But she was wrong. Ever since he had read Susan’s note, he hadn’t been able to look at his daughter without feeling physically ill. He couldn’t bear to disappoint Hester by staying away at Christmas—he wasn’t sure how many Christmases his grandmother had left—but he had been desperately searching for a way to avoid being alone with Beth.
Gavin looked up and met Rolleen’s grim, gray-eyed gaze. “I may have a solution to your problem,” he said tentatively.
Her brows rose in question.
“This may sound a bit farfetched, but hear me out before you say no,” he said.
“All right.”
“I think we should get engaged.”
Rolleen backed up against the door and stared at him wide-eyed. “What?”
He rose and came toward her, but when she reached for the doorknob, he stopped and held out his hands placatingly. “Don’t leave. Please just listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“What I’m suggesting is a temporary, make-believe engagement,” Gavin said, warming up to his subject as he realized what a good idea it was. “When you go home for Christmas, I’ll go with you. You’ll still be pregnant and unmarried, of course, but you’ll have a doting fianc;aae on your arm. We’ll tell your parents there are practical reasons why we can’t marry now, but we plan to marry before the baby’s born.”
“What reasons?” Rolleen said. When he frowned she explained, “They’ll want to know why we aren’t married.”
“I’m sure we can come up with some good excuses,” he said. “What do you think?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” she said, “but I couldn’t let you—”
“I’m not doing this only as a favor to you. I want something in return.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m listening.”
“We can spend the holiday until Christmas Eve at your family’s ranch, but I want you to come to my house on Christmas Day and spend the rest of the holiday there.”
A pinched V appeared at the bridge of her nose. “Why?”
“It’s a long story, and I’ve got two weeks before Christmas to tell you all about it. Suffice it to say, I’ll play your fianc;aae and you’ll play mine for the duration of the holidays.”
“We don’t even know each other!”
“But we have an excuse for knowing each other. It was your sister Jewel who arranged the introduction by asking me to look you up in August—about four months ago,” he pointed out, letting her see how easy it would be to carry out the deception.
“I don’t know anything about you,” Rolleen said. “We’d never be able to fool my family. They’d know right away we were strangers.”
“Not if we spend the next ten days getting to know each other,” Gavin argued.
Rolleen pursed her lips. “I still won’t have solved the problem of telling my parents I’m going to be a single mother.”
“No, but you’ll have saved Christmas for everybody. After you’ve been back at school for a while, you can call or write your parents and say we’ve broken up.”
Rolleen folded her hands together behind her back and wandered past him to the other side of the room, examined an autographed Cal Ripken, Jr. baseball in a hermetically sealed case on the credenza, then meandered back to the door. She turned to face him and said, “I suppose it might work.”
“It’ll work, all right,” Gavin said, thinking how agreeable his grandmother would be when he asked her to keep Beth while he had some grown-up time with his fianc;aaee. Hester would be glad to see him happy again and downright ecstatic at the thought he might marry and provide her with more grandchildren. Rolleen’s presence would provide a welcome distraction on all counts.
“How do you propose we get to know each other?” Rolleen asked.
“We’re going to have to spend some time together, at my place, at yours, kissing, touching—”
“Whoa, there! Hold your horses!” Rolleen said. “Kissing and touching?”
Gavin shrugged. “I don’t know any engaged couples who don’t kiss and touch. Do you?”
He watched as Rolleen scratched the back of her neck, and recalled the enticing curls on her nape. He might be kissing her there sometime soon, he realized in amazement.
“I hadn’t figured on getting intimate with another man,” she said thoughtfully.
“I’m not suggesting we go to bed together,” Gavin said, “although, if you have any birthmarks I should know about—”
“I see your point,” she interrupted. “And my family will expect us to kiss and hold hands.”
“And touch,” Gavin said. “Don’t forget I’ve met them.”
She wrinkled her nose like a kid facing a plateful of lima beans and spinach and brussels sprouts. “Within reason,” she conceded.
“All right, then. We’re agreed?”
“Agreed,” Rolleen said, extending her hand.
Her hand and wrist were fragile, he realized, but the woman extending them wasn’t. He was glad she had a strong backbone. She was going to need it to stand up to the interrogation his grandmother was certain to give her. All in all, Gavin was satisfied with the bargain he’d made. Rolleen seemed like a pretty levelheaded young woman. They should both be able to accomplish their goals with a minimum of fuss and bother.
“Can I give you a ride home?” he asked.
She started to shake her head, then said, “I suppose we might as well start getting acquainted. I can show you how to get to my apartment.”
Gavin rolled down his sleeves and buttoned them, then retrieved a navy blue wool sport coat from a hook and slipped it on. He picked up Rolleen’s lab coat from the couch and said, “Have you got a jacket somewhere?”
“In my hospital locker,” she said.
“Let’s go get it.” He slipped his arm around her waist, and she immediately stiffened.
He kept his arm where it was and looked down at her until she looked back up at him. “You okay?” She managed a smile, and he felt her relax slightly.
“I guess this is going to take some getting used to,” she said. “Bear with me, will you?”
“Sure.” He opened the office door and ushered her through it, noticing how soft and feminine her hip felt pressed against his. She was so small tucked in beside him, his protective instincts rose, and he tightened his hold on her waist.
She made a sound of protest in her throat, then made a face and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s just… Never mind.”
“What?” he asked. When she kept her face forward, he said, “You might as well tell me. We need to learn everything there is to know about each other in the next ten days. As you said yourself, we might as well start now.”
She took a deep breath, let it out and admitted, “I’m not used to being around men—I mean, this close. I never dated much in high school.” She shot him a quick, shy smile. “Too busy being the perfect daughter,” she explained. “And I was too busy studying in college so I would be sure to get into medical school. So Jim… He was my first… Jim was my first lover,” she managed to get out.
Gavin stopped and stared down at her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So your parents are going to be shocked and pleased that you’re bringing a man—me—home for Christmas.”
She nodded. “I never told my family about my relationship with Jim, because he was one of my professors. As far as they’re concerned, you’ll be the first man I’ve shown a serious interest in dating.”
“I’m going to get grilled like a hamburger.”
Her gray eyes focused intently on his face. “I’ll let you out of the bargain, if you don’t think you can handle it.”
Gavin’s lips flattened. Her lack of experience with men might make the situation a bit more difficult, but not impossible. “I can handle it. I can handle anything.”
Except a four-year-old who isn’t your daughter after all.
“Let’s get going,” he said, urging Rolleen down the hal
l. “The sooner we get started, the sooner this’ll all be over.”
CHAPTER 2
Rolleen rolled over in bed and groaned. She had invited Gavin Talbot to return to her apartment for lunch at noon today to begin their “courtship.”
What was I thinking last night? How could I have agreed to such a bizarre plan? We’re never going to get away with it. My family will know right away that we’re not really lovers.
Not if she and Gavin Talbot knew everything there was to know about each other. Not if she could successfully pretend she felt affection and admiration for him.
That wasn’t going to be too difficult, Rolleen admitted. At least the admiration part. The man was gorgeous. Tall, dark and handsome. The proverbial knight in shining armor riding to the rescue. Intelligent, kind, considerate, compassionate…and sexy.
Yesterday, when Gavin had rubbed her shoulders, she’d felt the strength of his hands, and the tenderness, and wished she’d tried harder to meet him in August when he’d first called her. She’d been too busy buying books, getting into the routine of classes and catching up with friends she hadn’t seen over the summer. Jim Harkness had made his move the first week of classes, and by the time Gavin called the third and fourth times, she was already secretly seeing her professor.
Rolleen swallowed down the acid that rose in the back of her throat. It wasn’t the baby making her feel so sick. It was bitterness over Jim’s behavior. Just in case, she reached for one of the saltines she kept beside the bed, bit off a corner and began chewing.
She was determined not to let her feelings toward Jim make her ill. Her inexperience with men had led her to misjudge Jim’s intentions. She had thought his emotions were as much engaged as hers; he had thought she knew he always had an affair with one of his students. She had been naive. And in love for the first time.
Her nose stung and ready tears came to her eyes. Rolleen felt her stomach turn and ran, hand over mouth, for the bathroom. She barely made it in time.
Forget about Jim, she admonished herself a few minutes later, as she rinsed her mouth and pressed a cold, wet washcloth to her face. Rolleen groaned again as she examined herself in the mirror. Her eyes looked less puffy, but they were still bloodshot, and her nose was raw and tender where it had been wiped so many times. She had to stop crying over spilt milk. Jim’s gone from your life forever. You were a fool and an idiot.
Once. She’d been a fool once. Never again. She would never again give her heart so quickly or completely. Which was why Gavin’s offer of a pretend engagement had been so appealing. Her parents would find solace in the fact she was happy and in love with the baby’s father, even if she wasn’t married. If she went home looking like she looked now, they would feel her pain and suffer along with her.
Rolleen wondered if she would be able to fake with Gavin the same euphoric feelings she’d felt when she’d given herself to Jim—to the man she’d loved—for the first time. Perhaps. But she would have to put a smile on her face to do it. Which meant no more tears.
She dabbed at her eyes with the cool washcloth one more time, then set it aside, looked in the mirror and said, “No looking back, Miss Whitelaw. Think about the wonderful life growing inside you and the joy and happiness ahead of you.” That thought brought a smile to Rolleen’s face and, amazingly, she felt better.
When Rolleen heard Gavin’s knock at the door shortly before noon, she met him wearing a boat-necked, short-sleeved red silk blouse, black designer jeans with a silver-buckled belt, polished-up-but-worn-out black cowboy boots and a practiced smile, looking very much like her old, stylish self.
“Hi, Gavin,” she said cheerfully. “Come on in.”
He didn’t budge. “Rolleen? Is that you?”
She laughed, grabbed his hand and pulled him inside. “Don’t tell me I looked so bad last night you don’t recognize me.”
“You look…different.”
“It’s the smile,” she said, beaming at him. “It was missing last night.”
He finally returned her smile with one of his own that nearly took her breath away, revealing a single dimple in his left cheek. “I had no idea you were so beautiful,” he said. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to convince your folks I fell in love with you.”
Rolleen felt something shift inside. The experience was disturbing, because she’d felt something similar the first time she’d laid eyes on Jim. She quelled the feeling. She wasn’t interested in getting involved with another man. And unlike Jim, Gavin had made his position clear from the start. This was all pretend.
“Come on in and make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing him inside her one-bedroom apartment. A ceramic, cowboy-dressed Santa, a table-size pine Christmas tree with winking lights and a fragile crystal nativity evidenced her love of everything to do with Christmas.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.
“Nothing right now,” Gavin said, searching for a place to sit that wasn’t already occupied by something else.
“Let me clear a place for you,” she said with a laugh that acknowledged the clutter. “Growing up in a house with so many kids, I always had to put my things away or lose them. Since I’ve had a place of my own, I guess I’ve gone a bit overboard in the other direction.”
“I never had to be neat, so I’m not,” he admitted with a grin that made her heart take an extra thump.
Rolleen quickly turned away from all that powerful sex appeal, moving a stuffed kangaroo she’d bought for the baby the day she’d learned she was pregnant, a book on childbirth and a red-and-green ruffled Christmas pillow from the secondhand sofa to make space for Gavin. “I thought we could talk for a little while before we eat,” she said.
By the time she turned around, Gavin had already claimed her favorite overstuffed corduroy chair by shifting copies of Vogue and Elle and The New England Journal of Medicine to the wooden coffee table.
“Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?” she asked, her nerves getting the better of her as she dropped what she’d picked up back onto the couch.
“Nothing for me.”
She waffled about where she ought to sit, then settled on the end of the couch closest to him, reminding herself she was a pregnant woman and that letting herself fall for a handsome face was how she’d gotten that way. She pulled off her boots, tucked her red-Christmas-stocking-clad feet under her and leaned on the broad arm, her attention focused on Gavin. She noticed he was sitting on the front edge of the chair, rather than settling into it and looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
“Where should we start?” she asked.
He rose immediately and paced across the sea green carpet, making a detour around her wooden coffee table, which was littered with as many life-style and fashion magazines as medical journals. Rolleen made most of her own clothes and had once upon a time dreamed of becoming a fashion designer—before she realized her parents expected her to pursue one of the professions more commonly chosen by someone of her extraordinary intelligence.
Gavin abruptly stopped pacing and turned to face her, his hands behind his back. “Have you had any second thoughts since last night?”
“Second, third and fourth thoughts,” she admitted. “But I haven’t changed my mind.”
He hesitated, then crossed and settled more comfortably into the chair, this time leaning forward with his forearms braced on his knees. “I’ve been thinking about it, too. But I couldn’t come up with any better plan to solve your dilemma—or mine—so we might as well go for it. What does the J in R.J. stand for?” he asked.
“Jane.”
“Rolleen Jane,” he said. “I like it.”
The hairs stood up on her arms when he said her name. Rolleen rubbed them down and countered, “It’s a better name for a doll than a doctor. Rolleen Jane: she speaks, she sits, she wets! R.J. sounds more like somebody you’d want to have deliver your baby.”
Gavin chuckled. “How about plain Rolleen.”
“Plain Rolleen?�
��
“Make that just Rolleen.”
“Just Rolleen?”
He laughed and said, “I’m sticking with Rolleen. I like it. By the way, is that what you want to be, an obstetrician?”
“A pediatrician,” she corrected.
“Why?”
“Because I love children.”
“Then you’re glad about the baby?”
She looked down and placed her hand on the gentle curve where her child was growing inside her, then looked up at Gavin. “I was at first. And I am now.”
He nodded with understanding.
She liked that about Gavin, Rolleen decided. He understood so much without her having to explain it. “What kind of doctor are you?” she asked.
He smiled, and the dimple reappeared.
She told herself she wasn’t charmed, as he explained, “I’m not a medical student. I’m studying for my Ph.D. in child psychology. Eventually I plan to counsel dying kids.”
Rolleen picked a tuft of stuffing from the couch. “To be honest, that sounds like distressing work.”
“Difficult,” Gavin conceded. “But ultimately quite uplifting.” She raised a questioning brow, and he continued, “We’re all going to die. Kids with cancer or other debilitating diseases have time to think about it in advance. I help them through denial and bargaining and anger, and from depression to acceptance, before they actually have to face dying.”
“I imagine it must be hard to work with someone—to become intimately acquainted with someone—you know is going to die.” Isn’t it hard to share their pain?
She dared a glance at him, looking for an answer to her unasked question, and found it in the eloquent sorrow reflected back to her from his dark eyes.
“They don’t all die,” he said. “A few of them miraculously recover. I always hope that will happen.”
“You’re an optimist,” she said, suddenly finding it easier to smile. “That’s good. My parents would expect me to choose a spouse who believes the glass is half-full, rather than half-empty.”
“Tell me about your life growing up,” Gavin said. “The kind of anecdotes you might have shared with me when we were getting to know each other.”
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