5 Minutes to Marriage

by Carla Cassidy

  Throughout the afternoon she reminded herself that whatever Jack felt for her was tied up in who she was professionally. She was the woman who had brought order to his chaotic existence. It was no wonder he’d kissed her. She was positive what had prompted him to do so was a healthy dose of gratitude and nothing more.

  She had to remember that. She had to remember that Jack Cortland might make her heart race, but she’d be a fool to fall into thinking Jack had any real feelings for her. And Marisa had been a fool only once in her life for a man. She wasn’t about to repeat the same mistake.

  Rita Perez was frantic. She’d been frantic ever since she’d realized the ring, Harold Rothchild’s million-dollar diamond ring, was missing.

  It wasn’t just a piece of expensive jewelry. It was the ring Candace Rothchild had been wearing the night she’d been murdered. The ring they called The Tears of the Quetzal.

  The ring not only had a Mayan legend attached to it but it had also had a crazy past since it had come into evidence, having been stolen from police custody and then recovered.

  And now it was gone once again.

  For the hundredth time in the past week, she knelt on the floor under her desk and searched the carpet, even though she knew it wasn’t there. The ring hadn’t accidentally fallen on the floor; it hadn’t dropped into a desk drawer. It had disappeared from a small box that she kept locked in her gun safe.

  She should never have checked it out from the evidence room and brought it home, but she’d been fascinated with it and had wanted to research more thoroughly how it had come to belong to the Rothchilds.

  A wave of despair washed over her and made the wound on the side of her head bang with nauseating intensity. She’d probably be fired. Worse than that, if Harold found out the precious ring was missing again, he’d sue not only her but also the entire department for her negligence.

  How had that ring disappeared from her gun safe? Whoever had stolen it had been a professional. They’d known just where to look and how to get in and out without her even knowing they were there.

  What was she going to do? Sooner or later she was going to have to tell her superiors what had happened, and then all hell was going to break loose.

  With a new burst of energy she began to pull out the desk drawers, hoping, praying that it would be found.

  Once again Jack and Marisa were in the living room. It was just after nine, and David and Mick had been in bed asleep for half an hour.

  “I still can’t believe how easy bedtime has become,” he said. “It’s like a miracle.”

  Marisa smiled at him. “All it takes is a firm hand and consistency. That’s the secret of good parenting.”

  “What about your mom and dad? Were they good parents?” he asked curiously.

  “Absolutely.” She leaned back against the corner of the sofa and drew her legs up beneath her. “Like Candace and the Rothchilds, money was never a problem in my family. My parents are quite wealthy, but they taught me values that had nothing to do with money. I started babysitting when I was about fourteen and even through college worked a variety of jobs. What about your parents?”

  “They were terrific people, hardworking and possessed good old-fashioned values.” A flash of pain darkened his eyes. “They taught me right, but when I got to Los Angeles and had more money than sense, all their lessons went right out the window. I think I broke their hearts.”

  There was nothing more appealing than a man who recognized his own frailties and regretted them, Marisa thought. “I’m sure they’d be proud of the man you’ve become,” she said softly.

  “Yeah, I’m just sorry they passed before they saw me pulling my life back together again.”

  “I’m sure they were confident that eventually you’d come back to the values they’d taught you as a young man,” she replied.

  He nodded. “You think the boys will ever call me Daddy?”

  She heard the wistfulness in his voice and knew how important that was to him. “Maybe when they feel safe with you. I don’t know much about their lives when they were with Candace, but from what little you’ve told me I would guess that most of the people who entered their lives were there only on a temporary basis. When they know you’re not going anywhere and they can trust you, then maybe you won’t be Jack anymore. You’ll be Daddy.”

  He smiled at her. “What made you so smart?”

  “Trust me, I’m not always smart. We all have things in our pasts that we’d prefer to forget about.”

  Jack raised a dark eyebrow. “Now you have me intrigued.”

  For just a moment she thought about sharing with him the heartache that would always be a part of her, one that had forever changed what she would expect from life.

  She knew Jack would understand how foolish she’d been, that he of all people wouldn’t judge her. But it felt far too intimate to share that piece of herself with him.

  Once again she realized the lines were getting blurred between them. She had to remember that he was her employer and nothing more. She had to remember that she was one of those temporary people not only in the boys’ lives but in Jack’s as well.

  She got up from the sofa. As always when it was just the two of them, she felt the need to get away, to escape from him. It was too appealing, too intimate to sit in his living room with him while night fell outside.

  This whole assignment would have been easier if Jack had a wife, but of course if he had a wife Marisa probably wouldn’t be here.

  “Good night, Jack,” she said, hoping he didn’t follow her down the hallway to her room, yet in a small little place in her mind wishing he would. She wouldn’t mind sharing another kiss with him, and that realization worried her.

  Thankfully, he seemed to be caught up in thoughts of his own, for he murmured a good-night and remained in his chair.

  Over the past couple nights they had fallen into the habit of staying up talking until around midnight or so. During those hours she’d heard a lot about the Rothchild family, and she’d told him how close she was to her aunt Rita.

  Even though the conversations during those hours of the night were light and not overly personal, the end result had been a growing friendship between them. Still, it wasn’t that friendship that made the most simple touch from him sizzle inside her.

  She now paused in the doorway of the boys’ room before going to her own. How could she not fall in love with these boys? They were children who desperately needed a mother, and she was a woman who was meant to be a mom.

  With a soft smile, she went first to Mick’s bedside and pulled the sheet up closer around his neck. She smoothed a strand of his blond hair off his face and pressed a kiss on his forehead. He said something incomprehensible but didn’t awaken.

  She moved to David’s bed and tucked in one of his legs and an arm. He mumbled and smiled, as if enjoying the pleasant dreams of innocence. She kissed him, too, then moved back to the doorway.

  Two months. That’s all she was giving herself with them. By that time she’d have taught Jack what he needed to learn to be a good father, and the boys would have a new respect and love for him.

  This was her job, to make things right for parent and child, then to walk away. But somehow she thought it was going to be more difficult than it had ever been to walk away from the boys.

  And from Jack.

  With a tired sigh she left the boys’ bedroom and went across the hall to her own. She stepped inside, flipped on the overhead light and froze as she saw a masked man sliding open her window.

  She has a boyfriend. Jack had to keep reminding himself that Marisa wasn’t available to him, that she was a temporary fix in his life.

  The worst mistake he had made since she’d arrived was kissing her. The memory of that single kiss had haunted him each night since. She haunted him, stirring inside him a want that he hadn’t felt for a very long time—perhaps never before.

  He was a fool. She was intelligent and had big plans for her future. She was eager to
start her own agency, and the last thing she needed was to be involved with a man with his kind of past.

  A scream shot him out of his chair.

  Marisa! His heart leaped into his throat as he raced down the hall toward her room. She stood just inside, a hand over her mouth. When he entered she pointed to the window where the screen had been removed and the window was partially opened.

  “A man. He was trying to get in,” she exclaimed.

  “Go check on the boys,” Jack said.

  “Should I call the police?” she asked.

  “No.” Jack barked the single word as he raced down the hallway to his bedroom. Once inside the room he pulled a lockbox from his bedroom drawer, unlocked it and withdrew his gun.

  As he ran back down the hallway he glanced into the boys’ room, grateful to see them both still sleeping and Marisa standing between the beds.

  The hot July air wrapped around him oppressively as he left the house. He moved with stealth, keeping to the shadows of the house and trees. He was grateful for the moonlight that made his search that much easier.

  When he reached the window of Marisa’s bedroom he tightened his grip on the gun. The window screen was propped up against the house, but there was no sign of the intruder.

  As he extended the perimeter of his search outward, a thousand questions flew through his head. Was this about Marisa? Had somebody been trying to get inside to harm her? Or was it about him?

  Whoever it had been, he was apparently gone now. Jack put the screen back up in the window, then went inside.

  Marisa met him in the hallway, her eyes large and still holding an edge of fear. “Nothing?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He motioned her to follow him into the living room. “Whoever was out there isn’t there anymore.”

  She curled up on the sofa, as if her fear had made her unusually cold. He set the gun on the coffee table then began to pace in front of her.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” he asked.

  “He had on a ski mask. Are you sure you don’t want to call the police?”

  “Right, I can see the headlines now. Intruder looking for drugs at Cortland Ranch. Harold Rothchild steps in to save Candace’s kids.” A ball of tension expanded in his chest, and for a moment he had trouble drawing a full breath.

  “You think that’s what it was? Somebody looking for drugs?”

  He stopped pacing and looked at her. “I don’t know what to think. Unless you know somebody who might want to break into your bedroom to harm you.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt me,” she replied. “Surely Harold can’t use it against you that there was an attempted break-in.”

  “You’d be surprised what he could use against me,” Jack replied with an old touch of bitterness.

  “Okay, if you don’t want to call the police, why don’t you let me call my aunt Rita? She’s FBI. She can take a look around, maybe check the window for fingerprints and we can trust her not to say anything to anyone about this.”

  We. We can trust her. The use of the plural wasn’t lost on him, and there was a certain sense of relief knowing that he wasn’t in this alone.

  “Would she mind coming over?” he asked.

  In reply she uncurled herself and reached for the phone. Minutes later as they waited for Rita to arrive, they sat together on the sofa, and it was then that Jack decided to tell her what scared him more than anything.

  “When Candace died and I was granted custody of Mick and David, Harold made a lot of threats. But the one he told me that upset me most was that it was possible that one or both of the boys might not be mine.” A new surge of emotion filled his chest.

  “I don’t care about biology,” he continued. “As far as I’m concerned both of them are mine, and I don’t give a damn what a blood test would show. But one little mistake and I’m afraid Harold will order DNA tests. Then I risk losing the only thing that has given me any real meaning in my life.”

  She placed a hand on his arm. “Then we won’t let that happen.”

  At that moment Rita arrived.

  Jack immediately liked the no-nonsense woman who held an important role in Marisa’s life. She briskly went about her work of checking for fingerprints in and around the window frame, but unfortunately there were none.

  After looking around the area, she returned inside, where she sat with Jack and Marisa at the kitchen table. “If he was smart enough to wear a ski mask, then he was surely smart enough to wear gloves, hence no fingerprints,” she said. She reached up and touched the bandage on the side of her head, then dropped her hand to her side.

  “Maybe it was just somebody trying to get in to rob Jack,” Marisa said.

  “Maybe,” Rita agreed. “Or I suppose it’s possible it was an old fan wanting a piece of the famous Jack Cortland.” She smiled at Jack, but the smile didn’t last but a moment.

  “What would concern me if I were you is that those two little boys of yours would be hot targets for kidnapping,” she said.

  Marisa gasped, and Jack sat up straighter in his chair, his blood chilling. “Everyone around these parts knows I spent most of my fortune years ago,” he said.

  “But not the Rothchild fortune,” Rita replied. “Those boys are Harold’s heirs, and everyone knows that he’s probably worth more than the national debt. My recommendation would be that you beef up security around here.”

  An overwhelming sense of discouragement settled on Jack’s shoulders as Rita stood to leave. He started to rise as well, but she waved him down. “Marisa will see me out,” she said.

  Jack nodded wearily as the two women left the kitchen. In the four months since he’d had the boys here with him at the ranch he’d never thought about the fact that they could be potential kidnap victims.

  The idea of somebody taking his boys and using them for ransom was absolutely chilling. How did you keep children safe against an unknown threat? When there was no way to identify the face of a kidnapper? Somehow, some way he’d have to figure it out.

  He forced a smile as Marisa came back into the kitchen. “Thanks for calling her.”

  She nodded, a worried frown creasing her forehead as she sat in the chair next to his. “She wasn’t herself tonight. Something is wrong. I could feel it.”

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  “Yes, but she assured me it was nothing, just something work related. I just hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the wound on her head.” She quickly told Jack about how Rita had gotten shot during the kidnapping of Jenna Rothchild.

  “Yeah, I read about that in the paper,” he said.

  Marisa’s gaze held his intently. “So what happens now?”

  “I wish I knew. I guess the first order of business is to get a security system installed here. Maybe it was just somebody trying to get in to rob me,” he said thoughtfully, “But it’s definitely put me on notice, and I’m going to take whatever precautions I can to see that we’re all safe here.”

  She reached across the table and gave his hand a quick squeeze, then got up. As she moved a strand of her shiny hair behind her ear, he noticed that her hand shook slightly.

  Even though he knew it wasn’t a good idea to try to comfort her, he got up and wrapped her in his arms.

  She stood rigid for only a moment and then melted against him. He held her tight and felt the slight tremor of her body against his.

  “I’m sorry you were frightened,” he whispered against her ear, where he could smell that dizzying scent of her.

  “It’s not your fault,” she replied as she buried her face into his shoulder.

  “I should have had an alarm system put in here when I first moved the boys in, but nobody had ever bothered me out here and it just never entered my mind.” He was rambling, wanting to keep talking, needing to continue holding her.

  He’d felt alone for a very long time, but with her in his arms the loneliness no longer existed inside him.

  When she finally raised her head
to look at him there was no question that he was going to kiss her again. As he took her mouth with his, desire slammed through him. What he’d intended as a gentle kiss instead was hot and demanding.

  She responded with a hunger that stunned him. She raised her arms and tangled her fingers in his hair as they stumbled backward and her back hit the refrigerator.

  Their lips remained locked in a kiss that drove all other thoughts from his head. He slid his hands up the back of her T-shirt, wanting to feel the warmth of her bare skin against his palms.

  She didn’t protest but instead broke the kiss and leaned her head back, allowing him to trail his lips down the length of her neck and across her delicate collarbone.

  “Marisa.” He breathed her name on a sigh against her ear. “I want you. I’ve wanted you every day since you arrived here.”

  When she looked up at him he saw the flame of desire in her eyes, and that nearly shoved him over the edge. She didn’t say anything but instead pulled his head back down so their lips could meet once again.

  As he kissed her once again he leaned into her and slowly moved his hands from her bare back to her breasts. Her nipples pushed against the thin material of her bra, and he wanted her naked in his arms. He wanted her panting beneath him as he took her over and over again.

  She moaned, a soft throaty sound that shot through him like a bolt of electricity.

  He stepped back from her and took her by the hand. Neither of them said a word as he led her out of the kitchen, through the living room and down the hallway to his bedroom door.

  They were just about to go into the room when Mick cried out from his bedroom. Both Jack and Marisa froze.

  “Marisa,” Mick cried. “I had a bad dream.”

  Jack dropped her hand. Whatever fire he had seen in her eyes moments ago was gone. “He needs me,” she said.

  Jack nodded. “Go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  As she hurried back down the hallway to the boys’ room two thoughts flittered through Jack’s mind. Would he and Marisa ever be able to reclaim the moment that had just been lost? And would there ever come a time when his boys would cry out for him?