And it seemed only moments later they were there. She barely caught sight of the tall, wrought-iron fence, before Mac was pushing a button that made the double gates electronically swing open. "There are a ton of things I need to show you—like how the security system works. But there's time enough to talk about all that in the morning. I suspect you just want to get settled in and get your feet up. I want you to know, though, that the security system's state of the art. You're safe here, Kel."
"I know." It was the one thing she hadn't worried about in the last two weeks. Since the night she'd been attacked in the parking lot, Kate and the family had cosseted her nonstop, but the security she felt with him was a world apart. She'd feel safe with a lion if Mac were around. It's just the way he was. At this precise moment, though, she suddenly discovered that feeling safe from criminals and feeling safe with her new groom were two entirely different things.
Her pulse started skittering. Once the gates closed behind them, the look of anything civilized disappeared, and the drive seemed to go on forever. Even with the blinding, slashing snow, she could make out certain things. The private road twisted around a creek bed. Pines nestled around one turn, their branches bowed with heavy skirts of snow; a stand of virgin hardwoods stretched in another direction, then a field that roiled and curved and looked as if it was blanketed with whipped cream—there were no footprints in the snow, no sign of man. But up and around a sloping knoll, the house came into view.
The baby suddenly kicked, and Kelly's hand instinctively covered her abdomen. Even with the dim visibility, she recognized the property and house.
Mac had brought her here once, a few days before. Two weeks was an incredibly short time to upend your whole life. He'd insisted she see it to decide if she could live here. Possibly he really meant to give her one last-ditch chance to say no to the whole marriage idea, but truthfully, Kelly never felt as if she had a chance or a choice. The attack had petrified her. She had to protect her baby. Nothing else mattered, but the last two weeks had still felt like a fast-moving train. There hadn't been time to catch her breath, much less figure out what all these monumental changes and decisions really meant.
She still hadn't had that time. But her first look at the house had touched something inside her. And it did now, even more.
The place was lit up. Snow spiraled in the outside porch lights, and inside lamps shone in the windows like welcoming beacons. Kelly remembered the first time she'd seen Kate Fortune's house. She had grown up on a struggling single mom's budget, and the opulence of the home base Fortune mansion had her bug-eyed. It just went on and on—the landscaped grounds, objets d'art, priceless rugs, loot and luxuries she'd never seen outside of movies. Kelly remembered thinking God, how easy it would be to develop a lust attack for material possessions. But working with Kate had somehow sabotaged her developing that vice.
She'd seen firsthand what a life of privilege was about, and she'd choose a mortgage anytime over having to live in a museum.
But Mac's place was no museum. The house was stone. Two sturdy stories, with gleaming casement windows and gables and arched doorways. Compared to her three-room apartment, it was monster-size—and she hadn't seen all of it—but the place had so much character and personality that it looked like … well, it looked like a home. Smoke chugged out of the chimneys and snow cuddled in the windowsills. Whoever had cleared the walk had left the shovel in the porch overhang. Maybe an ordinary person could live here. Like the kind of person who would forget to put away the shovel. Like her.
She only glimpsed the front for a second, then Mac punched a button and the garage doors opened. A Jeep already took up one parking place—not a fancy Jeep, but one with mud-crusted tires and a little dent in its fanny. It wouldn't particularly have startled her, except that Kelly had never seen Mac dressed less formally than a suit, formally ready for a shot in GQ. "The Jeep is yours?"
"Yeah." Mac was already climbing out, the Jeep obviously the last thing on his mind. If he hadn't suddenly rolled his shoulders, she wouldn't have realized that he was whip-tired from the challenging drive—not counting everything else that had happened that day. "Just head inside, Kelly. No one's here—I can't remember if you met Benz and Martha the other day. They live on the far side of the property, do some housekeeping and chores for me, and I've lined them up to come in more often. While I'm at work, I don't want you here alone, especially when you're this far pregnant. But for a few days, I thought you might want to explore the place on your own and not feel like strangers were hovering over you. If you don't remember the layout, that door leads to the kitchen—just settle in wherever you want. I'll follow you in two seconds—I just want to check a few things out here first. The house has a generator if we lose power, and the way this storm's building we could be holed up for a couple of days—oops."
"Oops?" Somehow Kelly didn't think that expression got much of a workout in Mac's normal vocabulary, and suddenly there was that potent quicksilver smile again.
"Yeah, I don't know where my head was. Here I'm rambling on about silly subjects like blizzards, when I should have remembered there are bigger priorities. The bathroom is the first door on the left," he informed her.
She chuckled, and for the craziest moment they shared a smile. A real smile. For an instant she forgot he was a sexy hunk, forgot he was the formidably powerful Mac Fortune, forgot he'd been sucked into protecting the woman his brother got pregnant. For that instant, Mac was just … a man. A man with rumpled dark hair and the shadow of whiskers on his chin and a smile that warmed up those cool green eyes. A man she wanted to know. Not had to get to know.
But he had that generator thing he wanted to look at, so she hustled inside. After shedding her coat on a kitchen chair, she kicked off her shoes and peeled promptly for the teal-and-white bathroom she saw off the kitchen.
When she washed her hands, she caught sight of herself in the vanity mirror and immediately considered hiding out in the bathroom—like for the next two weeks. She'd looked worse. She just couldn't remember when. Her fine blond hair was tumbling down, her makeup long gone and the elegant cream satin dress looked silly over her basketball-size tummy. The bride of Frankenstein surely looked more put-together than this … but objectively Kelly knew that vanity was a pretty silly thing to worry about. Mac had no reason to care what she looked like.
It was just that this was the part of the day she'd dreaded a hundred times more than the ceremony. Facing her new husband. Alone. There was no question or worry about intimacy—even if she weren't seven months pregnant, she couldn't imagine being the kind of woman who would remotely attract Mac. Besides, he'd already broached that lion in its den, and so had she. They had reasons to marry. They had no reason to sleep together—or to feel awkward about that. But the average new bride would undoubtedly be flying into her lover's arms by now … and Kelly didn't know what to do, what to say, or even how to start the whole business of living together.
Well, postponing it wasn't getting the job done—or making it any easier. After running a quick brush through her hair, she charged out. Immediately she noticed that the back door was bolted and the outside lights shut off—and Mac must have hung up her coat because it had disappeared—so he was obviously in the house somewhere.
She padded through the kitchen, trying to remember the downstairs layout. The east side of the house held the kitchen, a long dining room with cushioned window seats and then a library/study kind of room with a fireplace and ceiling-tall bookshelves and a fat, plush, Oriental carpet in a million colors. She half hoped to find Mac there—she'd already identified that room as a great private haven—but no dice.
Across the hall was a polished staircase leading up, and although she didn't remember much about the west side of the house—she didn't have to. She promptly found Mac in the giant living room. And one look from the doorway was enough to make restless nerves prowl through her pulse again.
The room was … stupendous. The ceiling and walls had all be
en paneled in heart-of-redwood. A stone fireplace arched to the beamed ceiling and was big enough to roast a boar. None of the furnishings were exactly fancy. They were just ultracool guy stuff—a ten-million-button entertainment center, throne-size chairs, two long couches, sturdy antiques with a western flavor, fabrics in a forest green that complemented the rich redwood. The whole darn room was perfect—at least for a guy—except for the pile of battered suitcases and boxes all over the place.
Mac had shed his tux coat and unlatched the buttons at the top of his shirt. Until he saw her, he was hunkered down by the hearth, getting a fire going. Flames were already dancing, licking the kindling, warning the whole room with the tangy scent of pine—but all she could see were her waiflike suitcases cluttering up his elegant room.
He stood up with a smile. "I was wondering if you got lost."
"I'd probably better tell you now—I've got the geographical sense of a deaf bat. I can get lost in a room with one door. You've got a beautiful home, Mac."
"Your home now, too." He motioned to the piled suitcases. "I had your things moved this afternoon so you wouldn't have to be carrying anything on your own—but I couldn't guess on the bigger items like furniture. I thought we could go over to your apartment in a few days? And then you could choose whatever you wanted to bring here—"
"Um, most of my stuff is pretty much early-attic. I don't think anything is exactly going to fit in here too well."
"We'll find room. Or just move some of my things out. For that matter, if you want to redecorate or change something, all you have to do is say. And in the meantime, I didn't mean to dump everything here—or leave it for you to carry. But without asking you first, I didn't know where you wanted to sleep. Do you remember the upstairs?"
"To be honest, no." Actually she remembered the master bedroom—Mac's bedroom—with embarrassing clarity. But she'd been too nervous that day to pay much attention to anything specific about the house.
"Well … upstairs there are five spare bedrooms. I figured you'd want to choose two—one to fix up for the baby and one for you? But I didn't know which ones would suit you without asking. I also thought, you must be exhausted after this long day—maybe you'd just like to pick a bed to sleep in tonight, and save any other decisions until tomorrow or when you feel up to it."
"That sounds fine. I really don't care where I lay my head tonight." Kelly thought this was going like a dream—only too much so. He didn't seem to notice that her suitcases looked like Little Orphan Annie had come to visit. A small tray on the coffee table held two glasses—the one with milk was obviously considerately meant for her. He'd eased into discussing the sleeping arrangements the same way he'd handled the wedding, the drive, everything—Kelly didn't know what she expected, but it was never this level of perception and thoughtfulness. He was taking care of her as if she was precious china, for Pete's sake, when he'd been stuck with this marriage no different than she had.
"We can either go upstairs now and get you settled in … or maybe you'd like to just put your feet up in front of the fire and unwind for a while—"
"Mac." She reached for the glass of milk and gulped down a slug. "Don't you dare say one more kind thing. You're just making me miserable."
"Miserable?"
Instantly he quit messing with the fire and surged to his feet. "Hell, why didn't you say something? It is the baby? Are you sick—?"
"No, no, it's not that kind of miserable. I just feel … look, I'm disrupting your whole life. It's one thing to believe we had good reasons for doing this, and another to figure out how to be comfortable together. Everywhere I look you have got this great house all set up for a bachelor, and suddenly you're stuck with a woman who goes in for lace curtains and a pink couch. Somehow we've got to figure out how to talk the same language."
Mac looked confused. "There's no problem, Kelly. If you want lace curtains in here—"
"No. Holy kamoly. No. They'd look awful." The mental picture of frothy curtains against the rich, dark heart-of-redwood almost made her laugh. "I didn't mean I cared about anything like that. I just … would you mind if I asked you some blunt, nosy questions?"
"Of course not. Shoot." He settled in one of the massive forest green chairs and motioned her to take the other.
She considered a straight chair—knowing how hard it was to get in and out of anything these days—but the only straight chair in the room was a mile from Mac. So she sank into the luxuriously fat cushions of the chair across from him and started in. "There are so many things we talked about before. I know you realized how frightened I was the night I was attacked—"
"I know. And I just wish I could change things, Kelly, but I'm afraid criminals tend to prey on a family like the Fortunes."
"I understand that now. But when I fell in love with your brother, I'm afraid I never even thought about his being a Fortune—or how that could affect me or my child." She chugged another gulp of milk. "What I'm trying to say, though, is that your asking me to marry you solved so many things. Just from the angle of protection alone, I've got you behind me, and the Fortune family and those nice, big, tall gates."
"And your baby will have a name."
She nodded. "Yes. He—or she—will have the last name he's entitled to, and the family relationships that go with that. Securing a future for my baby—Mac, that's everything to me. But we've been through all that, too. All those papers you had me sign. They were all a benefit to me. To my child. You even built an easy out for me into all those legalese papers—"
Mac cocked a black-stockinged foot on the coffee table. From his quizzical expression, he still didn't understand where she was leading this conversation. "The trust we set up for the baby was to secure his future no matter what we choose to do down the road. And we talked about this, Kelly. You're especially vulnerable now, this late in a pregnancy—and right after the baby's born, too. But those circumstances aren't going to be the same, down the pike, and that means you could want to make different choices. We both agreed there's no reason this marriage has to last if it stops working at some point."
Kelly again made a gesture of frustration. "Yes. All that's great. I know all the advantages for me and the baby. But that's just it. It's so one-sided. What on earth is in this arrangement for you?"
Mac's eyebrows arched as if the answer to that question should have been obvious to her. "It was because of my brother that you were put in danger. We may never know if that jerk meant to kidnap you, but there've been kidnappings in the family before. Con artists, thieves, blackmail schemes tried on us. And your relationship with Chad made the society columns often enough to make the public aware that you're pregnant with a Fortune child."
"But it was Chad who put me in that situation. Not you. None of it was your fault, Mac."
"Fault, no. But responsibility is a different thing. We had a problem on the table that had to be solved—keeping you and the child safe. If fixing that were as simple as hiring security for you, anyone in the family could have done it. It wasn't that simple. You weren't raised in this kind of family. There were risks you had no possible experience to know how to cope with. And money alone was no way to do right for the baby, either." Mac hesitated, and then reached for the glass of scotch from the tray. "Did Chad ever tell you much about our family?"
"Some. Not much. I know your mother died when you were around ten—which had to be terribly hard for you. And I know you're the oldest, that there's a big age gap between you and the twins. I've met Chloe, because she and Chad were so close—"
"Thick as thieves," Mac concurred. "And much as I love them, both of them are hell on wheels—my father just seemed to lose heart after Mom died, let them run wild. But Chad has had the hardest time finding his way. I know his good qualities, and I know you do, too. But growing up, I was so much older that I really felt to blame for not being a stronger influence."
She shook her head. "I understand what you're saying. You felt extra responsible because the baby was Chad's. But th
is was still your brother's mistake. And mine. Not yours."
"That's my nephew or niece you're carrying. Blood kin. And it could be the closest to a child I'll ever have. Making sure that relationship was a legal tie—"
"Would give you the right to interfere in his upbringing?"
Mac hadn't ducked any blunt questions she'd asked him before, and he didn't evade this one. "To a point. Yes. I wanted a vote in all those million things that come up when you're raising a child—schools, health care, security, the chance to give the kid some coaching and time from the male gender side of the fence—"
"Mac, for heaven's sake, I'd have let you have those things, anyway. And down the road, if we don't agree on issues like that, I assume we'll fight—but no silly legal piece of paper would stop me from telling you if I thought you were over-interfering. But back to what you said a moment ago … why on earth would you think this is your only chance at a child? Why haven't you married?"
She caught a flash of humor in his eyes. "Um … is this where the nosy part of those questions kicks in?"
"Mac, I'm not just asking to be nosy." She struggled to find the right words to explain. "I'm trying to figure out how to make this work for you, not just me. I look around this place and it's a bachelor's paradise. Suddenly you're stuck with a woman who likes clutter and lace and flowers. For that matter, the house I grew up in would probably fit in this living room. I don't know how two people could be more different. And if you never really wanted to be married—"
"All right, I can see where you're headed with this now. And the truth is—I never did plan to marry." Mac scratched his chin. "The whole family's pushed hard for me to tie the knot. I'm not sure I can explain why I haven't. Maybe a wariness just built up over time. Although there are plenty of happy marriages in the family, those aren't the ones I see. If someone's coming to me, it's because there's trouble. Everyone always starts out talking about how much they're in love, but I see what happens when the chips go down, how lives are torn up in the name of love, how the kids are ripped apart when things don't go right. To be honest—"
THE HONOR BOUND GROOM Page 3