The Virgin's Secret Marriage

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  His gaze drifted over her like a sweet, warm breeze. She flushed and stepped back, her waist grazing the dishwasher.

  “Why not?” he inquired innocently.

  “Because…” Emma swallowed, wishing she didn’t recall quite so well how sweet and sensual his lips felt mating with hers.

  He took a lock of her hair, tucked it behind her ear. “We might accidentally touch each other?”

  Emma shrugged off his touch, stepped even farther away. She reassured herself she did not want him, not at all. She drew a bolstering breath. “Because sharing space that way is just too intimate.” Too endearing. Too sexual.

  To her surprise, Joe did not point out the fact that when they were dating they had slept wrapped in each other’s arms whenever they could manage, without taking it to the next step and actually making love. They had wanted to save that for their actual wedding night.

  Which was, Emma realized, now tonight…

  He simply moved to the window overlooking the parking lot next to the building. He stared out through the still-open blinds into the dusky summer light, looking unsurprised by whatever it was he saw. He crooked a finger over his shoulder, beckoning. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

  Reluctantly, Emma crossed to his side, saw the W-MOL Action News van still parked outside in the lot. Immediately, a lot of very unladylike words came to mind.

  “What are they doing?” she asked, fearing she already knew.

  Joe’s lips took on a cynical tilt. “My guess is they are waiting to see if what just happened here was a scam, or possibly get some ‘action’ footage of us leaving for our honeymoon or whatever it is we have planned for the rest of the evening.”

  “But we’re not going on a honeymoon.”

  “We know that.” Joe aimed a thumb at the center of his chest. “They don’t.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to go out there and tell them that and ask them to leave.”

  Her husband did not budge.

  “And raise their suspicions about the validity of our union even more?” Joe asked as the phone rang.

  Emma went to answer it, saw from the caller ID it was Gigi Snow. As Emma had hoped, her client had heard about Emma’s marriage to the hockey star on a W-MOL news break, and she wanted Emma back on her daughter Michelle’s wedding again.

  Emma agreed bygones should be just that and promised she would meet Gigi and Michelle at the Wedding Inn the following morning, to continue with preparations.

  She hung up the phone to find Joe watching her. Emma sighed. “I’ve got so much work left to do on that wedding it is unreal.” But her hectic schedule the rest of the week would keep her from dwelling on her precipitous marriage to Joe. And that was a good thing, in Emma’s view, a very good thing.

  “If that’s the case, then you need a good night’s sleep.” Joe shut the blinds, tugged his shirttails out of the waistband of his slacks and finished unbuttoning his shirt. Ignoring her stated wishes to the contrary, he headed for her bedroom. When she made no move to follow him and, instead, just continued looking at him in mutinous silence, he sighed. “Come on, Emma, we can do this, it’s only for one night. Tomorrow we’ll both move to my place, anyway.”

  Emma blinked, caught off guard by his nonstop one-sided plans for them. “Your place,” she repeated. Did he even have a place?

  Joe sighed in exasperation, as if already weary of having to explain himself and the reasons behind his actions to her. “I bought a house in Holly Springs last fall, so I’d have somewhere to crash when I came home to visit my mom, but I haven’t had time to fix it up. We’ll give your notice here and move all your stuff there tomorrow.”

  That was some decision he had just made. “Why would I want to do that?” Emma countered belligerently. “I like my apartment, Joe.” It was convenient. And fixed up just the way she wanted in southern belle chic.

  Ignoring her protests, he came over to take her hand. “You have to do it because we have to make this marriage of ours look as real as possible. People are just waiting to pounce.”

  “Well I’m not going to do it.” Emma jerked her hand away from his.

  “Yes.” Joe braced both of his hands on his waist. “You are.”

  Emma tossed her head. “You are not the boss of me.”

  A challenging light glimmered in his amber eyes. “I am, however, your husband,” he pointed out, just as sagely.

  Her heart began to speed. Emma stubbornly refused to give ground. “So?” You’re my husband? So what?

  “So I’m too tired to argue this any more, Emma.” Without warning, Joe scooped her up in his arms and held her against his chest.

  “What are you doing?” Emma demanded, incensed.

  “Exactly what you think,” Joe said, turning sideways to go through the bedroom doorway. He looked down at her determinedly. “I’m taking you to bed.”

  Chapter Six

  Joe set her down gently next to the foot of the bed and then finished stripping off his shirt. Disappointment swept through Emma, potent as the chill winter wind, as she realized this was as far as the romantic gesture was going to go. Joe looked as disinterested in making wedding night love with her as she promised herself she was with him.

  Aware her feet were hurting from so many hours of standing, Emma did her best to steady her trembling knees and slipped out of her high-heeled shoes. She went to put them in the closet. When she turned back around, he had already stripped down to his boxers, was turning back the covers and climbing into her bed.

  She stood there, stunned. Not sure what to say or do next. The evening was becoming so surreal.

  He folded his hands behind his head and continued to regard her nonchalantly. “Do you need help getting into your—whatever it is you wear to bed these days?” he asked pleasantly.

  “No. Thank you.” Aware she had half a mind to sleep in the satin sheath and jacket that had served as her “wedding dress,” just to spite him, Emma disappeared into the closet. She grabbed a pair of cotton pajama pants off a hanger, then shut the door, blocking his view.

  “I’m very good at unzipping,” Joe called from the other side.

  Emma rolled her eyes as she shimmied out of her panty hose, shucked her bra and pulled a rib-knit cotton tank top over her head. “I’ll bet.”

  Finished, she opened the door and stalked back out into the bedroom. Head high, she moved past him into the adjacent bath and busied herself brushing her teeth and washing her face. When she emerged again, Joe was still lying there, in her bed, looking as relaxed as could be. Almost ready for sleep.

  Was it her imagination, or had her queen-size bed shrunk?

  Or was it simply the fact that his broad-shouldered, two-hundred-pound, six-foot-two-frame was taking up so much room?

  “I still think it would be better if you slept on the living room sofa.” When he didn’t budge, Emma looked down her nose at him. “It would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  He snuggled even more deeply into her sheets. “I earn my living with my physical agility, Emma. No way am I going to mess up my perfectly conditioned muscles to try to curve my body like a slithering snake to fit on that trendy red sofa you’ve got out there, just so your feminine sensibilities are appeased.”

  As much as she was reluctant to admit it, he had a point. Emma had accidentally fallen asleep on the oddly shaped piece of furniture that served as dramatic counterpoint to all her chintz-and-classic antiques, and awakened a half hour later, stiff, sore and out of sorts. “So sleep on the floor,” she urged him unsympathetically. “I’ll give you some pillows and a blanket.”

  “No thanks.” He flashed her another sexy grin. “I’m cozy right where I am.”

  Emma stood with her legs braced apart, and planted her hands on her hips. “I don’t see why you’re being so difficult about this,” she said as her toes curled into the soft ivory carpet.

  “Hey.” Joe palmed his nicely suntanned chest. “I’m not the one still standing there arguing ab
out what should be a very simple, very safe and platonic thing.”

  Irritated he was making her feel like she had something to prove, when she absolutely didn’t, Emma sashayed primly around to the other side and climbed beneath the covers. Although Joe was strictly on his half of the mattress, she still felt cramped and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she lay back against the pillows and folded her hands over the top of the coverlet. Stared straight up at the ceiling.

  Sighing in satisfaction—or was that triumph?—Joe reached over and turned out the bedside lamp. A mixture of moonlight and the yellow glow of the street lamps poured through the sheer white drapes. For several minutes, they continued lying there in the semidarkness, not moving or speaking. Yet Emma could tell by the tenseness of his body and the meter of his breathing that he was no more inclined to go to sleep than she was.

  “There is one thing I’d like to know,” he said conversationally after a while.

  Which made them even, sort of, because there were a zillion things she’d like to know. She didn’t want this situation to be any more intimate than it was. Which was not an easy thing, when she was all too aware of the masculine scent of his soap and skin. “It just kills you to lie there and be quiet, doesn’t it?” she said, feeling even more irritated with—and aware of—him.

  “Just like it kills you to have to engage in a real conversation with me instead of a witty exchange of insults?” Joe drawled right back.

  Emma sighed and turned on her side, so she was facing him. She could do this. She just had to remind herself he didn’t matter to her. Not the way everyone now thought, anyway. She propped her head on her upraised palm. “What is it?” she demanded with a beleaguered sigh.

  “What exactly did you say to your dad that night, after I left the dorm?”

  Emma flashed back to her father’s angry face as Saul told Joe Hart to get lost, that he and the Storm coaches and attorneys would deal with him later.

  “’Cause he sure looked awfully surprised this morning, to find out we had been to see a justice of the peace,” Joe continued amiably.

  Emma knew Joe probably didn’t care either way, he was just asking the question as a diversion, a way to keep things from turning…sexual, while they waited to fall asleep. So she didn’t need to let him know how hard she had tried to protect Joe, back then, from her father’s wrath. Even if it meant her father thought worse of her.

  She rubbed her fingertips across the embroidered edge of eyelet lace on the coverlet, aware Joe was waiting for her answer. “That’s because I didn’t tell my parents about us going to the chapel.” Not even after it had become clear Joe was not going to change his mind and come after her again.

  Joe rolled onto his side, too, so they were lying there, face-to-face. “What did you tell them, then?” he asked softly.

  Emma shrugged and turned her gaze from the powerful muscles of his chest. “The truth. That I wanted to drop out of college and run away with you, and you didn’t want to run away with me.” She paused to look into his eyes. “And when you failed to make me see things your way, you broke up with me.”

  “And broke your heart.” Joe recollected what else had been said in hurt and fury, in the hall outside her dormitory room, while her father listened on the other side of the portal.

  Emma nodded, wishing she could take back those oh-so-revealing words, because it would make her so much less vulnerable to him now.

  Joe frowned, perplexed. “Then why was your dad so mad at me for so long—if he thought I had saved you from doing something really stupid?”

  Emma released a pent-up breath. “He was ticked off because you had dared to come near me. Same as now. Because he knows how a lot of the hockey players are, Joe. He’s been in many a locker room. He knows all about the groupies and the easy sex and the egos and tunnel vision on the game itself, how that tends to work against a happily ever after and he and my mother both wanted a happily ever after for me.” It just hadn’t happened, Emma realized sadly. With or without Joe.

  “I’m not promiscuous, Emma. Getting a piece of…just for the sake of doing it…never appealed to me.”

  “That’s good to know,” Emma retorted in a low muffled voice as she rolled onto her other side, away from him.

  He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her back, until her back was pressed against the unyielding hardness of his chest, her bottom nestled against his powerful abdomen and thighs. His lips brushed the curve of her neck as he peered over her shoulder into her face. “You don’t believe me.”

  Emma shut her eyes and told herself that was not desire she was feeling. She hugged her arms to her chest, insisting, “I don’t care whether it’s true or not.”

  “Bull.” Hand to her shoulder, he turned her so she was lying flat against the mattress once again. He draped a leg over hers, propped his head up on his hand and continued staring down into her face. “The truth is, you’ve never gotten over me, Emma Donovan-Hart, any more than I’ve gotten over you.”

  JOE HAD SAID THAT JUST TO get her goat. Or at least he thought he had. Now, hearing her small intake of breath, seeing the look on her face, he was surprised to note that he had indeed hit the nail on the head with his presumption.

  More disturbing still was the fact that there was some truth in his assertion where his own feelings were concerned, too.

  Not that she was about to concede to being vulnerable, where he was concerned.

  “Dream on,” Emma scoffed. “And while you’re at it, you keep your hands to yourself.” She pushed his leg away from hers. “And your lips, too.”

  How had she known he was thinking about kissing her just now? Just to see where it would lead? He sent her a sexy, sidelong glance. “Scared you’ll succumb?” he taunted softly.

  Emma regarded him grumpily and refused to answer. “I don’t know how in the heck I ever let you talk me into this.”

  “Probably,” Joe predicted complacently, “because you still have a secret hankering for my body.”

  “You wish!” Emma rolled back onto her side, away from him.

  They drifted into silence once again.

  What a hell of a way to spend a wedding night, Joe thought. But short of forcing the issue, or taking Emma where she clearly was not ready to go, all they could do was lie here, thinking, waiting to drift off to sleep even when he knew it was going to be impossible. Just one minute of her soft body nestled against his had his muscles tightening, the blood rushing to his groin. And that coupled with the deeply held yearning to make her his…and only his…. Well, suffice it to say, it was going to be a long night. A hell of a long night.

  Joe closed his eyes and tried not to think how much he wanted to kiss her soft lips again, or feel the silken heat of her skin, pressed up against his.

  The next thing Joe knew it was 5:00 a.m. and the alarm was going off on the nightstand. Emma reached over top of him, her breasts brushing against his chest, as she punched the shut-off button.

  Joe rubbed his eyes as she moved away, rubbing up against him once again. Then she was leaping out of bed gathering up her things and heading for the shower. Joe lazed in bed, waiting for his turn in the bathroom, and idly hoping for a tantalizing glimpse of Emma’s lively, feminine curves. To his disappointment, though, instead of walking out in a towel or a robe, she was already fully dressed when she emerged some fifteen minutes later.

  “You’re in a big hurry this morning,” he noted, disappointed he hadn’t been able to watch her put her lipstick on or brush her glossy brown hair, or even slip on her sling-back heels.

  “No surprise there,” she retorted in a low, clipped tone. “I’ve got a lot to do today.”

  So did he. So reluctantly he hauled his body out of bed and went to find the gym bag he had brought with him the afternoon before with his workout clothes and running shoes, while Emma headed on down to the kitchen.

  “Listen, I’m going to arrange to have your lease broken and all your stuff moved over to my place today,” he said as Em
ma was standing at the counter, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing so she could take off.

  She turned to him, clearly annoyed. Joe didn’t care. Someone had to take charge here. Make some decisions. And it was damn well going to be him.

  “Why would I want to give up my place?” she demanded impatiently.

  Realizing this was one woman who was not going to be easy to tame, never mind merge lives with, Joe shot back, “Because for it to look as if this marriage is as real as the fates of our careers need it to be, we both have to live in the same place.”

  A little of the fight went out of Emma’s dark green eyes. “So why not here?” she said a little more quietly, as she poured steaming coffee into her stainless steel travel mug bearing the Carolina Storm insignia.

  Trying hard not to notice how fresh and pretty she looked in her work clothes, when he had yet to shower, Joe drew on all his patience and explained, “This apartment is too far from the Storm practice rink in Holly Springs.” He paused to pour coffee into a regular stoneware mug. “My place is only five minutes from there. And you work in Holly Springs, too. So it just makes sense.”

  “Except for one thing.” Emma tossed him a sassy smile over the rim of her coffee cup as she paused to take a drink. “Both our families live in Holly Springs.”

  “So?” Joe shrugged as he added sugar to his coffee.

  “So,” Emma continued, “having them a half an hour or so away limits the opportunities to run into them and so on.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Emma, but if either of our families want to see us, they will. Commute into Raleigh or not.”

  “Fine. Do whatever,” Emma said, glancing at her watch. She was obviously in a hurry to get to work. “I don’t have time to argue about it.”

  EMMA ARRIVED AT WORK half an hour before she was expected. Five minutes later, the Snows showed up, with Michelle’s fiancé, Benjamin Posen, in tow. “I was just over at the Flower Mart and I have to tell you, none of those flowers are going to be acceptable,” Gigi Snow told Emma the moment they were all settled in her office. “I want our orchids flown in from Hawaii.”