THE HONOR BOUND GROOM

by Jennifer Greene

  A log tumbled to the hearth, sending sparks shooting up the chimney. Mac leaned forward as if he were going to Promptly go over and tend the fire, but Kelly was afraid she'd never get him talking this way again. "Please. Finish saying whatever was on your mind."

  "Well, you might find this hard to believe, but this marriage you and I put together is the first one that ever appealed to me."

  "You have to be kidding. Why?"

  "Because I think we've got freedom in this relationship that other couples never have. We can make our own rules. We don't have to do one thing that doesn't work for the two of us. You want to do the whole house in pink—believe me, Kelly, I don't care, go for it. If you don't like anything, all you have to do is say. I'm sure we'll have to compromise on all kinds of things—but neither of us have love or emotions tangled up in this. We can be honest with each other."

  Kelly fell silent, studying her new husband. She could have guessed Mac would value honesty and freedom in a relationship. With his heavy responsibilities, he'd go nuts with a high-maintenance mate—or even a friend—who demanded constant attention. And as always, his expression was self-contained, those wonderful dark eyes of his unreadable. He didn't seem lonely. Yet his settling for so little sounded terribly lonely to her. "You don't believe in love, Mac?" she asked softly.

  "Sure. I believe in all kinds of love. Love, loyalty, family, taking care of your own—"

  "But not the other kind of love? Between a man and a woman?"

  Mac finished the last of his scotch in a gulp, and met her eyes squarely. "I believe the power of hormones can be a hell of a lot of fun—but if one of the things you're worried about is whether I'll be faithful to you, rest your mind. I can't say I'm fond of a celibate lifestyle, but right now … hell, it seems to me we both have our hands full and will for some time. It'd go against my grain to cheat while I was wearing a wedding ring—and whether we're sleeping together doesn't change that. However…"

  "However…?"

  "However … Chad could come back. Or you could find someone. So could I. That's why we worked out all those prenuptial legal papers, to protect you and the baby no matter what happens to us. There's no such thing as an overnight divorce, Kelly, but we've made it as easy as possible to sever the tie if either of us wants to. As long as we're careful to build this right, we won't have the hurt and anger and emotional baggage that usually goes with a split up. Either we make this work or we've lost nothing. We've still done the right thing for the child. We've still done the right thing to protect you at this moment in time."

  And doing the right thing was obviously a critical thing to her husband, Kelly mused, but there was still a gaping hole in this discussion. He'd asked for nothing from her—except honesty. Maybe Mac didn't want her to have any real place in his life, but she was living here now. There had to be needs she could fill, things she could do for him to at least balance all the things he was doing for her.

  But before she could say anything else, she heard a clock chiming in the front hall. One, two, three … abruptly she realized that the clock was going all the way to twelve. In seconds it was going to be the new year.

  Mac was diverted by the clock chimes, too, and suddenly stood up with a chuckle. "It looks like we're both running on empty, but do you have enough milk there to toast the New Year?"

  "You bet." She leaned forward to grab her milk glass.

  "We made it through one incredibly unusual day—thanks to the bride's willingness to kick the groom in the shins when he forgot his lines. Did I remember to say thank you for that?"

  "No, but, um … you could pay me back now with a little help."

  His eyebrows lifted. "What?"

  She rolled her eyes with an embarrassed laugh. "I was trying to stand up for this toast. Only I think I'm stuck. I should have known better than to sit in this chair—the cushions are so deep, and the only thing I can get gracefully out of these days is a straight chair. I feel like an ungainly elephant—"

  Before she could even try to scooch forward again, Mac swiftly hooked both her hands and pulled her up. The serious mood was obviously broken, Kelly thought, and they could talk another time. Right now she just figured on toasting the New Year with him and then packing it in. But for just that instant when he helped her up, her protruding tummy grazed against his flat abdomen. And her hands … for some reason he didn't release her hands for another whole millisecond. His grip was warm and strong, his touch sparking an electric rush in her pulse.

  She'd felt the same sizzle when he'd kissed her at the wedding. She was positive, then and now, that she was imagining it. He was being kind. He'd frankly brought up sex with her, several times now, with the same ease he'd mentioned having macaroni and cheese for dinner. He thought she was in love with his brother. There wasn't a single rational reason in the universe to think he felt an ounce of attraction for her.

  And she didn't. She really didn't.

  But for that miniscule second, the muscle in his jaw tightened and some kind of emotion flashed in his eyes. Something bleak and stark. Loneliness. Aloneness. As if he realized—as she did—that a normal bride and groom would never be ending their wedding night this way.

  It was just an impulse, while he was already standing as close as a heartbeat, to wrap her arms around him. She didn't want to give her new groom a stroke, and hugs weren't part of their deal. Maybe a hug was presumptuous, but she didn't care. That look of stark loneliness got to her. Everyone needed a plain old affectionate hug sometimes, the warmth of a connection to someone else. If he had a heart attack, then he'd just have to have a heart attack.

  He stiffened like a poker when her arms curled around him.

  But then he unbent.

  Holy cow, did he unbend…

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  Mac poured another mug of coffee—his fourth that morning—and carried it to the window. The sun hadn't even thought about waking up until past eight. The horizon still had the pink-pearl luster of dawn, making the snowy landscape look as pretty and innocent as a Christmas card—but there'd sure been nothing innocent about the blizzard winds last night. He estimated there were two fresh feet of snow on a level, which wouldn't be that hard to plow out, except that nothing was on a level. Some of the swirling, eddying drifts were taller than him.

  With Kel pregnant, he got antsy at the thought of her being cut off from doctors and civilization, even if the city was as shut down as they were. Still, he had a pickup with a blade. He could have their country driveway cleared in a few hours, but for damn sure no one was going anywhere this morning.

  Hearing the thump of a distant footfall from upstairs, Mac immediately spun around. The kitchen was lit up brighter than a hospital surgery. Granted, the teal blue counters and Italian-tile floor were a tad littered, but he'd been working like a dog. Four pans jostled for space on the stove, one for eggs, one for bacon, one for muffins and the last for pancakes. The table was crowded with lined-up boxes of cereal and bowls heaped with apples and oranges and melons—he'd been challenged to find space for silverware, particularly after he'd added pitchers of both orange and cranberry juice.

  Mac scratched his chin. Possibly he'd overdone it just a little. Hell, somehow he seemed to have enough food for a battalion of marines, but pregnant women were a completely alien species. He didn't know what Kelly was supposed to eat or what appealed to her, either.

  Mac hated being unprepared.

  When he heard another footfall, his heart started banging in his chest. Swiftly he shoveled a hand through his hair, checked his jeans zipper, then glanced at his black sweatshirt to make sure there wasn't as much pancake batter on him as there seemed to be on the floor. The sound of footfalls moved to the stairs. He braced as if he were imminently facing a firing squad of Uzi's.

  That's exactly what went wrong the night before, Mac figured. He hadn't been braced. He hadn't been prepared. Technically there was nothing wrong with a hug, but he'd just neve
r expected Kelly to suddenly wrap her arms around him. He still had no clue why she'd done it. Maybe every pregnant woman got a wild hair. Maybe she was tired and not thinking. Maybe she needed reassurance. Maybe she'd forgotten she was in love with his brother.

  Mac hadn't. Even if he'd tried, the family must have asked him forty times what would happen if Chad came home. They didn't get it. Of course Chad was going to show up sometime—he always did after one of his playboy disappearing acts. Mac knew that perfectly well when he'd asked her to marry him, known she'd loved his brother, too. Those sticky complications didn't erase the reasons for the marriage, but the opposite. Kelly had been in danger. Cut-and-dried. And Mac loved his brother, but he knew him. Painfully well. Whether Chad was snoozing on a beach in Jamaica or right here made no difference. Mac couldn't trust his brother to protect Kelly or to do right by the child. Keeping her safe was up to him.

  And that was precisely why his response to that damn hug was so inexcusable. Mac shoveled a hand through his hair. He remembered folding his arms around her, because he couldn't just stand there like a lump, and hell, he didn't want her feeling rejected or scared. Returning the hug seemed an okay thing to do, but after that it all got hazy. Sensations had bombarded him like bullets. Soft bullets … like her hair tickling his nose, and the feel of her tummy pressing against him, and the way her skin glowed so vulnerably in the firelight She smelled like peach shampoo and soap and that teasing, illusive perfume she wore. It bugged him, those self-deprecating comments she made about being graceless and as big as an elephant. She wasn't. She'd felt so small in his arms, so warm, so real. He remembered closing his eyes, remembered feeling gut-punched with a stupid, alien, childish wave of longing … he also remembered, too well, being aroused faster than a trigger-hot teenage boy.

  He'd jerked back faster than a whiplash, hoping she hadn't noticed. But all night long he'd seen the bathroom light go on and off. He'd worried about her pregnant kidneys, worried she was sick. But mostly he'd worried that she couldn't sleep because she was in a strange house with her whole life turned upside down, and now he'd become a new kind of unknown worry in that picture for her, too.

  He was just going to have to fix it, that was all. Hell, he'd handled multimillion dollar mergers, European stock crashes, hiring and firing staff in four countries. How much trouble could one pip-squeak-size pregnant woman be?

  And then suddenly she was in the doorway. "Morning, Mac. You're up so early. Whew, can you believe all this snow?"

  "Good morning back and yeah, some of those drifts outside are really something." Oh, God, one look and he could feel a sinking. Give him a stock crash anytime. He knew what to do about that kind of thing.

  No matter how glaringly lit the kitchen was, she was still a brighter shock of color. She smiled at him through a sleepy yawn. Her hair was brushed—he was pretty sure—but it still fell around her shoulders in tumbled swirls. An oversize red sweatshirt burgeoned over her tummy, the color matching the two dots of color on her cheeks and her pants both. Unless he was mistaken, she was wearing fat fluffy hound dogs on her feet. It occurred to him that they must be slippers. And that five-hundred-watt sleepy smile suddenly disappeared—hell, had he already done something wrong?

  She motioned around the kitchen. "Oh, Mac. You've gone to so much trouble—"

  "No trouble at all," he said swiftly. "I just figured you might be hungry for breakfast—"

  "I'm always hungry, but I'm afraid I get a queasy stomach first thing in the morning. The most I can handle is a little juice and toast—"

  "Toast." The one thing, naturally, that he hadn't thought of. "No problem, I know we've got bread around here somewhere—"

  She shuffled in, motioning him to relax. "Now don't be silly. You don't have to wait on me, and I have to start finding my way around the kitchen besides. And listen, I'll help you do something with all that food—"

  "No, no, just sit down and relax." Best to steer her away from the stove and all that food, particularly if there was a threat of her throwing up. "Did you sleep okay?"

  "Pretty good—except for the baby kicking. And I had a little problem with the mattress…"

  "The mattress?" His head jerked up from where he was pouring her juice.

  "Uh-huh. I don't think I'm cut out for a life of affluence. I could hardly sleep on a mattress with no lumps."

  He'd made a whole list of stuff he thought she'd need. Somehow he'd never considered that she'd want a mattress with lumps.

  "Um, Mac … maybe you want to stop pouring that cranberry juice on the table?"

  "Oh. Oh, my God…"

  But she was laughing as she unfurled a long skirt of paper towels and carried them to the table to start mopping. "That was a joke about the lumpy mattress. I was trying to be funny. But I'm afraid I'm making you nervous—"

  "I'm not nervous," he assured her, thinking how little she knew him. The whole family could testify that he had nerves of steel. The tougher the crisis, the calmer he got. Problems were his baliwick. Yet somehow when his new wife discovered some spilled cranberry juice on him and started patting his chest, Mac could feel nervous heat shoot up his neck.

  Kelly stepped back and glanced at his face. "Listen, you. We're going to talk about this, and we're going to make both of us more comfortable, I swear."

  Mac thought: that was supposed to be his line. And he was the one who had planned on using that firm, calm, take-charge tone of voice. Hound-dog slippers or no hound-dog slippers, the woman was downright bossy. Efficiently she finished mopping, retrieved the bread from a cabinet and then gravely pulled out a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen from her pocket.

  "You're a list-maker?"

  "Can't start the day without one," she admitted.

  Maybe there was hope for this morning yet … and since she was showing off hers, Mac figured he might as well show off his. His list, however, covered the serious things. The security system. Emergency numbers. How to run the electronics in the house from computers to VCRs. Credit cards and her new checkbook.

  Only Kelly was suddenly frowning. "Mac, I realize we have to cover all that life stuff, but could we just talk about important things for a minute?" She already had her ball-point poised, ready to scribble. "What are your favorite foods?"

  "Foods?" The irrelevant question seemed to come from nowhere.

  "Yeah. You like steaks or fish? Anything you're allergic to, or vegetables you can't stand? Are you watching your cholesterol or just praying you're immortal? Any special desserts you like?"

  "Kelly, I don't expect you to cook—"

  "What, we're going to eat by osmosis? And then there's your favorite TV shows. And more important than that—when's your goof-off time?"

  "Goof-off time?"

  "Your job's a steam cooker. You don't need to tell me that. But what do you do to relax? Loll in a Jacuzzi? Hike? Mellow out in front of the tube? Ski? And is there a time of day you need some space alone to unwind?" She hesitated. "What's wrong? Why are you looking at me that way?"

  Mac didn't realize he'd been looking at her in any specific way. Her nonstop bubbling questions were just hard to keep up with. And so, he kept discovering, was she. "I just can't remember anyone ever asking me about my goof-off time. And I don't think my own sister knows what my favorite foods are."

  "Well, Chloe isn't living with you. I am. And I don't want to intrude where you don't want me, Mac, but obviously this is going to go easier if we know something about each other's living habits. You like your shirts starched?"

  "Damned if I know. They go to a cleaners. They come back. I always sort of thought it was a magic thing. Nobody ever told me there were choices."

  She muttered some humorous comment about men! and then rattled on. And on. Mac kept waiting for her to ask about money—hell, no one ever had a conversation with him without asking about money, and Kelly actually needed to know about household accounts and where the cash was. She asked him what he liked to read. He needed her to know how to page him w
herever he was. She had a "need to know" section on her list, too, consisting of irrelevant issues such as whether he was bugged by unwanted phone calls she could field for him.

  Mac couldn't remember such a bewildering conversation. Nobody ever asked him personal questions. He hadn't even thought about such things in years. And of course he catered to her. If it killed him, he was going to cater to her. She was not only pregnant, but she'd had nonstop traumas in her life in the last few weeks, and he was damn well going to make her life both easy and safe—even if he had to do it over her dead body.

  "Now don't get exasperated, Mac. I'm almost through…"

  "I'm not exasperated. I never get exasperated."

  "Uh-huh. Actually that was on my list … what kinds of things test your patience? But actually, I think I'm going to have no trouble figuring that out on my own." That impish grin of hers could inspire a hard-core grouch, but again it was gone faster than smoke. "I have to bring up one unpleasant thing, though, so brace yourself. It's money."

  Finally. He knew she had to have a practical bone somewhere in that curly blond head.

  "Cards on the table, Mac."

  "Cards on the table," he agreed.

  She took a breath. "I haven't balanced a checkbook in twenty-seven years. I finally accepted that it isn't going to happen. I got A's in English and history, but you put a bunch of figures in front of me and I'm dead. I just thought I'd better be honest with you. Don't waste your time trying to talk figures or money with me. It just goes in one ear and out the other."

  "Kelly, that's okay. You don't have to balance any checkbooks. But there really are a few things we should talk about related to this—"