by Abby Gaines
Casey assessed Adam as objectively as she could. Dave was right. He smiled more these days, and he seemed less unyielding. “Maybe,” she said.
“Does it suit you equally well?”
She laughed at his blatant nosiness. “It suits both of us for a time.”
“I don’t know that you should be too hasty about ending it,” he said. “Marrying you two...I couldn’t have done better if I’d planned the whole thing.”
“You didn’t know that ceremony was for real, did you?” she demanded.
“No idea,” he said. “But I’ve looked into it since—turns out, as an ex-commissioner, I can do all kinds of weird things.”
Casey sipped her wine. “Can you issue annulments?”
“Uh, no.” He shrugged in apology. “But if you want a permit to keep an alligator in your backyard...”
“Really?” She shuddered.
“Maybe I read that one wrong.” Dave grinned. “It’s mainly pretty boring stuff.”
“Are you talking about a conversation with you?” Adam found the small of Casey’s back, applied a pressure with his hand that moved her closer to him.
“I’m talking about what it must be like being married to you.” Dave punched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Is marriage to me boring stuff?” Adam asked Casey.
The heat of his palm branded her back through the thin fabric of her dress. Somehow she’d moved even closer to him. If she stood on tiptoe her lips would brush his chin.
“Actually,” she said, “it’s kind of interesting.”
For a moment, everything seemed suspended...her breathing, the chatter around them, the music...everything except the deepening intensity in Adam’s eyes.
“If you guys don’t quit ogling each other, I’m going to think there’s more to this marriage than you both claim,” Dave said.
Adam let go of Casey. “You’d be wrong.” He glanced at his watch. “They’ll be starting the speeches soon, I need to find out when I’m on.”
He left, and Casey excused herself a minute later.
As the evening wore on, she found most people were interested to meet the woman who’d married Adam Carmichael on TV, but they were polite enough to keep a rein on their curiosity. Except for one man around her own age she could have sworn was flirting with her. He looked vaguely familiar.... Where had she seen him before?
She’d been fending off his advances for nearly ten minutes when he said, “I guess congratulations are in order. Maybe a Happy Anniversary?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve been married over a month now, haven’t you?”
It was true. She and Adam had been married for a month. Which meant any day now, the annulment would come through.
The stranger’s words triggered the memory of where she’d seen him—below her bedroom window at seven o’clock on Saturday morning. This slug was a journalist. Casey struggled to keep her dawning realization from showing on her face. How could she use the knowledge to her advantage?
As it turned out, he handed her the opportunity on a plate. With what looked like deep concern, he expressed sympathy about the press coverage she and Adam had been subjected to.
She nodded gravely. “It was awful.” She let a tremor enter her voice. “And all of it lies.”
“Really?” He could barely contain his eagerness. “So you and Adam are, uh, a proper couple?”
With a naughty smile she said, “I don’t know about proper.” She leaned forward confidingly, and he did the same. “You’ve heard of spontaneous combustion?”
He nodded.
“Adam and I—we’re like that.” She winked, just to be sure he couldn’t mistake her implication.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ADAM BROUGHT THE MAIL in with the newspaper at breakfast next morning.
He opened a lilac envelope without a stamp, hand-addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. A. Carmichael,” and scanned the contents.
“Casey,” he said silkily.
She looked up from her cereal. “Uh-huh?”
“This note is from Mr. and Mrs. Bob Harvey, saying they’ll be delighted to attend lunch here on Tuesday.... Tell me it’s come to the wrong address.”
“Uh, not exactly,” she said around a mouthful of cornflakes.
He scowled. “I distinctly remember telling you our marriage would be over if you invited the neighbors here.”
“They brought flowers after those awful newspaper reports,” she said. “This lunch is to thank them for their support. You’ll be at work. You don’t have to get involved.”
“And it’s just Mr. and Mrs. Harvey?” he asked suspiciously.
“Uh, I invited Alison Dare on the other side as well, with her three preschoolers. She and the Harveys don’t know each other, but her kids don’t have any grandparents, so I thought...”
With a snort of disbelief, he opened the newspaper and held it in front of his face. It was a milder response than Casey had expected. Relieved, she returned to her breakfast.
“What the—” He lowered the paper to gape at her. “Have you seen the headline on page five?”
“How could I when you’re the one with the paper?” she demanded reasonably.
He turned it around for her to read, Casey Carmichael: My Husband’s Hot. “Did you really say that?”
“Of course not. I told him I was hot.” How could that idiot journalist have got the angle so wrong? And since when did she and Adam only rate as page five news? “Typical man, giving you the credit for any heat that’s going.”
“Entirely justified,” he assured her. “As you’ll find out very, very soon.”
“I will not.” Had he heard the waver in her voice?
* * *
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Adam proudly surveyed the Aston Martin’s dazzling red bodywork. It was time consuming, but he still preferred to polish the car himself.
He just hoped he could do as good a job of convincing Casey’s family to relinquish their demands on her. She owed it to herself to finish her book.
The other night, he’d asked if he could read some of her work.
“Writers don’t let people read their stuff,” she said. Then she handed him her almost completed manuscript.
Although Adam’s teenage years were a distant blur, he was pretty sure he hadn’t read anything this good back then. Casey had managed to capture teenage angst and put a comic spin on it. Adam figured her book might achieve the near impossible—getting young people not to take themselves so seriously.
He’d considered her novel-writing a silly dream. But Casey seemed to have a knack for making dreams come true.
When he heard the crunching of tires on gravel around the front of the house, Adam went inside and joined Casey at the front door to greet her relatives.
“Let’s lay it on thick,” he murmured in her ear—and got a jolt of pleasure at the wicked look in her eyes.
But they were only briefly arm in arm, presenting a united front. Then Casey rushed forward to take the baby, car seat and all, from Karen.
“Let me,” she said.
Adam rolled his eyes and stepped forward. “Darling, that looks far too heavy for you,” he said solicitously. He took the car seat from her and gazed down at Casey’s niece.
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Casey demanded.
A far as Adam could tell, this was a pretty ordinary baby—red in the face, with a trail of drool at one corner of its mouth. He’d bet any daughter of Casey’s would be far prettier. Not that I care what Casey’s babies might look like.
“Gorgeous,” he agreed with complete equanimity. He juggled the baby seat to shake hands with Casey’s father, Ed, who in turn had to juggle the cane he was using to walk. Next, Adam kissed Karen on her cheek. Mike hadn’t come, but since he wasn’t the target of this campaign, that didn’t matter.
When they got everyone inside, Adam had to forcibly restrain Casey from trying to simultaneously carry all the bags upstairs, make coffee and feed the baby its b
ottle. No wonder her family never did anything for themselves. He sent Casey and the others to the living room, put the kettle on the stove and took the suitcases himself.
He stowed Ed’s in a downstairs bedroom, since the older man might have a problem climbing stairs. Karen’s bag, along with the portable crib and a mini-Everest of baby gear, went in what was normally Casey’s room. Leaving it there reminded Adam that he and Casey would be sharing a bed tonight. Not that he’d forgotten.
Tonight, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Actually, he knew damn well that he would. Somehow Casey had ended up calling the shots on this sex thing. She was in control, and Adam hated it.
Yet somehow, he couldn’t get mad about it.
Back in the living room, he walked right up to Casey and leaned over the sofa from behind to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “How are you, my love?” he asked tenderly. “Feeling better?”
“Is she ill?” Ed asked, confused. Casey looked equally puzzled.
“She’s been working too hard,” Adam said. “I’m always trying to get her to slow down.”
“What work?” Karen said curiously. “The newspaper said you had a housekeeper.”
“I’d never expect my wife to do housework, Karen.” The guilt in her eyes suggested he’d hit the target. “Casey’s been working hard on her writing,” he elaborated.
It was plain from Karen’s bewilderment that she’d never thought of her sister’s writing as work.
“And you, Karen,” he said. “You’re not working at the moment, are you? You’re taking maternity leave?”
“I—well, yes, but it’s not easy looking after a baby on my own,” she said, a tremor in her voice.
“That’s right,” Adam said innocently. “You wanted Casey to work as nanny for you, didn’t you, so you could go back to your law job?”
If looks could kill, the daggers coming from Casey would have slain Adam on the spot.
Karen’s lip quivered. “Casey always knows what to do. She’d be better with Rosie than I am.”
“That’s not true, honey,” Casey assured her warmly. “Rosie’s obviously very content—she’s been asleep in her car seat ever since you arrived.”
It was clear to Adam that Karen actually believed what she’d just said. So while she was being selfish in her expectations of Casey, that selfishness stemmed from fear, a lack of self-confidence. He figured that attacking her would only encourage Casey to take pity on her sister, which wouldn’t be good for anyone.
So he said, “Of course it’s not true. Babies take some getting used to, that’s all. You’ll be fine.”
Smoothly, he steered the conversation to safer topics. He was still standing behind Casey, so he took the opportunity to give her a neck massage, as a loving husband might. Of course, it involved burying his fingers in that thick, lush hair to reach the tender skin of her nape. Barely discernibly, she arched against him.
He managed to keep his hands on Casey one way or another pretty much the whole afternoon.
“You’re overdoing it,” she said in a near whisper at one stage, when they were on the back veranda having predinner drinks. Casey had been sitting on the swing, cuddling the baby, her legs stretched out along the cushion. Adam sat on the end, and when she started to put her feet on the ground, he held on to them and played “This little piggy” with her toes—not saying the words, of course, but she knew what he was doing.
Did he know what he was doing? Other than having the time of his life? Of course he did. Play acting, that was all. Just enough to convince his in-laws he adored Casey.
Ugh. He was even thinking the word now. It’s only a word. Just because I’m thinking it doesn’t mean it’s for real.
Still, Adam cooled it for a while, just stuck to the endearments and kept his hands off her. Which left him feeling as if his hands weren’t doing what they’d been made for.
They had dinner late, after Rosie had been put to bed upstairs. During the meal, Karen revealed that she and her husband had now initiated divorce proceedings, so she was back in Parkvale for good. Adam learned that Ed had been doing poorly since Casey left. Both were feeling sorry for themselves, he surmised uncharitably.
At last Karen raised the hot topic of the week. “What about the article in last week’s paper? It said you sleep in separate bedrooms.”
“The woman was only with us a few days,” Casey said. “Adam and I had an argument, so I slept in the guest room a couple of nights. It just happened to be while she was here.”
“It was my paranoid jealousy,” Adam said helpfully. Casey choked on her water. “Are you all right, darling?”
“Why were you jealous?” Karen asked.
“I found Casey flirting with the gardener,” he improvised, and earned a hard kick under the table. “I mean, I thought she was flirting,” he amended. “She wasn’t, of course, and she moved out of our room until I saw sense.”
Before he could get himself into more trouble, Adam raised his glass in a toast. “To the Greene family,” he said, “who raised me the best wife a guy could have.”
The others lifted their glasses, but when Adam sought Casey’s eyes to share this moment of triumph, they were clouded with tears. Soon after dinner, she excused herself, saying she was tired and would go to bed. Had he done something wrong?
Adam was torn between wanting to go with her and the need to be courteous to their guests, to make amends for his earlier rudeness to Karen. He decided Casey would appreciate it more if he stayed with her family.
It was another hour before he made his own way upstairs.
The light was off, and he couldn’t hear a sound. Could Casey have fallen asleep? When he knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink with her beside him? Damn, she was annoying. In the darkness, he stepped carefully in the direction of the bathroom.
Casey closed her eyes when Adam switched on the light in the bathroom. She lay motionless until he’d closed the door. She’d never been good at hiding her feelings. What if Adam had already guessed the awful realization that had hit her this evening, after she’d endured a whole day of his caresses, his loving attention?
The realization that, for better or for worse, she was in love with her husband.
The knowledge weighed on her, holding her there.
Today’s tantalizing glimpse of what it might be like to be truly married to Adam, if he loved her, had illuminated the truth she’d been denying for days. This was the meaning of the pleasure that curled in the pit of her stomach when he smiled at her. This was the cause of the physical ache his slightest touch induced. This was why, with him, she felt fully alive, one hundred percent herself.
All week, his assertion that tonight they would make love had caused excitement to thrum through her veins, heightening every sensation, invoking an unbearable tension, even as she’d told him it wasn’t going to happen—and meant it. But now she knew she didn’t have it in her to deny him.
Casey fidgeted under the crisp cotton sheets.
Just knowing that his body normally occupied the space where she now lay was enough to set her on edge. She should have dressed, or rather undressed,
for the occasion. Would Adam want her looking
like this?
Would he want her if she told him she loved him?
The bathroom door opened, and Adam’s deep voice called softly, “Here I come, wife.”
“You’re being Neanderthal again.” Her attempt at a casual comment came out a squeak.
He chuckled, then the bathroom light clicked off, and she sensed rather than heard Adam making his way across the room in the dark. Casey froze, wondering where he would touch her first, the suspense tearing her apart. Where was he, dammit?
His hands brushed her collarbone as he reached for the duvet she’d pulled up to her neck despite the hot night. He tugged the cover away, and she felt the play of air over her body. Still he didn’t touch her, yet she prickled all over. She heard the soft swish of the comforter hitting the fl
oor, felt a sudden depression on the other side of the mattress. He was in bed with her, no more than a dark shape. She shouldn’t have closed the shutters, not when she needed to see exactly where he was.
She felt his touch, featherlight on her forehead, smoothing her hair aside. He ran a finger down her nose, then traced the outline of her lips. Casey took his finger into her mouth, nipped the pad between her teeth, heard his ragged breath as she soothed it with her tongue.
He moved his hand to her nape, buried his fingers there the way he had earlier. Casey arched her neck, felt him shifting closer. When she lifted a tentative palm, she met the firm wall of his chest, felt the coarseness of the hair there. She wondered if he was already naked. Then she registered the brush of a silky fabric against her thigh. Boxers, she concluded.
His hands moved over her shoulders. Then he pulled away. “What on earth are you wearing?” The lamp on the nightstand snapped on, making her blink.
Adam stared down at her T-shirt and jogging shorts. Heat mingled with laughter in his gaze.
“You look fantastic,” he breathed, and she giggled at the outright lie. The giggle turned into an indrawn breath as his hand caressed the bare skin of her abdomen where her T-shirt had ridden up.
“I guess your outfit means you’re still not planning to let me make love to you,” he said regretfully.
“Actually...” She licked her lips and saw his gaze follow the movement of her tongue. Her heart began thudding so strongly she thought Adam must surely hear. “It doesn’t mean that at all.”
He stared at her for a long moment. She nodded. A smile curved slowly across his lips and ended up in his eyes.
Then his mouth was on hers, and she was matching him, kiss for searing kiss. Whatever she’d said to that journalist about spontaneous combustion had been an understatement, Casey thought, as Adam’s lips trailed fire over her face, her neck and, nuzzling her T-shirt aside, her shoulders.
His hands roamed beneath the shirt, exploring the sensitized column of her spine, then moving around to cup her breasts. At that touch, Casey couldn’t stifle a cry. Adam pulled away, breathing heavily. The need in his eyes was exhilarating...and terrifying.