Did she dare trust her heart again?
“I’m not interested in a marriage of convenience with you any longer, Jamie,” he said evenly. “I haven’t been, since the night I found you with Floyd what’s-his-face. I realized then that I love you and probably have for years, only I hadn’t realized it. Condemn me if you will, but it’s the truth.”
Jamie’s heart quickened. Tears streamed down her face and she brought her fingers to her lips, knowing it would be impossible to speak. Instead, she held out her hand to him, her shoulders trembling.
Rich was there a second later, hauling her into his arms. His mouth unerringly found hers, and he lavished warm, moist kisses on her quivering lips.
“I hope all this emotion means what I think it does,” he murmured against the curve of her neck.
Jamie’s tears fell without restraint. The emotions within her were too primitive, too deeply rooted to allow her the luxury of responding with words. Her hands framed his face as she spread eager kisses wherever she could. Trying to convey everything in her heart, she cherished him with her lips, kissing him again and again until they both shook with passion.
“Jamie…” Rich tore his mouth from hers and stared searchingly into her face.
“I love you,” she managed in a breathless whisper.
His smile was more brilliant than a rainbow after the fiercest storm. “I know.” He wore a cocky grin as he swung her effortlessly into his arms and walked to the bedroom.
Tenderly he placed her on the bed and moved over her. When he kissed her, their passion flared to life, with no reservations, no holding back.
“Tell me what you said wasn’t true,” he pleaded. “Tell me our lovemaking touched you the same as it did me.”
Jamie tried to answer him, reassure him it had been her pain talking, her disillusionment, but she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. Smiling, she gazed up at him, letting all the love in her heart spill into her eyes. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
They made love gently, slowly, and when they’d finished, they held each other. For a long time neither spoke.
They kissed after a while and Rich rolled onto his back, taking her with him. His hand caressed the small of her back. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love our baby, too.”
“I know…. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
Content, Jamie nestled against him, pressing her ear to his heart, which beat solidly in his chest. Her own heart was radiant with emotion. She’d tried to close herself off from love, but Rich had made that impossible.
His hand reached for hers. Palm to palm. Heart to heart.
And Jamie felt—finally—like the married woman she was. A wife deeply in love with her husband. A woman deeply loved by a man.
Epilogue
The brightly decorated Christmas tree stood in the corner of Rich and Jamie’s spacious new living room, in front of a large bay window that overlooked Puget Sound.
Jamie sat with her swollen ankles elevated while Rich brought her in a cup of tea from the kitchen. He’d insisted on doing the dishes and Jamie hadn’t argued. She was tired and crabby and impatient for their baby to be born.
“We really should take down the tree,” she said. Christmas had passed several days before.
“Take down the tree?” Rich objected. “We can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Junior wants to see it.”
“Rich,” Jamie muttered, her hands resting on her protruding stomach. “I’ve got news for you. Junior has decided he’d rather not be born. He’s hooked his foot over my ribs and says he’d rather stay right where he is.”
“You’re only three days past your due date.”
“It feels like three months.” She’d given up any hope of seeing her feet back in October.
“Can I get you anything else?” Rich asked. “A pillow? Your knitting? A book?”
“Stop being so solicitous,” she snapped.
“My, my, we are a bit testy this evening.”
“Don’t be cute, either. I’m not in the mood for cute.”
“How about adoring?”
“Maybe…but you’re going to have to convince me.”
“Perhaps I should try for the besotted look.” He crossed his eyes and dangled his tongue out of the side of his mouth, imitating the impression she’d done of him earlier that year.
Despite her low spirits, Jamie laughed and held her arms out to him. “I love you, even if you do look like a goose.”
Rich sat on the ottoman facing her. “I love you, too. I must, otherwise I wouldn’t be this worried.” The humor left his eyes as he leaned forward and placed his hand on her stomach. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”
“Are you really worried?” He tended to hide his anxiety behind a teasing facade, and Jamie had been so consumed by her own apprehensions that she hadn’t taken the time to address Rich’s.
“I’m anxious.” His hands gripped hers and he raised her knuckles to his mouth and gently kissed her fingers.
“So am I! I want this baby to be born.”
“I can hardly believe how much I love him already,” Rich whispered, his eyes serious. “At first, the baby was something we talked about. When I learned you were pregnant I was so excited I could’ve walked on water. Then a few weeks later, we were living together. This summer we sold your condo and moved here. That was only the beginning of all the changes in our lives.”
“I know.”
“Then Junior started getting sassy, constantly moving around, letting us know he was there.”
“He—or she,” Jamie said with a grin.
“I’ll never forget the first time I felt him—or her—move.”
“I won’t, either,” Jamie said.
Rich smiled that lopsided grin of his that never failed to disarm her. “Everything’s changed, hasn’t it?” Once again his blue eyes brightened. “This child is part of you and me—the very best part of us both. Every time I think about him, I get all soft inside. I want to hold him in my arms and tell him how much his mother and I wanted him. Or her,” he added with a smile. “Enough to go to exorbitant measures.”
“Not that it was necessary,” Jamie whispered. “Might I remind you that Junior was conceived in the good old-fashioned way?”
Rich leaned forward and reminded her of some other good old-fashioned methods they’d discovered. She was laughing when she felt the first contraction. Her eyes widened and she squeezed Rich’s hand.
“Jamie?”
“I think all my complaining might have done some good. Have you got the stopwatch?”
Rich paled, nodded, then rushed into their bedroom, returning with the stopwatch he’d purchased after attending their childbirth classes.
He knelt in front of her, clasping her hand. “Are you ready, my love?”
Jamie nodded. She’d been ready for this moment for the past nine months.
With a loud squall, Bethany Marie Manning made her way into the world thirteen hours later. Rich was at Jamie’s side in the delivery room. When Dr. Fullerton announced that they had a daughter, Rich looked at Jamie, his face filled with wonder and surprise.
“She’s a girl?” he asked, as though he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“Do you want to check for yourself?” Dr. Fullerton teased.
Jamie watched her husband, searching for signs of disappointment, but if there were any she didn’t see them. The nurse weighed Bethany, then wrapped the protesting infant in a warm blanket and handed her to Rich.
Rich stared down at the bright pink face and smiled. When he looked over at Jamie his eyes shone with unshed tears. “She’s beautiful.”
“You’re not disappointed we didn’t have a son?”
“Are you crazy? I always wanted a girl. I just said I wanted a boy to keep you off guard.” Very gently, Rich bent down and kissed his daughter’s forehead.
Hours later, Jamie woke and saw that Rich was asleep, slumped in t
he chair next to her hospital bed. His head rested against hers. Smiling contentedly, she rubbed her fingers through his tangled hair.
Yawning, Rich raised his head. “Hello, little mother.”
“Hello, proud daddy.”
“She is so beautiful. Oh, Jamie, I can’t believe how much I love her. And you.” He kissed her hand, then held it against his jaw. “I never knew I could feel like this.”
Feeling dreamy and tired, Jamie nodded and let her eyes drift shut.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Rich whispered, his face close to hers. “I’ve taken care of everything.”
Jamie’s eyes flew open. “What do you mean by that?”
“Ballet classes.” He pulled open the drawer in the bedside table and withdrew a Seattle phone book. “I’ve called two schools, both of whom are sending us brochures. I also talked to a teacher about piano lessons.”
“Rich!”
“Just kidding.” He lifted her hand and clasped it between his own. “I love you, Jamie.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
They’d come so far, Jamie mused. They’d tried to manipulate fate, create their own destiny, constrain their marriage with limits and conditions.
Instead, love had caught them unawares.
STAND-IN WIFE
To Lucy Beckstead
Thank you for showing me the way,
then taking me by the hand and guiding me there
In Memory of Kim Gonzalez;
and for Tyler, who will never know his mother
Prologue
The morning was bleak, the sky, gray and overcast. The phone call from the hospital woke Paul Manning from a sound sleep—his first decent sleep since his daughter, Kelsey Diane, was born seventy-two hours earlier. Because of toxemia, his wife, Diane, had been placed in intensive care as a precaution.
Things quickly got worse, however, complicated by the fact that Diane had been born with only one kidney. Generally the toxins disappeared from the mother’s body following birth, but in Diane’s case that hadn’t happened. Instead they’d attacked her liver and kidney, and before Paul fully realized the seriousness of her condition, she’d slipped into a coma. Paul and Diane’s sister, Leah, had held a vigil at her side. After two days Dr. Charman had sent them home, promising to contact Paul if there was any change. Now he had.
“Could you come to the hospital?” he asked.
“What’s wrong?” Paul demanded, frightened by the weariness in the physician’s voice.
“It’d be best if you came to the hospital. I’ll explain everything once you’re here.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
A half hour later Paul Manning was shouting the words in his mind, but not a sound passed his lips. He was overwhelmed by pain, disbelief, shock—they punched him viciously, knocking the wind from his lungs. Dizzy and weak, he slumped into the hospital chair.
“We did everything we could,” Dr. Charman murmured, his voice subdued with defeat.
Women gave birth…but they didn’t die from it. Not in this day and age. Not when they were at one of the best medical facilities in the country.
The pregnancy had begun in a completely routine manner; Diane had never seemed healthier. Then, in the eighth month, she’d developed toxemia. Paul hadn’t been too concerned, blithely unaware of how deadly her condition would prove to be.
Diane had suffered from toxemia during her first pregnancy, too, and everything had turned out all right. The twins had been born six weeks premature, but the toxemia hadn’t been life-threatening to either her or the boys.
“Is there someone you’d like me to call?”
Paul glanced up and shook his head. He didn’t want his family just yet. For now he needed to grieve alone. “I’d like to be with her for a few minutes if I could.”
Dr. Charman nodded and led the way down the quiet corridor to Diane’s room. Paul’s heart was pounding savagely, his head whirling, his legs unsteady. He felt as though he was in a nightmare, and he prayed someone would wake him up.
Dr. Charman opened the door and stepped aside. “I’ll wait for you here,” he said.
Paul nodded, surprised by the sudden calm that enveloped him. He hadn’t expected to feel serenity. Not when the grief, the guilt and pain, were crushing his heart.
The first thing he noticed was that all the tubes had been disconnected. His wife’s face glowed with a beauty that transcended anything he’d ever known. For a moment he was sure Dr. Charman had made a mistake, that Diane was only sleeping.
He remembered the first time he’d met Diane six years earlier. He’d been in the army, stationed in Alaska, and she’d come up for the summer to work in a cannery. He was nearly thirty and she was barely twenty-one. Paul had taken one look at her, and it was as if his heart had stopped. He’d fallen in love a dozen times before, but no woman had ever affected him the way Diane Baker had. By the end of the summer, she’d decided to drop out of college and marry him.
They’d talked for hours on end, planning their future. Paul’s degree was in journalism, but he intended to be a novelist one day. Diane read his work, built up his confidence, convinced him he’d sell his stories. Through the years her belief in him remained unwavering.
Six months after they were married she was pregnant. When she had Ryan and Ronnie, Paul thought his heart would burst with pride. He had a family of his own now. A wife he adored and two sons. Twin sons.
Then, a year ago Diane had decided she wanted a little girl. Paul would’ve preferred to wait, space out their family, get the boys in school first. But Diane had been adamant. She’d wanted another baby. They’d argued about it, but in the end she’d convinced him. Actually, he used to joke, it was a sheer black nightie that had convinced him. The truth was, he’d never been able to refuse his wife. She was his whole world—and now she was gone.
Paul looked down at her and his heart felt the heaviness of grief. The emptiness. What would he do without Diane? How could he possibly face life without her?
Diane was at peace, but Paul was in turmoil.
The anguish rose in his throat until it escaped in a low moan. Gripping the railing of the hospital bed, he closed his eyes and felt his body rock with grief.
A sound outside the room caught his attention and he turned, recognizing Leah’s voice. Leah, Diane’s sister.
The two women had always been close, and it didn’t surprise him that she was here. Moving from his wife’s side, he opened the door to find a stricken Leah pleading with Dr. Charman.
“Paul?” She shifted her imploring gaze to him. “I woke up. Something told me to come to the hospital…right then…not to wait. I’d only been home a few hours.”
Paul nodded. He hadn’t been asleep long himself.
“I can’t believe this,” she sobbed. “Not Diane…” She covered her mouth, and her shoulders shook with the pain of a loss that went soul deep.
Paul opened his arms to her, and Leah walked into his embrace, but he didn’t know who was comforting whom.
He needed her and she needed him.
One
Kelsey’s weak cry stirred Paul from his light sleep. He blinked and rubbed a hand down his weary face. The midnight feedings were the worst, especially on Friday nights.
Life had fallen into a dismal pattern in the six months since Diane’s funeral. He’d never worked harder in his life. Keeping up with the kids and the house and his job left room for little else. The demands seemed endless.
His family had pitched in to help every way they could. Between his mother and his sister-in-law he was managing, especially with his mother taking the kids every weekday, shuttling the boys to preschool and picking them up.
Kelsey cried again, and Paul threw aside his covers and sat on the edge of the bed. Blindly he searched with his feet for his slippers, then stood and pulled on his robe.
Kelsey’s crib was in his room, and he automatically reached for her, placing her against his shoulder.
“Just a minute, sweetheart,” he said, walking around the room until he’d located a freshly laundered diaper on top of the dresser.
Bless Leah. He didn’t know what he’d do if she hadn’t taken over the laundry. With so many extra medical expenses, plus the cost of the funeral, he couldn’t afford a diaper service or even disposables, or, at least, not as many as he needed. At night he used the old-fashioned kind, often going through two or three. So every afternoon on her way home from teaching at the college, Leah came by to prepare dinner and start the laundry. He wouldn’t have survived the past few months without Leah and his mother.
He deftly changed Kelsey’s wet diaper while her bottle was heating in the microwave. He was getting fairly good at this diapering business. Early in his married life, Paul had teased Diane that she could have as many children as she wanted as long as she was the one who dealt with the messy diapers. Now changing diapers, like so many other tasks, had become his alone.
Settling in the rocking chair with Kelsey, Paul carefully touched the nipple to her lips. The baby’s tiny mouth parted, and she sucked hungrily.
He brushed the soft blond wisps of hair from her sweet face. How grateful he was that Kelsey had been born healthy. Diane had wanted a little girl so badly. An ultrasound early in the pregnancy had told them that she was to have her wish. Paul hadn’t cared one way or the other, but Diane had been overjoyed at the prospect of a daughter.
Paul had been with her when Kelsey was born. Because there’d been so much concern about Diane’s condition, they’d immediately handed Kelsey to him. Despite everything that had happened since, he remembered the surge of love and pride he’d experienced holding his newborn daughter that first time.
It wasn’t Kelsey’s fault that her birth had cost Diane her life. Not once had Paul thought to blame her. Who was there to accuse? God? Fate? Life?
Paul didn’t know. He’d given up looking for answers. There wasn’t enough time or energy left in a day. Not when he had to deal with the reality of raising three motherless children, aged four and less than a year.
The Manning Brides Page 19
