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“Marriage and childbirth are sacred to me, Ford,” she managed to say. “So is extended family. My mama died when I was kid, but I remember how it was with her, how close we were. My family’s still close. Family’s the most important thing in the world to me.” Color had flooded her cheeks. “I…” She paused, tightening her clasped hands. “Look, you’re not in love with me, so why are you doing this?”
He was still thinking about the tensions in his family, and he had to admit she was right. Marriages in his crowd were often cold. People made convenient, public matches, then had private affairs for other needs. But Katie was a warm woman. She needed more. She needed a loving man in her bed every night. “There’s more to the proposition,” he said.
She looked wary. “Really?”
“Really.” In a voice gone soft with seduction, he murmured, “There’s ten million dollars involved, Katie.”
She blinked, but to his surprise and her credit, she didn’t miss a beat. “You say that like you expect me to sell my soul to the devil, Ford Carrington.”
He smiled. “Not to the devil, Katie. To me.”
She looked as curious as she was cautious, and he suddenly wondered if he’d found a woman who really would marry only for love. “Hmm,” she said. “You and the devil. Why do I get the impression that at the moment there’s not much of a difference between the two?”
“Because there isn’t.” Now that he had her attention, he proceeded to explain the stipulation in his grandfather’s will. “I’ve always said I’m a committed bachelor, and my grandfather was worried I wouldn’t leave any Carrington heirs, so as an incentive, the next blood Carrington born gets a big chunk of change. Ten million. It comes out of the funds for the Carrington Foundation, which he started before he died.” So what if he’d also been lusting for Katie Topper? he thought. So what if having this baby excited him more than he wanted to admit? “It’s only practical. Think hard before you answer me, Katie.”
Her expression held equal parts frank curiosity and outraged fury. “And to think I’ve admired you,” she finally said stiffly. Raising her voice, she added, “Think? Oh, Ford, my mind’s running a million miles a minute.”
“Let it run ten million miles a minute, Katie. Because it’s in your hands right now to give our baby everything in the world. Summer houses. The best schools. Horses. Camps.” Everything Ford had been given—everything except the kind of love he imagined most kids got for free. His own baby would have it all.
She glanced away. She was thinking about how the money might affect the baby’s life, and how she would be able to tell her religious papa she wasn’t having it alone, but that a surgeon from a prestigious family wanted to marry her.
“You’d move into my place until the baby’s born,” he added reasonably, barely able to believe what he was suggesting. “After that, it’s up to you. After that, all the money belongs to the baby. But I can’t do it without you. The trust is set up so that I have to be married.”
“You never wanted it before?”
“I don’t care about money, Katie. It’s for the baby.”
“And later?” Her voice was suddenly so small, so resigned that Ford wanted to retract the words…to take back that damnable Carrington power that no one could ever stand up to.
“Later, we’d work out visitation arrangements.”
Her chin thrust upward a proud notch. “It would be for the baby. And, uh, I’d insist on my own bedroom.”
Not a point he’d wanted to negotiate. “You said you didn’t want to see me again, Katie,” he forced himself to say, stubborn pride stopping him from asking why she’d deny such insistent attraction. “Three months ago, we both agreed nothing more was going to happen between us.”
Swirling the coat from her shoulders, she held it out to him, and as he took it, she edged around him, managing to open her car door. She got in and slammed the door. As she started the engine, she rolled down the window.
He squinted at her. “Katie? We’re not through talking.”
“I’ll think things over, Ford,” she promised, the line sounding oddly rehearsed. “And I’ll get right back to you.”
And then she simply pulled away, offering what was almost a jaunty wave. A stunned, bemused smile curled his lips as the dented white compact plunged into the night. Exiting the parking lot, she suddenly braked. Was she coming back? No. She flung open the door, leaped out as the dome light flicked on and charged to the front of the car.
“She forgot about her clothes,” he whispered. Swiping them from the hood, she got inside, slammed the door and drove away. Watching the fading tail-lights, Ford couldn’t help but murmur, “Talk about hell on wheels.” But he felt strangely light, as if a cage inside him had opened and something had been set free. Was he really going to be a father in a few months? He’d expected to feel the usual fear that he’d revisit his childhood on someone else. Instead, he felt as light as air.
His and Katie’s baby.
These past two years, as they’d worked together in the OR, who would have guessed it? Just as intriguing was the fact that Katie was capable of turning down ten million dollars and a marriage proposal.
Or maybe she wouldn’t
“She said she’d get back to me,” Ford whispered with another low, astonished chuckle. And for the first time since he’d last seen Katie, he felt genuinely curious about what would happen next.
CHAPTER THREE
THINGS WEREN’T GOING the way Ford had imagined. Sitting cross-legged in his favorite leather armchair, he glanced around the den, shifting a cordless phone under his chin. “So, the pregnancy’s been all right?” he asked, feeling oddly surprised by the missed beat of his heart when he asked.
Katie’s voice softened. “Yeah. Like I said, I’m having some nausea. Nothing out of the ordinary, though. After…after we’re married, I’ll go to Dr. Price.”
While she’d seen an obstetrician in Houston already, she needed someone here and they’d jointly decided Dr. Price would assist Ford at the birth. “Good. But are you sure you don’t want to have a real wedding?”
It was probably his imagination, but as her voice came over the line, it seemed even huskier than usual, the catch of hesitation tantalizing. “You mean with flowers on the altar and me wearing a gown? You wearing a tux?”
He nodded, adding, “A flutist playing Brahms.”
“You like flute music?”
“Piano’s better.”
Katie offered a sudden rueful laugh as if to say she shouldn’t have allowed herself to get drawn into the fantasy. “I don’t think we should, Ford. I mean, uh, it’s not a real wedding.”
Somehow, the reminder bothered him more than it should have, though he was amazed she’d decided to say yes. “But other people wouldn’t know that. Don’t you want to invite some friends, at least? You said your family’s close. Shouldn’t we wait until your father—”
“Comes back to town?” she interjected. “Absolutely not. That won’t be for a couple more weeks. His contracting company’s still on a job, and when he comes back, I want to be able to tell him the ceremony’s over.”
“I get the feeling he’ll be sorry he missed it, Katie.”
“True. But…”
When she didn’t say anything, Ford prompted, “But what?”
“But he’ll guess…we’re not in love, Ford. He knows me like the back of his hand. Really, it’s better if we just tell him we eloped when he comes back.” There was a pause. “Well, sort of eloped,” she added. “We do have to be married in a church. A Baptist church,” she clarified.
“I’m already making arrangements, but are you positive you don’t want anyone to come?”
“Not unless you want your parents….”
Ford could do without them, too. Besides, Katie was right. The marriage wasn’t going to last. Why make a big deal out of it? Biting back a sigh, he chewed on his inner cheek, not about to examine his annoyance. He’d asked Katie to marry him so they could insure the trust for the baby, right? So, what was his problem? “Look, why don’t we meet,” he found himself saying. “You know. Get together. Maybe have some dinner. Talk about all this.” Waiting a long moment, he shifted the phone from one ear to the other, then prompted, “Katie? Are you still there?”
“Still here,” she said in that sweet Texas slur that set his already wild imagination rolling like a movie camera. “I think we both agree,” she continued, “we really do need to keep this strictly business.”
“I’m trying,” he muttered. But he was also wondering what Katie was wearing. Nightgown? Sweatpants? Jeans? And what did her apartment look like? Big? Little? Throw pillows and knickknacks? Even though it was only for six months, would she miss her place while she was staying here? “Do you really think eating with me would interfere with things?”
She inhaled sharply. “Don’t you think so?”
“You’ll be eating with me sometimes once you move into the house,” he said diplomatically.
“I know. But…” Another faintly exasperated sigh sounded before she changed the subject. “Uh, you finished working everything out with the lawyer, right?”
“Right,” he said uncomfortably, wishing the situation wasn’t starting to rankle. Katie hadn’t wanted to get together over the past week except to work out necessary details about their marriage. Finally, he added, “Yeah. The lawyers talked. Mine said yours was good.”
Actually, brutal was the word he’d used. Katie had lost no time in having someone carefully lay out the terms of a prenuptial agreement that would cover the baby if she and Ford divorced, which of course they would. Surprised he felt so unreasonably emotional, Ford added, “As soon as we’re married, your lawyer said the paperwork would go to my parents and to Gil Gilcrest. He’s the Carrington Foundation’s lawyer—”
“Blane’s father?”
“You know Blane Gilcrest?”
A full moment seemed to pass. “Only by name. We don’t exactly run in the same crowd.”
“No,” he murmured, realizing Katie had probably seen Blane’s name on the society page. Getting back to the issue at hand, he continued, “Sure you don’t want to get together to take the edge off this? We’re doing the right thing, Katie, but…”
He thought he heard her voice catch again. “But?”
He glanced toward the red-carpeted steps leading upstairs, hardly wanting to contemplate the amount of time he’d spent deciding which sheets should go on the bed Katie would soon be using. He’d settled on red satin. “But it’s strange to be sitting here, planning a divorce before we’re even married,” he admitted. Strange, too, to think Katie Topper would soon be sharing his house, sleeping right down the hall from him.
She exhaled another quick breath. “Strange or not, it’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
Yes. But she didn’t have to sound so…well, businesslike. He understood, he even knew she was right, but that didn’t stop him from wanting her where she’d been months ago, naked and shivering in his bed, smiling at him in the moonlight flooding the room. To his ears, the words sounded lame. “I’d just like to see you before the wedding.”
There was a long pause, and then she said, “Why?”
Why? After the night they’d shared, how could she ask? “So we’d feel more comfortable with each other when you move in.”
“I’ll think about it and get back to you,” she said.
“You do that.” Even though hers was probably the wisest course, her businesslike tone, the cold legality of dealing with lawyers, the fact that she didn’t want to see him—it was all so frustrating.
Right before the phone went dead, she conceded, “Oh, I don’t know, Ford. Maybe we could get together just once. Like I said, I’ll get back to you.”
“She’ll get back to me,” Ford muttered to the dial tone. He was hardly used to this treatment from women and he found he didn’t particularly like it.
STANDING NEXT TO FORD at the altar in a small Baptist church that wasn’t but six miles away from the one her papa attended so faithfully every Sunday, Katie tried to tell herself that to refuse ten million dollars and a well-known Austin surname for the baby would have been to look a gift horse in the mouth—a cardinal sin in Texas, if there was one.
Not to mention she’d now be allowed to live.
She shuddered to think of her papa’s reaction if she’d had to announce she was unmarried and pregnant. So what if she’d been secretly enamored of Ford Carrington ever since she’d met him? So what if the rose Ford brought her today tempted her to imagine she was wearing a gown and he was wearing a tux. Or that a flutist and pianist were playing Brahams and her friends and family were here. Yes…Ford loved her. Tonight, they’d be sharing a bed.
Stop it, Katie!
Smoothing her best sage dress, she curled her fingers tightly around the rose stem, feeling a pang that was sad and wistful by turns. Moments from now, it would look as if her every secret fantasy about Ford Carrington had come true. But fantasy was exactly what this marriage was, and she simply couldn’t afford to forget that.
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