THE HONOR BOUND GROOM

by Jennifer Greene

  Mac mentally damned his younger brother—not for the first time in the last few months. Chad could charm a woman into bed faster than a bee could smell honey. He also had a gift for disappearing from sight whenever there was music to face. Truth to tell, Chad hadn't known about the pregnancy when he disappeared this time, but he'd paid his way out of a paternity suit before. Maybe if Mac had listened earlier to gossip, he'd have heard about Chad giving Kelly a rush and done something about it—but maybe not. Over the years, he'd tried counseling, tried yelling, tried bailing Chad out of countless scrapes, but nothing seemed to root a sense of responsibility or honor in his younger brother. Initially Mad had tried to locate him when the situation took a serious nose dive, but Chad had cut and run for parts unknown—par for his course. Eventually, he was findable. With enough money, anyone was findable. But the problem of Kelly required immediate action, and Mac had lost all faith that his brother would step up to the plate even if he were in the ball park.

  Kelly suddenly raised her eyes and looked at him. She was obviously trying to communicate something, but damned if he could read the message in her eyes. Hell, for a minute he couldn't even think.

  His mind spun back two weeks ago—to the night when she'd been attacked in the parking lot on the way to her car. He'd known she was pregnant long before then. He'd known she was wildly in love with his brother, and that Chad was unquestionably responsible for the pregnancy. And those factors added up to a problem that involved family—but not a problem that directly affected him until that night.

  She'd stayed late, finishing up something for Kate—so late the parking lot had been pitch-dark and deserted, so late there were only a handful of people in the whole building when she'd escaped her attacker and raced inside looking for help.

  Mac just happened to be the first body she saw, and those moments were still carved in his memory with indelible black ink. He'd known Kelly for years, but their contact had only been peripheral; she was either running around, doing something for Kate or with Kate. They had few reasons to directly cross paths. Recently he'd tried to catch a closer look at her because the family was having such a royal cow about Chad and the pregnancy, but that was tough to do—invariably she skittered around him or ducked from sight. Mac couldn't do his job, not well, and fuss whether he was winning popularity contests. He was so used to people being uncomfortable around him that Kelly's response didn't bother him one way or the other. That night, though, Mac doubted that Kelly knew or cared who he was. He could have been saint or sinner, God or the janitor—it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to Kelly.

  She came chasing through the glass doors of the lobby, running hell-bent for leather. There was a receptionist/ guard at the front desk, but she didn't even seem to see him. Her hair was all tumbled, no coat even though it was subzero outside; her cheek was scraped, a stocking ripped and her right knee bloody. She was crying and hiccuping and damn near hysterical and she hurled straight for the nearest body with the ballast of a missile. She'd almost knocked him over—and Mac was no powder puff.

  Her missing coat was how she'd escaped the son of a bitch. There had been some point in the struggle when the SOB had grabbed her and only got a handful of coat, which enabled her to shimmy loose from the garment and run. Right then, it was tough to get even that much out of her, because she had no interest whatsoever in talking about her attacker. She'd fallen, and was petrified something had happened to her baby.

  Faster than ten minutes, Mac had both the cops and a doctor there. He'd left her with a woman employee and the doctor, but the whole time he was with the police, Mac could feel the tension coiling in his stomach. As he could have guessed, the cops could find no clues to the identity or motivation of her assailant. It could have been a garden-variety purse snatcher; it could have been some nut-case psychopath. But Kelly's involvement with Chad had been spread in the press early on in their relationship, simply because anything the Fortunes did was news. And that meant, unfortunately, that it was public knowledge that she was carrying a Fortune child.

  There had been kidnappings in the family before. Kidnappings, threats, blackmail attempts; thieves—hell, there was no limit to the criminal element hot to prey on a family with money like his.

  Later that evening, he'd taken Kelly to her home, sat with her until she calmed down, poured her a glass of milk and himself a bourbon—it was the only alcohol drink she had in her apartment—and proposed marriage. It was the first time he'd heard her even try to laugh that evening. And when she realized he was serious, she got another case of hiccups.

  Marrying a woman because she was pregnant would never necessarily have aroused Mac's sense of honor. Hell, you couldn't solve one disaster by compounding it with another. But that happened to be his nephew growing in her womb. A Fortune child. And whether she'd volunteered for the problems that came with being a Fortune when she fell for his scoundrel of a brother, there was no escaping them now. The baby had the best chance of being protected from within the family circle—the Fortune name, the Fortune power, the Fortune protection. She had the chance to give the baby his birthright as well as insure the child's future. Mac wasn't closing any doors to choices down the pike—for her, or for him. Hell, he knew she was in love with his brother—but love had nothing to do with this problem and couldn't solve it. Right then the only choice he saw to effectively protect the child was a legal alliance between them.

  She'd said yes that night—Mac knew—because she'd been scared. Not just scared from the attack itself, but stunned—scared from realizing that attack could be just the tip of an iceberg. Maybe she'd just fallen in love with a man, but her making love with a Fortune had volunteered her for a ton of repercussions she'd never expected.

  And belatedly, Mac suddenly recognized that Kelly looked scared right now. Not terrorized or anything that traumatic, but one of the few things—in fact, damn near the only thing—Mac knew about his bride was how she responded when she was shook up. Her face was tilted up to his, so it wasn't as if she was trying to hide her expression from him. Two dots of fire-engine red dotted her cheeks. The pulse in her throat was beating like a manic clock. Her soft blue eyes were shooting him an increasingly urgent message. Hell, she was probably going to start hiccuping any second.

  With a frown, he glanced at the minister. Reverend Lowry was as red-faced as Kelly. The instant he caught the groom's eyes, he repeated loudly, "I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride. Now, Mac."

  Sheesh. Mac could have kicked himself. This was no time to be woolgathering, and more to the point, one short buss for his bride and the two of them were done with this blasted ordeal and closer to being out of there.

  He pushed up the fragile, lacy veil to get the nuisance thing out of the way and bent down. For some God-unknown reason, Kelly's eyes flashed an even more frantic message than before. He couldn't imagine what she was worried about. This was just a kiss. A traditional gesture. It wasn't going to take a quarter of a second. Surely she knew she had nothing to fear from him.

  And then he kissed her.

  The kiss was fast. Faster than a man could suck in a lungful of oxygen—hell, his bride had been a stronger brick through the ceremony than he had. Mac owed her a thank-you. He owed her a promise that she had nothing to fear from him, ever. And when his lips touched down, there was nothing on his mind but a quick, impersonal kiss that shared a mutual desire to get this over with.

  But in that blink of time, something went haywire. He couldn't explain it. It was just … her lips were warmer than a summer sun, and soft. Soft like spring, like the stroke of a restless silky breeze. She tasted young and sweet and vibrant, and it seemed like a thousand years since Mac had felt that way. He was a grown man. He'd put aside his boyhood idealism a century ago, but he suddenly remembered that time in his life when he'd been young, so stupid—young, back when love was everything and life offered a nonstop excitement of possibilities. Until that second, he hadn't remembered that huge, yearning, al
luring hunger to love in years. He couldn't fathom why a quarter-second kiss from Kelly could possibly have invoked it.

  But when he swiftly lifted his head, two dots of color heated his cheeks. And the pulse in his throat was beating like an out-of-control battery.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  «^»

  "How much farther?"

  "About five miles." Mac scratched his chin. "About a quarter mile less than the last time you asked me. Is there a problem?"

  Now there was a hysterically funny question, Kelly thought dryly. She was freshly married to a stranger. The kiss that sealed their vows had shaken her socks off. The snowstorm had escalated to a mean-cold, wind-howling blizzard, with snow slooshing down so hard that even Mac's elegant Mercedes's windshield wipers could barely keep up. They'd turned off the highway a while back, and she hadn't seen a single car on the road since, much less buildings or lights or any sign of civilized rescue potential if they got stranded—assuming they found anything open this late on a New Year's Eve.

  Offhand, yeah, she thought they had a few problems. Yet all those details seemed itsy bitsy compared to the serious problem troubling Kelly at the moment. "How long does it usually take you to drive home from the Fortune headquarters?"

  "Fifteen minutes, twenty max. But it's pretty hard to move faster than a crawl pace with this snow."

  "I know, Mac. I didn't mean to sound impatient."

  "You're not cold, are you? Because I could turn up the heat—"

  "No, I'm fine." He'd already cranked up the heater and defroster to full blast. She couldn't be warmer if she were curled up in front of an oven.

  "If you're tired, you can put the seat back—"

  His concern touched her, but the subject of exhaustion again teased her sense of irony. If anything in life were normal, she'd be snoozing right now. From the beginning of the pregnancy, she'd been prone to nap at the drop of a hat. And after all the stress of the wedding and reception, technically she should be as comatose as a zombie. But that kiss from Mac had shaken her whole equilibrium.

  She knew he'd meant nothing by it. She knew she was imagining a potent, sizzling connection that had never happened. It was just hormones again. Kelly had had seven months to discover that pregnancy made a woman emotionally goofy. Impatiently she twisted in her seat. "I'm fine, not the least tired. And the car couldn't be more comfortable," she assured him.

  Mac glanced at her again as if unconvinced, but of necessity his gaze zipped swiftly back to the road. She could barely see his face in the pitch-dark car—just a glimpse of his patrician profile and a flash of his dark eyes now and then. There simply wasn't enough light to judge from his expression what he might be thinking—about the wedding or the weather or anything else. From the tone of his voice, though, Kelly understood he was deliberately trying to sound calm and quietly reassuring. "If you're worried about the weather, try to take it easy. I've lived here all my life, which means I've driven in a hundred blizzards. This one has the makings of a doozy—I think we could be socked in for a couple of days—but we'll be under cover before the worst of it hits. The roads are rough, but the problem is snow, not ice. Trust me, we're not going to have any trouble making it home."

  "That's good to hear."

  But when Mac caught her shifting in her seat again, he seemed to think his previous reassurances hadn't been enough. "Kelly … this whole day's been a pressure cooker, and I know you have to be worried about things. All kinds of things. But we were both honest with each other going into this, and we both want the same thing—to make this work out. I think if we just take it slow and easy, we'll find answers for whatever we need to, one problem at a time. Try and believe it's going to be okay, all right?"

  Kelly clipped back a sigh. Mac was not only trying to be considerate and reassuring—he was doing a damn fine job of it. He'd been downright wonderful at the wedding reception, sticking to her side, anticipating problems before they developed. Something had upset her maid of honor, because Renee had turned stark white after a conversation with her father and disappeared almost immediately after. That wouldn't have mattered except that Kelly had counted on Mollie to stay close during the reception, and her closest friend had suddenly left early, too. Both had left without a word, which was so unlike either woman that Kelly had worried … but at the time of the reception, she'd really had her hands full.

  Mac's family was unquestionably supportive for this wedding, but there wasn't a shy Fortune in the bunch. Their nosiness came from caring, but she'd felt painfully stranded with the now-you're-family-you-can-tell-me questions. What kind of relationship did she and Mac actually have? How well did she really know Mac? Had either of them heard from Chad? Did Chad even know about this marriage?

  Kelly had been heart and soul in love with Chad, but it took sleeping with him to understand that his interest in her was purely seduction, the new conquest. Since then she'd heard rumors that he had taken off with another woman—also some scandal about a paternity suit with another girl. But she'd figured out the measure of Chad long before the first pregnancy test—and her own naiveté in the relationship as well. She'd never have married him, but neither did she want to air the personal details of a painful mistake to anyone, much less publicly. And every time one of those awkward, prying questions surfaced, Mac had shown up like a magician. He never cut anyone off. He was always nice. But no one even tried to misbehave when Mac was around—cripes, even Kate seemed to instinctively defer to him.

  Kelly had the humorous impression of a wolf watching out for his lamb—and that rare feeling of being protected had been welcomed. Then. But not now. Now that they were totally alone together, she remembered how much he intimidated her, too. His being a sexy hunk only made her feel more awkward. That velvet-soft baritone of his was curling her toes—but not because of some hormonal response. She just couldn't face bringing up an indelicate problem with the formal, elegant, dauntingly sexy and formidable Financial V.P. for the whole darned Fortune empire. Kelly squirmed in her seat again.

  "With road conditions this rough, I really think the seat belt's essential, but they can't have made those things for a pregnant woman. If you're uncomfortable—"

  Well, spit. Apparently Mac had perceived there was something wrong and he wasn't going to let it go until she confessed the reason. And it wasn't as if she had a choice about staying silent more than another two seconds, anyway. "Mac, I am uncomfortable. But the problem isn't the seat belt or being married or the heat or the weather. It's that I have to go to the bathroom."

  "Oh. Um—right now? We really should he home within twenty minutes—"

  "I realize this is hard to believe if you've never been seven months pregnant. But twenty minutes from now, I'll be desperate to go all over again. So that won't exactly solve the immediate problem."

  "Okay. No reason to be embarrassed. Everything's fine. It just may take me a few minutes to find a gas station. There isn't much open on New Year's Eve, and I'm afraid we're a little removed from—"

  "Mac."

  "What?"

  "Pull over."

  "Pull over? Honey, we're in the middle of a blizzard in subzero temperatures—"

  She heard the "honey" and felt a wave of sympathy for her poor groom. She'd never seen MacKenzie/Mac Fortune flustered before—even by the threat of a company takeover. "Yeah, well, I should have told you before I got desperate. But I didn't. And I won't survive, Mac. If I had an accident on these incredibly luxurious leather seats, I'd be so mortified I'd never be able to face you again as long as I lived. You'd have my death-by-mortification on your conscience. And we'd have gone through the whole marriage for nothing. We can solve all this if you just pull over, okay? Like … pronto."

  Mac pulled over. Pronto. "Do you need, um—"

  Before he was reduced to using any more wild endearments, she filled him in. "I've been carrying toilet paper since I was four months pregnant. Believe me, I figured out a while ago that I needed to be prepared.
"

  The winds were gale force, the snow biting like icy teeth, and Kelly thought glumly that this was a hell of an auspicious way to start a marriage. But when she climbed back into the car with wet feet and wet hair and snow sticking to her nose and eyelashes, she caught the hint of a quicksilver grin from Mac.

  "I don't think we'd better take you out in too many blizzards for the next couple months," he said dryly.

  A startled chuckle escaped Kelly. Holy kamoly. Mac had actually teased her. Who'd a thunk it? And it seemed a crazy thing to be just discovering that her groom had a sense of humor … but she suddenly realized how many things she'd been judging about Mac on limited evidence. She'd assumed he was formal and serious by nature because that's all she'd been exposed to. But their personal conversations over the last couple of weeks had been dead serious because they needed to be. And no, she'd never seen him casually joking around with staff at work before that, but really, how could he? His job was tough and required toughness. If someone had to make an unpopular decision, it always fell on his shoulders.

  Maybe authority and toughness came naturally to him, Kelly mused, but the point was that she'd had no opportunity to know any other side of Mac … what he wanted, what he dreamed of, what he was like when the suit and tie came off. Who was there for him when he needed to vent that chestload of endless responsibilities? Heaven knew, she could imagine all kinds of women in his life. But by the farthest stretch of her considerable imagination—none of them remotely resembled the bride he was stuck taking home tonight.