“What are you talking about?” Gabe demanded as he watched her spread some more adhesive on the wall above the counter. “I thought you had a happy childhood.”
“I did!” Maggie smoothed it in place with even strokes of her trowel.
Gabe tore his eyes from the faint jiggling motions of her breasts beneath her soft cotton T-shirt. This was no time to be thinking how well she filled out her clothes, he reminded himself sternly. He stepped back slightly to allow her room to work. “Then…?”
“I didn’t always have choices.” Finished, Maggie put the bucket and trowel aside and wiped her hands on a cloth, before throwing it aside, too. “I want choices.”
Gabe watched her lay another plumb line across the bond with chalk and string, before starting up again. “In what way didn’t you have choices?” he asked.
Maggie leaned across the counter to lay the first tile with the careful precision of an artist. Finished, she released a beleaguered sigh and reached for another tile. “From the time I was old enough to know the different types of cabinets and countertops and flooring, it was expected that I would keep Callaway Remodeling and Construction going.”
Gabe watched her continue the pattern she had started, alternating plain and painted tiles. “I thought you loved your work.”
Maggie stepped back to admire what she had done thus far. Her pouty lower lip curled thoughtfully as she propped her hands on her hips and looked at the half-tiled backsplash in front of her. “I love aspects of it. But—” she turned to give Gabe an arch look “—I might have loved something else as much or more, but I wasn’t given the chance to explore my options and figure out what I wanted because of the demands of my family.” Their eyes met and she shook her head unhappily, recalling. “The needs of the business, and the expectations of my family overrode any choices I might have had.”
This, Gabe hadn’t expected. He had always assumed, as did everyone else who knew Maggie, that she had never even considered doing anything else. He studied the unhappiness in her eyes, and wished, once again, that he could erase any and all negatives in her life.
“That might have been true while your parents were alive,” he pointed out calmly, wanting her to take charge of whatever she could. “But since your folks died and you inherited the business, you’ve made plenty of changes, concentrating on kitchens, which are your forte and turning down a lot of the other work.” She also could have chosen to sell the business—she hadn’t.
Maggie sighed heavily. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?” Gabe studied the flushed color in her cheeks and the cautious sparkle in her green eyes.
Maggie threw her arms up in frustration and went back to laying tile, one by one. “I thought I was free of arbitrary familial expectations and demands. And now here I am again,” she muttered grumpily, “expected to move in with you by your family, because your mother is a celebrity, and there’s enormous public interest in her and her family life.”
Gabe moved around to stand beside Maggie, making sure he gave her plenty of room to work. Reminding himself to put her needs and wants ahead of his own, despite what his own heart was urging him to do, he told her matter-of-factly, “You don’t have to move in with me.” If she really wanted another solution, they could find it. They just needed time. And, he added dryly to himself, a little cooperation from her.
Maggie made sure the patterned tile she was laying was precisely in place, then turned to shoot him an aggrieved look. “If I don’t, people will wonder why,” she explained irritably. She propped her hands on her hips and angled her chin up at him contentiously. “The little dog-and-pony show we put on during the ‘Rupert and Casey Show’ will all be for naught, because the tabloid press will start investigating us. And then they’ll find out about my visits to the fertility clinic, and your no-show, and my fury, and before you know it, the tabloids will be publishing stories that our marriage is all a sham.”
To Gabe’s chagrin, Maggie had a point. “Then there’s only one way to fix it,” he decided, just as firmly. Stepping forward, he closed the distance between them, not stopping until they stood toe to toe. “We make our marriage a real one, in every way.”
MAGGIE STARED at Gabe, not sure whether she wanted to hug him or throttle him. She only knew he was, without a doubt, the most persistently chivalrous man she had ever met in her entire life. The only problem was, she didn’t want to be made his “wife” out of an act of mercy. It was bad enough they had decided to make their baby the old-fashioned way, and then kept right on making love to each other even after her fertile period had apparently passed. She’d told herself at the time it was simply lust, and the need to feel close to someone—physically and emotionally—in this very special time in her life that had driven her back into Gabe’s arms, but in retrospect, she knew it had been a great deal more than that. She had made love with him again, because she was in love with him, and wanted him to be in love with her. But that wasn’t going to happen, she schooled herself firmly, because true love wasn’t something that could be ordered up on demand to make their lives work out more neatly. True love either happened or it didn’t, and thus far, with Gabe, it simply hadn’t.
Aware he was waiting for her response to his suggestion that they make their marriage a real one in every sense—except the spiritual, which couldn’t be feigned, even by the hardiest Good Samaritan on earth—Maggie swallowed hard and looked Gabe straight in the eye. “And you know what I wish?” she lobbed back as she went back to what she was doing, laying the last of the patterned tiles on the diagonal she had carefully measured out. “I wish you wouldn’t make our situation any more complicated than it already is.”
“I’m not,” he retorted, just as resolutely, as he moved in. An instant later, her back was to the counter and he was standing directly in front of her, his hands braced firmly on either side of her. “I’m talking about simplifying things—to the point that you would no longer have to hide from me.”
Okay, so that was what she was doing. Did he have to be so ungentlemanly as to point it out? Maggie wondered silently as he caged her body with the taller, stronger, warmer length of his. She tipped her head back and intensified her glare. “Don’t you need to go and eat some dinner or something?” she asked, doing her best to remain immune to the take-no-prisoners look in his eyes.
A knowing smile curved his lips. He leaned down and pressed kisses along her temple. “We both should eat some dinner,” Gabe said.
Maggie watched the broad muscles strain against the fine cotton of his pale-green dress shirt and recalled without warning how good it felt to be enveloped in their seductive warmth. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart beat wildly in her chest, and her head tipped back all the more. “I don’t want to do that until I finish here,” she told him defiantly.
“Fine,” Gabe said, as he dropped kisses along the shell of her ear, and buried his face in her neck. “Then I’ll help.”
Aware she was weakening and he hadn’t even kissed her—really kissed her—yet, Maggie splayed her hands across his chest. She hitched in a quick, bolstering breath. “You don’t know what to do.”
Gabe shrugged his broad shoulders amiably. “So show me.”
“No,” Maggie retorted stubbornly, knowing if she gave this man an inch, he would definitely take a mile, and then some.
Gabe drew back slightly. His eyes widened in surprise. “Why not?”
“Because,” Maggie fibbed as she tried to quickly build a case against them spending any more time together, intimate or otherwise, “you’re an amateur. And my company only does the most professional work.”
Gabe paused and moved his torso in even closer, until his lower half rested against hers, and she could feel the depth of his arousal. “So teach me,” he said softly, looking straight into her eyes. “I’m capable of learning.”
Exactly what she was afraid of, Maggie thought. She didn’t want him knowing any more about how to handle her. Not when she
was this vulnerable to him already. “No,” she replied, just as stubbornly.
“Okay, then,” Gabe said, as she started to step past. He slid an arm beneath her knees, another behind her back. The next thing Maggie knew she was cradled against his chest and he was headed out of the kitchen, up the stairs to the master bedroom.
Cradled against his hard chest that way, she felt a little dizzy and out of breath, not to mention excited. Definitely excited. “Now what are you doing?” she demanded, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
He regarded her with a mixture of heat and tenderness that set her blood to racing as he charged into his bedroom, used the back of his wrist to turn on the lights, and set her down on the floor. “Time for bed.”
Maggie swallowed around the sudden dryness of her throat and did her best to look as if she had little interest in making love with him again, when she knew darn well nothing could be further from the truth. “Says who?”
He grinned and gave her body a long, thorough once-over before returning his hot-blooded gaze to hers. He offered up a rapacious smile that promised untold delights as he told her softly, “Says your husband, that’s who.”
She ignored his teasing as her heart began to race. Shaking her head at him in mocking censure, she drawled in a voice that had no room for compromise, “Very funny. I want to go home.” Before I fall even deeper in love with you.
Gabe stepped closer, looking impossibly handsome and impossibly determined in the soft lamplight of his bedroom. “Not until you tell me one thing. What’s it going to take to make this a real marriage?”
Love, Maggie thought. I need you to love me the way I’ve started to love you. But since that wasn’t ever going to be the case…. “It can’t ever be a real marriage,” she said stubbornly, knowing feelings weren’t something you could conjure up on demand.
Gabe’s lips took on a tempting curve as he closed the distance between them, bringing a higher level of romance and tenderness into her life. “Tell me that again after we’ve made love,” he murmured in a low sexy voice that stirred her passion, “and I’ll believe you.”
Anchoring an arm about her waist, he dipped his head, and caught her lips against his in a fierce, burning kiss that prompted her to answer his ardor with her own. Their tongues mated in an erotic dance unlike anything she had ever imagined and for the first time all day, Maggie realized she was exactly where she wanted to be. His arms were strong and protective, wrapping her in sensual pleasure, lower still there was a provocative hardness, heat and strength. And just as before, he knew exactly how to get to her as he molded her breasts with his hands, circled the aching crowns, teased her nipples into tingling awareness.
Maggie moaned low in her throat and moved closer yet. Gabe murmured his pleasure, then drew back a little, altering the angle, increasing the depth and torridness of their kiss. Her excitement mounted as he led her over to the bed. Finding her knees suddenly too weak to hold her, Maggie dropped down onto the edge of the bed. He knelt in front of her, and began untying the laces of her work boots. Needing to do something—anything—to maintain her dignity, even as he stripped off her work shirt, T-shirt and jeans, Maggie said, “This proves nothing.”
Gabe let her clothes fall to the floor, then moved in between her knees. He looked up at her, his gray-blue eyes shimmering with a passion, want and need that matched her own. “It proves you want me,” he said softly.
She hitched in a deep trembling breath as he kissed his way up her thighs, past the triangle of golden curls, to her tummy. “I never said I didn’t,” she asserted in a low trembling voice.
“True,” he murmured, as he cradled her hips and thighs as if she were the most precious thing in the world and found her with his lips. His tongue plunged between the satiny folds, her head fell back. Her body shivered with exquisite need, and then she came apart in his hands, delicious tremors of pleasure ricocheting inside her.
Gabe held her until the aftershocks subsided. Ready to make her his, he stripped off his clothes, too. But Maggie, no passive woman in work and certainly not in play, wasn’t ready for that.
She stripped back the covers, guided him to the pillows and straddled the length of his tall, strong body. Gabe grinned as she kissed her way down his chest, lingering over the hard pectoral muscles and tight abs before finding the flat male nipples with her fingers and tongue. He sucked in his breath as she moved lower still, to the throbbing hardness of his arousal. Senses swimming with the clean, musky scent of him, Maggie traced the hot, velvety skin, learning how to pleasure him with lips and teeth and tongue, until he was wanting her as much as she had wanted him, until he groaned and caught her head with his hands.
“Enough,” he said in a low, gruff voice, turning her so she was beneath him. “I want to be inside you.”
Heart soaring, Maggie accepted the warm, wonderful weight of him over top of her. “I want that, too,” she murmured, loving the way he felt as he fit the hard planes of his body to the softer dips and curves of hers.
He parted her knees with his, settled deeply between them, then his lips were on hers once again and his hands were sliding beneath her, lifting and positioning her. She felt his manhood poised to enter her. She opened for him, like a flower blossoming in the spring, and then he plunged inside her, taking her completely, making it an all-or-nothing proposition with each slow, sexy stroke of his body. The climax she had felt earlier came roaring back in a rush of heat. She dug her fingers into his back and moved her hips to his commanding rhythm until a cry of exultation rose in her throat and was echoed in his. And then they were both soaring, wanting—finding—all they had ever dreamed possible in this crazy, mixed-up arrangement they called a marriage.
“YOU NEVER ANSWERED my question,” Gabe said, an hour later, as they sat outside on the deck, enjoying the warm spring evening and a glass of wine, and waiting for the delivery of their dinner.
“What question?” Maggie asked, looking ravishingly beautiful in a pair of his boxers and one of his shirts.
Although Gabe knew he risked ruining their mellow mood, he also knew the two of them were never as close as they were immediately after making love. If they were going to go past the boundaries they had initially set and be closer still, he was going to have to push the envelope, and take his chances that Maggie would respond the way he wanted. Gabe exhaled slowly and continued to study her in the soft glow of outdoor lighting. “What’s it going to take to make this a real marriage?” he asked. “You never answered me before.”
Maggie shrugged and sent him a cautious smile. Abruptly, she was her old sassy self—pragmatic to a fault. “You tell me,” she said softly, meaningfully, as yellow headlights swept the carport beneath the deck and a car pulled into his drive.
His heart began to beat like a bass drum. Reminded of all that was at stake here, Gabe promised, “I will tell you—in just one second.”
Gabe hustled down the steps to meet the delivery person at the bottom of the stairs. He paid the guy, giving him a handsome tip, then carried the bag back up the steps and over to the patio table where Maggie was sitting. Her hair was tousled, both from their lovemaking and from the evening breeze, her cheeks were pink with emotion, her green eyes glittering expectantly. She looked edgy and kissable—and every bit as wary of messing up their “marriage” as he felt. And—like him—she seemed determined to take charge of what she could.
“Tell me something, Gabe,” Maggie said, as he put the sacks onto the table in front of them. “What do you want from a wife?” Maggie sniffed appreciatively as the delicious aroma of Chinese food mingled with the fresh salt air.
Glad she was taking such an open-minded, practical approach, Gabe handed Maggie a set of chopsticks and laid out another for himself. Maybe there was a chance they could work this out yet, he thought hopefully. “Actually, a lot of things,” he said.
Maggie shot him a curious look as she opened up the white cardboard containers of sweet and sour chicken and steamed rice. “Such
as…?”
Sitting back in his chair, Gabe decided to start where they were having the most success. “Great sex, and lots of it.”
Maggie grinned and admitted with the combination of sweet sensuality and shyness that had been driving him wild, in bed and out, “I think we’ve got that much covered.”
Wanting her to know how deeply he felt about her now, and always would, Gabe looked at her in a way that let her know he was far from wiped out on that score. “I could make love to you all day and all night, and still never get enough.”
Maggie blushed as she opened the beef and broccoli and handed it to him. “What else do you want from a wife?” she asked, as her fingers brushed his.
That, Gabe thought, wishing their evening together would never end, was easy. “A baby—our baby.”
Maggie ducked her head shyly. “If we get our wish, we’ll have that, too.” She paused, bit her lip, some of the worry coming back into her eyes. “But it takes more than great sex and a baby to make a marriage, Gabe.”
Gabe wanted to put their food aside, take Maggie into his arms, and make love all over again, until the love and passion were back in her eyes, and none of the doubt. But he knew doing that would only put off the inevitable. There were things they needed to talk about, he reminded himself firmly. The time was now, while they were alone. “I want to be able to talk to my wife, the way I can talk to you, and know she’ll understand me, the way you understand me,” he said softly.
“What about friendship?” Maggie asked, leaning over to pour them both some more wine.
Gabe grinned as he helped himself to more rice. “It’s on the must-have list, too.” And there was no better friend for him, in this world, than Maggie, whether she knew it yet or not. “What do you want?” he asked, as they opened the other containers on the table.
“Besides all of the aforementioned?” Maggie helped herself to some kung pao chicken.
Gabe nodded as he savored the taste of fried Peking dumplings.
My Secret Wife Page 15