The Millionaire and the Pregnant Pauper

by Christie Ridgway

  With a sigh, she gathered Mischa in her arms. After reporting to Michael, maybe she’d skip dinner— all the better to avoid more contact with him—stretch out on the daybed and make it an early night.

  Michael stared, unseeing, at the laptop computer’s screen. He should be satisfied, happy even, after Beth’s rundown of her day in Freemont Springs. After all, with the addition of his own marriage shoringup—all day he’d tried acting properly sappy—his grandfather should be nothing less than convinced that Michael had married Beth for all the right reasons.

  Which begged the question—what were the right reasons?

  He didn’t want to think about the answer.

  Just as he didn’t want to think about her flushed face when he’d held her wrist this morning or her almost-shy gaze just a few minutes before when she told him of the best wishes she’d received from the Freemont Springs townspeople. Mischa had started fussing, and she’d exited, leaving Michael bemused, bothered…bored with this damn report he was putting together for Donnolly.

  Maybe he could try to decipher her breakfast-hour, cryptic comment about eggs and hens instead.

  Anything to avoid facing the fact that he was married. Married!

  And guilty as hell about it. And strangely exhilarated by it.

  Her hands had trembled while repeating her vows. He’d gone cold then, as if suddenly splashed awake. The ceremony was a marriage, not a mischievous boy’s stunt to outwit Grandfather. A marriage—to a woman whose blond hair and blue eyes had sent him sifting through the jewelry he’d inherited from his mother, his gut clenching when he’d found that perfect ring.

  God. He switched off his computer and ran his hands over his face. Maybe they should call it quits before something unexpected happened. Before someone unexpectedly got hurt.

  The office door shuddered with an urgent knock. Beth followed immediately, her chest heaving and that pink flush high again on her cheekbones. “Michael—”

  He jumped up from his chair. “What? What is it?” he asked. “Mischa? Is the baby okay?”

  She swallowed, nodded. “Mischa’s fine. It’s— it’s—” She broke off, grabbed his hand and started dragging him from the room.

  Her fingers were warm. This close, he could smell her perfume. But no. Beth wouldn’t wear perfume. Her scent came from shampoo, something flowery. And then there was a crisp, more familiar note. Ah. Oatmeal and peppermint soap, the stuff boxed in towers in the Wentworth bathrooms.

  The stuff he lathered across his own skin every morning.

  He shouldn’t find a shared soap scent so arousing. So…married.

  She pulled him to his room. The door was thrown open, as was the door to Mischa’s room across the hall. She dropped his hand.

  He missed her touch.

  “Look!” she said, raising an arm in the direction of each open door. “Evelyn said they’re gifts from your grandfather. Surprises that arrived today.”

  The day bed was gone from Mischa’s room. Michael saw that right off. In its place, a massive toy chest and a carved and painted rocking charger—a fantasy horse that had carried him on more adventures than he could count. When Blackie had lost his charm as a rocking horse, he’d become confidante to childish secrets, compadre in revenge schemes against his big brother Jack, and finally, in preteen years, a clothes horse. With two fingers, Michael saluted the old favorite. And smiled. Mischa would love Blackie.

  “You’re not getting it!” his bride uttered between her teeth. She put a hand on his arm and spun him in the direction of his bedroom.

  Uh-oh.

  Michael smelled his sister’s work here. Joseph Wentworth might order daybeds moved and toys unearthed, but only Josie would have selected the rainbow hue of negligees spread across his bed.

  His bed.

  His suddenly too small, that Grandfather-wasforcing-to-be-shared bed.

  Michael could almost hear the old man in his mind. You want a marriage, boy? Then you’ve got a marriage!

  Of course Grandfather and Josie could not know that he and Beth had never slept together. Could not know that on their wedding night the bride had slipped between the covers of the daybed in the baby’s room instead of Michael slipping between her thighs.

  Would it be bad form to count the nightgowns?

  “What are we going to do about it?” Beth asked hoarsely.

  There were nine.

  He looked at her. Her chest was still heaving. What were they going to do about it?

  Throw in the towel.

  Safe. Easy. Grandfather most likely suspected it anyway.

  A fake marriage. What had he been thinking?

  The truth would temporarily cost him partnership in the Rocking H, but he could still provide for Beth and Mischa. He swung around, opened his mouth to tell her—

  And knew she wouldn’t take the money. Not after a twenty-four-hour failed marriage.

  “Well? What are we going to do about it?” she asked again. Her eyes sparkled and that flush burned across her face.

  Like desire burned in his blood. Like her ring burned on his finger, a sweet, wicked promise. “We’re going to sleep together,” he said.

  5

  Beth stared at Michael. “You’re kidding, right?”

  His eyebrows rose. “What else can we do? Tell Evelyn the newly weds need separate beds? We might have gotten away with it for one night, but the servants will talk if we keep this up.”

  Beth ran her hands through her hair. No doubt it would seem very odd, especially following her afternoon excursion into town. Word was spreading like chicken pox at the orphanage that she and Michael were blissfully married. Add to that separate beds and—

  “The stink will reach Grandfather before tomorrow’s opening stock prices,” Michael said, as if reading her mind.

  “But this was supposed to be, um, convenient.”

  He shrugged and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. “Is it so inconvenient to share a bed?”

  That annoyingly casual attitude and pose of his was back. With his necktie gone and his dress shirt open at the collar, she could see the calm beat of his pulse at the hollow of his throat. He had a strong man’s neck and it would be a strong man’s body next to hers if she slept with him.

  “C’mon, Beth,” he said, the corners of his mouth quirking into a half smile. “Certainly we can share a bed without touching. We’re both adults.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of.

  She was used to sharing a room with other girls. Sharing her space with her baby. Not sharing a bed with a man. Evan had never stayed the entire night with her.

  Maybe that should have told her something.

  “I don’t snore,” Michael offered.

  Beth didn’t doubt him. A man like Michael didn’t snore. A man like Michael warmed beds and warmed hearts and shooed away that awful, cold loneli—

  She’d promised not to think of that word again.

  “Really, it’s not a good idea, Michael.” That darn eyebrow of his rose once more so she spoke faster. “I can sleep on the floor, or—”

  “Not afraid, are you, Beth?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything.” Automatically, the response spilled out. You learned that in the orphanage. You learned never to admit you were afraid of the dark or of not having parents or of not being able to raise your little boy by yourself.

  “Good then, it’s all settled.” He turned back toward the office.

  “No!” That came out automatically, too. Orphans learned self-preservation at the cradle, as well. And some instinct told her to beware getting close to Michael.

  He spun around oh-so-coolly. Oh-so-calm, his dark eyebrows moved ceilingward. “I don’t bite,” he said.

  But what if she wanted him to? The wayward thought made her cheeks burn.

  His eyes narrowed, he walked toward her. His fingertips touched cool against her face. “You are afraid.”

  Deny it! Beth’s pulse doubled. Being afraid meant you could be hurt. An
d she wasn’t going to let any man, prince or husband, close enough to hurt her ever again. She had the calluses to prevent that.

  And, darn him, Michael seemed so easy with the whole idea, as if sleeping with her would be no more unsettling than sharing the covers with a tabby cat

  “Beth…” he began, and his fingers stroked her skin in a light caress. “If you don’t want to—”

  “Nonsense,” she said briskly, ignoring the squiggly sensations tickling her skin. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He stilled, laughed, slowly drew his fingers away. “Me, too.”

  There was nothing special about Beth.

  A few minutes after 11:00 p.m., Michael slouched in an overstuffed chair beside the marble fireplace in his bedroom, convincing himself of the thought. Through the closed door to the attached bathroom, he heard the sound of running water.

  Beth would be brushing her teeth. Washing her face. All the things a woman did before bed—simple, ordinary.

  Nothing special enough to make his muscles guitar-string taut or his blood run flood fast.

  There was nothing special about Beth.

  Because that was how he was going to make it through tonight. Through the entire marriage. With calm, with ease, they would play their roles for. Evelyn and the household staff to convince Grandfather they were married.

  To persuade the old man to resume the reins of the Oil Works.

  To purchase Michael’s freedom from family responsibilities.

  To provide Mischa and Beth the security they deserved.

  The bathroom door opened and she emerged in a thin, frayed, pink-striped robe. White flannel—a nightgown, he presumed—showed at her neck.

  Nine negligees and she chose flannel and frays. Thank God.

  She darted a nervous look his way. “Well,” she said. She smiled that tight, labored smile he remembered from the night they met.

  “Well,” he returned. There was nothing special about Beth. No reason for him to imagine sleek skin beneath warm flannel.

  “I, uh, I’m going to check on Mischa one more time,” she said.

  Michael didn’t point out that another of Grandfather’s gifts had been a state-of-the-art nursery monitor. The receiver sat on one of the bedside tables and could pick up the sound of a feather falling in the room across the hall.

  A short reprieve from the scent of her soap and toothpaste and the wild imaginings of his flannel-nightgown-obsessed mind seemed like a good thing. To make this work, to guarantee a pain-free “marriage,” he had to remain as distant and controlled as possible.

  She left the door to his bedroom open and the one to Mischa’s open, too. From this far away, as she hovered over the crib in the dimly lit room, she seemed more like a maternal angel than a woman.

  He liked thinking of her that way. Angelic instead of arousing. Haloes instead of hormones. For the first time since he spied the negligees spread across his bed, his mood lightened. He could do this. He could take his wife to bed and not touch her.

  “Michael.” A ghostly, but sexy whisper shivered down his spine. “Michael.”

  It took him a moment to put together the disembodied voice, the nursery monitor, the woman— think angel, Wentworth—across the hall.

  In response to her call, he need only have approached as far as the doorway of Mischa’s room. But when he arrived at that point she smiled—not her nervous smile, but that other one, the bright, warming one—and he suddenly found himself striding close enough to smell the freshness of her flannel.

  “Just testing that the monitor works well,” she whispered, obviously relieved. “I wanted to make sure.” Into the new silence, the soughing of the baby’s breaths washed through the room. One of Beth’s fingertips lightly touched the baby’s hair and then, as if she still couldn’t bear to move away, she pulled up the blanket to the baby’s shoulders.

  Something caught in Michael’s throat. He tried swallowing, couldn’t, coughed lightly, turning away from the crib.

  “Are you okay?” she asked quietly. Her palm smoothed against his back.

  Michael coughed again, straightened away from her hand to maintain a distance from her nothing-special touch. “Fine,” he said shortly, ready to dash back to the relative safety of his bedroom.

  Her hand stopped him again. Just two fingers on his forearm and a small nod to the rocking horse in the corner of the room. “I love the horse. What’s his name?”

  Michael relaxed. Come to think of it, the horse was a safe topic and Mischa’s room was safer territory than across the hall. He swallowed and kept his voice low. “When he was Jack’s, he was Challenger. Josie called him Beauty. Me, I went for plain and simple. Blackie.”

  “Was he a gift from your Grandfather?”

  Michael shook his head. “From our parents, actually, to Jack. Then each of us got him in turn. Blackie made a great rodeo bronc.”

  Beth laughed softly. “I can picture that. How did your mother handle your antics?”

  “She didn’t have to. She and my father died when I was a baby.”

  She touched him again. Bare skin to bare skin. Her fingers against the back of his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He pulled away, slowly, so that he felt another long glide of her touch. “Don’t be. I had my grandfather. Josie. Jack.”

  A silent moment.

  “How do you feel about losing him?” she asked softly. “Jack, I mean.”

  Michael’s skin turned cold. He didn’t want to think about Jack. About missing Jack. Grandfather grieved enough for the entire family. “I’m mad as hell at him.” The words burst out.

  Michael wanted them back. Not that the words weren’t true—but why talk about it? He was the expert at keeping things light and he liked it that way.

  “Why are you mad at Jack?” she asked.

  He’d known she would persist, he thought, annoyed. Beth was the type to make him think about stuff that was easier to live with as an unrecognizable heap in a dark corner of his mind. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said coldly, stalking away from her and toward the door. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Me, too,” Beth answered, following him.

  “I want—” Hell. He wanted to be alone, but they were stuck in this sham of a shared wedding bed.

  He shut the door behind her and instantly flicked out the light, not wanting her to see his face. In the near pitch-blackness of the room, he found the bathroom. When he came out, he could discern the slight lump Beth made under the covers of the bed. He shucked his sweatshirt and jeans and wearing only boxers, he crawled in the opposite side.

  He pummeled the pillow, then flopped down on his back. Beth lay as silent and stiff as a mannequin.

  His irritation with her hadn’t washed down the drain with the toothpaste. And her obvious discomfort in his bed heated it to anger. “I’m not going to attack you, dammit.”

  “That’s not what’s bothering me,” she said, her voice quiet. “Alice always said never to go to bed angry. And I owe you an apology, Michael.”

  Oh, hell. She had that all wrong, but he wasn’t ready to admit it yet. “Who is this Alice?”

  “One of the women who raised the girls at the Thurston Home. She handled most of the day-to-day care of us. She would say it wasn’t my place to probe your feelings about your brother. And she’d be right. I’m sorry, Michael. How you feel is none of my business.”

  “You’re my wife.” He didn’t know why he mentioned it. He didn’t know why he didn’t just agree with her. Welcoming his anger, nurturing it, was a much safer and distancing response.

  “Temporarily your wife.”

  As if he needed to be reminded.

  “It’s just that…” Beth didn’t finish.

  “Go ahead.” The talking was relaxing her. And he knew he couldn’t sleep if she was board-stiff beside him.

  “It’s just that I’ve lost people, too, Michael. I may not have known my parents like you knew Jack, but I’ve been sad. And angry. I though
t you might like to talk about it.”

  What he would like was to avoid the entire subject. But Michael sighed. “Oh, hell,” he said. Did he feel like a heel, or what? “I’m a hotheaded jerk,” he said. “I should apologize to you.”

  “Accepted, if you’ll accept mine.”

  “Done.”

  He sighed again. “Done,” he repeated.

  With the anger fading, the room held only the sound of her breathing and the scent of her body. Michael closed his eyes and tried to think of the last details of his move from Wentworth Oil. Tomorrow he’d start working half days and the other half with Elijah.

  The warmth from Beth’s body was creeping toward his side of the bed.

  There was nothing special about it.

  “Do you think I’ll be able to hear Mischa if he needs me?” Her breath feathered over his skin.

  He swallowed. “You know I heard you just fine.”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  In a few minutes she was asleep.

  In a few hours he was still awake. Even after she got up once to nurse the baby and then fell back into bed and sleep, immediately. Her body warmth seemed to find him, no matter how many ways he turned, no matter how many times he threw off the covers.

  Finally, finally, he dozed. And woke to find Beth’s body heat surrounding him again. His eyes still closed, he flexed his arms and discovered them around a small, flannel-encased woman. Her rear end was pushed into his groin. He guessed that the tickle at his chin was nothing more special than Beth’s duck-down hair.

  He groaned softly and opened his eyes.

  Suddenly, she turned over and edged out of his arms. They were on her side of the bed, staring at each other.

  The bed-poacher had been him.

  The tousled and rested-looking woman was her.

  “Well,” she said.

  He wanted to say something. Make some promise about it not happening again. Some cool, flip comment to neutralize the moment. Anything to make it nothing special to wake with her in his arms.

  Her scent clung to his skin. He liked it.