Commissioned In White (Art of Love Series)

by McDonald, Donna

  “Yes I am,” Brooke replied. “I appreciate Shane leaving the furniture. If you guys ever need any of it though, just say the word.”

  “We don’t need the furniture. There’s no room in the house. But I’d sure like to have the contents of his nightstand right now,” Reesa joked.

  Brooke laughed. “I think I know what you mean, and it’s too late. I watched Shane empty the whole box into the trash, thanking the creator he didn’t need them anymore. I could have probably used them, but there’s no real etiquette for passing along unused birth control to your stepsister, is there? Even the Larson men have some sense of decorum.”

  Reesa snorted and ran a trembling hand through her hair. “I can’t believe Shane just threw them all away after investing in the biggest box he could buy. How am I supposed to ask Shane’s mother to stop and let me buy condoms on the way home?”

  Brooke looked down at Reesa’s raised chin and felt almost sorry for her unsuspecting future stepbrother who wouldn’t be getting to enjoy his beloved wife completely tonight.

  “I couldn’t ask Ellen either, and I’m pretty brazen,” Brooke said.

  “Shane better not be in an amorous mood,” Reesa declared. “Unless he wants to spend the night on the living room floor again.”

  Brooke snickered. “Poor Dr. Larson, banished to the living room floor for something his brother did accidentally. That’s too funny.”

  Reesa stopped walking to sigh heavily. “I guess it isn’t fair to do that to him, is it?” she said, biting her lip. Then she sighed. “Oh, whatever. I’m doing the best I can to prevent pregnancy. If it happens, I’ll just have to find a way to deal with it, like everything else in my life. I’m not going to be able to keep my hands to myself either.”

  Brooke patted her shoulder. “Good for you. I have to say though—I have never been so happy to be going home alone as I am tonight.”

  ***

  “Michael is going to be ecstatic. The idea of having a baby with Carrie means the world to him. He’s even willing to be the stay-home father and do the infant care,” Shane said, his hand resting on Reesa’s stomach. One day, he thought, one day he would be that lucky. “I hope Carrie is okay with it this time.”

  “Carrie was so mad—like openly mad,” Reesa said. “She was swearing and crying. I’ve never felt so sorry for a woman in my life. April was always so happy when she was pregnant—even with Sara, who was a big surprise after all those years.”

  “Carrie and Michael are very passionate, expressive people. Everything important in their lives always seems to involve a lot of swearing and tears, but they love each other deeply. Remind me to tell you their story sometime. Not now though, it would just make you hate Michael more. He wasn’t always good to her, but it was because she married two other men before him,” Shane said softly.

  “Okay—that’s definitely too much back story for me. I think I’ll just go with the whole ignorance is bliss thing where they’re concerned,” Reesa said firmly, truly not caring about anyone else as she turned her face into Shane’s chest and breathed him into her.

  Luckily, she didn’t marry the argumentative, emotional brother—thank God. She wasn’t totally sure yet what Shane was like when upset, but even the one time they’d fought, he hadn’t really lost his temper. He’d just left to give them both space. If anything, she was the one with the worse temper, but the last thing she wanted to do tonight was fall asleep thinking of what wasn’t good in her relationship.

  Remnants of the cologne Shane had worn to work clung to him still, and Reesa could smell it on the shirt he’d worn to bed. Every night they slept together, more and more she came to rely on the comfort of being close to him. No man before him had affected her in quite that way. He made her feel like she wasn’t alone in the world.

  “Can I ask you something?” Shane whispered the question and ducked his head as he scooted back to better see her face.

  “Sure,” Reesa said, blinking open her eyes and watching the shadows from the nightlight play across Shane’s face.

  She preferred total dark in her bedroom, but had learned to leave the light on because of Sara’s nightly visits. They were less these days, but she still came to sleep with them several times a week. It was a miracle to her that Shane never complained. He just took whatever time and attention she could give him.

  Shane spread his long fingers out, noticing his one large hand spanned across the front of her, almost reaching her waist on both sides. He was endlessly amazed at her diminutive size, and often forgot how small she was until moments like this. He’d learned to enjoy the feeling without bragging to her about how incredibly male she made him feel. Shane hoped someday she could hear it and appreciate it without being afraid of what it meant.

  “Do you feel married yet?” he asked finally, giving voice to his doubts.

  “What do you mean?” Reesa asked in return, surprised and partially laughing at the question.

  Her stomach jerked alarmingly against the very masculine hand resting on it. She wasn’t used to lying to herself, but over the years she’d developed quite the habit of keeping her private thoughts from the men sharing her bed. When she caught herself being less than honest with them, she’d always passed it off as natural self-defense, but with Shane—well, she just wasn’t sure of her reasons for not speaking her thoughts.

  Shane sighed, searching for the right words to explain. “I guess I’m talking about the ritual. I won’t say I personally ever dreamed of a giant church wedding or anything like that, but I didn’t exactly expect to get married in a courtroom under duress either,” Shane said quietly. “I don’t regret marrying you, not for a second, but I would understand if you didn’t feel the same. Lots of women dream about having the perfect wedding. Did you?”

  Reesa sighed and moved her head back on the pillow, staring intently at the man staring intently back at her. Shane could spot a lie in a heartbeat, so she had learned to tell him as much of the truth as she could handle sharing without feeling like he was peering too deeply into her soul. They might be married, but she still needed to feel like her thoughts were her own.

  “Well, I’m a woman. I think planning a wedding is coded into the X chromosome, so yes I had some plans—when I was younger,” Reesa admitted. “However, helping me get full custody of the kids was the best wedding gift a woman could ask for from a groom. Plus my husband is incredible, both in bed and out. The bottom line is that I’m a lot happier than most married women I know.”

  “Are you sure?” Shane asked, reaching over to kiss her temple.

  “You’ve been great so far. I would never lie about that,” Reesa said truthfully, pushing thoughts of her unused bridal gown out of her head.

  With the children, she would have never been able to afford a big wedding anyway, so what did she lose with how they got married? Nothing important. Just a piece of the dream. The rest of what was important was lying next to her.

  She rolled back into Shane’s chest, wrapping her arms around him and throwing one of her legs over his hard thigh. “I could have married any one of those other men that asked me, but I wouldn’t have been nearly as content as I am with you. Every day you are here, that’s just more true.”

  Shane groaned in relief at her declaration and wrapped her in his arms, wanting to believe what she said despite the nagging doubts that remained. After all, Reesa rarely said “I love you” directly, but she told him in so many other ways that it was hard to fault her for not using the standard words. He sighed in pleasure as she cuddled closer.

  “I love you so much. It was just Dad and Jessica talking about their wedding that got me wondering about our marriage. I don’t like thinking you missed out on something important that maybe you wanted or dreamed of having,” Shane said softly.

  “I’m fine, Shane, but I’m too tired to reassure you more tonight. You’ll have to wait until the morning,” Reesa said softly, patting him and loving the rumble of laughter echoing through his chest under her ear. “
Now stop analyzing us, hug me, and go to sleep.” Crisis adverted, she thought at last, breathing out a sigh of relief when Shane nodded against the top of her head.

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll shut up about it,” Shane said, petting Reesa’s hair and down her back until her breathing became soft and regular.

  But Shane couldn’t sleep and lay awake for a couple of hours wondering how he might have felt if their situations were reversed. He remembered Reesa losing her temper at how little they really knew about each other. Thinking about her not telling about the ten year old wedding dress, he now agreed with that assessment.

  He couldn’t see how Reesa had made the giant leap from angrily insisting they didn’t know each other well enough to placidly accepting the judge forcing them to marry so quickly. He could see her giving in for the kids, but what had happened to the normal resentment anyone in her situation would have had, much less her when she had already expressed it once?

  After going over it several times, in the end Shane concluded there was no way any rational person with such strong doubts could have not felt resentful. It meant Reesa was tolerating the situation between them, just as she did all the other challenges in her life.

  Which meant Reesa was not sharing how she really felt with him.

  Which was a problem because Shane didn’t want to be one more person in Reesa’s life for whom she had sacrificed everything, including her normal feelings. Reesa was every dream come true that he’d ever harbored about the perfect woman, loving and fun, enthusiastic bed, and loyal—incredibly loyal.

  Shane wanted to be the perfect man for her, or at the very least he wanted to be someone with whom Reesa didn’t have to always be so damn brave and stoic. He gathered Reesa’s sleeping form close and tried not to disturb her as he whispered how much he loved her over and over into her hair.

  It was his little good luck ritual, and he had been doing it every night since the day they got married. He may have found his destiny, but he had a healthy respect for fate.

  Chapter 5

  “Michael, quit hovering. The nausea medicine is working, and I need to get some things done. You know Thanksgiving is a week away and the grand opening is the week after,” Carrie said.

  “You need to get off your feet more. Can’t you talk on the phone without pacing?” Michael asked, watching his wife clutch her soda in one hand and her cell phone in the other.

  He wasn’t even surprised when she turned around and growled at him, her gaze almost feral. Carrie’s reactions were scary as hell lately, Michael decided, but he was even more shocked by the masculine laughter in his ear.

  “I’ve known you less than two months and yet seen you now almost as much as Carrie,” Drake said, laughing. “Why are you hovering over her so much? She was barely sick at all yesterday.”

  Michael sighed and turned to see Barrymore’s grin. “Yeah, speaking of hovering—don’t you teach classes anymore?”

  “That’s what grad assistants are for, especially those who want to show their art in the new gallery on the edge of campus,” Drake said, continuing to arrange the freshly polished jewelry in the lighted glass case.

  Michael shoved his hands in his pockets. “She was really sick last time too.”

  “I don’t blame you for being worried,” Drake said more gently. “I completely understand what it’s like to care about your woman and feel helpless to change anything. Try to stop worrying though. It will eat you alive if you let it.”

  Michael nodded, knowing Drake was talking from experience. He walked over to peer into the case. “So you’re a jewelry expert too?”

  Drake snorted at Michael’s snarky comment. “Not at all. I’m just handy labor for your wife. You want to arrange the other part of the case? Since you’re hanging around, it might be better use of your time than annoying the future mother of your child every few minutes.”

  Michael picked up a jeweler’s cloth and starting gently polishing the pieces laid out on the counter. They were all marked with little numbered tags that matched other little numbered tags in the case. “I see this is a pretty foolproof process.”

  “That’s why I volunteered for it,” Drake agreed with smile. “I’ve never seen a woman work as hard as your wife does. She’s an organizing machine. Nothing fazes her.”

  “Except when she’s pregnant,” Michael said softly.

  “Jessica told me you two lost the last child, but I don’t think you have to worry about her being concerned,” Drake said quietly, pondering the most somber expression he’d ever seen on Michael Larson’s face. “She’s been pouring over baby magazines during lunch. I saw them on her desk.”

  “Baby magazines?” Michael repeated, too stunned by the news to hide his hopefulness that Carrie really didn’t mind being pregnant this time. “Thanks for telling me. She’s not really sharing much of her feelings about it right now. You’ve seen for yourself that everything I do seems to just make her more mad.”

  “Well, her condition is your fault,” Drake said logically, grinning at the grin it brought to Michael Larson’s face. He remembered how it felt to be that happy, even if it was almost nineteen years ago now.

  “Damn right, it’s my fault,” Michael replied proudly, grinning in return.

  “From what I remember, all pregnant women are unpredictable,” Drake said more mildly. “My wife made me sleep on the couch for most of her pregnancy with Brandon. She said I thrashed around when I slept and woke her up.”

  “Well, I am definitely not sleeping on the couch,” Michael said fiercely. “There will be none of that craziness in my household.”

  Drake laughed at Michael’s pronouncement. It would be interesting to see how the emotional male adapted to fatherhood. Being a parent tended to calm you down considerably, as he well knew.

  “When Carrie gets past the first trimester and the baby starts to move, you’ll be hard pressed to deny her anything. Of course, I do recall there being one giant upside which I will refrain from describing in too great of detail. Let’s just say that there is nothing like a hormonal woman full of fantasies,” Drake remarked, arranging several pieces in the case.

  Michael laughed and kept on polishing. “Thanks. You don’t know how badly I needed to see the bright side of it all today. We weren’t supposed to even be trying again for ten more months. Our attempts at birth control failed, and this isn’t the first time. It was all I could do to keep Carrie from killing the doctor.”

  Drake laughed, but couldn’t keep his face from flushing.

  “Damn—sorry,” Michael said, seeing the older man’s red face. “I’m used to being fairly open with the men in my family. I definitely wasn’t filtering, but I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Drake.”

  “No problem,” Drake said, shrugging off his embarrassment with a grin. “I just haven’t had frank conversations with other men in a while. I’m a little envious of your situation. And it makes me miss my wife, even after all these years.”

  Michael was surprised to hear Drake talking so freely about his dead wife. He couldn’t remember hearing him say anything about her before, even when all the pictures were being hung in the gallery. “Your wife was certainly a beautiful woman. Doesn’t it bother you to sell off your portraits of her?”

  “You know, I get asked that question all the time,” Drake said easily, stopping to look at Michael. “The short answer is no, which is why I do it. The longer one is more complex, but would require a therapist to sort out. Each one is my art as much as it is a picture of my wife.”

  “I hear you,” Michael said, and then grinned. “You can explain it to my brother the psychologist one day—if he ever decides to be in our lives again.”

  “Missing your newly married smart-aleck brother are you?” Drake asked. “I had lunch with him two days ago. Being the youngest ‘doctor’ on staff, he’s getting the usual flack over it. He said he was seriously grateful he’d bought all the new clothes.”

  “Seriously?” Michael asked, frowning. “
I haven’t seen Shane in a couple of weeks. Before Reesa, I was used to seeing him several times a week. Hell, I guess I do miss him. How pathetic is that? My brother is my best friend.”

  Drake laughed. “Since I’m an only child, I have no idea. Speaking of siblings, your future stepsister and her twin just walked in the door.”

  Michael laughed at Drake’s joke about Jessica being Brooke’s sister.

  “Tomorrow is the big day. Brooke took Jessica to do the kind of girl things that men aren’t supposed to think about too much. That’s why I came to work with Carrie. If I had known you were going to be available for pregnant wife sitting, I’d have stayed home and finished the art piece I’m working on. It’s the last one before the opening.”

  Drake laughed. “I didn’t know myself that I would be here. It was pure impulse on my part this morning. I’m getting excited about the opening next week and can’t stand to be away from the gallery for long. I’ve gotten way too involved to keep a professional distance.”

  “Me too, actually,” Michael declared. “Carrie’s got people flying in from all over the US for the opening, and more are driving here. I’m just hoping it doesn’t snow on everyone. I knew things were moving along well, but she’s surpassed even what I thought she could do.”

  “Bet you haven’t seen much of Carrie lately either,” Drake said, watching the three women chatting and smiling at each other. Jessica was gesturing and Brooke seemed to be correcting every other thing that was said. He almost wanted to laugh.

  “I miss my wife even more than my brother,” Michael said sincerely. “But I promised her my support, and here I am.”

  “You’re a good man for that, Larson,” Drake said, grinning. “I bet you’re not noble very often.”

  “Hell no,” Michael agreed, liking the way Drake laughed at his emphatic statement.

  He watched fascinated as Brooke broke off from the group to walk slowly toward them. First he felt Drake tense, then he saw the man retreat as far inside himself as he could go until his eyes were emerald stone chips. Brooke, on the other hand, didn’t seem overly fazed by Drake’s presence, or his withdrawal.