by Teresa Hill
“I took care of him,” Matt said.
“What did you do?”
“Put a private investigator on him. Found three other students he’s talked into his bed, got statements from them, took them to the dean and got him fired from the university. Made it clear to the man that he can apply for all the teachings jobs he wants, but he won’t get them. I’ll make sure of it. He won’t do this to anyone else.”
Jim nodded approvingly. “Good for you, son.”
“You were afraid I was going to beat him up?” Matt asked.
“That’s what I wanted to do.”
“Me, too,” Matt admitted.
“I’m glad you took some more time to think about it. This is more fitting,” Jim said. “I want you to know, too, that I’m very glad Cathie had you to turn to. I mean, I don’t think getting married was the smartest thing the two of you could have done—and just for the record, in case something like this comes up again—don’t you ever make a decision like this based on whether you think I can handle something, whether it’s my heart or some of those narrow-minded, sanctimonious fools I work for. They’re my problem, not yours or my daughter’s.”
“Okay,” Matt said.
“Like I said, not the smartest thing you could have done, but I’m glad you were here for her.”
“I just wanted to help her,” Matt said. “She wanted this baby so much, and I—”
“I know what you were trying to do, and I’ll always be grateful for all you’ve done.”
Done? As in, something he was finished doing? Suddenly, Matt wondered, now that Cathie’s parents knew everything, what exactly she and the baby might need from him now? If she’d pack her things and the baby’s and go home with her parents, let them take care of the two of them?
It only made sense.
If all she’d needed was the protection offered by the illusion of a marriage, he’d given it to her. The illusion had no value to the people she most cared about, because they knew the truth now.
Matt fought to keep anything of what he was feeling from showing in his face. Hell, he didn’t even know what he was feeling. None of it had been real, after all. He hadn’t forgotten that. He didn’t think Cathie had, either. So was that it? It was done? She’d take the baby, and he’d go back to life as he’d known it before she came?
He’d always known that she would, hadn’t he?
It was nothing to bring up this sense of panic inside of him.
Matt hadn’t been scared of anything until he’d made her his wife.
Chapter Twelve
They named the baby Emma, after Cathie’s grandmother, and brought her home from the hospital when she was four days old, when the doctor was finally ready to release Cathie.
She was still worn-out, but ready to be out of the hospital.
She settled into the bed she’d shared with Matt, and he had the baby’s cradle waiting by her side of the bed. Night came and the baby was asleep. Cathie lay there waiting. Finally, she heard Matt come in, obviously trying to be quiet. He went into the bathroom, came out in his pajama bottoms and no shirt.
She saw him bend over the baby’s crib and heard him kiss her forehead and then hesitate as he turned to Cathie. She slipped her hand into his and said, “It’s late. Come to bed.”
He stood there just long enough to worry her. She thought he was going to leave, but instead he walked around to his side of the bed and climbed in.
Cathie sighed in relief. He heard it and was afraid she was in pain, and she had a hard time convincing him she wasn’t. They still hadn’t talked about anything important, like what they were going to do now that she’d told her parents everything.
Well, almost everything.
The only secrets left were between her and Matt, not her and them.
She didn’t think she had the strength to go into it right now and honestly had no idea what she’d say to him.
“Where does it hurt?” Matt rolled over towards her. Those wonderful hands of his settled against her back, working out the soreness there. “Here?”
“All over,” she admitted. “But that feels good.”
She was lying on her side, so he could get to all the sore spots in her poor back.
“Close your eyes and try to relax,” he said. “The munchkin will be howling for her midnight snack soon.”
She would. Howling was the perfect description.
“How can something this tiny make such a racket?” Matt asked.
It took a while for her to realize this wasn’t a continuation of one conversation, but that some time had passed. It felt like she might have slept for all of two minutes, but actually, it had been more than two hours.
She was going to be a zombie before this baby was six weeks old.
The next thing she knew, Matt was piling pillows against the headboard, and she managed to raise up a bit. He put the baby in her arms. Cathie barely had time to push her nightgown out of the way before the baby latched onto her breast and started sucking hard. Cathie gasped. Her daughter had an appetite like a linebacker. Cathie was sore, and would be for the first week or two, the nurse told her.
“Hey, take it easy,” Matt told the baby.
Emma just sucked away.
“Listens really well, doesn’t she?” he said.
He was so funny with her, talking to her like she understood everything. He claimed Emma did, that she put on an act of not understanding just so she could get her way, manipulating them like a pro already.
Cathie smiled and leaned back onto her pillows. She was happy to be back here in this bed with Matt by her side. She thought she was going to nod off for a moment, that she might drop the baby, but Matt sat down beside her, his arms around hers, around the baby, making sure they were both okay.
For a man who claimed to know nothing at all about love, he was so good to them, so protective, so tender, so kind.
He burped the baby, and Cathie coaxed her into waking up and nursing from her other breast. Matt changed her and put her back into her cradle, then came back to bed. He lay on his back and Cathie rolled over and snuggled against his side, thinking it was a sheer miracle that she’d managed to keep from telling him how much she loved him.
But if she was going to tell the truth, the biggest secret of all had to come out: that she loved him, and she’d married him partly because of the baby, but most of all, because she’d hoped he’d learn to love her in return.
She just let it go. A week went by. Then two. Emma was a good baby. All she really wanted to do was eat, sleep and try to talk. Matt was convinced that she thought she was talking, and that everyone else was just stupid for not understanding the little squeaks and grunts she made. He said she was the bossiest female he’d ever met and that things were only going to get worse once she started communicating in English.
He obviously adored her, and Cathie thought the baby adored him, too.
Just love her, Matt. Open up your heart and love her.
He hardly went into the office at all anymore. He claimed there was nothing that important going on there. He moved his laptop into the bedroom next door and between that, his modem, his fax machine and his phone, he took care of what he had to and let the rest slide. He even had people coming to the house for meetings.
The baby had started fussing in the midst of one of them, and he’d grabbed her and taken her downstairs, claiming computer system security discussions were sure to put her to sleep. It did. Cathie had gone downstairs in a pair of sweats with her hair in a ponytail and saw him standing in the middle of the family room, the sleeping baby propped up on his shoulder, as Matt conducted his meeting from there. It had been the most adorable thing.
Another week went by. Before she knew it, she was at her six-week checkup and the doctor was telling her that physically, she was fine, then asking what she planned to do about birth control.
“What?”
The doctor laughed. “Six weeks. Husbands tend to count down to this point.”
“Last thing on your mind?” the doctor said.
“Well…” She remembered sex. Remembered that she liked it very much, and it sounded fine now, in an abstract sort of way. The thought of actually doing it…her whole body winced.
“I get that look a lot from new moms.” The doctor laughed and handed her some condoms. “Remember, I didn’t say you had to do anything. Just know that anytime you feel up to it, it’s fine. But be careful.”
Cathie thanked her and left.
Matt and the baby were waiting for her in the reception area. Matt had four women crowded around him admiring either him or the baby. It was the same everywhere they went. Cathie couldn’t blame the women. There was something about a big, strong, gorgeous man and a little baby that absolutely snared women. Especially seeing all the strength of the man turn into something so tender with the baby. Who’d have thought that tenderness could be so attractive?
Okay, Matt looked great at whatever he did, and she’d thought she knew and loved everything about him already, but she’d been wrong. Seeing him with the baby, she fell more and more in love every day.
He could be a wonderful father, if he let himself. And a wonderful husband, if he wanted to go on being her husband.
He looked up and spotted her, managed to disperse his and Emma’s admirers and was by her side a moment later, looking worried. “You okay?”
Cathie nodded. “Fine.”
“Tired?”
“How can I be tired? All I did was get up and get dressed and let you drive me to the doctor’s office.”
“But you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted, thinking that he babied her as much as he did the baby. How in the world would she have done this without him? She couldn’t imagine.
He took her home and insisted she go back to bed.
Cathie went into the bedroom to get out of her clothes. She put on a nightgown and was putting her slacks back in the closet when Matt walked in.
“What’s that?” he asked, bending over to pick up something off the floor at his feet. “Condoms?”
Cathie closed her eyes and groaned. She’d forgotten about stuffing them into her pocket. They must have fallen out when she folded her slacks.
Matt looked completely bewildered. “Want to tell me something?”
“The doctor gave them to me.”
“Why?”
“Just in case,” she said, concentrating very hard on getting her slacks on a hanger.
“In case of what?”
“In case we needed one. So I won’t get pregnant. She doesn’t want me on the Pill while I’m breastfeeding, and she offered to talk to me about other options, but…well, it just all seemed too complicated to even think about at the moment. So, she gave me those,” Cathie said. “It’s been six weeks, you know.”
“No, I don’t.” He frowned. “You mean, if we wanted to…we could?”
She nodded, and then it was all she could do not to cry.
“Can’t wait, huh?” Matt said gently, taking her into his arms and holding her close.
She wrapped her arms around him, feeling truly miserable. “I’m sorry.”
He kissed her forehead. She could hear the smile in his words. “It’s all right, Cathie.”
And then he did the nicest thing. He just hugged her. No demands. No sweet-talk. No guilt. He just held onto her, offering any kind of comfort he could give her, as generously as he gave so many things to her.
She snuggled against him, pressing closer, thinking there was absolutely no place on earth that made her feel like she did in his arms. Nowhere as safe or as comforting as this.
His body was all lean muscle and pure strength. Solid. Broad. Reassuring. Warm. Everything. She wrapped her arms more tightly against him, and for the first time in what seemed like forever when she did that, he eased himself away ever so slightly.
She backed up, stared up at him, wondering what she’d done. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he insisted.
“Matt? I know it’s something,” she said, and in one little shift of her weight, certain parts of her body bumped against certain parts of his, and she understood. “Oh.”
He grinned sheepishly. “Nothing for you to worry about. It’ll keep.”
But she felt that little spark now. The one that had been gone completely from her mind in the midst of baby exhaustion. She remembered. This wasn’t just a man to stay by her side through every painful moment of childbirth and who’d fallen completely under the spell of her daughter. He was also the man who’d dazzled her in this bed for the past few months.
There had been a time when she’d been something other than a mother. Despite all the little aches and pains left in her body and the way it still didn’t feel like her body again, she did remember this.
She remembered kissing him slowly and deeply and how it felt when he rolled her over onto her back, and she sank into the cloud mattress, so soft at her back, with this big, hard body stretched out on top of hers. Those sexy muscles in his arms and the power of him moving inside of her.
Her whole body started to tingle. Aches and pains faded away to nothing but a bad memory. She felt his body stirring against hers, and he leaned down and kissed her softly, slowly, deeply.
“You know, I think it’s starting to come back to me,” she said, pressing herself more fully against him.
“I can wait,” he claimed, the gentleness of his mouth and his hands at her back in direct contrast to the tension she felt gathering in his body.
“Maybe I don’t want to wait,” she said, thinking she was living on borrowed time and had been for a while now. A woman had to make the most of borrowed time. “Where’s the baby?”
He kissed her again. “Asleep, for the moment.”
“Can we turn out the lights and close the blinds? Can we make it as dark as possible?”
He grinned against her mouth. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to see me.”
“But I like seeing you,” he claimed.
“But everything’s still not back the way it was. With my body, I mean. It’s all kind of…I don’t know. Puffy and soft.”
“I like soft,” he said kissing her neck.
Oh, that felt good. She really loved what he could do with his mouth on her neck. She squirmed to get closer to him, her body sinking into his. “I have missed you, Matt.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” He picked her up and carried her to bed, setting her gently on the covers and turning out the light, as she’d asked him to do, and closing the blinds.
She got under the covers and pulled them up to her chin. He grinned down at her and started tugging at her nightgown.
“Come on. You’re covered,” he said, pulling it over her head and throwing it into the corner of the room.
She clutched at the sheet. “My breasts are still tender.”
He cupped them gently through the sheet. “Okay. Got your condom, Mrs. Monroe?”
She held up the hand that was still clutching it. He took it from her and put it on the nightstand, then started unbuttoning his shirt. He pulled it off, and it was her turn to grin.
His body was so beautiful. Hard in all the right places. Muscular in some, sleek in others. It was still hard to believe he was actually her lover or in any way her husband.
It was like he took her to another planet when he touched her, and nothing about that had changed. It was all right there waiting for them.
She forgot what still hurt and what was still tender. He moved slowly and very deliberately with every touch, and it wasn’t long before she’d practically wrapped herself around him and begged him to make love to her.
He slipped inside of her very slowly and carefully, the way he had after she’d almost gone into labor much too soon, and barely moved inside of her, rocking ever so gently back and forth. She wanted to crawl inside of him completely and never come out.
To kiss him and never stop. To have him never take his hands off her.
She had tears in her eyes by the end, and she knew it took all the self-control he had to hold his body in check in the last moments. He groaned out loud and kissed her and moved against her, his big, hard body shuddering in her arms, and then she was, too. It was like falling, the easiest thing in the world, being with him this way.
He kissed her for a long time afterward, and then slipped out of bed to get rid of the condom and was back, pulling her on top of him and just hanging onto her.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You should sleep while you can,” he said, kissing her softly, and she let herself drift off in his arms.
Matt stayed there beside her, but he didn’t sleep. He just wanted to be here with Cathie in his arms and the baby in her cradle beside their bed. Their cloud bed, in their bedroom, in their house.
He wondered how long she was planning to stay, how much more time they had, how much more complicated this could get before it was done.
She still hadn’t said anything to him about confessing everything to her parents. He’d been waiting for a conversation that had never come. They’d brought the baby home from the hospital, and then lived in a sleep-deprived haze, when nothing else really mattered except taking care of the baby and Cathie getting her strength back.
He’d thought, No problem. They’d made a deal, and he’d never try to back out on his end of it. For as long as she needed him, he’d be here. Cathie and the baby would be here.
But she’d told her parents, and they’d made it clear that they would support her, no matter what. The biggest reason for their marriage was gone. She had to realize that. Matt tried not to count the days he imagined they had left, tried not to get used to living like this, because he knew it wouldn’t last.
He thought about asking her to stay, because he liked having her here, and he liked the baby. He’d worry about them when they were gone, and honestly, there was no reason for them to go. Life had fallen into a pattern that felt… He thought about what word fit best. Good. Better than good. Comfortable. Not lonely. Maybe even happy?