by Metsy Hingle
“No reason,” Scott said and looked away.
They fell silent and Jack’s thoughts returned once more to Lily. He looked at his watch again. As the minutes ticked by, he grew more and more anxious. “You got the ring?” he asked Scott.
Scott patted his pocket. “Right here.” He paused. “I’ve never seen you so nervous before. You sure about this, Jack?”
“I’m sure,” he told his friend, because he knew he was doing what was best for everyone. Now all they needed was the bride.
When the violinist began playing, Jack turned and looked at the end of the aisle where his sister Courtney stood under the arbor of flowers. Dressed in a peach-colored dress and holding a small bouquet of peach roses and lilies, she started down the aisle with a smile on her face. When Courtney was about midway down the aisle, his sister Elizabeth stepped under the arbor. Since Lily hadn’t been able to think of anyone to ask to be her maid of honor, his youngest sister had volunteered herself for the job. Lily, apparently not wanting Elizabeth to feel left out, had suggested both of his sisters serve as attendants. It was a decision that had pleased both his sisters and his mother—and him because he wanted Lily to feel that she was truly a part of his family now. Once his sisters had reached the altar and taken their places, the first notes of the wedding march rang out.
Both anxious and excited, Jack turned his gaze once more to the entrance at the rear of the gardens. This is it, he told himself as he waited for Lily to appear beneath the flower arbor and walk down the aisle to become his wife. Several seconds went by, but there was no Lily. The first notes of the bridal march were played again. And still there was no Lily.
Jack tensed, his first thought that he’d been right to worry. He’d pushed her too hard, and, just as he’d feared, she’d decided not to go through with the wedding. His second thought was that something had happened to her, that maybe she’d slipped on the stone floor inside the house and was hurt. It was that last thought, imagining Lily hurt, that had him starting to leave the altar to find her.
“Hang on,” Scott whispered, gripping his arm before he could go. He motioned for him to look at the rear of the guest seats where Felicity was signaling to him to give her a minute. The blonde disappeared, evidently going through the side door of the house to where Lily was supposed to be waiting.
Jack could hear the murmurs among the guests, the shifting in their seats, and he saw the anxious look on his mother’s face. Damn it. They just should have eloped, he reasoned. If they had, Lily wouldn’t have had time to think about changing her mind.
And if she has changed her mind? What are you going to do?
He was going to change it back, he told himself. He couldn’t afford not to. Looking at his watch, he decided to give Felicity five minutes and then he was going to do just that.
“Relax,” Scott told him. “She probably broke a nail or got a run in her stocking. You know how women are about those things.”
He did know how women were. A broken nail or a run in a stocking would have sent his mother and his sister Courtney and probably half the women he’d dated into a frenzy. But not Lily. Lily was not most women. He’d sensed that the night of the ball. It was one of the reasons, he knew, that he’d given a woman whose name he didn’t know the key to his hotel room. It was also the reason that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since that night.
Granted, the only reason he had suggested they get married was because she was pregnant with his child. He’d never been a man to shirk responsibility. He had no intention of doing so now. Lily and the baby were his responsibility now. But if he was going to be completely honest with himself he didn’t find the idea unappealing. There had been something special between them that night at the ball—something that went beyond the good sex. Whatever that something was, it would be enough to start with because he didn’t intend to lose her again.
She couldn’t go through with it, Lily told herself as she stood in front of the vanity in the powder room of the Cartwright mansion. She stared at the woman in the mirror. That woman looked like a real bride. The wedding gown was beautiful. So were the shoes. Her hair had been swept up into an elegant French twist with wisps arranged around her face. Courtney had performed miracles with the paints and polishes and brushes, making Lily’s skin look creamy, her eyes bright and her cheekbones those of a model. She touched the strand of pearls with the diamond clasp at her throat and noted the matching earrings. Both were wedding gifts from Jack. “For my bride,” he’d told her when he’d given them to her the previous evening.
Wedding gifts for a bride. Even the bouquet of white roses and lilies looked as if they belonged to a bride. No question about it. The woman looking back at her in the mirror certainly looked like a real, honest-to-goodness bride.
Only she wasn’t a real bride. She was a fake.
And she absolutely, positively couldn’t go through with the wedding.
When Jack had suggested that they get married, it had all seemed to make sense. After all, he was the baby’s father and she had wanted her baby to have a real home with two parents. It had also made sense when he’d told her that shuffling the child between the two of them wouldn’t work. She’d seen firsthand how tough shuffling between parents could be on a child. She hadn’t wanted that for her baby. And as Jack Cartwright’s wife, she could be assured that her child would have the loving home she had never had.
Only now that the day was here, she simply could not go through with it. She didn’t love Jack Cartwright and he didn’t love her. And when two people got married it should be because they loved one another, not because their hormones had run amok one night and resulted in a pregnancy. While she understood Jack feeling he needed to take responsibility, he didn’t need to marry her to do it. The man deserved a happy life with someone he loved. So did she. They could still love their baby, be good parents and provide a stable, loving home without making such a colossal mistake. Because going through with this marriage would be just that, she reasoned—a colossal mistake.
The first notes of the bridal march started and panic began to swim in her blood. She had to get out of here. Maybe she could slip out the powder room, make it out the front door and hightail it to the main road and try to find a taxi. Jack would understand. Shoot, he’d probably be relieved, she told herself as she turned and moved as quickly as she could with a ten-pound ball around her middle. She had almost reached the door when it burst open and in flew Felicity.
“Lily, didn’t you hear your cue?”
“Yes, I did. Felicity, I—”
“Where’s your bouquet?” she demanded and swept her gaze over the room to the dressing table. She scooped it up, stuck it in Lily’s hands. After fussing with her hair for a moment, Felicity stepped back. “You look gorgeous. And wait until you see your groom. The man should live in a tux.”
“Felicity—”
“Listen, there’s your cue again,” Felicity told her.
Lily’s hands began to shake, but evidently Felicity didn’t notice that the roses and lilies were trembling like the leaves on an aspen in a windstorm. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Sure you can,” Felicity insisted and straightened the skirt of her gown. She gave her a quick hug and a smile. “Just take a deep breath and think of Jack.” And before she could say another word, Felicity flew out the door as quickly as she had blown in.
The first notes of the bridal march started for the third time and Lily couldn’t move. She stood frozen in the powder room and wished she was Samantha from the oldBewitched TV show so she could wiggle her nose and disappear. She was still standing there wondering if she was going to be sick when the door to the powder room opened again. Only this time it was Jack who came in.
Her first crazy thought was that Felicity had been right. The man really should live in a tux. The black jacket made his shoulders look broad, his height towering. His black hair was thick, his blue eyes as dark as steel. His jawline was strong, his mouth almo
st elegant. There was something solid and commanding and, at the same time, dangerous about him—the very things that had drawn her to him that night at the ball.
“I wasn’t sure if you remembered to check your calendar this morning,” he said, his voice casual. “But according to mine, we’re supposed to be getting married right about now.”
“I didn’t forget,” Lily told him. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at him and into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jack. I know how much trouble you and your family have gone to, but I can’t go through with it. I just can’t.”
“I see.”
I see?
It wasn’t the response she had expected. In truth, she had expected him to be angry. After all, the man had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to arrange the wedding. He had at least three dozen family members and friends sitting outside waiting to see him take her as his bride. He’d even given her his grandmother’s ring. No question about it, Jack Cartwright had every right to be downright furious with her. Only instead of being angry, he took the bridal bouquet she was clutching in her still unsteady hands and placed it on the dressing table. Then he took her by the hand and led her to the bench by the wall.
“Why don’t we sit down a minute?”
She did as he suggested and said, “I’m not going to change my mind, Jack. I’m sorry, but I simply can’t go through with it. I can’t marry you.”
“All right,” he told her. He sat down beside her, took her other hand and held it in his. “So is there any particular reason you don’t want to marry me?” he asked calmly. And before she could find her voice, he continued, “Is it my nose? I broke it playing football in college and it never did heal quite right. Maybe you don’t want to be married to a man with an ugly nose.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your nose. It’s beautiful.”
“The hair then. You probably noticed that I’m starting to get a few gray hairs right around the temples. I know some women find that a turn-off—”
“There’s nothing wrong with your hair. It looks great. You look great,” she insisted.
“Hmm. It isn’t because I’m a lawyer, is it? I mean, I’ve heard all the lawyer jokes and I know we’re not the most popular people.”
He was deliberately being absurd to calm her, she realized. “It’s not any of those things. You’re handsome, charming, kind and one of the nicest men I’ve ever known.”
Jack winced. “You make me sound like my grandfather. I’d much prefer you thought I was sexy.”
Her lips twitched. “I do think you’re sexy—which you already know. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“But we are in this situation,” he said. “In four months, we’re going to be parents. And I thought we agreed that for the baby’s sake, we should get married.”
“I know we did. But we were wrong.I was wrong,” she told him and, unable to sit still, she stood. “I should never have agreed to it. It’s crazy to think this marriage would ever work. I don’t know what I was thinking to have agreed to it in the first place.”
“You were thinking about what’s best for our baby.” He rose and came up behind her. “Our baby needs a mother and a father, Lily.”
“He or she will have a mother and a father,” she insisted. “We don’t have to be married to be good parents. Lots of couples raise children without being husband and wife.”
“We already covered this, Lily. Neither of us wants our child to grow up being shuffled from one house to the other, splitting time between Mom and Dad on holidays and weekends. I want our baby to have a real home, a real family. I want our baby to have what you never had. I thought you did, too.”
She hated that he was right. She did want that type of home for her baby. She wanted the picture-perfect home for her baby that she’d always longed for, but had never known. The kind of home she’d read about in books when she was a girl where children were loved and felt secure. She wanted to sit at the dinner table together as a family, to decorate the Christmas tree as a family, to bake cookies together and have picnics in the backyard. She wanted her child to have a family and never, ever feel alone as she had. “I do want those things. Making sure my baby feels loved and secure it’s…it’s what’s most important to me.”
“To me, too. And we can make sure our baby is loved and secure by providing him or her with a real home with both of its parents.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face him. “Our child can have that, Lily. All you have to do is marry me.”
He made it sound so easy, so logical. But it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. “What about love, Jack? You know you don’t love me.” And that was the problem. She couldn’t let go of the idea that she wanted to marry for love.
“And you don’t love me. But we both love our baby,” he pointed out.
“But what if that’s not enough? We’ll be trapped in a loveless marriage.”
“I don’t see marriage to you as a trap. I see it as a gift. I’ll be getting a smart, beautiful wife and the mother of my child.”
“And love? Don’t you even believe in love, Jack?”
“There are all kinds of love. Love of family, love of a parent and child, love of a friend.”
“What about love between a man and a woman, a husband and wife? Don’t you believe in that?” she asked. “Don’t you want that?”
“I believe that there are some people, like my parents, who find that kind of connection. I don’t know if it starts out that way or if it’s something that grows over time out of respect and caring for one another. What I do believe in is the power of hormones between a man and a woman,” he told her. He drew his fingertip down her cheek and Lily could feel her already nervous stomach flutter at his touch. “I still want you, Lily. And I think you want me.”
She swallowed past the knot that seemed to have lodged in her throat. “You’re talking about meaningless sex.”
“I’m talking about desire, passion. It’s still there between us. Just like it was that night.”
It was true, Lily admitted silently. The pull between them that had drawn her to him that night and that had led her to breaking all her personal rules by sleeping with him was still there. In fact, it was even stronger now that she’d gotten to know him better. “What if desire isn’t enough to make it work?”
“It’s more than a lot of people have,” he said. “I think we owe it to our baby to at least try.”
Once again he made the whole thing sound so simple, so logical. Jack was a good man, an honest man and she had no doubt that he would be a good father to their child. Yet, it felt wrong to start any marriage this way.
“It’s your call, Lily. You know how I feel, that I think the two of us marrying is the right thing to do for our baby’s sake. So what’s it going to be? Should I go out there and tell everyone that the bride has changed her mind and there isn’t going to be a wedding after all? Or do I go out there and tell the minister to get the show on the road before the ice sculptures melt?”
She took a deep breath and met his gaze. “Tell the minister to get the show on the road,” she told him.
“You won’t be sorry, Lily. I promise.”
She certainly hoped Jack was right, she thought as he disappeared out the door. When she heard the bridal march start once again, Lily picked up her bouquet. As she exited the powder room and started toward the garden where she would pledge to become Jack Cartwright’s wife, she prayed she wasn’t making a mistake that both of them would live to regret.
Six
As he returned to his position at the altar, Jack didn’t miss the looks and whispers that followed him. He glanced over at the front row on the right where his mother sat on the edge of her seat, her white gloves clasped tightly in her hands, a worried expression on her face. His father met his gaze and when Jack nodded, John sat back and took his wife’s hand.
“Everything okay?” Scott asked in a low voice.
“Everything’s fine.”
Despi
te what he told his friend, he wasn’t at all sure everything was fine. Lily had looked terrified when he’d found her in that powder room. She’d been hit by a major case of cold feet. He couldn’t say he blamed her. Her entire world was being turned upside-down. Not only was she pregnant with his baby, she was marrying a man she knew very little about and she was becoming a member of the Cartwright family. In his opinion neither of those things would inspire much confidence. He wasn’t sure which was more daunting—marrying him or marrying into his family because, as much as he loved his family, he knew being a Cartwright wasn’t always easy. A lot of expectations and responsibilities came with the family name and the fortune. He’d had his entire life to learn to deal with both. Lily had had less than two weeks.
When the first chords of the bridal march sounded once again, he stared at the entrance. Despite the fact that she’d agreed to go through with the wedding, he wasn’t at all confident that she would. And just when he thought she had decided against marrying him after all, there she was—standing at the entrance beneath the flowered arbor.