“Are you proposing a business relationship or a personal one?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to go back five months and take a cab home from Missy Harcourt’s wedding.”
“I screwed up, Penny. I know that. But I can honestly say that I don’t regret a single moment that I spent with you.”
“Even though you didn’t get the information you needed to find the Santa Magdalena Diamond first?”
“Maybe I wasn’t honest with you at the beginning, but the truth is, what happened between us stopped being about the diamond long before I ever took you to my bed.”
She didn’t believe him. Because if she did, she might let herself hope that their relationship actually meant something to him. And if she started to believe that, then she might be willing to open up her heart to him again. And that was something she couldn’t let happen.
She didn’t want to marry him, and yet…“I don’t want to deprive my babies of a father.”
“I’ll be there for them,” Jason assured her. “And for you, however and whenever you need me.”
She took a deep breath. “Well, it’s starting to look like I might need a husband.”
Husband.
The word echoed in Jason’s mind.
“Are you saying…that you’ll marry me?”
She nodded. “It seems like the most reasonable thing to do, under the circumstances.”
He shouldn’t complain about the reason when it was getting him what he wanted, but it didn’t seem like an enthusiastic endorsement for marriage. But he knew she was still shaken by the revelation that she was carrying twins, and despite his earlier assertion that he wouldn’t use that info to sway her, he wasn’t going to try to talk her out of it, either.
“How’s Friday?” he asked.
“For what?”
“The wedding.”
She blinked. “This Friday?”
“Why not?”
She was silent for a moment, as if trying to think of a reason, but in the end, she only shrugged. “I guess if we’re going to do it, there’s no reason to wait.”
Unfortunately she was only talking about marriage and not any one of the numerous other things he wanted to do with her. He pushed the thought aside, to focus on more immediate matters.
“Is Vegas okay, or did you want to go to one of the islands?”
“I was thinking city hall,” she admitted.
“We’ll go with Vegas,” he decided. “Then we don’t have to worry about any waiting periods.”
“How did we go from a doctor’s appointment to dinner to a wedding date?” she wondered aloud.
Jason felt a slight twinge of guilt but reminded himself that the ends justified the means. Maybe they hadn’t planned this pregnancy, but he wouldn’t ever be sorry, because the babies she carried had given him the second chance he hadn’t even known he wanted.
Now it was up to him to make the most of it.
But Penny started to doubt her decision almost as soon as Jason dropped her off at home. By the time Friday morning came around, she was still wavering. Was she really going to do this? What had changed her mind? Was she foolish enough to hope that a marriage of convenience could lead to real, long-lasting happiness?
Because she wasn’t sure of the answers to any of those questions, she didn’t advise anyone of her plans. Instead, she told Paige that she was going to work from home on Friday, finishing up some design work. And she waited until her mother had gone out to run some errands, then left a note in the library for her, saying only that she would be away for the weekend.
She still wasn’t sure she would go through with the wedding.
But her bag was packed and her passport was in her purse, so she played around with some sketches while she waited for him to show up. That way her working-from-home story wasn’t really a lie, and she wasn’t watching the clock and worrying that Jason might have changed his mind.
But as she finished up the sketch of a bracelet to be made of twisted strands of copper studded with numerous gems, she worried about her deception. She’d never had secrets from her sister before. Not until she started dating Jason the first time, and now she’d fallen back into the same pattern. Then again, Paige had obviously been keeping secrets from her, most notably her search for the Santa Magdalena Diamond and her romance with Travis Foley.
The knock at the door had her pencil slipping from her fingers, then JoBeth peeked into the room and announced that Penny had a guest. Her tone of disapproval revealed Jason’s identity more clearly than if she’d announced his name. She’d been Devon McCord’s housekeeper for more than thirty years, and his dislike of all things Foley had apparently seeped into her blood. Which made Penny wonder how Rex—now married to Devon’s widower and living in the McCord mansion—was settling in. But she didn’t wonder long, having her own greater worries at the moment.
And one of those worries was that she still didn’t know what she should do. But she grabbed her bag, pointedly ignored the housekeeper’s raised eyebrows and went to meet Jason.
He was waiting in the foyer, and her heart gave one of those funny little bumps against her ribs, proving that whatever else she felt, she was still attracted to him. As for the rest of those feelings, well, if he was willing to marry her and be a father to their babies, why wouldn’t she say yes and figure it out later?
“Are you ready?” Jason asked.
“I’m ready,” she said, and hoped it was true.
Penny always thought she’d like to visit Vegas. Everything she’d seen of the city on television shows or in the movies was glamorous and exciting, but as the private plane began its descent, her stomach was a mass of knots and nerves.
Again, Jason seemed to be attuned to her mood and her concerns, as he reached over to take her hand, linking their fingers together.
“We’re doing the right thing,” he said.
She nodded, though she wasn’t entirely convinced.
“I’ll do my best to be a good father to our babies,” he told her.
She just nodded.
“And I’ll do my best to be a good husband, too.”
“We’re getting married for the babies,” she said. “I don’t want or expect it to mean anything more than that.”
“I can’t blame you for being wary,” he said. “But I hope that in time you’ll learn to trust me again.”
“Speaking of time,” she said, because she didn’t want to talk about their past and she dared not look too far into the future, “how soon can we get married?”
His smile was wry. “I’d like to think you’re anxious to wear my ring, but I’m guessing you just want it over and done with.”
“Ring?” She felt a tiny surge of panic. “I didn’t even think about the rings.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s taken care of.”
And he pulled a box out of his pocket to prove it. The lavender color of the packaging was unmistakably McCord’s, so she had to give him credit for both tact and taste. But when he opened the lid, she was stunned.
It was a three-carat, brilliant-cut canary diamond set in a wide band that had been formed by forging together eight narrow ribbons of yellow gold, symbolizing the linking of two hands together.
“Where did you get that?”
“At McCord’s, of course.” He smiled. “Did you really think I would dare shop for your ring anywhere else?”
“But why that ring?”
His smile faltered. “You don’t like it?”
“I’m just…surprised. It’s not a traditional design.”
“Maybe that’s why it appealed to me. Because nothing about our relationship has been traditional.” But something in her voice must have clued him in, because he said, “It’s one of yours, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “You really didn’t know?”
“I didn’t think about it,” he admitted. “But now that I do, I should have guessed.”
It wasn’t just one of her de
signs, but designed while she was dating Jason and inspired by her relationship with him—not that she was going to admit as much.
“I’m guessing, then, that you like it?” he prompted.
“It’s one of my favorite pieces,” she said. “But…what about your ring? Or didn’t you—”
He handed her another lavender box. Inside it was a masculine version of the same design—a little bit wider and heavier, and minus the diamond, but clearly designed to match, like two parts of a whole.
As they were going to be two parts joined together when they exchanged the rings.
The thought sent funny little quivers through her belly, more excitement than apprehension now. Or maybe it was just the plane touching down.
Penny was in awe as they drove down the strip toward their hotel. It was so much bigger and brighter, more than she’d imagined.
“Where are we getting married?” she asked Jason.
“We’re scheduled for a two o’clock ceremony in the Starlight Chapel.”
She tore her gaze away from the window. “You booked a ceremony?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” she said, though she was surprised that he’d obviously paid a lot more attention to all the little details of their wedding than she had. “I just figured we’d find some little chapel on the strip and have a quick ceremony officiated by a second-rate Elvis impersonator.”
“Just because it’s Vegas doesn’t mean it has to be tacky.”
“I’m beginning to realize that.”
“You’ve never been to Vegas before,” he guessed.
She shook her head. “It’s nothing like I expected. I mean, the strip is exactly what you see in all the movies and on television, but there’s so much more than just the neon lights and flashy cars.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, as something else caught her eye. “The Venetian.”
The name was barely more than a reverent whisper, as her hand lifted to the window, as if she could reach through it and touch the majestic hotel.
“Is it true that you can actually ride a gondola and eat in St. Mark’s Square inside?”
“It’s true,” he assured her. “And it is pretty spectacular, but on a much smaller scale than Venice itself.”
“I’ve never been to Italy, either,” she admitted.
He frowned at that. “Don’t you have family in Italy?”
“Gabby’s mother is Italian,” she confirmed. “And she invited Paige and me to go over for a visit the summer we were sixteen, but my dad wouldn’t allow it.”
“Why not?”
“Because Gabby’s beauty and celebrity had already put her in the spotlight and he worried that she would be a negative influence on us.”
The more Jason knew about Devon McCord, the more he agreed that the man had been a selfish sonofa-bitch. While he kept his wife and children safely ensconced at home, he was traveling the world and frittering away their fortune. No wonder Penny had been so eager for a little attention and excitement, so eager to experience life.
“Vegas isn’t Italy,” he said again. “But we’ll take a few days and I’ll show you around.”
“Really?” She seemed surprised—and unexpectedly pleased—by his offer.
“Sure,” he said. “Although a few days isn’t really long enough to see and do everything, it will at least give you a preview of what you might want to see on another visit.”
“I think I’d like to come back sometime,” she admitted.
“How about for our first anniversary?”
“That would be nice,” she said, but the light in her eyes faded and he inwardly cursed himself for mentioning their impending marriage, because now she was thinking about the reasons for it. And he knew it wasn’t the babies she carried that dimmed the spark of excitement, but her distrust of him. He’d done that to her, taken her innocence, destroyed her naïveté.
He would give anything to go back in time and tell her the truth before she heard it from her sister, because the whole truth was more than Paige had known. The truth was, he’d grown to care a great deal for Penny—more than he was even ready to admit to himself.
Jason had made reservations at the Celestial Resort and Casino, and after he’d taken care of the check-in, they rode up to the thirty-fifth floor—just the two of them, a bellboy with their bags and the elevator attendant, in an elevator that could easily hold fifty people and was as lavishly decorated as everything else she’d seen in the short walk through the lobby.
Their hotel suite was even more spectacular.
Penny was a McCord, so she was hardly a stranger to wealth or extravagance, but she had never seen anything that compared to the stunning opulence of the rooms.
Jason tipped the bellboy and sent him on his way while Penny checked out the view from the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and found herself looking down at a lake-size swimming pool.
“They don’t do anything by half measures here, do they?”
“Not at any of the places I’ll be taking you,” he assured her.
“I have to admit, whenever I thought about getting married someday, I never thought it would happen like this,” she told him.
“In Vegas?”
She managed to smile. “Actually, I’m okay with the Vegas part. It’s the whole getting-married-becauseI’m-pregnant-and-too-damn-scared-to-go-it-alone part that’s bothering me. And the why-am-I-doing-this-when-I-know-he’s-going-to-wake-up-one-morning-and-realize-he’s-trapped-in-a-life-he-never-wanted part.”
“This wasn’t what either of us planned, obviously, but I’m not unhappy about the babies or our marriage.”
“You’re not?”
“It wasn’t as if I never planned to get married and have a family someday, I just hadn’t yet gotten to that part of my plans.”
“Really?”
“I’m a thirty-two-year-old, financially secure man with a stable job, so I don’t have any concerns about what this marriage means for me.”
“You have concerns about me?”
He shrugged. “You’re only twenty-six and you’ve led a fairly sheltered life. After today, you’re going to be a wife, and in less than six months the mother of two babies.”
“Are you trying to get me to change my mind about this?”
“No,” he said, then paused. “But maybe I’m a little worried that I pushed you too quickly in this direction.”
He sounded as if he meant it, as if he really was concerned about her wants and her needs, and the knowledge stirred feelings she’d been trying to ignore.
“I know how to push back,” she assured him.
He studied her for a long moment, and finally nodded. “In that case, we’d better get ready for the wedding.”
As much as she thought she was ready, Penny experienced another moment of uncertainty when the ceremony began. Standing beside Jason and listening to the dark-suited minister recite the traditional words, she felt a pang of regret that this wasn’t, except in the most technical sense, a real wedding.
She’d never been a gambler, but this was Vegas, and she knew she was taking a very big gamble in agreeing to marry Jason. But despite her nerves and apprehension, she wasn’t going into it against her will. Even knowing what he’d done and why he’d done it, she wanted to marry him. She wanted to be with him, to raise her babies with him, to build a family together.
She wanted him to love her as much as she loved him.
There. She’d admitted it. She was in love with Jason Foley. Maybe she was stupid, maybe she was naive, maybe she was setting herself up to have her heart broken again—she didn’t know. She only knew she could no longer deny her feelings.
Follow your heart, her mother had said, and that was what she intended to do.
Maybe it was a gamble, but she was ready to ante up. Because she was in love with the man she was going to marry and she was betting everything she had on a long and happy future together.
She’d felt a twinge of regret as she walked tow
ard the front of the chapel past the empty chairs that lined the aisle. Whenever she’d let herself dream of her wedding day, she’d always envisioned her family celebrating the occasion with her. But she’d deliberately kept silent about her plans to marry Jason, not just because she hadn’t been certain it would happen but because she was even less certain of their support.
Then she’d looked up and met Jason’s gaze, and the easy warmth and obvious appreciation she saw pushed aside any regrets about the haste and secrecy of their wedding.
His eyes skimmed over her slowly, from head to toe and back again. The heat of his gaze was as tangible as a caress, making her skin heat and tingle in anticipation. Desire swept through her, sweeping away the last of her nervousness. Suddenly she was anxious to get through the ceremony and move on to the wedding night—even if it was still the afternoon.
Jason’s lips curved, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, and as if he was thinking the same thing. And she felt a surge of renewed confidence that everything would work out. Because certainly a man who looked at her the way he was looking at her, who wanted her as he had proven he wanted her, had to have real feelings for her. And that gave her hope that, in time, he might grow to love her as she loved him.
Jason spoke his vows clearly and confidently. Penny’s voice wasn’t nearly as clear or confident, but the words came from her heart as much as her lips. And as she recited her lines she silently prayed that this marriage would last, not just until their babies were born, but “so long as we both shall live.”
Then the minister pronounced them husband and wife and told Jason that he could kiss his bride, and Penny braced herself for the perfunctory touch of his mouth against hers.
Except there was nothing at all perfunctory about his kiss.
His lips came down on hers, soft but firm, possessive and persuasive. She had no intention of revealing the feelings she’d only just acknowledged to herself. But the stirring in her blood was all too real, and despite her intentions, her eyelids drifted shut, her arms went around him and she kissed him back.
The Texas Tycoon’s Christmas Baby Page 11