Marriage to a Stranger

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Marriage to a Stranger Page 17

by Dorothy Phillips

"I've something else I want to tell you, my darling."

  "What could you tell me that's more important than this?" She held up her lips for another kiss.

  He laughed softly and kissed her again, running his hand under the bedclothes and down over her breasts to her flat, sunken, empty stomach that was growling in protest.

  "I'm going to have to get some food into you." He gently caressed the empty spot. "But, first, I want no secrets between us, so I'm going to tell you something."

  She looked at him searchingly, suddenly frightened that what he had to tell her would snatch away her happiness.

  "You remember the first day I came here and Herb told you about your father's will?" She nodded. "Herb gave each of us a letter from your father. You took yours to the bedroom to read and I opened mine in the living room. My letter was a second will. It was dated after the one Herb probated and it was the valid legal will." Molly's face reflected her astonishment. "In the final will your father left all his files and charts, his notes and any other material connected with his work to me. He left the money to you with no strings attached. There was a letter attached to the will. In it he told me that if I found it impossible to abide by the conditions of the will Herb had read to us, or if either you or I found the other to be physically repulsive, I was to show the later will to Herb and have it probated. I thought about it, love, and I was tempted, but what Charlie counted on, happened. I had seen you! You came out of the bedroom and stood with so much pride in front of me and gave me your decision, I thought you were adorable and meant to have you for my own."

  Molly eyed him disbelievingly. "You… didn't have to marry me to get the files?"

  "No, pretty baby," he said with a laugh. "I didn't marry you to get the files. I married you because I wanted to. Because I didn't want you to get away from me before I had the chance to know you. To… find out if you could love me. I was pretty sure I would come to love you."

  "You did?"

  "Yes, I did." He kissed her.

  "Remember the first time I tried to make love to you?" The color that came up in her cheeks told him she did. "After I had time to cool off I was glad you turned me down. I knew when you gave yourself to me it would be because you loved me. I haven't had much love, Molly. Only from Dad, and now from you. The only true friend I have is Patrick, and now he is going to have to go on another expedition alone." He laughed joyously at the look on her face and hugged her close. "You're not going to get away from me, Molly mine. I'm staying with you or taking you with me from now on. Patrick can do the field work and I'll stay at home with my wife and kids and take care of the paper work."

  Molly couldn't believe she heard correctly. "You'll not be leaving at the end of the year?"

  "No," he said emphatically. He rubbed her stomach gently. "Besides, you'll be pregnant by then and I'll have to stay home and rub your stomach and feel my son grow."

  He watched the color come up her cheeks and flood her face. His eyes danced with devilry. He loved making her blush. She was adorable and she was… his!

  Molly's arms reached out to him and wound around his neck, inviting his possession of her.

  "Molly?" His voice questioned when he raised his lips from her clinging ones.

  Her eyes told him the answer and he stood up, fingers working at the buttons on his shirt. Her eyes never left him as he hastily shed his clothing and lifted the blankets to slip in beside her. Her soft, white, bare body against his said she wanted him.

  The old Indian slipped in the back door. Keeping his eyes away from the bedroom he stoked up the kitchen stove, put a big log on the already glowing coals of the fireplace, and silently went out again.

  A week later Patrick came in the ski plane to take them to Anchorage to see Adam's father. A radiant Molly met him at the door. Her eyes sparkled with happiness. This was the girl he had expected to see the first time he came.

  "Patrick, will you ever forgive me for the way I acted when you were here before?"

  "I don't ever remember being here before, Mrs. Reneau." His blue eyes were merry with teasing. "You have a lovely wife, Mr. Reneau," he said to Adam. "May I kiss her?"

  "You may not!" Adam firmly pulled Molly back against him, folded his arms around her, and planted a quick kiss beneath her ear. "Her kisses are spoken for—for the next forty years."

  Later that day Molly and Adam walked hand in hand into the sitting room of his father's apartment. The old man was sitting in his same chair and watched them come toward him.

  "Hello, Papa," Molly said and bent down to kiss his cheek.

  "Hello, daughter, son." His eyes went to their interlaced fingers, then twinkled up to their eyes. "Sit down, sit down."

  Adam pulled the big footstool up close to his father's chair as he always did for Molly, but today he sat down on it and pulled her down onto his lap.

  "She loves me, Dad," Adam said with a kind of wonder in his voice.

  "Well… ?"

  "I love her," Adam said simply.

  The old man laughed loudly. "So Charlie's plan worked, did it? I told him it would." He grinned broadly, his faded old eyes lighting up at the news he had sprung on them.

  "You knew about the will?" Molly gasped.

  "Sure did. Charlie and I talked about it."

  A glance told Molly that Adam was as surprised as she was by this news.

  "We—we came today to tell you," she stammered.

  Robert Reneau settled back, enjoying the situation he had created. "Charlie came to see me before he made out the will. I've known Charlie Develon for thirty years. The doctors had given him about six months on the outside and he was worried about his girl. Of all the men he knew, son, he chose you to take care of his most precious possession. He wanted to get the two of you together and was planning to have you come and work with him when he returned from the expedition. He was sure you'd want her and love her once you met her." He paused to see what impact his words had made on them and smiled to see his son's arms tighten about his young wife. "He told me the plan and I thought it was a good one, but… I knew my son. Put the screws on him to force him to do something and he'll rebel, Charlie, I told him. So I persuaded him to make a second will giving my son a choice."

  "Why, you old rascal!" Adam exclaimed. "I didn't know you even knew Charlie."

  "How could you plan our lives like that? Why… we might not have even liked one another. Think of what the year would have been like for us if… you had been wrong!"

  "But we weren't wrong. We were right." The old man interrupted Molly gleefully. "The plan worked."

  "Yes, it sure did!" Molly said, and slipped her arms around her husband's neck.

 

 

 


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