Deep down, Erik knew that someone was going to have to break this impasse or they were doomed, but for the life of him, he couldn’t summon up the courage to be the one.
On more than one occasion, as he lay alone in his bed at night with Helen just down the hall, he wondered if they shouldn’t call off the ceremony, but then he thought of his child and his resolve returned. He would see this through for the baby’s sake. And maybe someday, somehow, he and Helen would find their way back to each other.
The wedding definitely wasn’t a scene out of Brides magazine. Oh, the setting by the lake was spectacular. Just as Helen had envisioned, there were plenty of flowers in full bloom, even though it was well after azalea season, the swans were gliding across the water and the fourteen guests—she hadn’t bent and allowed her friends to make a bigger production of the ceremony—all seemed to be disgustingly pleased. Cal and Maddie were holding hands. Dana Sue had her arm linked through Ronnie’s. And Annie was stealing besotted glances at Ty.
In contrast, Helen stood stoically beside Erik, wishing she were in some wedding chapel in Las Vegas with an Elvis impersonator as the minister. It would have been more fitting, given what a joke this ceremony was.
More than once she’d thought Erik was about to open up to her and share his real feelings. Even if he’d shouted at her some more, it would have been better than the grim determination and silence that greeted her each morning across the breakfast table. She’d almost forced the issue, but her courage had failed her. She was disgusted with herself about that, too. She’d faced down high-powered opponents in the courtroom. She’d outtalked and outnegotiated most of them. But she couldn’t seem to initiate a conversation that mattered with the man she was about to marry, a man she’d cared enough about to choose to be the father of her child.
A thousand times she’d told herself to back out of this farce, but here she was, waiting to say the words that would tie her to Erik forever—or at least until one of them could wriggle out of it.
“Do you promise,” the minister began.
It was all so much blah-blah-blah as far as Helen could tell. Still, she said, “I do,” when it was called for because anything else would cause a scene no one in town would forget for the next century.
His own vows were spoken with only slightly more enthusiasm.
And then it was over and their small group was moving on to the reception at Sullivan’s that Dana Sue insisted they have. Erik had even baked one of his spectacular wedding cakes with a vanilla fondant frosting and a profusion of white orchids spilling down the sides. When Helen saw it, she almost burst into tears. Somehow he’d seen into her heart and gotten the cake exactly right.
For the first time since he’d found out about the pregnancy, Erik looked at her with something other than anger or cool indifference.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, actually looking worried. “Do you feel okay?”
Swiping at a tear that leaked out, she could only nod.
“Is it the cake?” He followed the direction of her gaze.
She nodded. “It’s so beautiful.”
His expression softened. “Wedding cakes are my specialty. How could I make ours anything less than perfect?”
Then, to her dismay, she burst into tears, mentally blaming her reaction on hormones and not the sweetness of his gesture. Erik took her hand in his and dragged her into the kitchen, then pulled her into his arms. She felt a sense of relief out of all proportion to the embrace. Maybe he didn’t hate her, after all.
“It’s okay,” he said, awkwardly patting her back. “It’s going to be okay, I swear it.”
“How can it be? I’ve made such a mess of things. No marriage is supposed to start like this.”
She felt his chest heave with a sigh.
“I’ve done my share of idiotic things lately, too,” he confessed. “I’m sorry.”
She looked up at him, seeing the regret on his face even through the blur of tears in her eyes. “I never meant to hurt you or make you angry,” she told him.
“Me, neither,” he said. He touched her cheek, wiped away the dampness. “Let’s just start from today and see how things go, okay? Can we try to do that?”
“You sound as if there’s all the time in the world to figure things out.”
“By my calculations we have just over six months ’til the baby comes,” he said. His lips twitched with the faint beginnings of a smile as he added, “Since one of us has an obsessive-compulsive personality, surely that’s enough time to reach a few conclusions about where we go from here.”
Helen recognized an olive branch when it was extended to her. “Deal,” she said, holding out her hand.
Erik ignored her hand and settled his mouth on hers, instead. It was the first time he’d kissed her since he’d found out about the baby. The kiss was a reminder that not everything was bad about this predicament they were in. Desire blossomed inside her like the promise of a new beginning, but before she could let it sweep her away, she remembered something else, and a sob caught in her throat.
“What?” Erik asked.
“We’re not even going on a honeymoon,” she whispered. Not taking advantage of the one thing between them that was so right seemed like a terrible way to begin their life together.
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to be alone with me,” he admitted, then grinned. “But I took a chance, anyway.”
Her eyes widened. “What kind of chance?”
“I booked us a suite in Paris for a few days.”
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him in wonder. “Paris? How did you know I’ve always wanted to go there?”
He laughed at that. “Wasn’t a shopping trip to Paris supposed to be your reward if you met your goals in that deal you had going with Maddie and Dana Sue a while back?”
“You knew about that?”
“You have no idea the things I know,” he said. “So, do you want to go or not?”
“I have court on Monday morning,” she lamented.
He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Barb spoke to the judge and rescheduled, just in case you said yes. She moved all your appointments for the rest of the week, as well. We’ll come back on Thursday and you can do a little catch-up in the office on Friday and you’ll have the whole weekend to recover from jet lag. How does that sound?”
“It sounds amazing!” she said, clasping her hands behind his head and giving him a kiss. “Let’s do it.”
Just then Dana Sue stuck her head into the kitchen and grinned. “You know about Paris?” she guessed.
Helen nodded.
“I thought that would make you happy.”
“Were you in on it?” Helen asked her.
“It was Erik’s idea,” Dana Sue said. “He simply asked me what I thought. I just told him I hoped he had a huge limit on his credit card.”
Helen bristled. “He won’t need it. I have mine.”
Erik shook his head. “We’re married now. I can buy you a couple of those fancy blouses you love so much.” His eyes lit up. “Maybe even some sexy lingerie.”
Annie stepped into the kitchen just as he said that and Dana Sue made an elaborate show of covering her daughter’s ears and elbowing Ty back out of the kitchen.
“Mom!” Annie protested, standing her ground. “I know guys like sexy lingerie.” She grinned at Erik. “I’d love to see the look on your face when you go shopping for it, though.”
“I’ll be off at Le Cordon Bleu taking a cooking class,” he said.
“You’re supposed to do things together on your honeymoon,” Annie scolded.
Erik winked at her. “Can you see Helen in a cooking class?”
“About as easily as I can see you in a lingerie boutique,” Annie teased. “Come on. You have to stick together. Promise me. I want pictures.”
Helen listened to the banter with a sense of wonder. It was surprisingly relaxed and normal, almost the way it had been between Erik and her before he’d found out about the baby.
Maybe they could recapture that connection again, after all.
“How was the wedding?” Frances asked when Karen and Elliott got home that evening.
“Tense,” Karen said. “But something happened during the reception. I don’t know what, but things seemed to be better.” She turned to Elliott. “Did you notice that?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t paying much attention to Helen and Erik,” he said. “I had other things on my mind.”
Suddenly Frances was on her feet and bustling around the living room gathering up her things. “I’ll see you two tomorrow,” she said.
Karen frowned. “Don’t run off. Stay and have some wedding cake. I brought a piece home for you.”
Frances winked at Elliott. “I’ll have it at home with a nice cup of tea. You two have more important things to do.”
“No, we don’t,” Karen protested. “We’re just going to sit here and unwind.”
“Enjoy yourselves. That’s what I’m going to do at my place—unwind. Mack and Daisy were a handful tonight. I’m a little tired.”
Karen regarded her worriedly. “Were they too much for you?”
“No, of course not,” Frances said. “Good night.”
She was out the door before Karen could ask any more questions.
“That was odd,” she said to Elliott. “She loves to stay and hear all about whatever we’ve been doing. I really hope the kids didn’t wear her out.”
“I think she was just trying to be subtle.”
“Subtle?”
“She knew I wanted to have you all to myself,” he explained.
Karen met his gaze and suddenly she knew what was on his mind, what had been on his mind for weeks now. “This is about you and me, isn’t it?”
“Let’s sit down,” he said, drawing her to an easy chair and pulling her onto his lap. “I couldn’t stop thinking about us today.”
“That’s just because we were at a wedding. Everyone feels a little misty and romantic at a wedding, even one as rushed and crazy as this one.”
“Does that include you?” he asked. “Did you give any thought to where we’re headed?”
“I thought we’d agreed to move slowly,” she said, though her pulse was racing in anticipation.
He traced the outline of her lips. “I’ve changed my mind. I know what I want. I want us to be a family, Karen. I don’t want you to have to struggle anymore. If we’re partners, I can share things with you, take some of the burden off your shoulders. I love your kids as if they were my own. I’d even like to adopt them, if it could be worked out and it was something all of you wanted.”
The picture he painted held tremendous allure, but she was still hesitant. She knew her feelings for him were deep, that it might even be love. And she trusted that his feelings for her were solid and true. The kids adored him. Frances, the closest thing she had to a mother, approved. So why was she hesitating?
Ironically, it was because of one of the things she’d so admired about him—his attachment to his family. Staunch Catholics, they were unhappy that she’d been divorced and had made no pretense about their disapproval. She’d seen it written all over his mother’s face and his sisters’ when she and Elliott had shown up at his niece’s birthday party.
“Your family won’t be happy,” she said at last. “And I can’t bear to be the cause of a rift between you.”
“I’ll deal with my family,” he stated. “They’ll come around.”
“Elliott, my being divorced strikes at the very core of their beliefs,” she reminded him. “I should have anticipated that before I even met them. So should you.”
“You could have your marriage annulled,” he suggested.
“I’m not Catholic,” she reminded him. “I wasn’t married in the Catholic church. It was a civil ceremony.”
“Then the church won’t even recognize it as a marriage, anyway,” he said. “Look, I don’t know all the church law on this, but it doesn’t matter to me. I love you. You’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. We’ll work it out. We can meet with a priest and he’ll tell us what needs to be done.”
He made it sound so simple, but there was one thing he wasn’t considering, the one thing that mattered most to her. “I won’t do anything that will suddenly turn my children into bastards,” she said fervently. She met his gaze. “I won’t do that to them, Elliott. I won’t. As useless as their father has turned out to be, he was their father. They were legitimate. I grew up not having a clue who my father was. It made me feel unwanted and ashamed. My mother abandoning me, emotionally at first and then physically, only added to that. I never felt good enough. I know now that I am a good, decent person, but I had to fight to accept that. I don’t want my kids to ever struggle with that kind of insecurity.”
“But they’ll have me,” Elliott said, his hand on her cheek, the touch meant to be reassuring. “Together, we’ll see to it that they know who they are, that they’re loved and respected and cherished. If we can work it out, I’ll even legally adopt them. It won’t be the same for them as it was for you, I promise.”
Karen wanted to believe it could be that way, wanted to believe she hadn’t come this close to finding the man of her dreams, only to have him slip away.
“We can talk to the priest,” she said at last. “I’ll listen to what we’d have to do to be married in your church and to win your family’s approval. That’s as much as I can do for now.”
His eyes filled with relief. “Then we’re engaged?”
“No,” she said adamantly, then tempered her tone at the flash of hurt in his eyes. “Maybe engaged to be engaged.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “That’ll do for now. It will all work out,” he said with a certainty she was far from feeling.
She recalled the condemnation in his mother’s eyes when she’d realized Karen was divorced. His sisters had been kinder, but no more enthusiastic about the relationship. Karen knew that winning them over was going to be an uphill battle.
Then she looked into Elliott’s eyes and saw the love shining there and thought that maybe, just maybe, it was a battle worth fighting.
Helen returned from Paris with seven new pairs of shoes, six new designer suits and a whole suitcase filled with sexy French lingerie. She also came home with new hope for the future of her marriage. The honeymoon had been a brief, but idyllic four days. She’d even learned to make a roux at the exclusive culinary school, though when she would ever need to do that escaped her. It had been fun, though, seeing Erik in his element. And as Annie had insisted, they’d come home with pictures. Hundreds of them, it seemed, including one of a red-faced Erik amid a dozen mannequins dressed in lacy bras and panties.
Right this minute, those pictures were spread out over a table on the patio at The Corner Spa as Maddie and Dana Sue pored over them. Helen ignored their envious sighs as she held out a foot and admired one of her new pairs of shoes, high-heeled mules with a pointed toe in a leather so soft it felt like butter. She figured she only had a few more weeks before she’d be too ungainly to walk in shoes like these.
Maddie glanced over and caught the direction of her gaze. “Did you do anything over there besides shop for shoes?” she inquired.
“Of course we did. You’re looking at the pictures to prove it.” She grinned wickedly. “And there were quite a few things we did that I don’t care to discuss. There are no pictures of any of that.”
“So things are good again between the two of you?” Maddie asked, her eyes filled with concern.
“Not perfect, but improving day by day,” Helen replied. “It’ll take a while before Erik trusts me again, and I’m not sure how things are going to be after the baby arrives.”
Dana Sue frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
“He told me from the start we could end the marriage then if that’s what I wanted,” she said, her voice hitching despite her efforts not to think that far ahead.
“He told you that because you were so determined
to raise the baby on your own,” Dana Sue said with exasperation. “Erik loves you.”
“He’s never said that,” Helen said. “Not to me.”
Dana Sue sighed. “I told him that was going to come back to haunt him,” she muttered. “Look, while he’s working on the whole trust thing, maybe you need to try to take a few things on faith.”
Maddie gave Dana Sue a wry look. “You’re talking to a woman who sees things as black or white.”
“Funny,” Dana Sue said, her gaze pinned on Helen. “I always thought she was a woman who understood that actions speak louder than words. How many times have you told a client not to listen to all the sweet words her lying, cheating husband utters, but to watch what he does?”
Helen had no idea what to say to that, so she gathered up her photos and stood up. “I need to get to the office. Barb says my calendar’s jammed starting Monday and there’s a pile of messages, even though I was gone less than a week. I need to make a dent in all that today.”
Maddie looked alarmed. “Don’t you dare try to do too much on your first day back. A whirlwind overseas trip is hard enough on your body. You don’t need more stress.”
“It’s just one day,” Helen reminded her. “I’ll have the whole weekend to recuperate while Erik’s busy at the restaurant.”
“I’m just saying—” Maddie began, but Helen cut her off.
“I know what you’re saying,” she said, bending down to give her friend a hug. “And I love you for worrying, but I won’t do anything foolish, I promise.”
“Okay, then,” Maddie said. “But I’m calling your office later. Barb will tell me if you’re misbehaving.”
“Only if she wants to lose her job,” Helen retorted as she picked up her briefcase and headed toward the patio exit, rather than going through the building.
“Hold it,” Maddie hollered after her. “You need to go through the spa. Elliott’s going to walk you to your office.”
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