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Michael’s eyes widened.
Hey, things were happening too quickly here, he realized, doubts surfacing thick and fast. He hadn’t thought this through.
But an image, insidious in its strength, slid into his mind and stayed—an image that had been with him all his life. A woman walking toward Maitland Maternity and leaving four babies on the steps.
And then walking away.
Jenny was fighting every way she knew to keep this baby. She wasn’t walking away, and by marrying her, he’d give her the only chance she had.
“I can handle that,” he said, and if his voice didn’t sound so sure to himself, it was convincing enough to cause a flood of gratitude and absolute relief to wash across Jenny’s face.
“You really mean it?”
“I mean it.” He grinned, lessening the tension. “Hey, there’s a few things we should clear up before we make a final pact.” He thought hard. “Like, I hate custard.”
“We’re not living together!”
“Maybe we have to, for a while at least. Tell me you won’t make me eat custard.”
She choked. “Hey, it’s good for you.”
“You make custard, and the deal’s off.”
She managed a wavering smile. “You drive a hard bargain. But okay. As long as I don’t have to eat pumpkin.”
“No pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving?” He sounded shocked, and she chuckled.
“I’ll make you Spotted Dick instead,” she promised, and his brows rose.
“Spotted Dick?”
“My very favorite dessert. England’s soul food.”
“You eat something called Spotted Dick?”
“Sure do.” She chuckled. “And so will you.”
“What am I letting myself in for? Aagh!” He clutched his stomach in mock horror and then managed a shaken grin. “Okay. I guess I can live with that. What else should we work out? You don’t snore too loud?”
“Nope.”
“Or watch WWF wrestling on TV?”
“Nope again.” She smiled. “You?”
“Nope. Promise.”
“And you don’t decorate your apartment with Playboy centerfolds?”
“I’ll move ’em all into my bedroom,” he said magnanimously, and she laughed again. Then her smile died.
“Michael, you won’t expect… I mean…”
He knew what she was asking, even though she couldn’t bring herself to say it. “No, Jenny,” he said. “No way. This marriage is in name only. I promise you that.”
She believed him. Maybe she was being a fool, but she looked into his deep green eyes and she trusted him. Absolutely.
But she’d been down that road before. Trusting a man whose reasons for marrying her weren’t what they seemed.
“You don’t fly aerolites?” she asked, and there was a faint tremor in her voice.
“No, Jenny, I don’t fly aerolites. Do you?”
“What do you think?” She grinned, her good humor flooding back. Okay, this was crazy, but it was better than the alternative—getting on a bus and heading for Mexico alone. A million miles better. “I’d weigh down any aerolite so much it wouldn’t make it two feet off the ground.”
“Only for a little bit,” he said. “Until the ninth earl is born.”
“Not the ninth earl,” she said sharply. “Baby Morrow. That’s all.”
“How about Baby Lord?” he asked. “Does that make sense?”
“I…” She stared at him in confusion. “I don’t know.”
“We have heaps of time to think about that,” he said, and turned on the ignition. “Meanwhile, if we’re getting married today—”
“Today?”
“Can you think of a good reason why not?”
“I…”
“Didn’t think you could,” he said smugly. “Okay, Jenny, let’s go find us a preacher.”
THEY HEADED for the border.
“El Paso,” Michael said as he turned his car onto the highway. He was thinking as he moved, discarding plan after plan and coming up with the one that made most sense. “It’s the only place we can get everything done.”
“I thought… Can’t we marry here? In Austin? Or even Las Vegas? It’d be simpler.”
She was still afraid, Michael thought as he turned the car toward the border. She was expecting any minute that the men in suits would come at them with sirens blazing and cart her forcibly away to the dreaded Gloria.
“By the time you see any immigration official—or Gloria—we’ll be married,” he said softly. “The advantages of El Paso are twofold. First, there’s a judge near there I know from my days on the force. If it’s for me personally and I tell him the baby’s on the way, he’ll waive the three-day license period so we can marry right away. He’d even enjoy it. Second, it’s a border town, so we can fill out all the immigration forms and get the rubber stamps and signatures you need to make you legal. By the time you get back to Austin we’ll be so legally correct, officialdom won’t have a chance.”
“But…” Her voice faltered. She still looked pale, and he couldn’t help noticing how many times she glanced behind them.
“Jenny, don’t worry,” he told her gently. “They’re not after us, guns blazing. This is not a bad movie. Sure, Gloria will have told them you intend overstaying, but you’re not illegal yet. No matter how much money and influence she has, she can’t bribe the department to throw the entire weight of the law into finding someone who hasn’t broken the law yet. Even if they found us—”
“They’d deport me.”
“They wouldn’t.” He put a hand out to touch hers. “You’re my intended bride, and we’re heading off to get ourselves married before our son in born. There’s not a way in the world they can stop us.”
“Then why aren’t you stopping off to collect your toothbrush?” she asked, and he grimaced.
“Sharp, aren’t you?”
“I have a lot hanging on this,” she told him. “And I need honesty here.”
“Okay.” He put his hands on the steering wheel and focused on the road. He still had the top down. The sun was on their faces, and they were heading toward the border for all the world like a married couple on vacation.
“It’s just that I don’t know Gloria,” he confessed. His brow was furrowed, his red eyebrows beetling in concentration. It was a gesture that was peculiarly Michael, and Jen was discovering how much she liked it. And the sound of his voice…
“Gloria sounds like an elderly, aristocratic nutcase, and my first reaction is to discount a heap of your fear,” he said. “I can’t figure her intentions, but I’m trained never to underestimate an enemy I don’t know. So I’m assuming the worst—that she has the resources to fight for what she wants.”
“But—”
“Once we’re safely married, there’s no way she can touch you,” Michael said, cutting across her protest. “I know how to look after my own. But let’s get married before we go taking any chances.”
THEY ARRIVED at El Paso late, far too late to get married that night. They’d stopped briefly to eat, but Jenny was so nervous Michael had barely time to bolt a burger before she was edging him back to the car.
“I told you, Jenny. There are no blazing guns.”
“I just don’t trust her. She’s known all along what I was doing. Now she’ll be thrown right off track, and I don’t know what she’ll do.”
Her nervousness was infectious, and by the time they reached the decent, plain hotel Michael knew, it was as much as he could do not to look over his shoulder.
He felt crazy to be worrying about an elderly aristocratic female half a world away.
Never underestimate an enemy you don’t know.
“Do you have a suite with two bedrooms?” he asked the woman at the hotel desk, and Jenny looked at him, startled.
“No, sir,” the woman said primly. “We have adjoining rooms with a communication door.”
He thought about that for all of two seconds and rejected it absolutely. “Nope. A twin room, then.”
“Certainly, sir.” She cast a curious glance at Jenny. Married couple having a fight, the clerk’s face said, and the tension in Jenny’s eyes confirmed it.
“You sleep well, then,” she told them as she handed over the key. “And…” She took a deep breath and beamed at the pair of them. “If I can butt in here… You’re such a lovely couple and with the baby so close, well, whatever’s bothering you, you try real hard to sort it out. Those twin beds are on rollers. If you want, they roll together real quick.”
“GREAT!”
“What’s the problem?”
Jenny had plunked herself on the farthest bed and was glaring at her intended husband as if her life depended on it. “She thinks we’re married,” she snapped.
“Get used to it, Jenny,” he said lightly, but there was an underlying seriousness beneath his words that had her staring. “We’re going to have to play this as if we mean it.”
“Why?”
“The immigration officials won’t give you a green card unless they think this marriage is real. The judge we see tomorrow has to waive the three-day license period. He won’t do that unless he thinks this is a real marriage and we’re only rushing it because of the baby. So we convince everyone we’ve been falling in love over the last few months, and the day before you were due to walk out of my life, I proposed and you fell into my arms.”
“But—”
“And we don’t convince them by sharing separate bedrooms.”
“We’re not married yet, Michael Lord,” she said with asperity. “I don’t see why we have to share tonight.”
He paused, but there was no room for dishonesty between them. This was too important.
“You’re afraid of what Gloria can do,” he said. “I don’t know Gloria and I don’t know what her resources are, but I don’t trust what I don’t know, and I want you where I can look out for you. I don’t want you down the hall.”
“You think…”
“I don’t think anything,” he said wearily, “but I’m taking no chances. We’re a couple, Jenny. Get used to it.”
EASIER SAID than done. Jenny was so tired she should be asleep on her feet, but she was so aware of Michael that every nerve in her body was still wide awake and screaming that there was a man in her bedroom—a very large, very…well, very male man.
A man who for the past few months had been her boss and was now to be her husband.
It was too unnerving for words. She went into the bathroom, washed, changed into her pajamas and made a dive for the bed. Safely there, she hauled the bedclothes up to her neck and then glanced over to see Michael sitting on the other bed laughing at her.
“Very sexy,” he approved, his eyes dancing. “Baggy pajamas wide enough to hide a small house. Just what I’d always dreamed my bride would wear.”
“Yeah, well, you try being eight months pregnant and figure how to be sexy,” she snapped, glowering. “Go get your own pajamas on.”
“I don’t have pajamas,” he said soulfully. “The drugstore only carried toothbrushes and razors—not pajamas.”
“That’s your problem.” Her voice was breathless. “I’m going to sleep.”
“You do that, Jenny,” he said, his voice gentling. “You must be beat.”
She was, at that. Why else would the sound of the concern in his voice make her want to weep?
It was too strange for words. She lay with her eyes closed as she listened to him head for bed—listened to him wash and use his brand-new toothbrush and then secure the room.
He didn’t just lock the door. He was taking no chances. He hauled his bed across the doorway so no one could enter without stepping right over him. Surely the precautions were unnecessary, Jenny thought sleepily, but she felt safer all the same.
She lay still until she heard him slide beneath the sheets, pummel his pillows, then settle down. The sound of his deep, even breathing was infinitely reassuring.
She shouldn’t let him do this, she thought, but there was no way she’d stop him. Not now.
“Michael?”
“Mmm.” He sounded half-asleep already.
“I—I appreciate this,” she stammered. “You don’t know how much.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said sleepily. “You wanted rescuing and I rescued you. You have no idea how satisfying it is. Maybe I always knew I wanted to be Sir Lancelot and rescue a few damsels in distress.”
She furrowed through her memory bank. “I thought Lancelot was taken up with Guinevere—the king’s wife.” She frowned. “Did Sir Lancelot rescue damsels, as well?”
“Sure he did,” Michael said easily into the dark. “In his pre-Guinevere days he was quite a boy. He dashed around on his white charger rescuing maidens all over the place.”
“What, lots of maidens?”
“Yep.”
She smiled into the dark. “Didn’t it get a bit crowded? Up on his horse, I mean?”
“It might have,” he agreed reflectively. “I guess he must have had some sort of system. You know, when the horse got crowded, the damsel on the back fell off, the dragon got her and he had to rescue her all over again.”
Silence.
“I don’t think, then,” she said at last, staring at the darkened ceiling, “that I want to fall off. Not quite yet.”
“Then you just hang on for all you’re worth, Jenny,” he said, and he chuckled into the darkness. “And let’s see where this dratted horse takes us.”
THEY WERE married at eleven the next morning.
It was the strangest wedding Jenny had ever attended, though in fairness she’d only been to the formal white weddings the British were so good at. Although her wedding to Peter had been quiet, they’d done it in a church, she’d worn white, and a vicar had married them in his crimson robes.
The man who married Michael and Jenny was a portly little judge in a too-shiny suit. He’d known Michael from way back and greeted him like a long-lost friend.
“I never thought I’d see you facing a shotgun marriage,” he said jovially, and Michael grinned.
“Have you any idea how hard it is to persuade a girl to marry you these days? Independent, single-minded females—”
“Hey, she sounds just like the sort of wife you need.” The judge beamed at Jenny. “Step right up, girl, before he changes his mind. If there’s one thing I’d like to see this boy do, it’s marry.”
So they married, exchanging rings bought half an hour before at a cheap jeweler’s in the next block. A secretary witnessed their signatures, and the entire process took just fifteen minutes.
“And not a moment too soon, by the look of it.” The judge inspected the last of the documents and nodded his satisfaction. “That’s that, then, and I’m glad to make your little one legal.” He fixed Michael with his sternest look. “You look after them, you hear?”
Michael smiled and took Jenny’s hand, for all the world as if he was a real-life husband.
“Yes, sir,” he said softly. “I intend to do just that.”
“Then there’s only one thing left.” The judge grinned.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
“You may now kiss the bride, boy.” He chuckled. “My favorite part. My wife says it’s the only reason I aimed to be a judge. Go ahead, boy. Kiss her like you intend to kiss her five times a day for the rest of your lives. Or more.”
He had no choice. Michael looked into Jenny’s confused eyes, and he knew this was what he must do. He must kiss her.
But for an obligation, it didn’t hurt one bit. He gathered her into his arms, and his mouth met hers, and what was meant to have been a formal kiss of acquiescence suddenly became much more than that.
He felt her softly yielding to him—but he sensed the tremor running through her and tried to kiss away the doubts and the fears and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
And somewhere in that kiss, something changed between them—something that would stay changed for all time. Because when he pulled away—finally—after a kiss that had gone on forever and must have satisfied any onlooking judge, it felt as if he was tearing himself apart to let her go.
It was as if in her touch, he was where he needed to be, he thought dazed. Forever.
That was crazy. He needed emotional attachment like a hole in the head!
And Jenny… She looked at him while their hands were still linked. He could see the faint indentation where his mouth had pressed against hers—like a shadow—and he could see matching shadows of doubt and fear in her eyes.
And the fear had deepened.
IT DIDN’T END there. There was a day of legal formalities in front of them. “One of the reasons I brought you to El Paso is that we can do everything at once,” Michael told her. “We’ll get your immigration forms filled in here and take the first steps to get you legalized. That way if immigration officials are waiting when we get back to Austin, they won’t have a leg to stand on.”
“Or Gloria.”
“Or Gloria,” he agreed gravely.
“She’ll be so angry. She seems so demure, so ladylike, but she has such power.” Jenny shivered in the warm sunshine, and Michael’s hold on her arm tightened. She’d been subdued since they’d left the judge’s office.
“There’s nothing she can do to touch you now, Jenny. Nothing.”
“I know that.” But still she shivered.
MARRYING WAS EASY compared to immigrating. The forms Jenny filled in were endless.
She and Michael went from one bureaucratic counter to another, and her guilt deepened all the while.
“You shouldn’t be here. You should be at work. You know you had appointments today,” she told him.
“You sound like my secretary,” he teased, and she glared at him.
“That’s what I am underneath all this pregnancy-bride stuff. Ellie won’t know where you are. She’ll be worried.”
“I called this morning and told her secretary I wouldn’t be in.”
“Did you tell her why?”
“I didn’t give her a reason, no.”
“But you’re always in,” Jenny said, alarmed. “She’ll be worried sick, especially if you’re not at home if she tries to contact you. You call her right away.”
“I don’t need—”
“Michael, people care about you,” she said sternly, finding a shadow of her old autocratic self. “Even if you don’t believe in emotional attachment, they do. Call.”
His eyebrows rose, but the look on her face told him she wasn’t kidding. It was her best schoolmarm look, and he answered accordingly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
HE DIDN’T leave her. Michael wasn’t letting Jenny out of his sight, not until the last of the legal documents had been signed. Instead, as she sat with head bent, plowing through questionnaire after questionnaire, he sat at the back of the office and used his cell phone.
Ellie answered on the first ring.
“Michael!” He could hear relief echoing in her voice, and he felt a twinge of guilt. Okay, he should have phoned earlier, he acknowledged. Jenny was right. It never occurred to him that anyone worried about him—it never had, which was a side of his personality that drove his sisters nuts. “Where on earth are you?” Ellie demanded. “I’ve been calling everywhere and you’ve had your phone turned off.”
“I’m not in Austin,” he told her obscurely. “I’m out of town on business.”
“And would this business have anything to do with Jenny Morrow?”
“It might.”
“Then don’t tell me,” she said hastily. “I don’t need to know. What I don’t know I can’t be forced to tell.”
“We’re not talking torture here, I hope, Ellie,” he said, startled, and she gave a reluctant chuckle.
“Not quite. But the people asking questions…they have all the right authority and they’re very insistent. They say Jenny’s taken off and plans to stay in the country illegally.”
“Ellie, how many illegal immigrants do you guess are in the U.S.?” Michael asked slowly. “Rough guess? Ballpark figure?”
“I don’t know. Thousands?”
“That’d be my guess.” He frowned into the phone. “So why do you think there’s all this interest in our Jenny?”
“Our Jenny?”
“She’s my secretary,” Michael said, stifling the impulse to lay claim to a closer relationship. That could wait. “I’d like to know what the heck is going on.”
“I thought you might know,” Ellie said thoughtfully. “Being away from work and all.”
“Ellie, when did I last have time off work?”
“Beats me,” she said. “I don’t think you have. Not since you started here two years ago.”
“Permission to take the rest of the day off, then? With that and the weekend… That should do it. I’ll be back at work on Monday.”
“Should do what?” Her voice rose. “No. Don’t hang up. I take back what I said about not wanting to know. I do. Michael, what’s going on?”
“I want you to find out. You’re closer to the action than I am.”
“There’s a strange woman here,” Ellie said suddenly, as if she was looking around reception as she spoke and her gaze had rested on someone. “Not a bureaucrat. English, upper crust. Mid-sixties. Looks like Wallace Simpson on a good day. Not a hair out of place. Expensively dressed and smooth as silk. You know the type—or maybe you don’t. It’s a female thing—on the surface polite and sweet and a little bit helpless, and underneath as tough as nails. She’s questioning all the staff about where Jenny might be—says she’s Jenny’s mother-in-law, and she’s worried sick.”
“Is she now?” Michael turned away so Jenny couldn’t hear him. “What’s she saying?”
“She thinks Jenny’s run away because the immigration officers have come. She says Jenny’s pregnant and alone, with practically no money. She told me the immigration officials are trying to deport Jenny, and she’s desperate to help her daughter-in-law and her poor little unborn grandchild. So do I know anything I’m not telling the immigration people?”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” Ellie said frankly. “When she asked the staff in accounts where Jenny might be and they didn’t know, she offered them money. A heap of money. To be honest, she gives me the creeps. So no, she has nothing from me except blank stares. I can be a real dope when I try.”
“Good girl.”
“Don’t patronize me, you toad. Just tell me—”
“Watch her, Ellie,” Michael interrupted. “You’re right not to trust her. I don’t understand yet if there’s just cause, but Jenny’s frightened of her, and Jen doesn’t scare easily. And don’t worry. I’ll see you at work on Monday.”
“Michael!” Ellie’s voice rose in a wail, and Michael grinned and disconnected.
For a change, it wouldn’t hurt Ellie not to know what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning.
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