that I couldn’t say no.”

  There was a trace of sympathy flickering in the woman’s eyes. “But you’ve said yes now?”

  Jenny’s chin tilted. “I surely have. We’re married now, so I guess I’m as sure as I’ll ever be. Michael’s promised to care for my baby like his own.” Her eyes defied the woman to doubt her. “An offer like Michael’s-from a man like Michael-doesn’t come along every day. I’d guess that my mother-in-law is very upset. I can understand her reasons, though we don’t always get on. But I’d be a fool to go home to England and to hope that Michael would follow.”

  “I would follow,” Michael said, playing his part to the hilt. He put his arm around her waist. “I certainly would. It’d be me who’d be the fool if I didn’t.”

  And suddenly it was over. The woman was rising and smiling, her frost giving way to a thaw. “Well, this seems satisfactory. There will be follow-up visits, checking on you on your home territory, so to speak, but it seems a formality. We’ll give you notice.” She cast a look of dislike at her computer screen, as if it had betrayed her. “Enough of my time’s been wasted on this. I seem to have sent my officers on a wild-goose chase.”

  “Your officers?”

  “There are two of our people searching Austin for you right now,” she told Jenny. “I suspect they’ll be annoyed when I tell them I’ve had you here all along.” She pursed her lips. “Of all the useless…”

  “Was that because of us?” Jenny said, distressed. “Should I have let people know sooner? I didn’t think- I mean, I thought we had until Monday to let people know. I thought if we applied now…”

  “No, my dear, it is not your fault,” the woman told her. “You go off and enjoy your honeymoon, and I wish you the very best of luck for your life together.”

  “I DON’T THINK,” Michael said carefully as the door closed behind them, “that Gloria is in for a very good reception if she tries to exert more pressure on you through immigration.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” Now that she was out of the office, Jenny felt her knees turning to jelly. Michael had hold of her arm, and she was grateful for his support.

  “Why? She clearly seemed to be on your side.”

  “Gloria has influence everywhere, right up to royalty and congress. We’ll be checked out thoroughly.”

  “Then there’s nothing to worry about,” Michael said, tucking her hand firmly into his. “We’re a staid married couple, off to take our honeymoon before we start our life together. Come on, Jenny. Forget about your mother-in-law. Come to think of it, you don’t have a mother-in-law anymore. Only me. So from now on, just think about us.”

  THEY HAD their wedding dinner at a restaurant where Michael said the food was better than anywhere else in the States. He made her eat migas, a very different form of scrambled eggs, and try Carta Blanca, a Mexican beer. She tasted the beer but went back to lemonade in a hurry, pleading her pregnancy, but he knew he was on a winner with the migas. She ate like a starving person.

  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?