by Sandra Hyatt
“Why don’t we go sit down,” Max prompted gently. With a glance back at Gillian and Ethan, Laura led the way through the house to a spacious, high-ceilinged living room.
Three men, all of them big, were sprawled on low, wheat-colored couches, their attention riveted on an enormous flat-screen television. It was easy enough to pick out Stephen, their father, and Max had given her good enough descriptions that Gillian was fairly certain she knew which brother was which.
Laura cleared her throat. “Max and his…friends are here.”
Only one of the men, Jake, Gillian guessed, glanced their way before the play was up. His observant gaze lit on Gillian and Ethan and froze there.
“Stephen. Turn the TV off.” Laura instructed quietly.
“This better be good, Max,” the man next to Stephen—had to be Carter, Gillian figured—muttered as their father pressed mute on a remote.
“It’s good all right,” Jake said, a broad smile spreading across his face as he levered himself off the couch. “Real good.”
The two others stood and all three men crossed toward Gillian and Max, like an approaching forest of oaks.
“Dad, guys,” Max said as his father got to them first, “this is Gillian and Ethan.” Gillian readjusted Ethan on her hip and reached to shake the hand Stephen held out to her. “Do you want me to take Ethan?” Max asked her quietly.
Ethan heard the offer, smiled and reached for Max. “Daddy.” The word rang clear and loud in the quiet living room. The silence stretched till it was broken by Jake’s roar of laughter. Ethan, still leaning toward Max and delighted to have caused such merriment, repeated his trick. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” Soon the boom of the two brothers’ laughter filled the room. Their parents didn’t share their amusement.
Gillian met Max’s gaze over Ethan’s head. A trace of wry amusement sparkled in his blue eyes. “I guess that’s one explanation taken off my hands,” he said. He reached for Ethan but the noise had gotten to her son, who changed his mind and clung like a limpet to Gillian instead, burying his face in her shoulder.
“And before Ethan beats me to my second announcement, you ought to know that Gillian is your sister-in-law, and daughter-in-law,” he added with a nod in his parents’ direction.
Did that mean he didn’t want to call her his wife? She didn’t blame him.
“You always were the secretive one. How long have you been married?” Jake asked, having gotten his amusement under control.
Max glanced at his watch. “In minutes as well as hours?”
Jake filled the silence that yawned after that pronouncement. “We didn’t get an invite?”
“It wasn’t that sort of wedding.”
That simple statement quelled any lingering amusement. Laura stepped into the breach. “Welcome to the family, Gillian.” She kissed Gillian’s cheek. “And welcome to you, too, Ethan.” She planted a quick kiss on Ethan’s curls. “Why don’t we all sit down and get to know one another. We have half an hour before dinner’s ready.”
Half an hour of interrogation, Gillian suspected from the questioning looks on everyone’s faces. Oh, goody. The only saving grace was that many of the questions would undoubtedly be directed at Max. And the fact that Ethan was here would surely be a kind of buffer and icebreaker as well.
“Hey, buddy,” Jake said to Ethan. “Want to come with your uncle Jake to choose a toy to play with? My nieces have a whole room full of them here.”
“I don’t think so,” Gillian said. “He’s quite shy around strangers.”
“Yes, please.” Ethan immediately made a liar of her and wriggled out of her hold and down her body. “Have they got a twain?”
He trotted off with Jake, who tossed a wink back over his shoulder at her. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
Laura watched them go. “How old is he?”
“Nearly three,” Gillian said.
“His birthday’s the same as mine,” Max said quietly.
Laura swung sharply back to look at Max, an expression on her face Gillian couldn’t interpret. Shock? Pain? It was so quickly replaced by neutrality that Gillian almost thought she’d imagined it. Laura gestured to the closest couch. “Sit down. Tell us a little about yourself.”
“Mom.” Max’s voice held a note of warning.
“I just want to talk to my new daughter-in-law,” Laura said innocently. “Stephen, I think you should turn that off.”
Stephen’s glance had strayed to the muted TV. “I was just thinking the same thing myself.” With a last lingering glance at the screen he pressed a button on the remote and the screen went blank.
Gillian lowered herself to the couch, grateful when Max sat next to her, and even more grateful when he took her hand in his. She tightened her grip around his.
“What is it you do, Gillian?” She knew there were plenty more questions that Laura would undoubtedly want answers to, like why was she only now meeting her almost three-yearold grandson, so Gillian was thankful for the casually polite question.
“I’m a journalist with a paper in Vista del Mar.”
“The Seaside Gazette,” Max added.
“Isn’t that the paper that’s been—” Carter cut himself short.
“The paper that’s been the thorn in my side?” Max asked. “Yes.”
Gillian could just imagine how Max might have complained about the Gazette to his family.
“But Gillian and I have always kept our personal and professional relationships separate.”
Just like in L.A. Though they’d met because of the intersections between their careers, they’d strenuously kept their work out of their relationship. In fact, they’d kept almost everything out of their relationship except the physical passion that had flamed between them. She’d been new to L.A. at the time and had thought she had to be sophisticated and unemotional. She’d thought she could play it that way. So they’d had good times, but neither of them had made an effort to truly know the other. They thought they’d had the relationship the way they wanted it, the way it ought to be. Superficial and fun. When Gillian made the shocking discovery that she was pregnant and realized she wanted more and hinted as much to Max, he’d ended it. She couldn’t blame him.
“But I have the highest respect for her integrity, even if I occasionally think it’s misguided.”
Gillian hadn’t expected the compliment, but she knew that at least at one time it had been true. Before they’d ended up on opposite sides of the fence regarding Cameron Enterprises’ takeover of Worth Industries.
“And what is it your folks do?”
“My mom owns a store up near Fort Bragg, and I never really knew my father. I have no idea what he does.”
Laura opened her mouth but it was a second or two before any words came out. “What sort of store?”
“A kind of art gallery.”
Laura brightened. “Perhaps we know it.”
Gillian looked at the sculptures and oil paintings in the living room and tried to imagine some of the things her mother sold—paintings of other dimensions, of spirit guides and angels hanging here. “Probably not,” she said. “It’s a small shop, very new age.”
“Oh.”
Gillian racked her brain for something else to say. Usually she could talk easily to anyone. But there were too many conversational minefields here for her to know which direction to go in. Fortunately, at that moment Ethan came trotting back, clutching a small stack of books, Jake following. “No twain,” Jake said. “Only dolls and books. Books won. But I’ve promised him a train before his next visit.”
“Uncle Jake’s never forgiven Mom for passing his train set on to the neighbor’s kid,” Carter said. “When he was twenty. He’s been looking for an excuse to get another one ever since.” The brothers laughed, the sound warm and inclusive.
Ethan had grown up without extended family. Now he had a father, grandparents, an aunt and a swag of uncles and cousins. Gillian was torn between guilt that she’d denied her son this and terror tha
t he’d grow to like it only to have it taken away when Max realized that he’d been right when he’d insisted that marriage and children weren’t things he wanted or needed.
Jake resumed his seat on the couch. Ethan climbed up beside him and passed him a book about a little yellow digger.
All Gillian had ever wanted was to do the very best she could for her son.
And she still didn’t know what that was.
She looked at Max. In a room practically brimming with charismatic men, Max was still the one who riveted her attention, who made her pulse pick up. It was his eyes that caught and held her gaze, the hint of pain walled off, the unfathomable depths in them, the intelligence and decency they hinted at.
And passion. The one area he’d never held back from her.
His hand tightened around hers and the remembrance of that passion flickered.
Gillian felt it in the pit of her stomach, felt it bring color to her cheeks. Her physical response was as unexpected as it was unwanted. She didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t still feel anything for Max. It was the only way she’d be able to survive this marriage.
“How long have you been in Vista del Mar?” Laura asked.
Max, still looking at her, lifted an eyebrow, sharing the fact that he, too, didn’t know the answer.
“Six months,” she said to him, then turned to Laura. “I love it there. It’s a wonderful place to raise a child.”
“More importantly, Dodgers or Angels?” Jake interrupted his storytelling to ask.
Gillian shook her head. “I’ve heard about the divided loyalties in this family and there’s no way I’m getting drawn into it.”
“She’s Angels,” Max announced on her behalf.
“I knew I liked you,” Jake said with a smile and a glance of triumph sent Carter’s way, before turning back to the book he was reading to Ethan.
Conversation limped along for ten more minutes till Laura excused herself to check on dinner, suggesting as she left that Max show Gillian their and Ethan’s rooms.
Leaving Ethan engrossed in the next story Jake was reading, Gillian headed up the stairs behind Max. They didn’t speak as he led her along the hallway, finally stopping at an open door. “This will be Ethan’s room. It’s a bit girly because it’s been set up for my nieces. We’ll get some stuff in here for Ethan.”
“I don’t think I should be away from him tonight. It’s his first night here.” There were twin beds, she’d happily sleep in one of them.
Max crossed the room and opened another door to reveal an adjoining room dominated by a king-size bed. He stepped back so Gillian could enter. “This is our bedroom. We can leave the door between the two open.”
“Our?”
Five
Gillian’s throat ran dry as she stared at the lushly draped king-size bed and the implications rained down on her.
She hadn’t thought it possible for things to get any worse. She’d been wrong. The trouble was she’d had all she could do to keep up with the present moment as the day lurched and leaped from crisis to calamity. She hadn’t thought ahead.
“Yes, our, but don’t worry, I won’t touch you.” His voice was cool, any hint of the remembered heat she thought she’d seen earlier had gone. “The bed’s big enough. We have to share because my parents will already have enough doubts about our sudden marriage. I’m not giving them any further cause for concern. We’ll be doing things together like a normal couple, like a normal family.”
Too much, too fast.
How could she be expected to share a bed with him, a man she’d once had such a passionate relationship with, a man she’d once hoped could love her? How did they pretend to be normal parents, with a normal relationship in public, while in private he could look so coldly at her?
He demonstrated how after dinner.
The meal had been pleasant, if she ignored the underlying strain of tension and the occasional looks she caught among Max’s family, but they made an effort to welcome her. And Max had been warm and affectionate. She could almost believe he meant it. Within his family he was different, though even from them he seemed to hold something of himself back.
His parents and brothers were nice people. People who in other circumstances she would have been completely relaxed around.
As it was, she was glad of the excuse of needing to bathe Ethan when she stood from the table. She hid her surprise when Max stood, too.
Together they knelt at the side of the bath while Ethan splashed and played with the bath toys, keeping up a stream of chatter. But the silence between them, as they shared this simple parenting task, was almost companionable.
Ethan dive-bombed a little red tugboat into the bath, sending up a fountain of water that splashed both Max and her, soaking their fronts. Before she’d realized it they were laughing together.
“Not your usual Saturday night?” Gillian asked as their laughter quieted and she eyed the shirt plastered to the contours of his chest.
Max’s gaze softened on her. “No. This is a first for me. And to be honest, if anyone had asked, I would have said I couldn’t think of anything I’d less like to do, but right now there isn’t anywhere in the world I’d rather be.”
Gillian looked away and studied her hands dangling over the rim of the bubble-filled bath. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”
Ethan made motor noises as he pushed the tugboat around, driving it into a duck and then a dragon. Finally, thinking he wasn’t going to answer, she glanced at Max. His blue eyes were so serious. “I don’t know if I can forgive you for it but…I can understand why you did it. After what I’d said. What I believed at the time. And knowing how I would have reacted.”
She shrugged. His concession was more than she’d expected.
And maybe it was a place they could move forward from.
At Gillian’s prompting, Ethan stood and she reached for a towel, wrapping him in it.
“I’ll lift him out if you like,” Max offered. “You’ll get wet. Wetter.”
“So will you.”
“I don’t mind if my brothers can see through my shirt. You on the other hand…”
She looked down at the green blouse she’d changed into earlier. She’d been so distracted by the contours of Max’s chest that she’d forgotten to consider her own contours, and the way the pale cotton would cling.
“Oh.” The heat of a blush crept up her face. Ridiculous since Max had seen way more of her than the outline of her breasts. But that was then and that was different. “Thanks.”
He lifted Ethan from the water. Together they readied him for bed, dressing him in his pajamas, then Max carried him to his bedroom. They tucked him in and sat on the side of Ethan’s bed for a few minutes before Max, realizing Gillian’s desire to be alone for a while, kissed his son good-night and left. In the doorway he turned back, his gaze soft on them before walking down the hallway.
With just a night-light for illumination, Gillian looked at her little boy as his eyelids drifted closed. He was so like his father. She shook her head. For a few minutes this morning she’d thought today was going to be an ordinary Saturday.
And now her whole world had been turned upside down.
She was married to Max, a man who didn’t love her, but who she could only hope would grow to love Ethan and be there for him for the long haul. If being married to him helped ensure that, she had to at least try to be glad of it.
Not frightened.
She wasn’t even sure what the fear was about. She trusted Max. He had a deep integrity. He’d said going into their original relationship what he did and didn’t want. So if he said he wouldn’t touch her, he wouldn’t.
The fear came from watching his tenderness with Ethan, and wanting some of it for herself. She’d cared for Max once, more than she’d let on because she’d known he didn’t want that from her. She had to be stronger than to care for him again.
She’d learned to live with loneliness, without his presence or warmth. She could go on witho
ut it now.
With Ethan asleep she had no excuse to linger up here so she made her way downstairs, pausing near the bottom when she heard her name. The sound came from the home office she’d noticed off the entry.
“I’m not the only one of us with a hell of a lot of questions.” Carter’s low voice carried to her.
Her hand tightened on the banister.
“Keep them to yourself because if they’re about Gillian and me they’re none of your damn business.” Max’s tone was mild but unbending.
“If she’s after the Preston wealth then they are my business.”
She should keep moving or make some kind of sound so that they knew she was nearby.
“She’s not.” Max’s words were clipped.
“Just tell me she signed a prenup?”
Max paused. “Yes.”
“I hope it’s iron-clad. You’re worth a fortune. It’s pretty tempting.”
“Don’t worry about it, Carter. She’s not like that.” Max defended her. Now there was a surprise. “I can guarantee she didn’t marry me for my money.” Gillian almost smiled. That much was definitely true. Max had mentioned that Carter’s engagement had ended when he’d discovered his fiancée was more interested in his wealth than him. So his cynicism was understandable.
“She’s pretty and everything. I’ll give you that. And she seems nice,” Carter said, still not sounding convinced.
“She is nice.” There was a warning edge to Max’s voice. “And yes, she’s pretty, but she’s also honest and kind and has the courage of her convictions. She always stands up for the underdog. That spirit was the thing that first drew me to her.”
Carter laughed.
“Okay.” Max’s voice softened and Gillian thought she heard a hint of amusement. “Maybe it was the second thing. But trust me on this, Carter, I know what I’m doing.”
“You usually do, but this seems to have come out of nowhere.”