“No, you’re right. If we’re going to do this, an elopement is probably best. And the sooner, the better. It’s not as if…as if waiting will make it easier.”
The hint of tears in her voice elicited his reluctant sympathy. “Would you rather have a wedding here? With your family present?”
“Oh, no. No. An elopement is much more practical. And…safer.”
Sure thing. As if her parents wouldn’t be ecstatic about this union. He’d thought about that, too, during the past week. A lot. He knew there was a chance this situation had been orchestrated, or at least, encouraged, by her parents, who were eager to find acceptance within the society the Danvilles had been born into for generations. For Connie and Rick O’Reilly, this marriage would be the magic key they had made no secret of wanting for their daughters and for themselves. Matt was aware of the benefit the O’Reilly family would gain through this marriage. He’d given it due consideration. But in the end he’d decided it made no difference. He wasn’t a victim in this. He’d made his choice and he would live with it. “Then we’ll leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “Shall I pick you up or would you prefer to meet somewhere?”
“The airport,” she answered quickly. “I’ll meet you there about ten. That’s when I’d originally planned to arrive for my flight to Baton Rouge. I’ll call my friend in Louisiana tonight and offer some excuse.”
“Tell her you’re eloping,” Matt suggested. “I think we should try to be as honest as possible about what we’re doing. We’re the only ones who need ever know we’re not in love and don’t plan to stay married for the rest of our lives. Anything beyond that should be the truth, or as close to the truth as we can make it.”
“I’m not sure there’s any truth at all in this.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Yes. I would never lie about that.”
“Then that’s the only truth that counts.”
“I don’t know, Matt.”
“You don’t have to go through with this, Peyton. You can change your mind.”
Her silence lasted so long he thought perhaps she had…and his heart inexplicably sank with regret. “I’ll meet you at the airport,” she replied resolutely. “At ten. Near the ticket counters.”
“I’ll find you.”
“I’ll make car rental and hotel reservations,” she said in that take-charge voice he knew well.
“No, you just concentrate on breathing between now and tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll take care of the details.” He hung up, took several long, deep breaths himself, then picked up the phone again to make the necessary arrangements.
PEYTON SANK onto the edge of her bed, letting the phone receiver dangle, the cord curl loosely through her fingers. Breathe, she thought. Just breathe.
But…marriage. Suddenly, it seemed so real.
She didn’t know what she’d expected to feel, wasn’t sure what she actually did feel now. Relief? Yes. She didn’t want to face the pregnancy alone, not any part of it, good or bad. Remorse? Oh, yes, there was that, too. And much as she hated to admit it, she felt rescued. And grateful that he’d agreed to shoulder half the responsibility, for better or worse.
Of course, she’d known he couldn’t do otherwise. She’d dealt with him on enough Foundation issues during the past several months to understand that he was a man of principle. Even when the principle he defended was wrong. She’d had enough arguments with him over the way the Foundation too often conducted its fund-raising to think he would shrink from a challenge. So why had she offered him such diametrically opposed, equally unpalatable, alternatives and then dared him to choose one over the other?
Because she’d thought maybe, somehow, that if she presented him such stark, black-and-white extremes, he would come up with a compromise. She’d hoped somehow he would see another option, the better idea that had eluded her. So now, it was settled.
They would marry. And she would keep breathing.
Admittedly, marriage would be a refuge from scandal and gossip. Having and raising a child alone, refusing to name the father, had not seemed an appealing prospect, although she would have done it if Matt’s decision had been different, if circumstances had proved it necessary. Her mother would never have forgiven her. Connie Barton O’Reilly had been raised with an ideology that made illegitimacy a sin shared equally by mother and child; a baby born out of wedlock was a shameful mistake, a thing to be hidden, shunted into the background in order not to embarrass the entire family. Once she knew Matt Danville was the father, she would have moved heaven, earth and every cloud in between to force Peyton into marrying him. She would have used any means at her disposal to persuade Matt that marriage was the only honorable course. There would have been no trick too manipulative, no method too devious. Connie would have pulled out all the stops to have her daughter marry into one of the oldest, most honored families in New England.
Peyton knew this about her mother. She hated it, but she knew it. And she knew the damage it would cause. For Matt. For the baby. For Peyton, herself. Matt probably suspected it, too, and while she felt certain he wasn’t happy about this solution, like her, he’d come to the conclusion that an elopement was their best hope of thwarting a scandal. She’d thought about this dilemma from every angle before she’d ever presented it to Matt. Now, he had reached the same conclusion.
And she was grateful.
Because no matter from which angle she looked at their situation, marriage seemed the lesser of the bad choices before them.
Replacing the phone on the bedside table, she turned to her suitcase, already packed, awaiting only her cosmetics bag and last-minute items. All she needed for a trip to Louisiana, but hardly anything warm enough for a trip to Niagara Falls in the dead of winter.
Eloping.
She was eloping.
“Hey, Pey.” Scarlett tapped on the door and came in. “Can I borrow that sweater Mom gave you for Christmas? The blue one?”
Peyton hadn’t even taken it out of the box. “I thought she got you one just like it.”
Scarlett flounced onto the bed and began rifling through the suitcase. “Mine’s pink. Pink would be much better for you. The blue would look much better on me. You know Mom, she never gets the colors right.” She glanced up with a hopeful smile. “We could trade.”
“I don’t think your sweater will fit me.”
“You should wear things tighter,” Scarlett advised knowledgeably. “Show off your boobs. You’ve got ’em, why not flaunt ’em?”
Peyton picked the blue cashmere sweater out of her stack of gifts and tossed it to Scarlett, who caught it handily. “You can have mine and keep yours, as well,” she said. “Just give me back that fleece pullover you stole a couple of weeks ago.”
“Thanks.” Scarlett smoothed the sweater, checked the attached tags. “I think I’ll take this and the pink back and exchange them for this great pair of boots I saw at the mall. You don’t mind, do you?”
“I don’t.” Peyton dumped out the contents of her suitcase, prepared to start over. “Mom might.”
Scarlett watched with interest. “She’ll never notice. What are you doing?”
“Packing.” In went two long-sleeved shirts and two sweaters. Peyton made a trip to the closet for wool slacks and a pair of jeans. From her dresser, she snatched heavy socks and a couple of long-sleeved tees and added them to the suitcase, too.
“I know it’s December, Pey, but remember Louisiana is way south of here, and way warmer.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said, making room in the suitcase for her favorite flannel pj’s.
Scarlett eyed the pajamas, then skewered Peyton with suspicion. “Where are you going?” she asked pointedly. “Really.”
Peyton considered sticking with her original plan as alibi. Lying, in effect. “Not to Louisiana,” she hedged.
“That much I figured. Is this a recent itinerary change? Did you and Michelle decide to go skiing or something?”
“I’m not going to vis
it Michelle after all,” Peyton said, then decided Matt was right about the truth. As much truth as possible. Scarlett would hate being the last to know. She might feel special knowing she was the first. “I’m going to Niagara Falls. To get married.”
“Get out!” Scarlett laughed, falling back on the bed in a fit of giggles. “Like that’s not the biggest lie you’ve ever told!”
“Maybe it’s not a lie.”
“Right.” Sarcasm dripped from the word, bringing Scarlett back up to a sitting position beside the suitcase. “You’re running off to get married. Ha. As if.”
Peyton stayed mum. One good thing about a fifteen-year-old sister was that she could usually be counted on to argue all positions.
“Like, if you were really going to elope, you’d be packing flannel pajamas.”
Good point. Peyton returned to the dresser, dug in her lingerie drawer until she found something more appropriate. A little black number made of silk so fine it looked like a gossamer cobweb—and as sexy as hell. She gave it a little flip before laying it in the suitcase, looked up in time to see Scarlett’s jaw drop.
“You’re just putting that in to trick me,” Scarlett accused. “But I happen to know you haven’t even been dating anyone, so how can you be getting married?”
“I imagine we’ll stand before a minister and say, ‘I do.”’
“All right, then, who’s the guy?”
Peyton merely smiled. “You’ll find out the minute we get back.”
“That means this is all a joke.” Scarlett flounced off the bed. “Well, it’s not funny, Peyton. And I’m not giving you back the pullover, either. You’ll have your new husband to keep you warm. So there!” She stalked out of the room then, taking the new blue sweater with her and slamming the door behind her as she went.
So much for truth, Peyton thought. But Scarlett was right about one thing.
Nothing about this was funny.
Not funny at all.
Chapter Four
“You may kiss the bride.” The minister spoke matter-of-factly, nodding his head at the same time he closed his book with a satisfied thud, as if the sound carved one more notch on his belt of ceremonies successfully performed. He had an unfortunate nose, nearly three times the size of his tiny, receding chin, and hardly any upper lip, which made his broad smile resemble nothing so much as two toothy commas on either side of a thick exclamation point. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re husband and wife.”
“Thank you.” Matt reached out to shake the man’s hand, turned to smile his thanks at the woman who not only played the organ at the wedding chapel, acted as witness when called upon, filled out the paperwork, but also offered to be the vocalist, should the happy couple opt for an additional musical selection. Matt and Peyton had opted for the basic, no-frills wedding package and the music for their ceremony had consisted of a rather jazzy version of Wagner’s “Wedding March” at the start, and what seemed to be a triumphant rendition of “We’re Off to See the Wizard” at the end.
But Peyton might have been wrong about the last song. She’d be the first to admit she felt a little foggy at the moment and wasn’t entirely certain of anything.
Except that she’d just married a man she barely knew. A man who’d skipped the traditional first kiss and done it so smoothly no one else seemed to have noticed.
Not that she was disappointed. No, indeed. This wasn’t exactly a traditional wedding. Nor would it be a traditional marriage. And she certainly didn’t expect a token kiss to mark its beginning. That would mean starting this strange relationship off with a lie and they had already agreed to be truthful with each other…no matter how untruthful they had to be in order to convince family and friends that theirs was a love match. So a kiss now was not required. Besides, the last time Matt kissed her—well, actually, it had been the first time—it had escalated from a keen curiosity between two consenting adults into a hotbed of passion between a man and a woman who, despite knowing that what they were doing was lunacy, still couldn’t keep their hands—or lips—off each other.
What had happened at Matt’s beach house had been a strange combination of attraction, a full moon, a higher than normal pitch of emotions, good wine, clandestine opportunity, and something Peyton couldn’t quite put her finger on. Desire, maybe. Or a rebellion of sorts. Perhaps just the wrong combination at the right time.
Or maybe the right combination at the wrong time.
Any way she looked at it, though, wrong seemed to be the right description.
She didn’t even want to think about it. Couldn’t think about it. Remembering anything about that night provoked dangerous feelings.
Recalling Matt’s seductive kiss and the response she hadn’t even tried to deny brought the memories back in a tumble of emotions, made a jumble out of her rationalizations all over again. Safer to maintain their mutual, morning-after assurances to each other that they’d made a mistake. A huge mistake. A mistake they would simply forget ever happened.
Which, as it turned out, wasn’t possible. So now that lapse in judgment had brought them to Niagara Falls and the White Dove Wedding Chapel and, possibly, probably, to yet another, even bigger, mistake.
“Right here!” The photographer snapped his fingers to get their attention and, like marionettes, they jerked around at the unexpected command. He raised his camera. “Now say, ‘happily ever after!’”
“Happ—” Peyton parroted without thinking, and that was the moment the shutter opened to catch her on film with her mouth agape, her expression startled, her single lily—what on earth had possessed her to choose to carry a lily of all possible bridal bouquets!—drooping limply in her hand. Her eyes were so wide and dazed by the flash that she looked more shell-shocked than bridal.
“IT’S NOT a terrible picture,” Matt said reasonably, as if it wasn’t clearly a complete waste of good film.
“Oh, please.” Peyton sipped her water, glanced around the cozy pub-like restaurant and persistently avoided looking down at the vividly colored photograph. “Even if that ficus tree branch didn’t appear to be growing out of the top of your head, and even if the artificial candlelight didn’t cast us both in that weird greenish glow, you will never convince me that wayward pouf of baby’s breath dangling over my head doesn’t make me look like Frankenstein’s bride.”
He grinned at her and slid the offensive wedding photo off the table and into his jacket pocket. “If that’s your charming Southern way of referring to me as Frankenstein’s monster, I have to warn you, you’re going to hurt my feelings.”
She smiled. Wanly. But a smile, just the same. “If I’d wanted to hurt your feelings, Matt, I’d have called you a Yankee. You don’t look half as awful in that picture as I do.”
“Except for the green lighting and the ficus tree.”
“Well, yes, except for that.” She opened her menu, then closed it again. “Do you think we could get rid of it?”
“The ficus tree or the lighting?”
“The whole photo.”
“Sure. I’ll throw it away right now if you want.”
“Oh, no. We have to burn it.”
He glanced up from his menu, cocked his eyebrows. “I didn’t bring any matches.”
“You’re making fun of me,” she said and opened the menu again.
“I wouldn’t do that, Peyton. Unless you called me a Yankee.” His gaze returned to the menu. “Now, what sounds good to you?”
“Mmm,” she said as if considering. Her stomach wobbled a little at the thought of food. Or maybe she felt queasy over what she’d just done. Married. She’d actually married him. Of course, marriage is what she’d asked for, what she’d decided—and still believed—would be the best thing for all concerned, so it was a bit ridiculous to feel sick about it now that it was done.
He snapped shut the menu, smiled across the table at her. “I think I’ll have the curried sea bass.”
It was as if the words conjured the smells—the thick pungent spice o
f curry, the sea-salty scent of fish—and her stomach pitched like an angry surf. “Oh, jeez,” she whispered, shoved back her chair and ran for the bathroom.
MATT KNEW how to handle women. He had two sisters, for one thing, so he’d been aware from an early age that females, for the most part, required special treatment. He’d learned young that girls were different, and that, on any given day, the same comment made the same way—with no underlying inflection or innuendo added—by the same brother, would elicit an entirely different response from the same sister. Sometimes, as best he’d ever been able to figure, simply because the sister in question did—or didn’t—like her current haircut.
That early education in the ways of the opposite sex had stayed with him, and his opinion had changed very little over the years. He had dated a lot of women. He worked with a lot of women. A lot of smart, educated, ambitious women. He commanded a philanthropy that depended, to a significant degree, on his ability to cosset the matrons who volunteered their influence and largesse. He knew how best to keep his distance while discreetly flirting with the young wives who would one day be the matrons with influence and largesse. He knew how to flatter a woman’s vanity, how to pamper her wounded pride, when to humor her disgruntled demands and when to put a stop to petty nonsense. He knew the value of listening and showing an appropriate amount of concern. He knew how to charm and cajole. He could be sympathetic or firm, unavailable or attentive, coaxing or casually indifferent, whatever he felt would best solve the problem. In short, he’d taken it as part of his job description to know when to compliment the haircut and when to keep his mouth shut. It had been a very long time since he’d run into a situation with a woman that he couldn’t figure out how to handle.
Until now.
He’d known, of course, to get Peyton out of the restaurant as quickly and quietly as possible.
He’d known to get her into the car and start driving—not too fast, not too slowly, just smoothly and steadily—toward the house where they were staying. Thank goodness, he had friends in the area who had offered him the use of their home while they were away. Thank goodness, it was only about a twenty-minute drive. Thank goodness, Peyton was getting a bit of color back.
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