Vows

by Rochelle Alers

  Vanessa tried pulling out of his embrace and failed. “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. Sleeping with you is one thing, but becoming pregnant is out of the question.”

  His hold on her waist tightened. “Is the possibility of having my child that repugnant to you?”

  She swallowed several times, trying to moisten her dry throat. “It’s not repugnant, it’s just out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Need you ask why?”

  “Yes,” he shot back, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

  “I don’t know you, Joshua. You’re a stranger and—”

  “A stranger who has made love to you three times. I think we’ve progressed beyond the stranger stage, Vanessa.”

  “I’m not ready to have a child,” she argued. “I usually plan what I want to do with my life, and having a child before I’m married is not something I’ve planned.”

  He almost laughed aloud. Now she was beginning to cooperate.

  “Marry me.”

  She went completely still as if she’d been shot. “No!” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know you.”

  He chuckled. “Is that all that’s stopping you?”

  “Of course not. People who marry usually love each other.”

  “Do you think you could love me?”

  Vanessa hesitated, unable to think clearly. She had slept with a man she’d known for four days, and there was the possibility that a new life was growing in her womb at that very moment.

  “Do you?” Joshua repeated.

  “Given time, I suppose I could.”

  Raising his head, he searched for her mouth and found it. His lips coaxed hers until they parted. “I’m an impatient man,” he breathed into her mouth, “and I don’t want to spend years chasing you. Marry me and I swear that I’ll love, honor, and protect you for the rest of my life.”

  “No,” she whispered tearfully. “I can’t.”

  “What if you’re pregnant?”

  “I’ll deal with it,” she said stubbornly.

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes, by myself.”

  He released her and reached over and turned on the lamp, flooding the room with light. Turning back to Vanessa, he caught her shoulders firmly and pulled her up to his chest.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said quietly. “Whatever you decide to do I’ll be there with you.”

  Nodding, she adjusted her dress, pulling it down over her hips and smoothing out the wrinkles. She realized he hadn’t said I’ll be there for you, but I’ll be there with you. It was apparent that he was not going to let her escape him.

  She didn’t tell him that if she were pregnant she would have the child, because even though she couldn’t admit it openly she knew that she was falling in love with Joshua Kirkland.

  She pulled away from him. “Excuse me, but I have to change my clothes.”

  Joshua watched her intently as she slipped off the bed, her gaze downcast. Her back was ramrod straight when she made her way across the bedroom.

  “Vanessa.” He’d spoken her name so softly that he doubted whether she’d heard it, but she stopped, not bothering to turn around. “I love you.”

  The moment the three words were uttered he knew they had come from the depths of his soul, and he was momentarily speechless with the revelation. Never had he ever openly declared that he loved any living mortal. The word love was as foreign to him as the emotion.

  Why Vanessa? Why her, and not some woman from his past?

  The questions nagged him as emotions he didn’t know he had attacked relentlessly. Why a spy?

  He wanted to protect her, and he was willing to marry her to do that, but what he didn’t want to do was love her; he had grown up seeing how the pain of loving could destroy a life.

  But what if she’s pregnant? What about your child? The thought that perhaps Vanessa could be pregnant quieted the riot of uneasiness assailing him. How different his child’s life would be from his own, and if he had to surrender to loving, it would be to his child.

  The seconds stretched into a long, suffering minute before she turned and faced him, her large dark eyes shimmering with moisture.

  “Don’t,” she whispered. She didn’t want him to love her, because she knew that she was falling in love with him. If he didn’t love her, it would be easier for her to walk away from him. When she left Mexico for the States all she wanted to take home was the memory of Joshua Kirkland and nothing else.

  “Don’t tell me what to feel,” he countered. “I love you, and I’ll say it over and over until you marry me.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, or believe what she was feeling. Joshua’s statement echoed the deep emotions she wasn’t able to deny. How had it happened? How could she have fallen in love with him so quickly? What was it about him that frightened and fascinated her at the same time?

  Only one other man had proposed to her, and he had loved her and any other woman who was available to him. Would Joshua also be unfaithful to her?

  The statement he’d uttered over dinner at La Mérida came rushing back. Not only would I not be unfaithful to my wife, but to any woman I found myself involved with. She didn’t know why, but she believed him.

  Retracing her steps, she returned to the bed and fell into his arms. She kissed him, communicating wordlessly that she had conceded. She would stay with him, and she would become his wife.

  Chapter 11

  A slow, warming sense of peace filled Joshua as he cherished the softness of Vanessa in his embrace. Everything that surrounded them was so right, so perfect. It was as if all of the bitterness he’d carried for years had vanished, a gentle, comforting peace taking its place.

  “Tell me what you want. What you need from me,” he whispered in her hair.

  Rubbing her nose against his smooth jaw, Vanessa smiled. “I want you to love me as unselfishly as I’m certain I’ll come to love you. And when I marry you I want it to be forever.”

  “Where do you want us to live?” he asked.

  “I want to stay in Santa Fe.” Pulling back slightly, she stared up at him. “That means you’ll have to relocate.”

  Joshua shook his head, smiling. “That’s not a problem. I think you ought to know that aside from the house on Ocho Rios, I also have a condo in Palm Beach, Florida.”

  “You’re not thinking of selling them, are you?”

  “No. We’ll use the house in Jamaica as a vacation retreat, and we’ll stay at the apartment in Florida whenever we visit my relatives.”

  Placing her cheek against his breast, she listened to the strong, steady beating of his heart, curving an arm around his neck. “Do you think they’ll like me?”

  A chuckle rumbled in his chest. “They won’t have a choice. The men in my family have a penchant for beautiful women.”

  “That means your mother must be beautiful.”

  His muscles tensed suddenly under her fingertips. “My mother was very beautiful.” He paused. “She died five years ago.”

  Closing her eyes, Vanessa tightened her hold on his neck. “I’m sorry, Joshua,” she whispered. If he was thirty-three when his mother died, then, she wondered, how old could she have been?

  Closing his own eyes, he sighed heavily. “She’s at peace.”

  There was a strained silence before Vanessa spoke again. “What is it you want from me?”

  “I want to spend the rest of my life with you in a marriage based on love, honesty, and fidelity,” he replied without hesitating. “And I also want children.”

  “How many?”

  “As many as you’ll give me.”

  “How many can we afford?”

  “At least a dozen.”

  “A dozen!” she exclaimed. “I don’t think so, Joshua Kirkland.”

  “Then we’ll begin with one.”

  Sobering quickly, she kissed his earlobe. “What do you need from me?�
�

  “I need you to trust me to take care of you and protect you.”

  A frown furrowed her forehead, and she pulled out of his embrace. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t trust you?”

  He stared back at her, his gaze unwavering. “No.”

  “I—”

  The chiming of the telephone preempted further conversation, and Joshua reached over to the bedside table and picked up the receiver.

  “Sí.” His greeting was soft and controlled.

  “Birmingham,” came a masculine voice on the other end. “We’re going to have to reschedule,” he said in Spanish.

  “Meet me in San Miguel in five days. I’ll be seated in the last pew of La Iglesia de los Santos at oh nine hundred,” Joshua said in the same language. “And I want you to give your boss a message from me.”

  “What?”

  “Pull The Shadow.”

  “I thought The Shadow was to stay in place until Operation MESA goes down.”

  His jaw hardened, and he turned his back to Vanessa. “Tell Blackwell to pull him or I’ll make him disappear permanently,” he ordered in a soft, lethal tone.

  “I read you,” Cordero Birmingham replied before the connection was broken.

  Replacing the receiver in its cradle, Joshua turned back to Vanessa, a warm smile replacing the hardness that had settled into his features. He had five days to marry Vanessa, uncover her contact, and set the wheels in motion for Operation MESA.

  He reached for her and pulled her to his chest. “What had you planned to do tomorrow?”

  “What I’d planned to do today.”

  “Shop?”

  She smiled down at him. “Shop until I drop.”

  “Where?”

  Oaxaca.”

  “That’s not a day trip,” he reminded her.

  “I know. I’d planned to take the 7:00 p.m. train down, stay overnight, and return the following day.”

  “I have a proposition to make to you.”

  Vanessa’s mouth hovered over his. “What?”

  “We check out, rent a car, and travel. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I’ll even act as interpreter so that the local merchants don’t cheat you.”

  “What about your business clients?”

  “I don’t have another meeting until the sixth.”

  She calculated quickly. That gave her and Joshua another five days together. “Will we have to come back to Mexico City for your meeting?”

  Joshua wondered just how much of his telephone conversation Vanessa understood. Was she fluent in Spanish? She’d admitted to having only a rudimentary knowledge of the language.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “I’m scheduled to return to the States on the seventh,” she reminded him.

  “What time is your flight?”

  “8:50.”

  “Morning or evening?”

  “Evening.”

  He kissed the end of her nose. “I’ll call the airline and change my ticket, then we’ll fly back together.” Sitting up, he pulled at a curl over her forehead. “I promised to feed you, didn’t I?”

  “You started to, but somehow you got distracted,” she said with a teasing grin.

  “That’s because you’re quite a distraction, Miss Blanchard.”

  Vanessa moved off the bed, blew him a kiss, and strolled across the room with an exaggerated wiggle of her hips. “You must work on your self-control, Mr. Kirkland,” she warned over her shoulder, walking out of his bedroom and into her own.

  Joshua stared at the space where she had been, still seeing her enchanting face and alluring body. The scent of her was stamped on his skin, like a signature. All that was needed was a smile, a caress, or a kiss from her, and he was lost, trapped in the seductive web she had woven.

  The script was written, but their roles were reversed. Vanessa had become the seducer.

  * * *

  Joshua sat across the table, watching Vanessa pick absent-mindedly at the food on her plate. He’d prepared shrimp and plantains on skewers with a mango mayonnaise, avocado halves filled with a succulent lobster dip, a tropical green salad and grilled rib lamb chops with savory white rice. He noticed she hadn’t touched her wine, but had elected to drink water.

  Placing his fork aside, he stared at her bowed head. “Is it too spicy?”

  Her head came up quickly. “No, not at all.”

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  She stared back at him, her gaze direct and steady. Exhaling audibly, she apologized. “I’m sorry. You went through a lot of work to prepare dinner.”

  “I had to eat, too.” He studied her thoughtfully. “What’s the matter, Vanessa?”

  “I’ve been thinking—” Her words trailed off.

  “Do your thoughts have anything to do with me?” he asked perceptively.

  Vanessa nodded. The day had been filled with surprises and revelations she never could’ve imagined. “I keep asking myself if I’m losing my mind, if I know who I am. My being here with you, sleeping with you, feeling what I do for you, and even going so far as to contemplate marrying you. I’ve tried convincing myself that it’s a dream, and when I wake up you won’t be here, that my sleeping with you was just a sexual fantasy because I’ve been celibate for so long.”

  A slow smile parted Joshua’s lips. “I’m not an apparition, darling, and what we’ve shared is real, very real.” His expression grew serious. “Perhaps what you’re feeling is guilt.”

  “What about?”

  “Sleeping with a stranger.” She glanced away, and he knew he’d identified her apprehension. “How do you propose we resolve your uneasiness?”

  Again Vanessa realized he’d said we, not you or I, and despite his closed expression she sensed his vulnerability. She did not want to reject him, could not without causing pain for both of them, but she couldn’t continue the headlong flight into a morass of passion where she lost herself each time she joined her body with his.

  “I don’t want us to make love again until after we’re married,” she stated, her voice coming out in a breathless whisper. “I hope that will help me to assess my true feelings for you, without confusing them with sex.”

  His eyes paled, raw hurt glittering in their depths like bits of stone. The victory that Joshua had savored earlier dissipated, leaving in its wake anger and disappointment. One step forward and two steps back, he raged silently.

  “What I feel for you has nothing to do with sex!”

  “I’m not talking about you, Joshua,” she countered, her voice rising slightly. “All I’m asking for is time,” she continued, this time with an unexpected, gentle pleading creeping into her tone.

  He stared at the hopeful expression on her face, unmoving, seeing the emotional struggle going on within her as a shadow of pain filled her large, dark eyes.

  I love you, a part of him crooned silently, a part he had never revealed to anyone, not to any woman. His heart turned over in compassion at Vanessa’s pleading that he understand her turbulent emotions.

  He managed a half-smile. “Take all the time you need.”

  Her eyes filling with tears of relief, Vanessa stood up and circled the table. Joshua pushed back his chair, gathered her into his arms, and held her gently. She felt his even breathing against her cheek as she pressed her lips to his.

  “You make it so easy to love you, Joshua,” she whispered, then buried her face against his throat.

  It was past midnight and Joshua lay in the darkened bedroom, listening to the sound of soft, gentle breathing and savoring the perfumed, scented softness of the slender body next to his own.

  He’d honored his promise that they would not make love again until they were married, though his body ached for her. She aroused a desire in him that he hadn’t experienced since adolescence, while she made him smile and look forward to marrying and fathering children.

  An indefinable feeling of peace swept over him as he tightened his hold on her waist.

  Day Four—he
had gotten Vanessa Blanchard to share his bed, and a promise that she would also share his future.

  Chapter 12

  Vanessa shook Joshua gently, rousing him from sleep. His eyes opened and he stared up at her, smiling. She’d opened the drapes, and the early morning sunlight pouring in through the windows highlighted the shimmering excitement in her large, dark eyes.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve showered and dressed, while you’re still lounging,” she teased.

  “I’ve been awake for hours,” he countered. And he had, his mind filled with the details for Operation MESA. “You left the bed at exactly 5:53.”

  A shock flew through her. How did he know what time she’d gotten up, when he’d been asleep? She had been certain he had been asleep, because his breathing was even and deep and he hadn’t even stirred when she pulled out of his embrace.

  “How did you know that?” There was no disguising the tension in her voice.

  Pushing himself into a sitting position, Joshua gestured to the travel clock on the bedside table. “I looked at the clock.”

  Vanessa glanced over at the clock as if seeing it for the first time, the slight frown that had furrowed her forehead disappearing. She didn’t know what it was, but she couldn’t rid herself of the belief that Joshua wasn’t truly what he presented to her. There was something curious, odd, about him. His quixotic behavior was totally incongruent with his impassive expression, because the times she had noted his expressionless face she hadn’t been able to suppress her fear of him. However, the fear fled with the sound of his sensual voice and the touch of his seductive hands. He was a stranger, and she knew even if she married him and spent the remainder of her life with him he would always be a stranger.

  “Get up, sweetheart,” she crooned, pulling on his arm. “I’m already a day behind schedule.”

  Joshua wanted to ask who she was to meet that made her so impatient to leave Mexico City, but didn’t. His admiring gaze swept over her melon-colored, sleeveless cotton shift, then moved up to her hair pinned at the nape of her neck in a simple chignon. She looked chic and innocent at the same time. Her perfect face with the large, trusting eyes made her appear virginal, untouched. He hadn’t been the man to claim her virgin body, but he would make certain no other man would ever touch her again. She was his.