The Secret Wedding Wish

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Suddenly, Janey was having difficulty drawing air into her lungs. “Definitely!”

  He let her go as swiftly as he claimed her. “Then is it me you’re avoiding?”

  Janey averted her gaze. “I’m not avoiding anyone,” she denied flatly, knowing even as she spoke it wasn’t quite true. She threw up her hands. “Why can’t people understand I have to work this evening?”

  Thad lifted a hand and gestured at the finished cakes. “None of this could have been done tomorrow morning?”

  Janey shook her head emphatically. “All of these have to be delivered by noon. I’ve been baking since I returned from the arena at noon.”

  His expression softening compassionately, Thad inclined his head at the Help Wanted sign in the window. “How long do you think it’ll take to get some extra help?” he asked, looking ready to help with that, too, if she would let him.

  “I don’t know.”

  Janey looked up as a second rap sounded on the storefront windows. Thad’s sister Molly stood outside. She waved at the two of them and strode on in.

  The first thing Janey noticed was that Molly didn’t look very tan, for just having come back from a honeymoon in Bermuda. Although that could be explained…by a lot of time spent in a hotel room. The second was that Johnny wasn’t with her. And that wasn’t so easily explained, given the fact they were still very much newlyweds and should be glued to each other’s sides.

  “I saw your lights and the sign in the window and I wondered if I could apply,” Molly said.

  Thad interrupted with a troubled frown, “What happened to your job in Chapel Hill?”

  Molly sighed. “My boss fired me when I didn’t show up for work because Johnny and I eloped.” Molly turned back to Janey, looking even more stressed-out. “Anyway, what kind of help are you looking for?”

  “An experienced pastry chef,” Janey said.

  Molly’s face fell.

  “But I’ll ask around, see if I know anyone who is hiring,” Janey volunteered gently, sorry she couldn’t help the young girl. “It’s possible my mother might be able to use you over at The Wedding Inn, especially since you’ve worked there before in years past.”

  “Thanks. I know Johnny is looking for work, too,” Molly said, cheeks pinkening self-consciously.

  “Speaking of Johnny,” Thad asked his younger sibling casually, “how was that honeymoon?”

  To his and Janey’s mutual horror, Molly burst into tears.

  Chapter Ten

  “It can’t be that dire,” Thad said, wrapping his arms around his sister.

  “But it is!” Molly wailed, her hysteria building with every second that passed.

  Janey brought a stool for Molly to sit on. “Maybe you should tell us about it,” Janey coaxed softly, remembering how lost and alone she had felt after her own elopement years before.

  Molly sobbed all the harder. “I wish I had n-n-never told Johnny that I was pregnant.”

  Well, this explained things, Janey thought. The hurry. The guilt. The confusion.

  “Exactly how far along are you?” Thad asked, exchanging concerned glances with Janey over Molly’s head.

  “That’s just it. I’m n-n-not going to have a baby!” Molly’s shoulders heaved with the force of her crying. “I just thought I was.”

  “Slow down and start from the beginning,” Janey urged quietly. She got a bottle of water out of the fridge and handed it to Molly, along with a box of Kleenex.

  Molly wiped her eyes and spoke in a muffled voice. “It was a couple of weeks ago. My period didn’t come and I got scared. So I got one of those drugstore tests and it said I was, and Johnny said we had to get married right away for the baby’s sake. So we just went to Gatlinburg that night and saw a justice of the peace.”

  “When did you realize you weren’t pregnant?” Janey asked.

  “The day after we told all our parents about eloping. I woke up and I had started my period.”

  “So Johnny knows,” Thad ascertained, still struggling to understand.

  Panic lit her eyes. “No, I mean I couldn’t tell him! Especially after—he’s going to think I tricked him, and I didn’t!”

  “You have to tell him the truth, Molly.”

  “But he’ll break up with me,” Molly predicted miserably, as a new flood of tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “You don’t know that,” Janey soothed, patting her shoulder.

  “Yes, I do.” Molly sniffed. “Johnny was losing interest in me before all this. And I could tell he didn’t really want to marry me, even when we were saying our vows. And it’s only gotten worse since we got back from Gatlinburg. He tries to hide it but whenever I look at him I just know he feels so trapped.”

  An emotion Janey was well acquainted with herself.

  “Where is Johnny now?” Thad asked.

  Molly blew her nose then let her hand fall to her lap desultorily. “Over at his parents’ house,” she said as she systematically shredded the used tissue in her lap.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Thad asked.

  Molly shook her head. Sadness filled her eyes as she composed herself once again. “That would only make things worse. This is going to be awful enough.” Molly paused. “I’ll call him and ask him to come over here now.”

  AFTER THAD’S sister talked to her husband alone, Thad insisted upon driving her back to Chapel Hill. He didn’t think she should be behind the wheel of a car in her upset state, and Janey agreed. So they took off, and Janey finished up at the bakery and headed home. She was just turning into her own driveway, a little more than an hour later, when Thad’s SUV pulled up at the curb.

  Wondering if something else had happened, she walked over to the passenger side. He let the window down. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “I thought it might take you a bit to wind down,” he said, pointing to the bags of take-out on the seat beside him.

  Janey could see he wanted to talk. “Come on in,” she said. She wanted to talk to him, too. “So how was she?” Janey asked, switching on the minimum of lights once they were inside the house.

  Concern lit his handsome features. “Better, when I dropped her off.” However, he looked even more worried. “I imagine she’ll be a wreck tomorrow.”

  “You think they’ll end the marriage?” Janey asked, her stomach growling she was so hungry.

  Thad shook his head and opened up the bags. The aroma of spicy Mexican food surrounded them as she went to get two stoneware plates and some silverware for them. “I don’t know.”

  Janey touched the side of his face and did her best to console him. “I’m sorry that Molly’s gone through such an ordeal, but maybe it’s for the best.”

  Thad handed her a Mexican beer, opened one for himself. “How do you mean?”

  Janey took a sip of the deliciously mellow brew. “Well, they never should have gotten married just for the baby’s sake.” Janey had stayed with Ty for that reason and it had been a disaster in terms of their husband-wife relationship.

  As Thad spread the food out on the coffee table, she got out a few pillows, and turned on some soft music to further set the relaxing mood. “I’ve seen it work,” Thad disagreed, “as long as the parents get along and enjoy each other’s company—and get along sexually, and all that.” He looked at her levelly. “Kids come first. At least that’s the way it should be in this life. For instance,” he said, sitting down on the floor in front of the sofa with a pillow behind his back, “it’s obvious you put Chris way ahead of your own needs, and I admire that.”

  “You do, do you?” Janey teased as she kicked off her shoes. She had been wearing the same gray sheath dress all day, even back at the bakery. The only difference was now she didn’t have a chef’s coat on over top of it, to protect it from stains and spills.

  “Yeah,” Thad said as she sank down beside him. He reached over and put a pillow behind her, too, his capable hands brushing her spine as he made sure she was comfortable. “Too many kids are going w
ithout the love they should have these days. And it’s a shame.”

  Janey couldn’t disagree with Thad on that.

  She looked over at the metal take-out pans with the snug-fitting cardboard tops that were spread out over the large rectangular coffee table. One touch and she knew it was all still piping hot. “So what have we got here?” It looked as if Thad had gotten enough to feed six, instead of just the two of them.

  The way he looked at her then, as if he wanted to make love to her then and there, had Janey’s pulse racing. “I didn’t know what you liked so I ordered one of everything on the menu,” he said.

  She grinned, her mouth watering for a bite of the delicious food. And something much more intimate for dessert. “I see you’ve got your bases covered.”

  “I try,” he admitted with a modest wink that sent her senses into overdrive.

  “So how come you didn’t tell me what you were up to today?” he asked as they divvied up a tamale and four kinds of enchiladas. “I could have gotten you an appointment to see Saul.”

  Janey had figured as much.

  “But you didn’t ask.” Thad looked at her as if his feelings were hurt. “How come?”

  It was Janey’s turn to shrug. “I didn’t want to appear to be taking advantage of our…um…dalliances.”

  “Dalliances?” he parroted humorously. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard that word.”

  Janey ducked her head self-consciously. “Well, get used to it, because that’s how I would describe it,” she said as she concentrated on serving them both some rice.

  He waited until she had finished, then tucked a finger beneath her chin and turned her face to his. “Nothing more than that?”

  Janey swallowed around the parched feeling in her throat. “What else could it be?” she asked huskily.

  He didn’t flinch. “A prelude to something more…permanent.”

  Janey flushed, not sure if he was talking marriage or a long-term sexual affair. Both possibilities scared her, albeit for very different reasons. “We haven’t known each other for very long.” A matter of days. And yet, she thought silently to herself, it felt as though he had been a part of her life forever.

  Thad regarded her confidently. “At our age we don’t have to know each other for months and months to know what we think or feel. People with our experience have enough street smarts to size a person up pretty quickly.”

  So they were both trustworthy individuals, responsible adults who tried their hardest not to trample on the feelings of others. So what? She slanted him a teasing glance in an effort to lighten the mood, and chided playfully in her best Miss Scarlett accent, “Coach Lantz. Are you trying to make time with me again?”

  He waggled his eyebrows at her. “What do you think?” He leaned seductively close.

  Janey inhaled the familiar fragrance of his aftershave, and beneath that the intoxicatingly male scent of his skin. She batted her eyelashes at him, drawled sexily, “I think you’re trouble with a capital T.”

  “Hmm. First time I’ve been called that.” He looked as if he liked it, then leaned closer and studied her even more intently. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” he asked, his shoulder rubbing hers. “Because you think I am going to somehow lead you astray?”

  The man definitely saw too much of what was in her heart and head. She gestured helplessly, aware it would do her absolutely no good to try and deny it, since that horse was long out of the barn. “I think you’ve already done that, haven’t you?” she asked.

  His eyes sparkled with unmistakably ardent lights. “I think you’ve already done that, too, or was that me dropping my robe the other night?”

  Unbidden, the image of the two of them making love flashed in her mind, bringing forth yet another thrill. One the more practical side of Janey knew would be wise not to repeat.

  Janey held up both hands in mea culpa, determined to be as honest and forthright with him as she wanted him to be with her, now that the moment for truth-telling was upon them. “Okay, okay. I admit I am just as guilty for the impulsive behavior between us the last two weeks as you are. But that does not mean you have to keep calling or sticking around,” she told him soberly, wanting to be clear about this much. “I’m a big girl. I may not play sports, but I do know the score.”

  “And what would that be?” he asked, no small trace of irony in his voice.

  Heat climbed to her face. As much as she tried she could not bring herself to look him in the eye as she confessed in a low, strangled tone, “I’ve never had a lot of luck holding a guy’s interest long-term. Sexually, anyway. So I would understand if you want to move on. There would be no hard feelings.” Just a broken heart on my part, she added ruefully, doing her best to keep her face absolutely expressionless.

  He ignored the release she had just given him as his eyes narrowed in obvious disbelief. “What about your husband?” Thad demanded curiously.

  “Ty would rather have skied any day, anywhere, than make love with me. And after Chris was born, we hardly ever touched each other.” She had never told that to another living soul. It had been just too humiliating. But somehow it was freeing, saying it to Thad.

  He blinked at her. “You’re serious.”

  “Painfully so. Which explains my morph into the hot chick who has no earthly idea what she is really doing. I guess I had something to prove to myself the other night.” Like maybe it wasn’t me, after all. It was Ty. She swallowed hard around the growing knot of emotion in her throat. “And so if you want to back out now. If you don’t want to be with a—a—”

  “Sex-starved lonely widow and mother of a twelve-year-old boy who spends all her time baking up a storm?”

  The laughter in his voice brought a deeper blush to her cheeks. She reprimanded with mock sternness, “I was going to say novice.”

  Again, he took offense. He peered at her as if she had lost her mind. “Are you kidding?” He leaned even closer, as if that somehow would clear the mystery up.

  “You may have noticed in our two dalliances, that you were the one with all the fancy moves. Not me.”

  “Hey, I’m an equal opportunity lover. Just so you know.”

  What the hell was that? Besides a rather obvious invitation to make a fool of herself over him yet again. “Thanks,” Janey said dryly. “And now that we’ve cleared that up—” Hands flat on the coffee table, Janey started to rise.

  Thad pulled her right back down beside him. “First of all, you’re no novice,” he soothed as he wrapped his hands around her shoulders. Moving closer, he spoke to her the way he spoke to one of his players during a game. With utter concentration and seriousness. “The key to lovemaking is the same as any other sport. The thing that matters, the thing that makes everything work is right in here.” He took her right hand in his and laid it over her left breast. Looking deep into her eyes, he told her firmly, “You’ve got the strongest heart of anyone I know. And heart is what it takes.”

  JANEY HAD NO IDEA how he had managed it, but five minutes later, the dinner mess was cleared away and she was up in her bedroom with Thad.

  “Haven’t you heard?” she asked a little nervously, now that the moment for further intimacy was upon them. “I turn into an uptight mother of one at the stroke of midnight, so—” Run, while you still can.

  “So, relax.” His sexy smile promised her everything she had ever longed for and more. His gaze drifted over her lazily, head to toe, making leisurely stops at breasts, waist, hips, thighs. “We’re going to have fun.”

  “Are we?” she asked, her voice soft, tentative. Or were they heading for an on-ice collision of a broken heart—hers—and crushed expectations—his? Doing this on the spur of the moment, without thinking or weighing consequences was one thing. Doing it knowingly, deliberately, was quite another.

  “Mmm-hmm.” His expression hungry, he took her hand in his and led her toward the neatly made covers of her bed.

  She watched, pulse racing, as he lifted his knit shirt ove
r his head and let it fall to the floor. Outwardly, she was still fighting it. Inwardly, she secretly liked the way he was taking charge. Tearing her glance away from his impossibly broad shoulders and nicely sculpted chest, she regarded him disdainfully. “I thought I indicated to you we wouldn’t be doing this.” That, under the complicated circumstances of their acquaintance, they would be better off as friends. Because if she were to let herself touch that warm, satiny smooth skin… Or be held against what even now she could see was going to be quite some arousal…her reckless streak would be back, full force. Never to be tamed again.

  Thad traced the shape of her face with the palm of his hand, regarding her with unmistakable pleasure all the while. “I thought I indicated to you we would.”

  Tingles of warmth shimmied through her. “Do you always have to have your way?” she asked, unable to help but notice how handsome he looked in the soft glow of her bedside lamp. How determined. How very male.

  “When it comes to you and this—always.” He took the clip from her hair, watching as the heavy length of it fell to her shoulders in silky chestnut waves. “Got a problem with that?”

  “Yes.” She spread her hands over the satiny smooth skin and the light mat of crisp, curly hair, holding him at bay. “No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  He grinned, amused at the confusion in her tone. “Just so we know where we stand.”

  They were teetering on the edge of a cliff, safety and practicality on one side, danger and unbelievable pleasure on the other. Should she throw caution to the wind and permanently become the wild woman Thad was urging her to be? Or stay as invulnerable—and lonely and unfulfilled—as she was? The only thing she knew for sure was that tonight was a turning point for them. Making love again would move them from fling to something more.

  And Thad seemed to know it, too. Eyes darkening, he tugged her all the way against him and whispered, “I want to kiss you, Janey.”

  And she wanted to kiss him, common sense be damned.

  His mouth came down on hers and he kissed her soundly, not stopping until her capitulation was complete and she felt the traitorous weakening of her knees. He drew back, his gaze ardently tracing her face, lingering on each feature in turn. “That was pretty good.” His tongue traced her collarbone before moving to the sensitive spot behind her ear. “Now it’s your turn,” he said as an ache began to speed through her. “You kiss me.”