Pushing her hair out of her face, she sat up in the middle of the mattress and looked around, searching for evidence to dispute the memories and prove them nothing more than a particularly bad dream. But the sight of her wedding dress lying where she’d tossed it in a heap on the floor, as neglected and forlorn as her marriage, gave proof positive that yesterday had been all too real.
The image of Marian Dawes had haunted her. Tiny, helpless, her big blue eyes swimming with pitiful tears, she was the kind of woman whose delicacy made fools of men; made them feel mighty and powerful and protective.
Maybe that had been her big mistake, Julia had thought, pacing the floor as the hours ticked by. When Ben said he wanted to wait until they were married before they made love, and then wait another couple of years to start the family she wanted so badly, maybe she should have pouted and broken down in tears. Appealed to his virility—because heaven knew, he had it in spades, and if she’d ever doubted it, the proof lay sleeping in the room at the other end of the house.
Dawn had been breaking behind Mount Baker before she’d fallen asleep finally but from the angle of the sun now, she guessed it must be about eight o’clock. The rest of the house was too quiet, the way a place is when no one else is home. Ben must have gone out for breakfast, or else to buy supplies for the baby.
Or else he’d left for good.
Refusing to acknowledge the momentary panic that thought gave rise to, Julia focused on more immediate concerns, such as finding something other to wear before she ventured from the room than a semitransparent nightdress or a crumpled wedding gown.
She needed a shower, fresh clothes and coffee strong and black, in that order. Only then could she face up to whatever the rest of the day—and her life—held in store.
She found her remaining luggage stacked outside her door, further indication that Ben had been up and about while she still slept. Dragging it into the room, she unpacked lingerie, a cotton sundress and sandals. There were towels in the ensuite bathroom, and shampoo, and plenty of hot water, testimony to the fact that not everything fell apart in the face of personal upheaval.
But there was no sign of Ben or the baby when she went downstairs, and no sign of coffee. Hardly surprising, since they hadn’t expected to be taking up residence in the house for another month, so stocking up on groceries hadn’t been at the top of their pre-wedding list of things to do.
No matter. She’d follow his example and go out for breakfast. There were coffee shops to spare along the beachfront.
But she got no further than the front door before coming face-to-face with her missing husband. And the child. Even though she’d known they were now a package deal, seeing them together came as a fresh shock of dismay. Would she ever get used to it, or was this sudden painful snag in her heart the way it was going to be for the rest of their lives?
“Hey,” Ben said, fishing a bunch of pink rosebuds spattered with baby’s breath from a pocket in the back of the infant seat, and offering it to her, “where are you off to at this hour of the morning? It’s not eight-thirty yet. These are from us, by the way.”
Us. The word that up until yesterday had cocooned her in the false security of believing that she and Ben had forged a magical, indestructible bubble of happiness that nothing and no one could puncture, took on an ominously darker complexion. There was room for only two in there and, suddenly, she was on the outside looking in. It was all she could do not to grab him by the throat and scream, “The only us should be you and I. Three don’t belong on a honeymoon!”
Of course, she did no such thing. Instead, she called on the pride that had carried her through yesterday’s farce of a wedding celebration and, ignoring the roses, said, “I thought it was much later. I thought I’d go out for breakfast.”
“No need. I’ve been shopping already.” With his knee, he nudged at the four supermarket bags lined up on the step. “I figured I’d better stock up on stuff for the squirt here, so I bought for us while I was at it. We’ve got enough food to see us through a couple of meals at least.”
“Thank you anyway,” she said, looking anywhere but at the baby strapped snugly in its car seat. “I prefer to go out.”
“Prefer to be anywhere but with me, you mean.” The edge in Ben’s tone brought her gaze swinging back to his face. “Why don’t you just spit out the truth, Julia, instead of choking on it?”
“This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the fact that I’ve had nothing to eat or drink since early last evening, and precious little in the twelve hours before that. Other events,” she said pointedly, “took precedence and for some strange reason, robbed me of my appetite.”
“Well, I can’t fix everything that’s gone wrong, but at least I can remedy that.” He thrust the smallest of the bags at her. “There’s hot coffee, croissants and fruit salad in here. Take them outside and we’ll eat on the kitchen patio. It’s going to be another scorcher today, but I turned on the fountain this morning and put up the sun umbrella, so it should be reasonably pleasant out there.”
His attempts to normalize a situation that was anything but normal brought out a side of her nature as new and unwelcome to her as it undoubtedly was to him: stubborn, unreasonable, vindictive—they were words to leave her blushing inside. Sadly, they weren’t enough to keep her from asking waspishly, “Are you giving me orders now, Ben?”
“No. I’m trying like the devil not to alienate you any more than I already have. Why else would I be out buying you flowers and getting up at the crack of dawn to set the stage for a romantic breakfast for two?”
For two? Oh, that was a laugh! “Do you seriously believe a few flowers and a fountain are all it’s going to take to put things right between us?” she said scornfully.
“No,” he replied. “But it seemed as good a place as any to start. You think I don’t know I’ve screwed up? You think I can’t see what I’ve done to you—to us? I want to put things right, but I can’t do it on my own. Whether you like it or not, you and I both are going to have to sit down and discuss things rationally to decide where, if anywhere, this marriage of ours is headed.”
“I thought we were headed for the kind of normal, happy life most couples expect once they’ve tied the knot. But so far, nothing about our marriage fits the norm, does it?”
“No. I hardly expected I’d become a father before I found out what it would be like to be a husband. Even less did I expect I’d be marrying someone other than the mother of my child.”
Every nasty, bruising thought she’d entertained in the last twelve hours supplanted common sense yet again. “Is that your oblique way of telling me you think you married the wrong woman?”
He rolled his eyes and bundled the grocery supplies into his arms. “Don’t be childish, Julia. It doesn’t suit you.”
Anger, guilt, disappointment and just plain, soul-destroying misery joined forces in a tide that swept the tattered shreds of her composure into oblivion. “How dare you criticize me?” she flared. “I’m the injured party here, not you. None of this mess is my fault!”
“I know,” he said, and she flinched a little at the weariness in his voice. He’d always struck her as a tower of strength, godlike in his beauty and able to move mountains if he had to. It had never occurred to her that he might have feet of clay just like everyone else.
Remorse and a shadow of sympathy prompted her to reach for the grocery bags. “Give those to me. I’ll take them to the kitchen.”
“They’re heavy. Take the baby instead.”
“I’m stronger than I look.” Without giving him the chance to raise further objections, she practically snatched the bags away from him and, hounded by a fresh wave of guilt, raced down the hall toward the back of the house.
What was wrong with her that she couldn’t bring herself to look at the baby, let alone touch him? She might see herself as the most injured party in all this mess, but he was the most vulnerable. And the most blameless.
Miserably, she gl
anced around the custom-designed kitchen Ben had had built for her. An array of white lacquered cabinets, some with arched glass doors and lighted interiors to showcase the fine china and crystal wedding gifts she’d received; dark green granite counters and pale maple floors; the very latest and best in the way of appliances: it was a dream kitchen few women were lucky enough to own.
“I can’t afford a live-in housekeeper,” he’d told her when they’d first bought the house. “But if you’d like to have someone come in to do the cooking—?”
“No!” she’d exclaimed. “I’m not my mother, who couldn’t find a can of soup in her house if her life depended on it. This is going to be my kitchen and I won’t have some other woman making it hers.”
She’d envisioned creating gourmet seven-course meals here when they entertained, having him perch on a stool and sip a glass of wine while she put the finishing touches to a quiet dinner for just the two of them. And she’d imagined how it would be when they eventually had children and they came home from school and sat at the breakfast bar enjoying milk and cookies she’d baked herself that morning.
But she’d never once thought that the first sack of disposable diapers and carton of powdered formula her husband bought would be for a baby that was his but not hers.
She heard footsteps approaching and pretended to be busy loading things in the refrigerator when Ben came up behind her. She felt his breath on her hair, and braced herself for the kiss she instinctively knew would follow.
His mouth fluttered against the side of her neck, warm and erotic. “Leave that for now and come outside,” he murmured in her ear, sliding his arm around her waist and cupping his hand under the slope of her breast. “The coffee’s getting cold.”
But he was hot. Hot and ready. The thrust of his hips against her bottom gave proof of exactly where he was coming from!
Furious as much with herself for the quivering response of her own flesh as she was with him for supposing he could seduce her so blatantly, she poked her head further inside the refrigerator. It didn’t do much for his state of arousal, but it helped cool her down.
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” she said starchily, swatting him away. “I don’t want stuff going bad in this heat.”
He removed himself at once, leaving her with such an aching sense of loss that she could have wept. “What stuff?” he said, and there was that edge of impatience in his voice again. “All I bought were a couple of steaks, some salad and a few dairy items, for Pete’s sake! Hardly enough to make a morning’s work out of. Or are you planning to climb in next to them when you’re done, rather than face me?”
Straightening, she slammed the refrigerator closed. “Fine! I’ll sit outside. I’ll drink the coffee. I’ll eat a croissant. Will that make you happy?”
“No,” he said shortly, flinging plastic knives and spoons on a tray next to the coffee and pastries. “I suspect it’s going to take a lot more than that to make either of us happy again. But this much I do know—until we arrive at some sort of resolution over what’s happened, neither of us will be able to move forward. We’re at an impasse here, Julia. Even you can’t deny that. Where we go next and whether or not we both take the same path is what we’ve got to determine.”
“And what if I’m not ready to face that decision just yet?”
“That’s what I’m most afraid of—your bottling everything up inside to the point that we never find our way back to each other again. We need to deal with this together, not apart.” He held out his hand. “Come on, Julia. Don’t make me beg. The baby’s upstairs and should sleep for a couple of hours. We won’t be distracted by anything. Let’s at least try to sort things out.”
Swinging away, she marched to the wrought-iron table and chairs on the patio outside the kitchen door. “What’s to sort out? You’ve already made up your mind what you’re going to do and nothing I might have to say on the matter seems likely to change it.”
“I thought you’d made up your mind, too.” He pinned her in a level gaze. “You were given the option yesterday. You could have walked away from me and our marriage, but you chose not to. Call me thick if you like, but I took that to mean you were willing to give us a chance.”
“I wasn’t prepared to make a snap decision, that’s all. I wanted time to think things over.”
“And?”
She glared at him. “And what?”
“I heard you pacing the floor all night. A reasonable man would assume you weren’t doing it for the exercise. A reasonable man would assume it was because you couldn’t sleep. A reasonable man would assume that was because you’d had a load of trouble dumped in your lap and you were trying to figure out a way to handle it.” His mouth tightened formidably. “I’m trying to be a reasonable man, Julia,” he said, “but you’re coming dangerously close to pushing me beyond my limits. So instead of flinging my question back at me, try answering it. What conclusions did you arrive at during your long, sleepless night?”
“I didn’t! You might have folded in the face of your former lover’s pressure, but I won’t be rushed on this, Ben, and that’s final. Whatever I decide, it’s going to take time. And a reasonable man wouldn’t need to have me spell that out for him. He’d understand and back off, particularly in light of the embarrassment he’s already put me through in front of my family and friends. How I’m ever going to face them all again I don’t know! But I can tell you this—if you think your becoming a father is enough to give rise to a great uprush of maternal feelings in me, you’re sadly mistaken.”
He tilted his chair backward, folded his arms over his chest and stretched out his long tanned legs. He was wearing denim cutoffs and a short-sleeved white cotton shirt and sneakers. He looked self-assured and invincible—and so sexy it was small wonder Marian Dawes had deserted her husband for him.
“There’s more at stake here than your stiff-necked pride,” he informed her. “In case you haven’t noticed, a child’s future’s hanging in the balance. I love you, make no mistake about that. But I won’t tolerate your taking out your frustrations on that baby. If you decide I’m asking for more than you’re prepared to give, you’ll move on with your life and eventually find some other man to take my place. But that boy has already been abandoned by his mother. I’ll see you in hell before I let you rob him of his father, too.”
She’d always known he had in him a steely strength that went beyond mere muscle power but this—the way he spoke to her, the harsh, uncompromising tone he adopted—this was a side of him she’d never seen before. Determined not to show how it rattled her, she said, “You don’t even know for sure that he is yours.”
“I know for sure that Wayne Dawes isn’t his father. I know for sure that his date of birth makes it highly likely that I’m the only other candidate for the job.”
“How can you know that?” she cried, slopping coffee all over the table in her agitation. “What makes you so sure you were the only one she was romping around in bed with? If you’re telling the truth, you didn’t even know Marian Dawes was married when you had your little affair with her.”
The front legs of his chair slammed against the paved stones of the patio as he brought it upright again. Leaning across the table, he said, “There’s no ‘if’ about it, Julia. I’ve never lied to you and I’m not about to start now. But if you’re in any doubt about that, perhaps you should have dumped me before the ink dried on our marriage certificate. Because I won’t live with a wife who doesn’t believe I’m telling her the truth.”
“How is it that I’m suddenly the villain of the piece?” she cried, too angry to care that he saw the tears filling her eyes.
He wiped one palm over his face and took a sip of his coffee. “There aren’t any villains here, Julia, that’s the whole point. There are only victims, and I’m sorry that you’re one of them. I want to make things right again between us, but I can’t do it by myself. You’ve got to want it, too. Last night…” He made a helpless gesture with his hand. “Shutting your
self in that bedroom, refusing even to listen to me, let alone have me touch you—sweetheart, that’s not how two people in love mend what’s broken between them.”
She’d almost begun to soften toward him, almost felt the first stirrings of sympathy, but for all his conciliatory tone, they fled at his last remark. “What would you have had me do? Climb into bed with you as if we were on our honeymoon and we were happy as peach pie together? Did you think I could have sex with you and not find my mind filled with images of you doing the same things to Marian Dawes that you were doing to me?”
He regarded her as if she’d said something unspeakably obscene. “I did have sex with Marian,” he said flatly. “But it never occurred to me that I’d have sex with you. I’d anticipated you and I would make love. To my mind, there’s quite a difference between the two.”
“Well, you’ll have to forgive me for not being quite as discerning. I haven’t had your vast experience. I foolishly believed sleeping around was cheap, not to mention risky, so I saved myself for the man I married.”
Very deliberately, he put down his coffee container and stood up. “Excuse me,” he said. “I hear the baby crying, and I’m concerned. He doesn’t seem able to keep his food down and he’s got a very suspicious bruise on his arm. I’m sure you’ll enjoy not having me around while you finish your breakfast.”
She’d gone too far and she didn’t need his carefully blank expression to realize it. But did she retrench before the damage grew worse? The old Julia would have; she’d have found it in herself to show a little remorse and compassion. But that person had died somewhere between cutting the wedding cake and leaving the reception in a hail of confetti. And the new Julia had such a core of bitterness to her that all she wanted to do was lash out at the person who’d brought her dreams crashing down about her ears, even if doing so hurt her as much as it hurt him.
The Unexpected Wedding Gift Page 5
