Daddy By Design? & Her Perfect Wife

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  Without thinking, Jack captured her hand and squeezed it. “And I’m going to help you do it.”

  “Next!”

  Smiling at the bored bureaucrat behind the counter, he stepped forward. It wouldn’t take that much effort—How hard was dusting?—but he was more than willing now to fulfill his end of the bargain.

  After a second’s hesitation, Mel joined him.

  Within minutes, they’d completed the process and were doing an Elvis: leaving the building. As Melinda checked her pager and rummaged in her lab-coat pocket for her keys, Jack tucked the license into his shirt pocket, then halted her departure activity by placing his big hands on her shoulders.

  “Hang in there, Doc,” he said, trying to ignore the sensual pleasure his palms derived from molding themselves around her softness. “Your worries are almost over.”

  “Is that a promise?” she asked, lips curving in a brief smile. A flicker of green glinted behind the thick lenses covering her face.

  And Jack felt…odd. As if the earth’s axis had, like, shifted or something. “Yes,” he vowed. “I couldn’t promise to love you forever and mean it, but I will take care of you for the next six months while you finish this surgery deal.”

  “And my parents’ house, right?” Mel asked after a moment of chewing on her lush lower lip. “I do owe them a lot.”

  “The house, too,” Jack said firmly, stuffing his hands into his pockets, because the damned things wanted to revisit Melinda’s shoulders. “Look, I’ll see you Saturday. We’ll get married. Then you’ll focus on your fellowship, I’ll keep house and prep for the Certified Financial Planner’s exam. Everything will work out great. You’ll see.”

  “I…I’ll hold you to that, Jack.” Mel looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go now.” Her chocolate hair flared like an opening silk fan as she turned away. “See you Saturday,” she called.

  Jack watched her go. This hair thing was becoming an obsession. Maybe he ought to encourage her to braid it. Or cut it. Better yet, shave it.

  For the next week, wedding logistics and Jensen’s transition demands kept Jack occupied. Too occupied to worry about the recurring jolts of lust that hit him just before he fell asleep, when his hands recalled the curve of her shoulders and his nostrils remembered her scent. And his mind’s eye saw again that chocolate silk spill over her breast….

  “OW!” MELINDA WINCED as Sherry and Noreen took turns ramming hairpins into her head. I should have let Raoul attach the veil, she thought as another pin pierced her skull.

  Foolishly, she’d declined the hairdresser’s offer, unwilling to leave the salon in jeans, T-shirt and a cloud of tulle. They’d had to cut the T-shirt off to avoid disturbing Raoul’s artful creation of curls.

  Then Sherry had applied makeup while Noreen supervised. Finally they’d helped her step into the foaming pool of white that was her rented wedding dress. The two women had taken turns working the aspirin-sized buttons through their loops.

  And she still hadn’t seen herself in it. “Wait till we’re done,” Sherry had insisted. “I want you to get the full effect.”

  Melinda feared she’d never make it down the aisle once that happened. How could she plausibly portray the happy bride of a handsome hunk like Jack Halloran if she knew she looked like a nearsighted geek playing dress-up?

  Noreen plowed a furrow in her scalp with another hairpin.

  The dress rustled as she jumped. It felt heavy and rich and elegant. Add in the satin pumps, her mom’s pearl drop nestling just above the edge of the bodice. Even though she knew better, it all made Melinda feel special, beautiful, feminine.

  Feelings she’d given up to pursue her medical degree and surgical training.

  For the first time in years, Melinda wondered if she’d missed out on anything important by focusing so exclusively on grades and her career goals.

  Holy organdy! Mel shook her head in disgust. Slap a bridal gown on me and suddenly I want to be Snow White or whoever married the prince and lived happily ever after.

  Sherry tugged on the veil cloud, then reached for another pin.

  It might be interesting, though, to talk to a noncolleague about something besides fracture displacement and suture techniques.

  A platonic marriage like this offered just such an opportunity, Mel reflected as the two bridesmaids finally abandoned the hairpin torture and stood back to study their handiwork.

  Matching frowns appeared as they tilted their heads to one side, stepped back, tilted the other way, stepped forward.

  “What’s wrong?” Melinda asked. Is it that obvious I belong in scrubs rather than this dress?

  “Well…” Noreen said, one perfectly manicured nail tapping her cheek.

  “Aha!” Sherry snapped her fingers, then leaned forward. Carefully she removed Melinda’s dark-rimmed glasses.

  Noreen’s hand moved to cover her mouth. “Ooh,” she breathed.

  “I knew it,” Sherry declared as she turned Melinda toward the mirror. “Take a look,” she invited, “at the most beautiful bride in Dallas.”

  It must be the dress, Mel thought dazedly. With its plunging sweetheart neckline, beaded bodice, lace cutouts covering the full skirt—anyone would look gorgeous. And Raoul’s hair magic, of course.

  And a couple of gallons of under-eye concealer.

  Because aside from the usual grind of sixteen-hour days, she’d been up until three that morning, stupidly attempting to minimize Jack’s inevitable initial shock when he saw the place. Cleaning the house for the maid—how idiotic.

  “Have you seen your flowers yet, Mel?” Noreen asked as she reached into the florist’s box.

  As Melinda shook her head, unable to speak, the tulle they’d nailed to her scalp floated back and forth across her shoulders like winter mist.

  Noreen held out a big spray of orchids and roses and baby’s breath encircled by assorted greenery—just as her husband poked his head around the door. “Y’all about ready?” he asked.

  Melinda’s cousin smiled sappily. “Sure are, darlin’. How’s my angel?” she cooed.

  Bobby swung a baby carrier into sight. “Still sleeping,” he reported, “but who knows for how long. Come on, ladies, show time.” With that, he disappeared.

  “Go ahead, Noreen.” Shoving Melinda’s glasses into the woman’s hand, Sherry pushed her gently toward the exit. “Give ’em back after they cut the cake,” she instructed, then, when they were alone, addressed Mel solemnly. “There’s nothing to worry about, you know.”

  Melinda nodded. Duh. She wasn’t marrying some adorable hunk who loved her madly and wanted to sweep her off her feet and carry her away to his castle.

  It was her castle—and it needed cleaning. Either that or the immediate application of a smallish nuclear device.

  “You’re just going to walk down that aisle,” Sherry reminded her, “say a few words—and take Jack Halloran to be your perfect, homemaking wife.” With a last look in the mirror, the maid of honor picked up her bouquet and headed for the exit.

  “Coming?” she asked as she paused in the doorway.

  Melinda took a deep breath. What the heck. She needed Jack’s domestic help. And he wanted her insurance plan. Without her glasses, everything was a blur. She’d just pretend she was playing life-size Barbies. In an hour or so, when they were done here, she’d do the Cinderella thing and turn back into Dr. Bowen’s pet surgical slave.

  But with clean underwear to look forward to!

  “Right,” she said, curling her fingers around her bouquet. “Let’s do it.”

  Sherry led the way from the dressing room down the hall to another room, stopping at the end of an aisle running between rows of white folding chairs—all of them occupied by strangers. And “cousin” Bobby.

  Taped organ music flowed from speakers near the ceiling.

  “When you hear the Wedding March,” Sherry instructed in an undertone, “just walk slowly forward. Stop when you get to the tuxedos.”

  Jack in a tux. Melinda�
��s eyes flew open.

  She didn’t need glasses to see her groom. In sharp, perfect detail: the crisp white and tailored black outfit adorning his magnificently masculine form—and every handsome, craggy feature above those football shoulders, too. The rich golden-brown hair with its adorable cowlick. The chiseled mouth. Those cobalt-blue eyes.

  In a few minutes, the guy in the judge’s robe was going to ask her if she took this man.

  Who wouldn’t? She might be busier than a honeybee in a field of wildflowers and as socially inexperienced as a cloistered monk, but she wasn’t crazy. Somewhere inside, what felt like a full liter of estrogen stirred to life.

  “Okay, Noreen,” Sherry whispered. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  With a final tug on her neckline, Mel’s cousin stepped forward.

  JACK TWEAKED HIS CUFF, then let his arm fall to his side. Tried to look appropriately solemn, but man, he wanted to grin like a fool!

  ’Cuz here he was, standing at the head of the line, in front of an ornately carved fireplace, which Sherry’s florist friend had decorated with greenery, flowers and ribbon-dripping candle stands. And if he turned his head a degree to the left, he’d see his sister, Tess, sitting in the front row.

  Life was great and for once, he had the easiest job in the wedding: repeat some vows, cut the cake and dance once with the bride.

  No worrying he’d lost the ring. No having to come up with a clever toast. No concern over who and how many he had to partner when the dancing started.

  No more Jugular Jensen and the grind of Loeb-Weinstein, either.

  Just dust something once in a while, pay a bill, do a little laundry. Study, relax.

  Kevan leaned around Geoff. “Tell us again why you’re suddenly getting married. When…where…how’d you meet this babe, anyway?”

  “I told ya,” Jack said out of the side of his mouth, “Sherry introduced us.”

  Kevan guffawed—loudly enough to make Tess frown at the trio. “Pull my other leg, bro. You and Sherry quit fixing each other up in high sch—”

  “Shh.” Geoff nudged Kevan to silence. “Here comes bridesmaid number one.”

  “Cute,” the youngest Halloran assessed sotto voce, then informed his brother, “but she’s already married. I checked.”

  Folding his hands in front of him, Jack hummed along with the music as first Noreen, then Sherry strolled down the aisle and stood opposite him and his groomsmen. Real wedding, fake marriage, he thought smugly. The only way to go. The only way to avoid the unhappiness Tess had experienced.

  He flashed a gentle smile at his sister just as the familiar fanfare sounded.

  “No wonder you took the fall!” Kevan exclaimed under his breath.

  Geoff whistled softly and dug his elbow into Jack’s side. “Tell me she has a twin sister,” he begged.

  Confused, Jack looked first at his brothers, then followed their gaze to the doorway.

  Oh. My. God. A gigawatt of pure, full-potency lust hit him in the chest. Then lower as he gazed at, at…a female goddess with curves a man could embarrass himself over in public.

  It’s the dress, he told himself.

  He’d better hope it was, Jack thought dazedly as he watched the beautiful, dark-haired angel float down the aisle toward him, or this business arrangement was in deep dirt.

  Because any male with a pulse would want this woman in the snowy, dream-princess outfit. Want to woo and win her, then possess her in the most primitive, elemental way.

  Melinda halted as she reached him, smiling faintly up at him as the music swelled, then died.

  In slow motion, as if in a dream, Jack offered his arm to his bride.

  Her right hand held a huge bouquet. Attempting to switch it to her left, Melinda lost her grip on the flowers.

  She and Jack bent to retrieve the nosegay-on-steroids at the same time.

  That darned physics! The nitpicky law stating that two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time did not take Saturday off: the bride and groom cracked heads.

  Pain, always a valuable tool, tried to recall Jack to his duty. Unfortunately, as he took a deep breath to control said pain, he inhaled his bride’s perfume. With the same enticing, erotic effect as before.

  He forgot where they were, and that they had an audience.

  “Jack…” Her velvet-soft voice further heightened his arousal.

  He wrenched his gaze from the breathtaking focal point of that wicked, curved neckline—right into smoky-green eyes, fringed with thick lashes the same strong-coffee color as the lustrous bundle of hair twisted up in some tantalizing concoction that simply begged a man to find and remove the hidden pins holding it hostage so it could spill loose from that puffy white cloud hovering around it and cascade over his hands onto her creamy—

  “Your foot is on my flowers.”

  Jack continued staring at the vision of feminine loveliness. Marry her, yes, he thought hazily. Live with her. Yes.

  Ignore traditional marital activities?

  Noo—

  “Jack?” Her eyes darkened. His fingers moved to thread their way into that silky, chocolate hair.

  The justice of the peace squatted to join their conference on the floor.

  “Could we get started, folks?” the JP asked.

  Moving his black wing tip, Jack freed the bouquet and handed it to Melinda. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he helped his bride to her feet.

  Without looking at him, she gave a silent nod, then stood there fiddling with the flowers he’d crushed.

  “Dearly beloved…” the judge began.

  Jack let the familiar opening phrases of the wedding ceremony flow over him. He damned well wasn’t going to love this or any other woman, but now that he—and everyone here, dammit—knew what those shapeless outfits had been hiding, he wouldn’t mind cherishing Melinda a little. Worship her with my body? Oh yeah.

  Like heck, moron. They’d made a bargain and he’d keep his end of it. But being married to Melinda Burke in name only might not be as easy as he’d thought. Or as enjoyable.

  “Who gives—?” The JP stuttered to a halt, apparently only now remembering Melinda’s solo walk down the aisle.

  “The woman’s twenty-eight, for God’s sake,” Jack growled protectively at the be-robed idiot when a pink flush crept up her neck and over her cheeks. “She’s giving herself away.”

  The audience tittered behind him.

  “That’s not—Oh, just skip that part,” he ordered the JP, who cleared his throat and obediently moved on.

  They took turns making the forever promises they only meant to keep for six months and exchanging the rings he’d picked out with Sherry’s help. Melinda stared at the narrow band with beaded edging as he slid it onto her finger.

  After a little prodding from Sherry, she returned the favor.

  Jack wiggled his finger, wondering how soon he’d adjust to wearing the gold symbol he’d insisted was part of his “statement”—and then suddenly all his careful planning went to hell in an express mailing tube.

  “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the justice of the peace intoned. “You may kiss the bride.”

  Jack bent to deliver a quick, G-rated peck, but Melinda tilted her face upward. Wide misty-green eyes blinked at him, and his simmering desire simply exploded.

  With a soft growl, his mouth covered hers.

  The room, the building, hell, the planet disappeared as their lips met, molded, melted. He deepened the kiss. She let him. One of them moaned. Flames licked his body, her fingers clutched his arms, slid up to circle his neck and bury themselves in his hair.

  His arms tightened, slid downward to bring her closer. He moved a hip to tuck her—

  “Whoa, there, big brother.” Hands gripped his upper arms, tugging to loosen the embrace.

  What? Who? Jack blinked. “Geoff?”

  “Save it for the honeymoon,” the grinning brother advised.

  “Although we do understand now why the short notice,” Kevan
added with a wink as he peered around Geoff.

  “Ahem.” With a repressive frown, the JP took charge. Turning them to face the guests, he intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Jack Halloran.”

  The audience’s applause covered Jack’s fairly unsuccessful attempt to regain his equilibrium. “Di-didn’t we decide you were k-keeping your own name?”

  “Yes.” Melinda sounded completely calm as she reclaimed her flowers from Sherry. “But right now, I imagine our guests are more interested in food than nomenclature.”

  Was he the only one blown out of the water by that incendiary kiss? Jack wondered as he watched his wife carefully settle the bouquet in front of her, then daintily tuck her free hand in the crook of his elbow.

  Sherry gave them a nudge. Jack obediently started forward, then staggered to a halt.

  My God. What if the sex was as good as that kiss?

  “Move it, Halloran,” Sherry urged in an undertone. “We’re finally getting to the good part.”

  Jack groaned.

  STRUGGLING TO HIDE how that incredible kiss affected her—pretty much the same way a match affects gasoline—Melinda smiled and nodded like a robot through the receiving line, the pictures and the paperwork. She cut and fed cake mechanically and entwined her arm as directed for the toasts.

  Even when Jack led her out to the center of the reception hall for the first dance…

  Melinda wondered if she was having an out-of-body experience. Instead of being a bundle of impatience or twitching when the heat of his hand splayed on her back or even simply stumbling blindly around the dance floor, she bonelessly spun and glided and twirled in perfect time to the music.

  “See? Payback can be fun.” Jack’s deep, smooth drawl penetrated her sensual fog. Making an idle comment. In a cool, laconic tone.

  Right. To someone as obviously expert in kissing as her new “wife,” their little lip-lock ending the ceremony probably rated one star. Or less.

  So keep your head straight, Burke. This was still and only an efficient business solution—even if it looked like a fantasy, danced like a dream and kissed like an X-rated film.

  “I suppose it has its points.” Mel thought she managed blasé pretty well.