The Unexpected Wedding Gift

by Catherine Spencer

  “But Ben, we’re creating an instant family, and pets are part of the picture.”

  She looked so crestfallen that he hadn’t the heart to point out she could just as easily have settled for a goldfish. “Well, he’s a handsome enough hound, I guess.”

  “And very good with small children.”

  Privately, Ben didn’t plan on putting that claim to the test. Michael would be no more than a passing snack for a hungry beast the size of this one. “Where’d you find him?” he said, instead.

  “At the local animal shelter. The people who owned him were apparently heartbroken at having to get rid of him.”

  Uh-huh! “So what did he do to persuade them to dump him at the pound? Swallow Grandma whole?”

  “Oh, Ben!” She fondled the dog’s ears, at which the benighted creature flopped over onto its back to show what a fine male specimen it was. “They’re moving overseas, which would mean putting him in quarantine for six months, and they couldn’t bear to do that to him. He’s used to being around people and running free in a big garden. He’d be miserable locked up in a pen all day.”

  He could think of a dozen arguments to counteract her reasons, but how could he oppose her after everything he’d already asked of her? And in all fairness, the mutt seemed gentle enough.

  Smart, too! As if it knew its future hung in the balance, it parked itself at Ben’s feet, one mother of a doggy grin on its face, but then got distracted and dug its paw about eight inches into its left ear.

  “Does it have fleas?” Ben said suspiciously.

  “Certainly not!” Julia jabbed an elbow in his ribs. “Why would you even ask such a thing?”

  “Because the farm dogs I grew up with used to scratch like that all the time and they were infested with the damn things. It was one of the reasons they weren’t ever let into the house.”

  “He’s not a farm dog, he’s a family dog, and thoroughly well-behaved.”

  “Uh-huh.” He eyed the mutt who ogled him back and thumped a lovelorn tail. “Does he have a name?”

  “Of course. The children at his other home called him Clifford.”

  Cripes! Who in his right mind would stick a dog with a name like that? “It should be Oscar,” he said, when the dog lifted a gentlemanly let’s-get-acquainted paw. “He’s putting on one hell of a good performance!”

  “Then we can keep him and you’ll let him live in the house?”

  Didn’t she know that when she gazed at him that way, he’d have let her keep a boa constrictor in the bathtub?

  “Sure,” he said. “We can keep him.”

  “Oh, Ben!” She flung her arms around his neck and nuzzled up against him in a way that she knew damned well would get him all in a lather. “I do love you!”

  “Yeah, well, same here, and I’m more than ready to prove it,” he said, dragging her toward the house, “but not with old Clifford panting on the sidelines!”

  On the Sunday afternoon, the in-laws showed up. “We understand the child has been released from the hospital and felt we should at least stop by,” Stephanie announced, obviously of the opinion she was doing them a favor they could never hope to repay. “Julia, darling, you look completely worn out. When does your husband propose to hire someone to take charge of his boy?”

  “My boy,” Ben said, forcing himself to adopt a reasonably civil tone, “is called Michael.”

  “Really?” Stephanie raised her immaculately mowed eyebrows. “Is that a family name, Benjamin?”

  “No.”

  She allowed herself a malicious little smirk. “Perhaps on his mother’s side, then?”

  “You tell me, Stephanie,” he said, smirking right back. “If anyone knows the Montgomery family tree by heart, I’m sure it’s you.”

  She clapped her mouth shut so fast on that comeback, she could have given lessons to a snapping turtle. Face all pinched with annoyance, she cast a critical eye around the kitchen. “Is this one of your designs?”

  “Yes. Would you like to commission one like it for your place?”

  She shuddered delicately. “I don’t think so!”

  “Just as well,” he said. “You’d have to wait at least a year before I could spare a crew to take on the job.”

  “Let me show you the rest of the house, Mother,” Julia said, flinging him a pleading glance.

  He shrugged apologetically. The old bat was enough to drive a man to drink, but she was Julia’s mother and in her own warped, controlling way, she loved her daughter.

  After the women left, Julia’s father cleared his throat and said, “Sometimes my wife puts people’s backs up without meaning to. She’s actually very shy, you see.”

  Your wife is a living bitch! Ben thought. But there was no point in saying so. He had only to look at Garry Montgomery to know the man had been molded so firmly to the underside of Stephanie’s designer heel that the spirit had been stamped out of him years ago. The greater mystery was how Felicity had managed to produce such a spineless offspring in the first place.

  “How is your son?” Garry went on, clearly unnerved by the lack of social small talk. “Is he going to be able to lead a…normal life—when he grows up, that is?”

  “Yes, Garry,” Ben said, maintaining a serious front with difficulty. “They didn’t lop off his future manhood, if that’s what you mean. The valve leading from his stomach was too narrow for food to pass through to the small intestine, that’s all. It’s not that uncommon a condition—one in every two hundred babies has it—and it can be corrected surgically without any other functions being jeopardized. The most Michael will have to put up with when he’s of the right age is having some amorous young woman examining his scar and wanting to know how he got it.”

  The old man rolled a nervous eye in the direction his wife had taken. “Aarumph-heh!” he said, letting rip with something between a cough and a guffaw.

  Ben grinned and jerked a thumb at the refrigerator. “How about a beer while we’re waiting for the women?”

  “I haven’t had a beer in years,” Garry said. “Stephanie never keeps it in the house.”

  “We’ll sneak outside with it, then. It’s too nice a day to be indoors anyway and our dog could use the company.”

  Stephanie found them about ten minutes later. “We must be going, Garry,” she declared, warding off Clifford who, apparently unable to tell the difference between her leg and a fire hydrant, was sniffing around her with scatalogical intent.

  “I haven’t finished my beer yet,” Garry said, “and I wouldn’t mind being given the grand tour. Unlike you, my dear, I like what Ben’s done in the kitchen and I’m quite looking forward to seeing the rest of the house.”

  If he’d jumped up and bitten her in the face, Stephanie couldn’t have looked more stunned. “You’ll have to wait until another time,” she said, separating each word into cast iron syllables. “The child is squalling and Julia is trying to calm him, though why it should fall to her to take care of his needs escapes me.”

  “Julia likes looking after him,” Ben said lazily. “We both do. Parenthood agrees with us.”

  She bared her teeth in a chilling smile. “How nice. Come along, Garry.”

  Defeated, Garry put down his beer bottle and followed her through the garden to the car. “I’ll show you around the next time you come out,” Ben said, feeling sorry for the man even though he was the instrument of his own misery. “And if I didn’t say so before, I do appreciate the flowers you sent to the hospital.”

  “Yes, well…” Stephanie took one last disparaging look at the facade of the house and drew in a deep cleansing breath. “If this really is what you and Julia want, I’m sure I wish you well.”

  Wish us well, my hind foot! Ben thought. What you really mean is you’d like to stuff me and my bastard child headfirst down the nearest well!

  She didn’t realize she’d fallen into a doze until Ben touched her shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “I wondered what was keeping you. Why don’t I take over in here and you
go take a nap?”

  “It’s this chair,” she said, smothering a yawn. “It’s too comfortable.”

  “I think it’s more that you’re not getting enough rest. I hate to say it, but your mother’s right. You do look worn out, honey.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, warmed by his concern. “And I love rocking Michael to sleep. Are my parents still here?”

  He shook his head. “They left about ten minutes ago.”

  She sighed. “Good!”

  “I thought you’d be glad to see them. I certainly never thought they’d drive all the way out here just to find out how Michael was doing.”

  “Nice try, sweetheart,” she said, shifting the baby to her other shoulder, “but we both know that’s not what prompted my mother to give up her Sunday afternoon golf game. She was hoping to find our marriage on the rocks and me ready to pack my bags and move back home. She pretty much came right out and asked how much longer I was prepared to put up with what I’d got myself into.”

  Straddling the rocker, he trapped her knees between his legs. “And how long are you?”

  “Forever!” she said vehemently. “And I let her know it in a way that left no room for misunderstanding. I’ll never give her the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so!”’

  He squatted in front of her and fixed her in one of his candid, far-seeing gazes. “If besting your mother’s your only reason, Julia—”

  “It’s not,” she whispered, hurt that he still suspected her motives after all they’d been through together. “I’m here because I love you, and I love Michael.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “Because given the situation, I’m afraid you can’t have one of us without the other.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  “Okay,” he said, so carefully that she knew he didn’t entirely believe her.

  “Why can’t you accept that?” she pleaded. “What do I have to do to prove myself to you?”

  “Maybe stop trying so hard,” he said. “I think, over time, your dad will come to accept me. Stephanie, though, is a different matter altogether. We’ll never see eye to eye. But she’s still your mother, Julia, and I don’t expect you to alienate yourself from her just to convince me that you’re in this marriage for the long haul.”

  “What do you expect, then?” she cried, frustrated.

  “That you take things one day at a time. Like I said before, small steps are okay, sweetheart. What matters is that you end up where you really want to be, and not where you think you ought to be.”

  “Then trust me to know the difference,” she begged, “and remember my grandmother’s advice. Don’t go looking for problems that don’t exist.”

  She thought she’d finally gotten the message across because later that week, when he had to fly to a remote valley in the Interior, Ben’s first thought was that he should take her and Michael with him.

  “There’s one of those fat farms up there,” he said. “You know the kind of place I mean, where rich women go to peel off the pounds.”

  “Yes,” she said, covering a smile. “But I believe the polite term is ‘health resort’.”

  “I guess. Anyway, the owner wants to upgrade the place—put in state-of-the-art whirlpools and steam baths and outfit each suite with its own luxury bathroom, to attract the rich and famous. I’d send someone else but he’s asked me to be there for the initial planning phase and this is too big a contract for me to turn down.”

  “So go,” she said. “It’ll only be for a few days and we’ll be fine by ourselves.”

  “But you could use a change of scene and it’s beautiful up there at this time of year.”

  “It’s also very hot, Ben. Ninety degrees isn’t uncommon.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a good hotel in town, right on the lake, with an outdoor pool and nice gardens where you could relax.” He cupped her breast possessively. “Come with me, Julia, and let’s take that mini-honeymoon you were talking about the other week.”

  “But we’d hardly see you,” she said, clinging to reason despite his shameless attempts at bribery. “You’re going to be tied up all day, working on plans with the resort owner.”

  “I’d be with you at night, though. That’s better than nothing.”

  It was, but not much, and in the end, she persuaded him to leave her and Michael at home. “Babies his age don’t tolerate extreme heat very well, especially if they’re not used to it,” she pointed out. “And he’s making such a good recovery that I’d hate to do anything that might bring on a relapse.”

  That proved the clinching argument. Ben left a couple of days later, alone. “I’ll phone you every evening,” he promised, giving her and Michael a hug.

  “Hurry back,” she said, a pang of loneliness already threatening.

  He dropped a swift, hard kiss on her mouth. “You know I will. The custody hearing comes up a week from Monday and I’m not about to miss that. Count on my being home that weekend, if not before.”

  Of course, she missed him, especially at night when the only thing she had to curl up against was his pillow. But she enjoyed having the baby all to herself, too. She knew it was natural, given Michael’s illness and the sorry circumstances surrounding his birth, that Ben should have immersed himself so thoroughly in the role of parent, but his doing so had exacerbated Julia’s sense of being on the periphery of things; an accessory after the fact, rather than an essential part of the family unit.

  With him gone, she felt for the first time like a real mother, and she loved every minute of it. What could be sweeter than the damp warmth of a sleeping baby’s breath against one’s neck? she wondered. What else filled a woman’s heart to overflowing the way that wide, toothless baby smile did at the sight of his mother’s face?

  The days rolled by, full of sun and lazy hours in the garden; the nights were calm and peaceful. She wasn’t nervous alone in the big house because Clifford appointed himself protector of the family the minute Ben left. He slept at the foot of her bed some of the time, and at others she found him in the nursery, next to the crib.

  “Well, darling girl,” her grandmother said, on one of her many visits, “I’m proud of you and Ben! You’ve managed to do what few other couples could, and look how it’s paying off. Michael is thriving beautifully and it’s easy to see you’re the light of his little life. He watches your every move.”

  “I never knew I could love like this,” Julia said, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. “I adore him, Amma, and I don’t know why I’m crying about it. I’m happier than I ever dreamed possible.”

  In fact, she’d been crying a lot lately. Anything or nothing could get her going: the sunset, a perfect rose, the sight of Michael sleeping with his little fat fist tucked under his chin, Clifford racing down the stairs with a nursery toy stuffed in his mouth, the wedding portrait of her and Ben that stood on the dresser in their bedroom—all fair game.

  The weepiness was the first in a series of clues that led her to suspect Michael might soon be sharing his nursery with a sister or brother, and when she took a home pregnancy test, all doubt was removed.

  Missing a couple of days of birth control pills earlier in the month had been enough of an omission for a new life to get started.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BECAUSE Ben would be back on the Sunday, Julia decided to wait until then to tell him the news. She wasn’t sure how he’d take it and confessed to being a little nervous. She’d wanted to start a baby as soon as they were married and he’d had a hard time dissuading her. Would he think she’d been deliberately careless, just to get her own way? Or worse, that she was retaliating because he’d left her no choice but to accept Michael?

  She’d never thought that sharing the news that she was pregnant would give rise to anything less than complete and delirious joy, but too much had happened lately for her to believe that a wedding ring had the power to ward off trouble.

  Marriage, even when two people were deeply
in love, wasn’t a guarantee of happy ever after; it was only as strong as the commitment and trust each party brought to it. Already, hers and Ben’s had faltered badly. Adding yet another unexpected baby to the mix might prove fatal.

  But her fears took second place to a much more threatening apprehension when the doorbell rang on Friday afternoon, and she found Marian Dawes standing on the front porch.

  “I had to come,” she said, before Julia could open her mouth. “I know I don’t have the right, but I had to see him one last time before I sign him over to you. Please don’t send me away.”

  Mutely, Julia opened the door wider and gestured her inside, too appalled by the woman’s appearance to speak. Marian’s pretty face was marred by a purple bruise on her cheek and her eyes were haunted.

  She scuttled through the door as if the hounds of hell were chasing her. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Carreras. I’m very grateful to you.”

  Why, she’s shaking! Julia realized and, moved to compassion, touched her gently on the arm. “Have you been in an accident, Marian?”

  “No…no!” Instinctively, Marian put up a hand to hide her poor battered face. “I bumped into my car door—clumsy of me, I know.”

  Julia didn’t believe her for a moment. “Come into the kitchen and let me get you something to put on that bruise,” she said, steering her down the hall toward the back of the house.

  “I don’t want to be any trouble. If I could just see my—your baby, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Michael’s sleeping, but he should wake up shortly. You won’t mind waiting, I’m sure, and it’ll give me time to fix you something to drink. You look as if you need something to fortify you.”

  In truth, she could use something herself! She felt sick inside. Sick and angry for Marian and, if she were honest, very afraid of her, too. That the woman was distraught was obvious, but it hardly explained her insistence on seeing Michael. Was she having a last-minute change of heart about giving him up?