by Leanne Banks
“Good idea for the kids.”
“And me,” she muttered. “I should take Nicholas before we have an accident.”
“Let Justin take him,” Kate interjected, stepping forward. “I’m Kate Hawkins. This is my husband, Michael, and friend, Dylan. Why don’t you guys take the other two children for a drink of water at the fountain while I help the bride?”
Michael’s face crinkled in confusion. “Help the bride do what?”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Get ready for the ceremony.”
“The ceremony won’t take five minutes, so—”
“Sweetheart, would you please take the children to get a drink at the water fountain?”
He blinked. “Sure. Come on,” he said to the kids.
Nicholas shifted again. “I gotta go.”
Amy didn’t want an accident. “So should I.”
Justin surprised her by stepping forward and taking Nick’s hand. “I’ll take him.”
Amy paused in surprise. “Are you sure you know how—”
Justin lifted an eyebrow. “I think we can muddle through.”
She watched them leave. “It may sound crazy, but I have a hard time believing Justin has ever helped a three-year-old visit the bathroom.”
“Given his aversion to children, I’d be surprised, too,” Kate said.
“Aversion?” Amy echoed, swerving to look at Kate. The slim brunette with curious warm eyes wore an easy air of sophistication.
Kate gave a wry grin. “That was pre-emergency surgery Justin. He seems to have changed. Some,” she added grudgingly. “Would you like one last dash to the powder room?”
Amy nodded and walked toward the ladies’ room. “So what was the pre-emergency surgery Justin like?”
“Ultracareful. I always got the impression he had no intention of ever getting married or having children.”
Amy’s stomach began to twist and turn. “He doesn’t like children?”
“I can’t say that,” Kate said. “He’s crazy about our baby, Michelle.” She sighed. “These three guys have hidden depths. Maybe it has something to do with spending all that time at the Granger Home for Boys. Maybe—”
Amy’s jaw dropped. “Justin lived at the Granger Home for Boys?”
Kate nodded, saving the bouquet from Amy’s limp hand. “Oh, yes. All three of them lived there. You didn’t know?”
Amy shook her head, trying to make sense of the new information. It reinforced her feeling that there was more to him than what he had revealed. If he’d lived at Granger then he had firsthand experience with the reason Amy wanted custody of the children and why she felt so strongly about making a safe place for them.
“But you know he trades stocks and is very successful at it?” Kate asked.
“Yes. When he suggested that we get married, I told him I couldn’t afford another mouth to feed and he told me he was a millionaire.”
“This has happened so fast I bet he didn’t have time to get you to sign a prenup,” Kate said, extremely amused by the idea.
“I signed it the same afternoon we got our blood taken. It was more than generous.” She met Kate’s gaze. “I’m not interested in his money.” She hesitated revealing her feelings. “I’m marrying Justin to ease the process for gaining custody of the children. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never set my sights on marrying any man, let alone a rich man. It always appeared to me that a woman pays in self-esteem and autonomy for that decision.”
Kate stared at her in surprise, then smiled. “I think you may be very good for Justin.”
Looking in the mirror, Amy felt a swirl of contradicting emotions. In less than fifteen minutes, she would be a wife. “This marriage may not last long,” she confessed in a whisper.
Kate gave her a considering glance. “Michael and I didn’t marry under the best circumstances and I didn’t think our marriage would last.”
“You changed your mind?”
Kate smiled. “Michael changed my mind. For what it’s worth, Michael says Justin is a stand-up guy. When the chips are down and everyone else has fallen, Justin is the one who’ll still be standing by you.”
That sounded so incredibly tempting to Amy. Sometimes she felt she’d spent her life being the stand-up woman. Her palms damp, she rubbed them on the sides of her dress. For the children, she repeated to herself like a mantra. She licked her lips. “I guess it’s time.”
Kate looked at her with sympathy in her eyes. “We’d already planned a cookout this afternoon. Why don’t we let it double as a wedding party?”
“I already have cake and ice cream at home for the kids,” Amy said.
“Bring it,” Kate said. “Hey, it’s one less meal you’ll have to cook. And my little girl will worship your children because they can walk and run.”
“Thanks for the offer. Let’s get through the ceremony first,” Amy said, feeling an overwhelming urge to hike up her dress and run.
“It’ll be short,” Kate told her in a reassuring tone as she returned the bouquet. “You look beautiful.”
Amy and Kate left the ladies’ room and encountered the rest of the group in the hallway. Justin caught Amy’s eye and strode to her side. “Ready?”
No. She nodded.
“I’m not an axe murderer,” he assured her. “Just for my own peace of mind, you’re not related to Lorena Bobbit, that woman who cut off her husband’s…”
Amy almost laughed. “No. Did everything go okay with Nick?”
“No problem. Just unzipped and put him in front of the urinal and let it fly.”
Amy felt a tug on her dress and looked down to find Nick smiling broadly. “Justin showed me a new way to pee. It’s a lot better than sitting. Jeremy wants to try it now.”
Amy looked up at Justin. “Thank you for your contribution. I think,” she added.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Guy-thing. You ready?”
No, but I’d really like to get it over with. “Let’s do it,” she said gamely and walked into the judge’s chambers.
Judge Bishop, a friendly man in his fifties, had just arrived from a morning golf game, jubilant over his score. “This is a great day to get married,” he said as he was introduced to Amy. “I shot a score of sixty-eight and left the rest of my foursome in the dust.”
Amy pushed her lips into a smile, wondering if she would remember that little tidbit in years to come.
“I’ll keep this short, so you can get to the good stuff,” Judge Bishop said with a broad wink.
Amy felt her smile falter. Oxygen was suddenly in short supply. Justin continued to hold her hand.
“Do you take this man…” the judge began, and Amy feared she might hyperventilate. Out of desperation, she did something she rarely did except for children. She pretended. She pretended she was talking to an order taker at Burger Doodle.
“…to have and to hold from this day forward for richer and poorer…”
Amy translated, Do you want mustard and pickles on your burger?
“I do,” she whispered.
“In sickness and in health…”
Do you want fries with that?
“I do,” she whispered again.
“Till death do you part?”
And a hot apple pie?
“I do,” she said, firmly aloud.
From the corner of her mind, she heard Justin answer the same way she had. The bubble surrounding her game of pretend began to deflate when the judge asked for the rings. Emily bounced to her side with Justin’s ring attached to a ribbon on her little nosegay.
With trembling fingers, Amy pushed the band on Justin’s finger and repeated the words, “With this ring, I thee wed.”
She stared at the wide gold band with the diamond solitaire Justin placed on her third finger and heard his voice repeat the same words. The weight of it was unfamiliar. The metal felt cold against her skin. She was enormously glad she wouldn’t have to say anything else because she was too stunned by the ring to make a sound. The ring was defini
tely not a cheeseburger with mustard and pickles, fries and an apple pie.
She glanced up to find him staring at his own gold band in shock.
“You may now kiss the bride,” the judge said.
Justin met her gaze and she had the slipping, sliding feeling that she had just danced with fate, done the polka with eternity. Though she may have pretended it, those were not Burger Doodle vows she’d just made.
Justin lowered his mouth to hers, and all her pretending was over.
Five
Amy felt as if she’d spent the day at the circus, minus the fun. After the ceremony, everyone met at the Hawkins’s for a barbecue. The children enjoyed themselves immensely and Amy relaxed a tad until Dylan gave a second toast. It was definitely time to leave. The children were on such a sugar high from the cake and ice cream that they skipped their afternoon naps and “helped” Justin move in.
She prepared a gourmet dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chicken noodle-o’s soup. God finally smiled on her when all the kids tuckered out early and she put them to bed. Leaning against the wall in the darkened hallway, she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. The only sounds she heard were the faint ticking of the downstairs clock and the rustling of computer and modem cords as Justin continued to set up his office.
She rubbed her thumb over the still unfamiliar wide gold band on her finger. Needing solitude, but unwilling to go to her bedroom just yet, she walked downstairs and lay down on the sofa in the quiet den.
Moments later, Justin appeared in the doorway. A dark silhouette with broad shoulders, he emanated a quiet strength merely by his presence. Amy wondered if the strength was in her imagination. There was so much she didn’t know about him.
“One question,” he said, his voice low and intimate in the darkness. “With those kids helping, how do you get anything done?”
She smiled at the dismay in his voice. “The rule of thumb is if you’re female, you add an hour to your estimated completion time for every child helping you.”
He strolled toward her and looked down at her. “And if you’re male?”
“Add eight,” Amy said.
“Eight?”
Amy nodded, keeping her head on the pillow. “Eight for every child helping you. It’s unfortunate, but men have difficulty focusing on more than one thing at a time. I’m not sure if it’s due to hormones or the Y chromosome.”
“Where did you learn this fun fact?”
“Oh, it’s well known. Ask any married mother.” She took a breath and looked up at him, a male stranger in her house. Her husband. Her heart jumped. She closed her eyes, thinking he might not affect her so much if she didn’t look at him. “Is part of the reason you offered to marry me because you once lived at the Granger Home for Boys?”
“Kate’s been talking.”
“A little,” Amy said, wondering why his voice felt like it rubbed over her like a forbidden caress. “It wasn’t all bad. You didn’t answer my question.”
“My experience at Granger may have influenced me, but it wasn’t the deciding factor.”
“Your mission was the deciding factor,” she said, reminding herself as much as him.
Feeling his hand close around her ankle, she opened her eyes in surprise.
“Do I have your attention?” he asked.
“Yes, and my foot.”
“Good,” he said, not releasing her ankle. “If we’re going to live together, we need to come to an understanding about a few things.”
The slow motion of his thumb on the inside of her ankle distracted her. “What things?”
“Your annoying description of why I proposed to you,” he said, holding firm when she wiggled her foot.
“Mission,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I said it was part of my purpose,” he corrected through gritted teeth.
“Semantics. Would you let go of my foot?”
“When we reach our understanding,” he said. His thumb and middle finger formed a human ankle cuff. The sight of his hand on her bare skin disrupted her.
“You want me to call it your purpose,” she said.
“That would be better.”
“We understand each other,” she said, noticing that his finger began its mesmerizing motion again. “You can let go of my foot.”
“Not quite,” he said. “We don’t understand each other yet. We don’t know each other.”
Amy gave a little test jerk of her foot to no avail. “Your point?”
“We don’t have to make this situation a living hell for each other.”
She met his gaze, wondering how one of his fingers could make her insides turn to warm liquid. “And how do we accomplish that?”
“We get to know each other,” he said in a voice that brought to mind hot nights and tangled sheets.
She wanted to say she didn’t have time to get to know him, but he chose that moment to skim a fingertip up the sole of her foot. Her stomach dipped.
“For the sake of peace of mind,” he said.
She searched her mind for a reason to disagree, but her brain had turned to sludge. “Okay.”
“We start tonight. I ask you a question and then you ask me one.”
“Truth or dare,” Amy said, not at all sure this was a good idea.
“Just truth,” Justin said.
“Okay, ladies first,” she said, shifting into a more upright position, ready to ask the question that had been burning a hole in her mind all day. “How did you end up at Granger?”
His jaw tightened. “My mother was unable to care for me.”
“Why?” she asked.
He shook his head. “That’s two,” he said. “My turn. The first time I met you I asked you to dinner. If you hadn’t been caring for your sister’s children, what would your answer have been?”
Amy squirmed slightly. It was much more fun asking questions than answering them. “Gosh, that was a long time ago, almost two months ago. And I got pretty distracted when you had the ulcer attack,” she said, trying to lead him away from his original question.
“What would your answer have been?”
Amy made a face. “Maybe.”
“Your answer would have been maybe,” he said.
Amy frowned at his disbelieving voice. How had he known she’d been intrigued by him from the beginning? “Okay,” she admitted. “Maybe yes.”
“I’m not familiar with what ‘maybe yes’ means. I’m sure it’s my Y chromosome. Could you translate?” he asked, massaging her ankle.
Amy glowered at him. “It means yes. You were interested in my after-school program. How could I resist?” she rhetorically asked. She told herself she’d been completely unaffected by his watchful, intelligent green eyes, chiseled facial features and those broad shoulders that looked like they could carry any problem a woman might face. Amy wondered why she felt as if she were back in pretending land again.
He nodded and released her foot. Her ankle felt surprisingly bereft. “Sleep tight, Amy,” he said and turned to leave.
Oddly miffed, she sprang up from the couch. “Sleep tight? That’s it?”
He glanced around at her with one lifted eyebrow. “I stuck to my proposal. One question,” he said. “Did you want something else?”
His voice was like a velvet invitation over her skin. The way he looked at her reminded her she was a woman. She fought the urge to rub away the effect of his touch on her ankle. She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “No. G’night.”
After watching him leave the room, she stood there for several moments, trying to regain her calm, but it had vanished like Houdini. She climbed the stairs and entered her bedroom, stripped and pulled on a cotton nightshirt. As she climbed into bed, Amy tried not to think about the fact that a dark, masculine stranger lay just down the hall from her, and that the dark masculine stranger was her husband.
Justin lay in a lumpy bed in a room one half the size of his walk-in closet. His bride, who posses
sed a body designed to make him burn with lust every wretched night of his immediate future, lay approximately twenty-five feet away. He hoped God was very happy.
Justin was waiting for the peace he’d expected in exchange for fulfilling at least the initial phase of his purpose on earth. Instead, when he closed his eyes, he saw Amy sprawled out on the sofa downstairs, her hair a riot, her eyes filled with sensual curiosity. Even her ankles got to him, slim, creamy and delicate. He had wanted to trace his finger up her calf to the inside of her thigh and higher still.
Justin wondered if hell could possibly be worse than being married to a woman who resented you and needed you at the same time. He stifled a groan. Then he thought of the kids and the tight feeling in his chest eased slightly. Even though they were nosey, noisy and expensive, he wouldn’t wish his upbringing on them. He admired Amy for her commitment and sacrifice. In a strange way, their shared goal bound them together.
All fine and good, he thought as he rolled over on the soft mattress, but he wondered if the next two years would drive him quietly insane and totally broke. That image kept him awake for hours.
Justin finally drifted into a dreamless sleep. A sound permeated his deep slumber. He buried his head further in the pillow, but the sound persisted. It wrenched at something deep inside him before he even identified it.
A child was crying. Justin sat upright and listened. “Nick.”
Hustling out of bed, he ran into the hall and collided with Amy. He instinctively closed his arms around her when she began to fall. She gasped, and he dimly noted her breasts heaving pleasurably against his chest. Her fingers closed around his biceps.
“Omigod, are you naked?” she whispered.
“Boxers,” he said, feeling the brush of her thighs against his. Nick let out another sob that would rip the heart from Atilla the Hun. “Nick’s crying.”
“I know,” she whispered, disentangling herself. “He does this every few nights. It used to be every night. I think it’s part of his way of working out his grief. I’ll take care of it.”
She carefully opened the door and moved quickly to his side. Quietly following, Justin watched her touch his arm and whisper to him. “It’s okay, baby.”