Good for her. He should have known she’d find a way to slay her dragons, and he didn’t want to interfere with that. But God, he was glad to see her. He wished he could tell whether she was glad to see him.
How ironic that he’d planned to meet Mary Jane’s friends today and find out whether they would take care of her when he left. Obviously they would.
Introductions took a while, but eventually he figured out the principal players. Lana Lord, Mary Jane’s best friend, and Shelby Lord, Mary Jane’s boss, had the same red hair because they were two members of a set of triplets. Then came the Maitland twins, Beth and Ellie. Sara worked at the diner with Mary Jane.
The other seven women were buddies from high school who were no longer a big part of Mary Jane’s life but were more than ready to swoop in and offer support in a time of crisis. Morgan wasn’t surprised by the kind of devotion Mary Jane inspired in her friends. She was an extraordinary young woman.
And so different from the way Arielle had portrayed her. Arielle hadn’t been able to say her name without putting the word little in front of it. That was understandable, because when Arielle had first taken over the Potter household, Mary Jane had been little. She still wasn’t very big in terms of stature. But in terms of heart, she was ten feet tall.
Morgan looked around the room at the people who had gathered to help Mary Jane through a difficult time and couldn’t imagine anything similar being orchestrated for him or Arielle. Perhaps Mary Jane didn’t have a college education or a job with a fancy title, but she was obviously doing something very significant with her life.
In response to questions, he told his story about not being able to get a standby flight and meeting the New York businessman who’d suggested that Austin was a good place to buy real estate. Now that he was explaining his reasoning, it sounded pretty weak.
Strangely enough, nobody pointed that out. They praised his idea as brilliant. Again, he kept trying to sneak a look at Mary Jane to get her reaction, but she avoided his gaze.
“There’s the Slattery place, next to Garrett,” Lana said. “That would make a wonderful winter home for you.”
“Perfect,” Shelby agreed. “That area will increase in value, and the house is well-built. Don’t you think it would be perfect, Mary Jane?”
Her cheeks grew pink. “Well, I—I guess it would, although that seems like a lot of money to spend.”
He was in agony, thinking that she didn’t like his idea at all. “Maybe it’s a stupid idea.”
“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just so much money for a winter home, that’s all.” She still refused to look at him. “More pizza?”
“No, thanks. It was great, though.” He wondered if she remembered how cozy this house had been the night before when they’d shared a pizza and watched Toy Story. Then again, maybe she’d moved beyond that and wanted him gone. “Listen, I didn’t mean to break up the party. I’ll call a cab and check into a hotel for the night.”
“That’s silly,” Mary Jane said.
His stomach relaxed a little. It was the first thing she’d said that indicated she might want him around.
“Maybe we should all skedaddle,” Lana Lord said.
“No!” He could see how much effort had gone into this party. “I’d feel terrible if you all left because I showed up. I’ll call a cab.”
Finally Mary Jane looked at him. “You can’t spend the night in some lonely hotel room,” she said.
He looked into her eyes, which had turned to that soft blue he’d come to cherish. “I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t feel right about it. We’re all sleeping down here tonight, so you can go upstairs and crash in my bed.”
That reminded him of something he’d conveniently forgotten. Mary Jane might need a night of fun and games, but he wondered if that was a good thing for the baby. “If I do that, then you won’t have use of the bed.”
She gestured toward a sleeping bag in the corner. “I have that.”
He had to tread lightly here. She’d created her own method for getting through her bad moments, and that was brave of her. Still, she shouldn’t spend a totally sleepless night. “Is that going to be good enough? Considering that you’re—”
“Aha!” Shelby said, stepping in. “I get it. He thinks we’re going to keep the little mama-to-be up all night and that’s not good for the little one. Am I right?”
“It crossed my mind,” Morgan admitted.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Shelby said. “We have a couple more events planned, and then we’re tucking Mary Jane in for the night.”
“Wait a minute,” Mary Jane protested. “I didn’t agree to be tucked in.”
“Too bad.” Shelby wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “If you think a room full of women are going to let pregnant you stay up all night, then you don’t know your friends very well.”
“We’ll see about that,” Mary Jane said.
Shelby glanced at Morgan. “Trust me. It’s under control. You can have the bed upstairs and go to sleep without a care.”
Mary Jane seemed ready to drop the argument for the time being. “I’m pretty sure there’s a pair of earplugs in my bedside table left over from the week they jackhammered the sidewalk to replace the sewer pipe. Stick those babies in your ears and you’ll be out like a light.”
Of course he wanted to stay in this house that was so full of life and fun. The idea of a hotel sounded really depressing. But his conscience bothered him. He hated the fact that he’d crashed her party. “I really don’t think I should—”
“Either you do that,” Lana said, stepping forward, “or we’ll all pack up and go home. Take your choice.”
He looked around at the women, and all of them nodded. With a sigh of relief he threw up his hands. “I guess you can’t fight city hall.”
“Of course, you don’t have to go up and go to bed right away if you don’t want to,” Shelby said.
“Yes, I do.” He picked up the duffel he’d borrowed from Mary Jane and smiled at her. “Otherwise you’re liable to rope me into that dance contest, and I’m a terrible dancer.” Amid a chorus of protests, he climbed the stairs. He sure loved living in Mary Jane’s world.
CHAPTER NINE
MARY JANE watched him walk up the stairs, her mind in a turmoil. He’d come back. To invest in real estate. If that was really his motivation, he was about to turn her life upside down simply for financial gain. With the way she felt about him, having him winter in Austin would be horribly painful.
The minute he’d gone upstairs and closed the bedroom door, her friends clustered around her.
“Oh, Mary Jane, he’s adorable,” Lana said. “Those sad brown eyes and that cute little grin. His body’s not so bad, either, although maybe it’s bad taste for me to mention it, with him being a grieving husband and all.”
“Poor man,” Shelby said. “You can tell he’s not quite sure how to cope.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Mary Jane sent another glance up the stairs to make sure Morgan wouldn’t suddenly appear because he’d forgotten something he needed. “Looks to me like he’s ready to wheel and deal.”
Beth laughed. “Are you saying you believed that cockamamy story about coming back so he could invest in real estate?”
“Lame, totally lame,” Lana agreed, shaking her head.
Mary Jane glanced around as everyone else echoed the sentiment. “But you all sounded as if you thought it was the greatest idea since sliced bread!”
“Of course we did.” Shelby patted her arm. “The man’s got nothing back in New York, and he doesn’t want to leave Austin and face an empty apartment, so he’s grasping at straws. Only a cruel person would point that out at a time like this.”
Shelby’s comments made sense to Mary Jane, much to her dismay. Morgan was running away from something, not toward something. Away from New York, not toward her. She shouldn’t be tempted to think otherwise.
“Besides,” Lana
said, “you can make sure he doesn’t buy something that’s overpriced or in a less desirable part of town. Encouraging him to buy the Slattery place won’t hurt anything, for example. I’m sure it will go up in value, so he’s not risking much.”
Just my heart. “But all that money for a place he might visit two or three times a year? That’s crazy!”
“People do it all the time,” Ellie said. “And he’ll have life insurance money,” she added gently. “A piece of property in Austin might be a solid way for him to put that money to work. When someone is upset, they sometimes make bad financial decisions. This wouldn’t be a bad decision. Unorthodox, maybe, but not bad.”
“Tomorrow you could take this poor guy to a trustworthy real estate agent,” Beth said. “I know a few who would be good.”
“Or better yet, why bother with all that?” Lana said. “We know the Slattery place is an excellent buy. Why not steer him straight to that and not have him stumbling into something that isn’t as good a deal?”
“That’s the best way to go,” Shelby agreed. “Call Garrett in the morning and ask him for the agent’s name and number on the sign out front. Once Morgan sees that place, he’s gonna fall in love with it, guaranteed.”
Mary Jane nodded. She was astounded by how quickly the women in the room had become protective of Morgan. But she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, she had reacted exactly the same way. Well, not exactly. Her friends had no idea what had transpired between her and Morgan that first night, or the sexual tension that had existed between them from that moment on.
Although she loved her friends and usually told them everything that mattered, especially Lana, she didn’t think she could reveal this. Even Morgan didn’t really understand what had happened between them, and Mary Jane wasn’t going to risk telling anyone who hadn’t been there, who hadn’t felt the wrenching pain or the need to heal it somehow.
If her friends had suspected anything was going on between her and Morgan, they wouldn’t have been so casual about him buying a piece of property in Austin and coming here for visits. Mary Jane knew if she intended to protect her secret, she should be casual about it, too.
After all, there were pluses to the idea. She wanted to play a part in the baby’s life, and if Morgan had a foothold in Austin, so much the better. She’d see the baby much more often.
She envisioned her relationship with the little girl as falling somewhere between fairy godmother and totally cool aunt. Morgan couldn’t be trusted to know about fashions and hair-styles, so Mary Jane would have to stay alert and make sure he didn’t turn the kid into a nerd.
Of course he might remarry, and then Mary Jane wouldn’t have as much of a say in what went on with the kidlet. She thought about the enthusiastic welcome Morgan had received from her friends. Oh, yeah, Morgan would remarry. He was far more of a hunk than he realized. Arielle hadn’t been exactly straight with him about his sex appeal. He was loaded with it.
With new insight, she gazed around the room. “Would any of you by chance be encouraging Morgan to buy property here because you’d like to keep track of him…personally?”
A few of the unmarried women in the room, including Lana and Shelby, blushed.
Mary Jane crossed her arms. “Interesting.”
“But, hey,” Lana said quickly, “you have first dibs, Mary Jane. Though you’re probably such good friends that you’ve never thought of him like that. If somebody’s like a big brother to you, you never think of him as sexy.”
“Right,” Mary Jane said with a straight face.
“But that could change,” Lana added. “If so, then you definitely have the field to yourself.”
“Don’t worry,” Mary Jane said. “He’s not my type.” Then she moved to the stereo, which had been turned off when Morgan arrived. She punched the power button. “Everybody ready to rock ’n’ roll?”
“You bet,” Shelby said, “but I’m keeping an eye on the clock.”
“Geez,” Mary Jane said. “I feel about eight years old.” But her complaint lacked any bite. She liked knowing that her friends cared about her that much, even if they were bossy sometimes.
MARY JANE’S BED lost a lot of its appeal without Mary Jane in it. Worse, the pillows were filled with the scent of her hair, and Morgan felt as if he were sharing the bed with a phantom. He much preferred the real thing.
He slept some, but not much. That might have been his fault for not wearing the earplugs, but he’d been comforted by the happy noise downstairs. He’d strained to pick out Mary Jane’s voice in the chorus of female chatter.
Once he’d been positive she was the one belting out Ricky Martin’s “Shake Your Bon-Bon,” and he’d become aroused imagining her down there gyrating around, the way she’d been doing when he arrived. That had been some show, all right. He wouldn’t mind a repeat. In private.
Of course that would be a very bad idea.
The next morning he woke to the sound of women calling goodbye as they headed home.
Shortly after that Mary Jane tapped on the bedroom door. “Are you awake?”
“Yep.”
“I’m sorry we made so much noise saying goodbye. I was afraid that would wake you up.”
He sat up. “No problem.”
“Everybody’s gone, if you want to come out.”
“You can come in, you know. This is your bedroom.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess it is.” She eased open the door and gazed at him. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Sure. Did you?” He marveled that she looked so damn good first thing in the morning. Probably had something to do with being twenty-two, or possibly with being gorgeous to begin with. The pink baby-doll pajamas made her look as yummy as cotton candy. When she lifted her arms and combed her hair from her face, he was glad he’d kept the covers over his lap.
“Those party poopers sure enough made me go to bed,” she said. “But I guess it was a good thing. I slept like a rock, and from what I heard, most of them stayed up talking for hours after I conked out. This town has its share of secrets. I really hated missing all the gossip about the current status of little Chase Maitland. You remember that whole thing, right?”
“Isn’t that the kid who was left on the doorstep of the clinic?”
She nodded. “He supposedly is a Maitland, but there are a ton of unanswered questions. It’s been tough on everybody in that family.”
“I’ll bet. Arielle was a little upset about the clinic getting so much controversial press. She didn’t want her baby connected with a place that showed up in the tabloids.”
“I remember she said something like that to me, too. I was surprised she’d even care about some stupid scandal. It won’t affect the care I’ll get at Maitland, and I can’t see how it would affect the baby, either.”
“That’s what I told her.” He sighed. “Well, none of that matters anymore, I guess.”
She gazed at him. “Listen, I hope you don’t think I’m a degenerate for throwing a wild party after you left. Or that I was being disrespectful to Arielle’s memory.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I have a pretty good idea why you’d want to fill the house with friends and turn up the music. It was a good plan. I’m sorry I barged in on it.”
Instead of reassuring him that he’d been no trouble, she continued to study him without speaking for several seconds. “Shelby and Lana think you should buy that house next to Garrett’s. I don’t know if you remember, but that was right past were we stopped to look at the—”
“Bluebonnets. I know. I noticed the sign.” He forced himself to ask the next question. “Would you rather I didn’t buy a place here in Austin?”
While she continued to regard him thoughtfully, she used one foot to scratch the back of her other calf. He wondered if she had any concept of the voluptuous picture she created standing there, so deliciously mussed from her sleep-over party.
“I guess I wonder why you want to do it,” she said.
“I’m not sure I know
myself,” he answered truthfully. “I feel pulled to this town. To you,” he added, deciding maybe they needed to talk about that.
Her eyes darkened, and she gripped the door frame, as if to keep herself in place. “Maybe because of the baby. It might not be me at all.”
“Maybe.” He committed to memory the image of her standing in the doorway, in case he never saw her that way again. “God knows I’m in no mental shape to make that kind of evaluation right now. But when I couldn’t get on a plane yesterday, and the guy next to me in the waiting lounge started talking about real estate investments in Austin, something clicked into place for me.”
“But it’s a big step, buying property here. Maybe after the baby’s born and you’ve taken her back to New York, a place in Austin won’t seem like such a cool idea, after all.”
He shrugged. “I could always sell it at that point. But you still haven’t answered my question. Would you rather not have me do this? Because this is your territory. If you think this town isn’t big enough for both of us, I’m outta here.”
“On the noon stage?” she asked with a smile.
“You bet.”
Sighing, she turned and leaned against the door frame so she was no longer looking at him. “I don’t know what I want,” she said.
He gazed at her profile and the perky jut of her breasts under the baby-doll top. Short-term, he sure knew what he wanted, but he wasn’t going to have it. He waited for what she had to say.
“Every day I’m more attached to this baby,” she said, “and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Sometimes I think it would be better if you took her back to New York and I never saw her again. That might make it easier to put her out of my mind.”
His heart ached. A few months ago the surrogate mother concept had seemed like such a civilized answer to his and Arielle’s problem. Now it seemed barbaric that Mary Jane would nurture this little girl inside her body for nine months and then have to give her up to others to raise. Maybe cutting it off clean would be the best way for her to cope with that.
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