“Well! I…hardly know what to say!”
“Congratulations would be nice,” Edmund suggested.
“No doubt,” Valerie replied, giving her nostrils another workout. “But you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not quite up to par on social niceties, Mr. Delaney. This is a decided shock. We had no idea Jenna was seeing…someone, let alone getting serious about him. Well!” She shrugged her skinny shoulders helplessly. “I suppose you’d better join us for dinner, too. Once he hears the news, my husband will certainly insist on meeting the person who’s swept Jenna off her feet in such a mysteriously short time.”
“I guess we can accommodate you, just this once,” he said, ignoring Jenna’s smothered gasp of dismay. “Where are you dining?”
“At The Pavilion.”
He should have guessed. Securing a table at one of the city’s most exclusive restaurants would be right up Valerie Sinclair’s alley! She’d probably lose her appetite for a month if she knew he had a standing reservation there any time he wanted one.
“In case you have trouble finding it,” she went on, “it’s down on—”
“I know where it is,” he said. “Go ahead and don’t worry about us. We’ll meet you there.”
“We can’t have dinner with them!” Jenna cried, the minute the door had shut behind the old harridan. “They’ll see through us in a flash!”
“They’ll see exactly what we want them to see and not a thing more,” he told her. “Your mother might like to think she can rearrange the weather to suit her, but she’s met her match in me.”
“You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for, Edmund!”
“I know this is something we have to face sooner, rather than later. We’re working to a pretty tight schedule here, Jenna, and while I agree it would have been better if we’d had a bit more time to rehearse, we can’t postpone the show indefinitely.”
“I can’t go through with it!” she moaned, flopping down on the couch like a rag doll. “Not tonight! Not this soon!”
“Sure you can. Just follow my lead. And if things get too dicey, go powder your nose and leave me to handle everything.”
“What if you can’t?”
He hunkered down in front of her and took her hands. “Hey,” he said, “this is me, remember? When have I ever let you down?”
He never had, nor did he that night, and if Jenna wasn’t just a little bit in love with him before then, she was afterward.
Her parents were already at their table when she and Edmund arrived and it was clear that her father had heard the news. But he, at least, made an attempt to be gracious.
“So,” he said, once introductions were out of the way, “the pair of you plan to get married. I guess that calls for champagne.”
“I think it calls for an explanation,” her mother said tartly, “because I frankly don’t understand how it happened. You’re aware, I’m sure, Mr. Delaney, that until very recently, Jenna was engaged to marry someone else?”
Edmund inched his chair closer to Jenna’s and smiled at her as if she were the only woman in the world worth a second glance. “Certainly. Jenna and I have no secrets between us.”
“Then you must also be aware that we were all quite devastated when things didn’t work out as we expected.”
“Perhaps you were more devastated than Jenna,” he suggested, cutting her off at the pass. “Or else her recuperative powers are greater than yours.”
Her mother turned faintly purple while her father, Jenna noticed, disappeared rather hurriedly behind the wine list.
“In any event,” Edmund went on, seeming blithely indifferent to the effect his words were having, “she’s engaged to me now, so the past is no longer relevant.”
“But she can’t have known you for more than a few weeks!”
“I’m not one to let the grass grow under my feet, Mrs. Sinclair. I know a good thing when I see it and Jenna is the best thing that’s happened to me in a very long time. Neither of us just fell out of the cradle, as I’m sure you’ll be the first to admit. We’re well past the age of consent and,” he finished pointedly, “fully capable of deciding for ourselves how and with whom we wish to spend the rest of our lives.”
Mercifully, the waiter showed up then, and after they’d ordered, everyone made a strained attempt to steer the conversation into more a general vein. But the minute their meals arrived and they were unlikely to be disturbed again, her mother picked up right where she’d left off, determined as a bloodhound on the scent.
“You’ll have to forgive me if I seem less than delighted by your news, Mr. Delaney, but I’m frankly having trouble coming to terms with the idea of accepting a total stranger as a son-in-law.”
“Mother, please!” Embarrassed as much by her own cowardice as her mother’s outright incivility, and furious that her father made no attempt to mitigate his wife’s remarks, Jenna sprang to Edmund’s defense. “I won’t tolerate your insulting the man I’m going to marry! If you can’t be happy for us, at least have the good manners to keep quiet. And if you can’t do that, then—”
Appearing totally undisturbed, Edmund threaded his fingers through hers. “Relax, sweet pea, and try to enjoy your dinner. Your mother’s concerned that you’re entering a pact with the devil, that’s all. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Sinclair?”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far, but—”
“But you’d find it a whole lot easier to welcome me into the bosom of the family if I were someone you could brag about to your friends. In other words, you’d like to scrutinize my credentials.”
“Well…!” For once at a loss, her mother dribbled into embarrassed silence and poked around at the food on her plate.
“Then let me put your mind at rest. I’m thirty-five, have a clean bill of health, pay off all my credit cards every month, own a condominium near Lost Lagoon, and run my own business. I make a respectable living and can well afford to support Jenna in some style. I’m an only child. My mother is a happy homemaker. My father is retired and plays golf whenever he gets the chance. I have a university education and have traveled extensively. I am committed to Jenna and to our marriage. I intend to make her very happy.”
Any trace of amusement long since dead, he rested his knife and fork on his plate and leaned forward to spear her mother with a laser-sharp glance. “Is there anything I’ve left out?”
“Well…yes,” she said, dabbing her mouth with her serviette. “You omitted to mention the kind of business you run.”
He lolled back in his chair again, the smile on his face reminiscent of an alligator moving in for the kill. “You’ll find me in the Yellow Pages under Used Building Materials,” he said, lifting his wineglass in a mocking toast. “EJB Limited at your service, madam, with four outlets throughout the lower mainland dedicated to meeting your renovation needs. Perhaps I should mention, though, that my father actually began the business with just one. Unfortunately, he ran into serious financial problems and very nearly had to close down the entire operation, but I was able to turn things around to where things stand today.”
After that revelation, there was no redeeming the evening. Jenna thought her mother was going to faint dead away, and could well imagine the fallout her father would suffer later.
Used building materials? The man’s little more than a garbage collector, Warren! Our future son-in-law makes his living out of a Dumpster and his father probably filed for bankruptcy! How will we ever lift our heads in public again?
Caught between hysteria and nausea, and not sure she could control either, Jenna muttered something about a headache and hurried to the ladies’ room for the fifth time in the last hour. When she came out, Edmund was waiting for her near the front door.
“I made our excuses,” he said, taking her elbow and towing her out to where his car waited with the engine running. “I don’t think they minded too much that we didn’t stick around for dessert.”
Once in the car, she fairly collapsed from the strain. �
�I don’t know how we lasted as long as we did!”
“Nor I,” he remarked dryly. “The next time someone offers you alcohol, sweet pea, try saying ‘no’ instead of swilling your glass into mine when you think no one’s looking. I’d have been pie-eyed if we’d stayed there much longer.”
“If I’d refused champagne to toast our engagement, they’d have been really suspicious.”
He spared her a quick glance as he shifted into gear and headed south through Stanley Park. “They’re suspicious anyway. You didn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive, you kept disappearing into the ladies’ room, and you were so uptight, you could barely string three words together without babbling. If your mother were any more suspicious, she’d try to have me arrested.”
The edge in his voice had Jenna covertly studying him, but all she could discern was the rather severe cast of his profile. “I did try to warn you, Edmund.”
“You did.”
Although the sun had long since set, the night was warm enough that he’d left the top down on the car, but she felt cold suddenly and it took real effort for her to pose her next question. “Are you having second thoughts…about us?”
They were passing the beach by then and instead of answering her, he braked to a stop in a deserted parking area, turned off the engine, and stared out across the bay.
“Edmund?” Heart fluttering with unaccountable anxiety, she said again, “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she said, so dismayed that she almost whimpered.
He turned in his seat and slid his hand around her neck. “Face it, Jenna,” he said, his fingers weaving sultry circles on the skin just below her ear, “you don’t need the kind of stress you were subjected to tonight. It wouldn’t be good for you at the best of times. In your present condition, it’s preposterous and I won’t allow it to happen again.”
“So what do you want to do,” she whispered, stunned at the devastation sweeping through her. “End things between us?”
His fingers stilled. “Is that what you think I’m saying?” he asked incredulously.
“Aren’t you?”
“Hell, no!”
“You wouldn’t be the first man to back out,” she said miserably. “And I could hardly blame you if you decided that’s what you wanted to do. Tonight was a complete disaster and I don’t see it getting any better, at least not where my mother’s concerned.”
He swore softly and cupped her face between both his hands. “I’m no Mark Armstrong, Jenna,” he said, “and I’m not looking for an easy way out of what I admit is a tough situation. Just the opposite, in fact. I vote we make this the shortest engagement on record and set a wedding date, because the sooner you and I are married, the sooner we can stop pussyfooting around other people and get on with our lives the best way we know how.”
“But what about Molly? You can’t just spring a stepmother on her without warning.”
“We’ll drive up there on Friday and spend the weekend with her. That’ll give you time to get acquainted before we break the news. And remember, she’s only four. She isn’t going to go looking for hidden motives or ask questions you won’t know how to answer.” He dipped his head closer to hers. So close that his breath fanned warmly over her mouth. His hand strayed down her shoulder and came to rest midway between her waist and thighs, just about where the baby lay snug and safe in her womb. “So what do you say to us making it official the week after next?”
The heat from his hand was creating an urgency in her blood, a flooding awareness between her legs. She wanted to feel him touching her bare skin. He made her ache and quiver. He made her yearn for him so badly that she hardly knew how to contain herself. “I’m not sure I can organize a wedding quite that soon,” she said breathlessly.
“Then how does this strike you?” He inched closer. “Let’s forget a wedding and just elope. There won’t be nearly as many sharks circling if we go that route.”
No family, no friends, no guests to speculate on the whys and hows? No witnesses in the event of last-minute hitches?
“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes falling closed in anticipation of the kiss she was sure would soon follow. “Come to think of it, I’ve had my fill of orchestrated weddings.”
“Good!” He planted a swift peck at the corner of her mouth, straightened in his seat and reached for the ignition key.
She almost cried out loud in disappointment. They were engaged. They would be married soon. She was expecting his baby. But he hadn’t really touched her since the night she’d conceived and one brief kiss wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her now, not after the evening just passed. “Do you think,” she said in a small voice, “that you could kiss me again before we go, and make it last a bit longer this time?”
Very slowly, he shifted back into Park and turned to face her again. “Oh, honey,” he said hoarsely, tracing a line from her eyebrow to her jaw and running his thumb over her lower lip, “I can do a lot better than that. All you ever had to do was ask.”
He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. Drew a circle there with the tip of his tongue, a tiny movement so intensely erotic that a jolt of electricity shot to the soles of her feet and left her gasping.
He raised his head. His eyes were luminous in the glow from the dashboard, and full of fire. They scorched over her face, slid the length of her neck to her breasts, then returned to settle on her mouth with searing deliberation.
Blindly, she reached for him, tangling her fingers in his hair. A need unlike any she’d ever known before consumed her. It rose up in her throat, clamoring to be heard. She wanted to tell him things which didn’t make any sense. Impossible things, like “I love you!” Impossible because they’d agreed love had nothing to do with their arrangement.
Quickly, before impulse gained the upper hand and ruined the moment, she lifted her lips to his. The faint light from the stars faded to black. The whisper of sea on sand dwindled into oblivion. The entire world retreated until there was nothing but her heart beating next to his, and his mouth closing over hers to weave a spell which promised untold magic in the years to come.
“To think,” she said dreamily, many long, delicious moments later, with the taste of him still on her tongue and the scent of him filling her senses, “that a person’s life can change so dramatically in such a short time. Not long ago, my future looked so bleak I didn’t know how I was going to face it. Then I discovered I was pregnant—something I’d never expected would happen. And soon I’ll be married to you, a man I barely know. The whole scenario lacks credibility. Yet when I’m with you, nothing seems impossible. You make me believe in miracles.”
“There aren’t any miracles,” he said, pulling away from her with flattering reluctance, “just ordinary people doing the best they can with the hand fate deals out to them. Sometimes, things fall into place of their own accord, and sometimes you have to shove the pieces where they belong.”
“Which are we facing?”
“A lot of shoving,” he said, “which is why I’m going to drive you home now and leave you at your front door, even though I’d rather be taking you to bed. You’ve been under a lot of strain lately and it’s beginning to show.”
The next week sped by, so crammed with things to do that Jenna had no choice but to leave the running of the day-care center to Irene and two part-time assistants.
“We need to find a house away from downtown,” Edmund insisted, the day after the dinner debacle with her parents. “Neither your place nor mine has room for a child.”
“But the baby isn’t due for another six months,” Jenna said.
“I’m thinking of Molly. I can hardly make a case for having her live with us if we don’t even have a bedroom for her.”
For three days, they shopped exhaustively, and pored over their shortlist each evening. By the Wednesday, they’d settled on an acre property tucked at the end of a quiet cul de sac in South Surrey, with a view of the ocean and a swi
mming pool. As an added bonus, there was also a playhouse sure to keep a little girl and her dolls happily entertained when the weather was fine.
On the Thursday, Edmund hired a crew to paint the house, a lovely sprawling rancher with four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a games room, self-contained nanny’s quarters above the triple garage, and enough special features that Jenna worried out loud, “Can we afford all this?”
Edmund looked up from the landscape catalog he’d been studying, a smile lurking in his eyes. “Your mother might have me pegged as nothing more than a guy who ekes out a living recycling other people’s junk, but I thought you’d have figured out by now that I amount to more than that.”
“I haven’t drawn any conclusions,” she told him. “You said you were gainfully employed and I took your word on it.”
“You mean, it wouldn’t bother you if I spent my days grubbing around in overalls and wading hip deep in demolition sites?”
“I almost married the heir apparent to a financial empire and look where it got me, Edmund. He might have worn custom-tailored suits and had money to burn, but when it came down to the crunch, I couldn’t count on him. So, no, it wouldn’t bother me one bit how you dress for work, as long as you’re doing what you want to do, and as long as I know you’ll be there when I need you, just as I will be for you.”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a minute, then dropped the catalog on the table and fished his car keys out of his pocket. “We’ve got an appointment in an hour with a friend of mine who imports carpets, but let’s leave early. There’s something I want to show you, first.”
He took her to a section of Main Street lined with smart antique establishments, and parked outside a shop with a discreet EJD Limited sign engraved on a brass plate above the door.
“Yours?” she said, astonished.
“Mine,” he replied, ushering her inside.
She might well have stepped back in time to another era. Floored in foot-wide boards of ancient fir worn to smoothness by the passing of many feet, steeped in the rich smell of fine wood paneling, lit by a hundred or more light fixtures ranging in size from miniature art deco wall sconces to nineteenth century chandeliers large enough to grace a Victorian mansion, the cavernous interior was a virtual treasure trove of architectural collectors’ items.
The Pregnant Bride Page 9
