“No, but…” She sighed. “Have you any idea how hard it is to get immigrant status anywhere when you’re pregnant? Unless you’re rich. The U.S. isn’t the only country with tight immigration laws.” She flashed him a smile that contained a hint of her usual spunk. “Anywhere’s impossible, really. I wanted to stay away from England-as far as I could. That was all I could think of to start with. I was shocked, bereaved, confused-and Gloria scared me to death with her assumption that the baby would be hers. I’d be paid off and I’d have no say at all. She has so much power… It scared me to death. So I stayed here.”
“And hoped.”
“And hoped. Stupid, really, but desperation makes for stupidity. I guess I hoped I’d be inconspicuous and Gloria would lose track of me. I found the job with you, you were happy with me, I was enjoying working for you, and the Maitlands were great. Then, when I tried to apply for permanent residency, I discovered it was impossible. As my pregnancy advanced, everywhere else seemed to close their doors, too. So I had a choice-stay here illegally or go home to Gloria. There are so many illegal immigrants, and I was desperate. The choice seemed obvious, given what was at stake, but now… I might have known Gloria wouldn’t give up.”
She shrugged. “But hey, I guess there’s still Mexico and a whole bunch of immigration officials who mightn’t be as efficient. And I’m a great secretary. As soon as the baby’s born I’ll be able to work.” She was smiling, reassuring him that she’d be okay, but he was grim. She was trying to make light of it, but…
“Even if you make it into Mexico, she’ll find you,” he said.
“No.”
“Yes. Or you’ll starve. For heaven’s sake, Jenny, you’ll have no health insurance, and as an illegal immigrant you’ll have no status. What if something goes wrong during the birth?”
“It won’t.”
“What if it does?”
“Then I’ll cope,” she said flatly. “Stop scaring me, Michael Lord. I can manage.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Watch me. Or rather, don’t watch me.”
“I’m not letting you go to Mexico on your own,” he told her. His mind was racing, and it didn’t like a single thing it was coming up with.
“There’s no alternative.” She tilted her chin, and a trace of fear shadowed the courage in her eyes. “Unless you’re planning to put me on Gloria’s plane. Hand me over to the authorities.”
She wasn’t quite sure that he wouldn’t, he realized. She didn’t quite trust him.
She must. There was no other way out of this mess.
“I won’t hand you over to the authorities.” He gave a self-mocking smile. “After all, you’re not illegal until Monday.”
“Yeah, heaps of time.”
“Not enough-but there is an alternative,” he said softly, his voice steady. An idea had flashed into his head. It was a crazy, lunatic idea, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the only way out of this mess. “It’s the only one.”
“Which is?”
“You’re sure you won’t go home?”
She swallowed, but the look in her eye was one of iron determination. “No way. I’ll lose my baby.”
“For this to work, you’d have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone,” she said flatly. “Not where my baby’s concerned.”
“You need help, Jenny.”
“You’re proposing to hide me in the basement until Gloria goes away? She won’t. Now she knows where I am, she’ll be around forever.”
He smiled. “I don’t think hiding in a basement is a sensible solution.”
“No, but…” She shook her head. “Believe me, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no possibility I can stay here legally, and now the immigration officials are aware of me, I have to move on.”
“There is one thing you can do.”
“Which is?”
“You can marry me.”
CHAPTER THREE
A S A conversation stopper it took some beating. Jenny sat with her mouth open for all of two minutes. There was not a single word she could think of to say.
It was Michael who finally broke the silence. Jenny looked as if she’d still be goggling in half an hour. “Aren’t you going to say something?” he asked, half amused.
“I don’t think I can,” she said breathlessly. She sounded as if it took a real effort to make her voice work. “I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face by a wet fish.”
“Gee.” He chuckled again, the second time in one day. Amazing! He smiled at her stunned expression. “As a romantic, maidenly reply to a proposal of marriage, that takes some beating. Slapped in the face by a wet fish. Good grief!”
She smiled, but her face was worried-humoring-a-lunatic worried.
“Michael, this is just plain crazy. You don’t want to marry me.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.”
“Well…”
“But that’s just it,” he continued smoothly. “I don’t want to marry anyone. So it might as well be you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He sighed, and his face tightened. He didn’t discuss his private life with anyone, but there was no getting out of this. Not if she was to take his proposal seriously.
“Jenny, let me tell you something. Like you, I’ve done the love thing.”
“I don’t…”
“Just shut up and hear me out.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he was no longer seeing her. He was seeing events of two years ago, and he was seeing them as though they’d been yesterday. “You know I’ve been a cop?”
“Yes.” Her frown deepened. What on earth was he talking about?
“And I left the force when my partner was killed?”
“I’ve heard that, too,” she admitted. Gossip among the staff at Maitland Maternity had told her that much about him, though Michael’s private life was very much a closed book. He kept himself to himself-absolutely.
“What people don’t know,” he said heavily, “was that my mind wasn’t on my job the night my partner died.” He hesitated, then went on, but he sounded as if it hurt to say every word. The pain was real and terrible. “I’d gotten myself into a relationship,” he confessed. “My first. I’d never had much time for women. But Barbara… Well, she seemed different-special-and I thought I could get involved.” He shrugged. “Okay, so I got involved, and I was stupid.”
“But what happened?” This wasn’t making any sense.
“Dan and I were on night duty, but we’d just attended a call near Barbara’s place. It was quiet, we were due for a meal break, so Dan went for a hamburger while I dropped in to see Barbara.”
“And?” She didn’t want to ask, but she knew he had to tell. The words were being torn out of him.
“She was with another guy. In bed. Stupid, sordid, the sort of thing that happens every day-but to others, not to me. I was so damned angry, so hurt that I slammed out of the house without a word-and then Dan got killed.”
He still wasn’t making any sense. “Would you mind telling me,” Jenny said carefully, “how you getting two-timed by some woman with no taste in men could get your partner killed? I don’t see it.”
Part of his mind registered the compliment, and a weary smile curved the corners of his mouth, but the story was too black for humor. The smile died.
“It was easy,” he said bleakly. “My mind wasn’t where it should have been, and I needed every scrap of attention that night.” His words were savage, and she could tell the night was still nightmare fresh. “We had a call to say there’d been an armed robbery. What they didn’t say was that the owner had shot one of the intruders. So we got to the store and the owner was out on the pavement yelling about a carload of kids that had got away. As I said, I wasn’t on the ball. I radioed in details of the car, and while I did that, Dan went into the store to check damage.”
“Oh, Michael…”
“The kid was lying on the floor, wo
unded, out of sight of the doorway, and he shot Dan from almost point-blank range,” Michael said bleakly. “And then he died himself. It was a stupid, stupid waste.” He shook his head. “So when backup arrived, I was blubbering like a baby, and I left the force soon after. To this job.” He compressed his lips and squared his shoulders.
“That was the first time in my life I’ve ever tried having a relationship,” he went on bleakly. “My sisters and brother-they’re the emotional hotheads. I’ve always had a sense that I should stand apart. Be alone. Maybe it’s because our birth mother dumped us-who knows? I only know the feeling’s deep-seated and real. And then, the one time I cracked and let Barbara close, the world exploded around me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So you see, I’m not in the market for any sort of relationship. Ever.”
Jenny shook her head. What on earth…? His birth mother dumped him? There was so much she didn’t understand about this man, but maybe it needed to be put aside for now. He was holding himself responsible for another man’s death, and who could believe that of Michael?
“Michael, Dan’s death couldn’t have been your fault,” she whispered. “Even if your mind was a hundred percent focused, it might have happened anyway. Dan must have assessed the risks, too. You won’t always feel like this.”
“Yes, I will,” he said flatly. “I’ve never felt emotional. I told you-my brother and sisters have enough emotion for the four of us combined. I’ve never seen the sense of this love bit, and when Barbara betrayed me and Dan was killed-well, that was the first and last time I’ll ever feel like that. Giving yourself to someone…”
He shrugged again and gave a self-conscious grin. “Enough. We’re not talking about me. All I’m saying is that I intend to stay a bachelor, which means there’s no reason I shouldn’t marry you to get you immigrant status.”
“A green card marriage.” Her mind switched to her problems, but a part of her stayed with his.
“It’s been done before.”
“It’s not legal.”
“Legal enough.” He gave a bitter smile. “We’ll be married. I have a huge town house.”
She gasped and almost visibly withdrew. “You’re saying you want me to live with you?”
“No, but we’ll need to for a bit.” He gave one of his characteristic self-mocking grins. “Call it self-preservation. This way I’ll get myself a decent secretary again.”
“You’d want me to keep working for you?” Her voice was rising to squeak level.
“Not right away,” he said, considering. He’d gone into the efficient mode she knew so well-the Michael Lord she worked with every day of the week. “I mean, I guess the baby will keep you busy for a while, and if you need me to, then I’m happy to support you while you do that.” He gave a slight shrug. “My adoptive parents were wealthy, and I have a good income. And apart from that…”
“Apart from that?” She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.
But Michael was totally believable-honest through and through. He gave another wry smile. “Yeah, well, I’m not all that proud of it, but after Dan was killed I took to gambling for a bit. Stupid. The only problem was, I won, and it started getting addictive. Luckily, reality hit home somewhere along the line, or maybe it was my sisters and brother worrying themselves into a white-hot melt, but I was smart enough to get out while I was ahead. It well and truly bankrolled me, so there’s no rush for you to head back to work. When you want to, well, that’s okay, too, and if there’s one thing Maitland Maternity is good at, it’s child care. So there’s your permanent status fixed up.”
“But, Michael…” She was staring at him as if he’d arrived from another planet.
“Yes?”
“There’s no way you’re supporting me,” she said flatly. “No way in the wide world. Thank you for the offer, but no, thanks. I’ve saved. I can support me and my baby until I can go back to work.”
“Okay, then.” He spread his hands as if surrendering. “Fine by me. I’m offering marriage, though, Jenny. If it’ll help.”
She gazed at him for a long, long moment. “Do you have any idea what you’re letting yourself in for?” she asked. “Marrying a pregnant woman, offering to support her, even offering to share your apartment-with a baby?”
“The guest room is on the other side of my living quarters and downstairs from my room,” he told her, still in efficient mode. “I don’t expect I’d hear it. I only use the place to crash at night.”
This was like a business proposition. Calm. Considered. Crazy!
“You think we could run separate lives?”
“I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t offer. I mean…you loved your husband, right?”
“Right.”
“Then you don’t want another relationship yet, either. It could suit us both.” He grinned. “Hey, and it’d get my family off my back. My sisters are always trying to set me up with some woman.”
“But I can’t…” She closed her eyes, and her fingers touched the band of gold on her left hand. “I don’t…” For the life of her she couldn’t stop her fingers trembling.
He reached out and closed his fingers over hers, stopping her shaking. For the first time a hint of tenderness came through the efficiency. “You can. It would work.”
“You don’t want to marry me.”
“I don’t mind. Honest.” He tilted her chin so she was forced to look at him, and the smile in his eyes was infinitely gentle. It gave her a massive jolt.
On one level this Michael was just as calm and in control as the man she worked for-but on another level he was about a zillion miles from the aloof Michael Lord she knew at Maitland Maternity.
“It could work, Jenny,” he told her. “And don’t look too worried. It’s not forever, so let’s not push this too far. In time you’ll be over Peter and want to be free, and maybe…well, maybe I’m wrong and maybe I’ll want a life, too. So then we divorce. But as long as we can stick it for a couple of years and your baby’s born into our marriage, then you’ll have a little U.S. citizen as a baby and you’ll be safe. Meanwhile, tell me what your options are. Run? I don’t think so.”
“I can.”
“You can’t.” He lowered his broad hand to the rising bulge of her pregnancy and placed it there almost unconsciously. It was a gesture of comfort and warmth, nothing more, but it set every fiber in Jenny’s body tingling in response. “You have a baby to think about. I have a stupidly gained fortune I don’t mind supporting you with. It’d take the edge off my guilt a bit. And once you’re married to me, your dreaded Gloria can’t touch you.”
His smile faded, and the look in his eyes was suddenly dangerous. “The worst she could do is give us a bit of unwanted publicity, but it’ll fade. There’s no way she can touch you if you’re my wife,” he repeated. “I’d like to see her try.”
“But…” Jenny’s eyes searched his, troubled. “Michael, I don’t want to be beholden.”
“Can you cook?”
“I…yes.”
“Then there’s our deal,” he said triumphantly. “Let’s leave the beholden bit out of it. I hate eating out, but I do it all the time because I’ve been known to burn baked beans. You cook for me, and we’ll live happily ever after.”
“I’m not living with you.” There was an edge of panic in her voice.
“No?”
“No! No way. Not in a million years.”
“Jenny, this is not for a million years,” he said as he watched the confusion in her eyes mount to panic. “It’s just until we have your immigration legalized, this baby safely born and Gloria off your back. It’s just until you have a breathing space to figure out what you want to do with your life. If you raise this baby in the U.S. there’s not a lot Gloria can do to control you. You can raise him the way you want, and then when he’s old enough, he can make his own decisions about his inheritance. But you’ll be the one who’s influenced him.”
She took a deep breath. She couldn’t think. She was so confused…
“Michael, are you sure? I mean…”
“I’m sure.” He wasn’t. He was as confused as she was, but he wasn’t letting on. Somehow he made his voice firm, and he looked down and saw the bulge beneath her dress move all on its own. His eyes widened, and he grinned.
“I’m guessing your son’s in agreement, too,” he said. “Will you look at that?”
Jenny wasn’t looking at her bulge. She was looking straight at Michael. “You realize if we’re married-if people found out that you’ve married me, and they will-then people might assume you’re his father. I mean, why else would you marry me? And the immigration people… I don’t know what we’d tell them. But you’ll have a pregnant wife. Even the person who marries us will assume it’s a shotgun affair. That this is your baby. That’s why he’d be a U.S. citizen. I don’t want you to face that. It isn’t fair.”
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.”
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