Adopt-a-Dad

by Marion Lennox

  The warm breeze was wisping the curls from her face, and her skin was still pale. She was wearing no makeup. Her lips were soft and full, and her lashes were long and luxurious.

  Socks, head on one side, looked questioningly at his mistress. He put one dusty paw onto Jenny’s knee, but she didn’t stir, and suddenly it was too much for Michael. It would be too much for any man, he thought, and this was his wife. The woman he wanted more than anything in the world.

  As if compelled, he bent and kissed her full on the lips, kissed her with a tenderness he didn’t know he possessed.

  His Jenny. His wife.

  As his mouth found hers, Jenny’s eyelids slowly opened, and she saw his face before her. Like part of herself.

  And somehow, still half asleep, she wasn’t surprised. This was an extension of a lovely dream. She’d expected that Michael’s mouth would be on hers, and she’d known that this feeling would be so immeasurably sweet she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t resist.

  “Michael,” she murmured, and her hands rose just a fraction. She didn’t pull away, but she stirred, and her eyes smiled into his.

  It was enough. He needed no other urging. His Jenny.

  With a joyous groan he knelt and gathered her to him, and then he kissed her properly, as a man should kiss his wife. He kissed her with a fierceness born of passion. Born of need.

  His lips were against hers, and her mouth was softly opening, welcoming, wanting him with an urgency that matched his. Dear heaven, she was so sweet. So lovely. She was so incredibly desirable that it was as much as he could do to breathe. His hands felt the roundness of her belly, and her breasts yielded to his chest, soft, compliant.

  Jenny.

  And still the kiss held. Her hands were on his face, holding him, deepening the kiss with a possessiveness that told him her hunger and her need were as great as his. The kiss went on and on, while they sat motionless under the cloudless sky.

  But at last it came to an end. Two small boys came tearing along the path and skidded to a halt at the sight of them-and then burst into teasing laughter.

  “Aw, mushy…”

  “Kissy, kissy!”

  One of the boys pursed his lips and made a kissing sound. Jenny and Michael broke apart in laughing confusion, while Socks barked his disapproval of this intrusion.

  “Clear out of here,” Michael ordered the boys, but there was laughter in his eyes. His heart had no room for anger right now. His arms were firmly around Jenny’s waist, and there was no way he was letting go. “Can’t a man kiss his wife?”

  “Kissing makes babies,” one small scamp offered, and the other boy hooted with scorn.

  “Stupid, they’ve already made a baby. She’s as pregnant as my mom was when she had Sarah. I’ll bet she’s about to bust at any minute.”

  “Then what do they want to kiss for?”

  Sarah’s older brother was unable to find an answer for such a tricky biological question. “Yuck! How would I know?” He giggled, threw Jenny and Michael a scornful glance and raced away with his buddy.

  What do they want to kiss for?

  Their words lingered, funny, yet profound. What did they want to kiss for? Jenny looked deep into Michael’s eyes and she knew exactly why.

  Peter! No!

  The stab of memory caught her by surprise. Why was she doing this? What promises was she breaking now? She took a deep breath and pushed away. “Michael, I don’t want…”

  “Me to kiss you?” He smiled at the distress in her face. “Honest? I very much want to kiss you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Jen…” He rose from his kneeling position and sat on the bench beside her, taking her hands between his. All of a sudden her fingers felt cold, and he frowned. “It’s too soon, isn’t it? Because of Peter.”

  “I…” She shook her head. How to make him see the impossible? “He’s only been dead seven months,” she said miserably.

  “I understand.”

  “No.” She pulled her hands away, pushed her curls out of her eyes and stared bleakly at the river. “I don’t think you do.”

  “So tell me,” he said softly. Her eyes flew to his.

  “You don’t-you can’t-this has nothing to do with you. I thought you never intended to get near anyone again.”

  “I’m doing it for the dog,” he said promptly, and his answer was so pat she frowned in confusion.

  “The dog?”

  Lightness was needed here. He was thinking fast. Anything to take the panic from her eyes.

  “Every orphan needs two parents,” he explained soulfully. “I ought to know that. Your baby needs two parents, so I offered, thinking we could get into the domesticity bit later. But now we have Socks, and the need is urgent. We need to indulge in domesticity right now, or Socks risks a deeply disturbed adolescence.”

  “And domesticity means kissing?”

  “Definitely!”

  “You know, Socks might not be the most stable adolescent to work on,” Jenny said cautiously, trying for laughter, and Michael shook his head in disbelief and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Shh. You’ll give the dog a complex. Let’s just go back to playing doting parents. Do what doting parents do.” He smiled at her-that heart-stopping smile that had her insides doing back flips-and tried to draw her into his arms. But she somehow managed to pull away.

  “No.”

  “Then tell me why.” His smile died again. Okay. Maybe humor wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe honesty was the best bet. “There’s all sorts of electricity between us, Jenny, and I don’t understand it one bit. It’s caught me by surprise, but my instinct here is to go with it. To see where it leads.”

  “To see if we can fall in love, you mean?” she asked cautiously, and he nodded.

  “I guess that’s what I do mean.” He caught his breath, overwhelmed by what he was about to say. “Maybe…maybe it’s already happened.”

  “You’re saying you love me?” Her eyes widened in incredulity. “After four days?”

  “Hey, I’ve known you for over five months. Every weekday for five months.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Yeah, right. And you spent all that time treating me like I was part of the furniture.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Every morning I had the same thing for morning break,” she said with asperity. “What was it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Ha! I told you you didn’t notice!”

  “How would I know if you had tea or coffee. Does it matter?”

  “I had chocolate milk,” she said with dignity. “Straight out of the carton.”

  “Jen…”

  “No.” Despite her attempt at lightness, the distress was still in her voice. “No way. It’s true you’ve only just noticed me. There’s no way I’m letting you commit here, Michael Lord.”

  Let him commit? Let him commit?

  “Hell, woman, I want to commit,” he roared. “Damn it, I’ve spent most of my life running scared of commitment. Now I’ve decided I want to go the whole nine yards, and you say you don’t? But I can feel you do!” He made a grab for her again, but she drew back and rose from the bench.

  “No!” This time there was no laughter at all. There was fear.

  He saw it, and his indignation died at once. He didn’t follow, just stayed sitting, watching her.

  “Tell me, Jen,” he said softly. “What’s bothering you? What are you fearful of? Me?”

  “No.” She hesitated. Maybe he had to know. She had to explain it to herself.

  “Peter married me fast,” she said.

  “How fast?” He didn’t make a move. He had the impression that if he did, she would retreat into silence. “Sit, Jen. And tell me.”

  There was a long, drawn-out silence, and then, slowly, she sat and started speaking. And when she did, her voice sounded as if it came from a long way away.

  “We met one fabulous weekend at the home of mutual friends,” she said. “Or rather, they weren’t rea
lly mutual friends. Henry and Kate were friends of mine, and Peter knew Henry from university. Henry had gone home to Peter’s for the weekend while they were undergraduates, and Gloria had pink fits because Henry’s mother worked as a char, and Henry was a scholarship student.”

  “Gloria disapproves of the unmoneyed?”

  “Absolutely. So Henry became a bone of contention between them. Whenever Peter wanted to infuriate his mother, he’d extend his friendship with Henry. When Peter had a fight with his mother, he took off to visit Henry. He even told her that. He was off to stay with his unsuitable friends.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Of course, I never knew that till later,” Jenny said, her voice bleak. “All I knew was that Henry’s friend was drop-dead gorgeous, and he swept me off my naive nineteen-year-old feet. We were married before I could blink-before I found out that he was marrying me so he could marry a totally unsuitable woman to get at his mother.”

  “He must have been nuts.”

  “He was very mixed up,” Jen said sadly. “I’m not saying he wasn’t attracted to me. Like me and you, there was this…thing.”

  “Like me and you?” He paused, hating the comparison. “So it’s the same?”

  “I don’t know.” She flushed and looked at him. “No. It’s not. At least I don’t think so. With you I feel-” She broke off as he moved fractionally toward her, and her hands came out as if to fend him off. “No. I don’t know what I feel. But I do know that I’m rushing into no commitment here. You married me as a kindness, and there’s no way I’m taking it further. I’ve had one man already who was stuck with me.”

  “Is that what Peter was?”

  “Oh, yes. Honorably stuck, but stuck all the same,” she said bitterly. “He was a mix…half his father, whom I gather he admired because he had such a stiff upper lip and was all honor-he died some time ago-and half his mother, whom you’ve seen. And a bit of rebellion, which made him seem vulnerable. He just didn’t know where he fitted in. But he made me promise…” Her voice died away.

  “He made you promise what?”

  Her chin tilted, trying to make him see. Trying to make him understand a little.

  “He regretted it, you see,” she said, faltering as she fought for the right words. “He tried to break free of his aristocratic bonds, and it didn’t work. So when he was dying, he made me promise to raise our child as he ought to be raised-as the next earl.”

  Michael’s brows creased. “And you made that promise?”

  “Peter was dying,” she said miserably. “And I still loved him-sort of. I’d grown, but he hadn’t. By the time he died it was more a maternal sort of love. I knew why he hurt me-why he acted like he did-but there was nothing he could do to change it. He was desperately injured. I was grief-stricken, in the early stages of pregnancy, alone in a strange country, and I was in shock. I’d have promised him anything if it would ease his distress.”

  “But you didn’t mean it?”

  “At the time, I did,” she told him bleakly. “I guess I thought I could do what he wanted-go home to England, live on the estate and become the next earl’s mother. There didn’t seem any choice. It was only after Peter’s death, when Gloria started laying down the rules, that I saw clearly what was involved. Or rather, that I wouldn’t be involved at all. I’d be welcome to have access visits as long as I didn’t take my son off the estate. I’d have a generous allowance as long as I gave my son none of my commoner ideals.”

  “The woman’s an autocratic dragon! There’s no way you can do things her way.”

  “Yeah, but I promised.”

  “Jen, it’s unreasonable.”

  “I know that.” A hint of defiance returned. “That’s why I’m still here. But it doesn’t make it one bit better. It’s like I can’t bury Peter in my mind. He’s hanging over me, like a sad ghost, reminding me that I’ve betrayed his last wish. And I can’t get on with anything.”

  “You mean you can’t love me?”

  She met his eyes. “Michael, I do love you,” she said softly. “You are the kindest, most generous person that I know. But I still feel that I’m married. As if part of me is still tied to Peter and will be forever, and in some stupid way it’s tied to that broken promise. Thank you for trying, Michael, but for now…let’s just leave it as it is. I need to come to terms with what I’ve done in my own way. For me, marriage-a proper marriage, with hearts involved, not the one we’ve made to keep me in the States-seems like one last betrayal.”

  “When you kissed me then, it was because you wanted…”

  “Because I wanted you,” she whispered, the faintest tremor behind her words betraying her turmoil. “But then, I’ve always wanted what I can’t have. Love.”

  “Let me love you.” His voice was urgent-insistent-but she moved away.

  “No. You mustn’t. Because betraying Peter again would drive me to the wall.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  H OW COULD YOU fight a ghost?

  There was no hope, and by the end of the following week, Michael decided he was going nuts.

  This was some crazy situation, he thought grimly. All his life he’d run from emotional attachment, and now, here he was practically wearing his heart on his sleeve, and Jenny was holding him at arm’s length and flinching every time he laid a finger on her.

  She was afraid. Afraid of him! Not of what he’d do to her. He knew her well enough to believe she trusted him. She was afraid of what she might feel if she let him close. So he’d walk into the room and she’d hug the dog or curl up on the end of the sofa with Socks between her and the world. Or she’d be out walking when he came home from some errand and she’d read a book after supper-or smile and talk him through his day, keeping the conversation casual, as if she were his best buddy instead of his wife!

  And all the time there was this tiny glimmer of fear in the back of her eyes that drove him nuts. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss the fear away, tell her it was okay, he’d never hurt her and he’d never make her feel she was tying him down.

  Damn, why had he ever told her he didn’t want emotional commitment? But he had, and that-along with Peter’s ghost-was enough to make her run scared.

  “SO WHAT’S UP, bro?” Garrett caught up with him the day he came back to work. He only had to look at his little brother’s face to know something was wrong. Michael looked strained to breaking point. “I thought you just had a week off.”

  “I did.”

  “You look like you’ve run a marathon.”

  “Yeah, well, you try sleeping in the same house as Jenny,” Michael growled, and Garrett’s eyes widened.

  “Hey, she’s some lady. I wouldn’t think you’d mind sleeping in the same bed as Jenny.”

  “That’s just it.” Michael slammed his fist on his desk with such force that his new secretary gave a startled glance his way. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping in the same bed as Jenny.”

  “Uh-oh.” Garrett grinned and rose lazily to close the door on the flapping ears outside. “I see. So sleeping in a different room is the problem. The lady’s almost nine months pregnant with another man’s child,” he said gently. “You need to give her space.”

  “I love her, Garrett,” Michael said, and put his head in his hands and groaned.

  Silence.

  “You love her,” Garrett said at last, in a voice that sounded strange. Obviously he was having trouble taking this in.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s great.”

  “Not when she doesn’t want me.”

  “Heck, Mike, give her a chance. She must have so many mixed-up hormones pounding around right now. Dead husband, pregnancy, marriage…”

  “You recommend patience?”

  “Hey, I don’t know,” Garrett said, exasperated. “You’re asking me about women? Short of Lana and Shelby, I know nothing. They’re a breed apart. Ask Lana.”

  “Ask her what?”

  “What to do,” Garrett said unhelpfully. “Meanw
hile, think of all the hearts you’ve broken in your time. It won’t hurt you to get a taste of your own medicine.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Garrett said expansively. “Now, why I came to see you…” He hauled a list out of his pocket and tossed it onto Michael’s desk. “Here’s a security check for you.”

  “What’s this?” Michael picked the paper up and stared listlessly at the row of names.

  “Possible parents. Shelby and I are working on it already, but we’d like you to give us a hand.”

  He froze. “What the heck… I told you, I don’t want to know.”

  “The girls do,” Garrett said. “Lana’s changed her mind since she married Dylan. Somewhere out there is our birth mother, Mike, and there’s a gut feeling among me and the girls that she’s hurting. We need to find her.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Mike, you’ve held yourself in that icy cocoon for too many years,” Garrett said gently. “Jenny’s chipped away at the ice, and there’s warmth under there. While you’re waiting for her to come around, use the warmth for someone other than yourself. Maybe Jenny can teach you how.”

  “Jenny!”

  “Yeah, Jenny,” Garrett said firmly. “If Jenny hadn’t found you-if she’d ended up destitute-maybe she would have given up her baby rather than see it starve. And if she did, would the hurt of losing her child have disappeared after all this time? I don’t think so, Mike, and neither do you.”

  “Garrett, I…”

  “Just look at the list,” Garrett said firmly. “Talk to Jenny about it. See what she thinks.”

  “It’s none of her business.”

  “If you want her to love you, you have to learn to share.” He hesitated. There was real pain on Michael’s face, and Garrett didn’t want to push it, but if the ice was cracking, he wouldn’t be the one to withhold the sledgehammer. “On Saturday night there’s a party at Megan’s to welcome Camille and Jake home from their honeymoon. It promises to be a real shindig. Fireworks, everything. Now her family’s all settled, Megan’s feeling like she’s on top of the world, and she’s showing it every way she can.”