THE HONOR BOUND GROOM

by Jennifer Greene

  Mac's jaw almost dropped. "I hope you weren't listening. I've never done black tie by choice in my entire life. I hate big political social gatherings like that with a passion.

  "That's what I thought." She was starting to wave those screwdrivers around like lethal weapons. "I found it pretty amazing. That none of them know you like to tromp around the woods. Cut your own firewood. Ski. That you love to read history. Most of the newlywed advice I got was related to joining you in the social limelight, but then there was your aunt Marie."

  "Yeah?" Hell. He lurched off the couch, hunkered down next to her, and grabbed the instruction sheet. He couldn't just sit there while she was working on the high chair by herself. That he didn't know a screwdriver from a wrench wasn't remotely relevant. Putting stuff together was man's work. "So what'd Aunt Marie have to say?"

  "She told me the way to keep you happy was lots of sex. Mac, don't lose those nuts—nothing too kinky, she said. She didn't figure you'd go for blindfolds and leather. I should just stick with the basics, but make sure you got action on a regular basis … well, I'll be darned, is that a blush climbing your neck?"

  "Picturing my aunt Marie discussing blindfolds and kinky sex is enough to make a monk blush," Mac muttered dryly. He hefted a strangely shaped piece of wood and tried to identify what it was from the instruction sheet—at least until Kelly tactfully removed it from his hands. Seconds later she was screwing that strange-shaped piece into another strange-shaped piece.

  "Well … since you and I don't exactly have that kind of relationship, whether you prefer blindfolds or leather isn't exactly a worry. But in my personal opinion, I'm guessing you could get more than a little wild and inventive once the lights were out, Mr. Fortune."

  Mac scrubbed a hand over his face. Something was brewing in those innocent blue eyes of hers. He remembered—with painful clarity—encouraging Kelly to believe she could be bluntly honest with him. And she was plenty honest, but never so blunt that she'd volunteered to tease him about sex before—much less following that intimate little encounter in the hallway that still had his hormones scrabbling with his sanity. "Did they spike your punch at this shower?" he asked suspiciously.

  "Mac! I'm pregnant! In fact, all the other women had a glass of wine except for me … now just hold those legs steady for me, would you? Anyway, there's a reason I'm telling you about all their advice."

  "What?" he asked warily.

  "It worries me. That your family doesn't know you at all."

  "Offhand, I'd say it'd be damn weird if the women in my family knew about my sexual preferences." His dry tone was an effort to coax a grin, but suddenly she'd turned real serious.

  "I'm not taking about sex. I'm taking about love. Your family would never have bugged me with so many prying questions or advice if they didn't love you to bits, or care about your being happy. And from what I gather, you're the first one they turn to in a time of trouble, and you've been there for them. A zillion times. But they don't seem to know you at all. I don't get it. Who's there for you when the chips go down?"

  She did that all the time. Confuse him. Ask confounding questions that nobody ever asked him. He never knew what she wanted him to say. "I'm a grown-up. If my chips go down, I fix the problem. I don't expect anyone to run around rescuing me."

  Her eyes turned luminous with compassion. She pushed the half-finished high chair aside, as if she'd never really been concentrating on it anyway. "Everyone needs rescuing sometimes. And you're so good to people, but somehow your family's got this idea that you come through every time. Mac, no one can always do that. There has to be someone you're not afraid to confess a goof to. Someone who can help you know the world won't end if you make a mistake."

  Mac shifted edgily. Kelly's perception of his family was right on the money, but he'd always been perfectly fine with his problem-fixing role in the clan. He'd never been conscious of loneliness, until his bride started bringing up all this kind of emotional junk. He'd never missed other people being close. Until her. Until he started missing her when she wasn't around—the way her baby-fine hair flew around her face. The way her soft eyes seemed to look right inside him when she brought up this kind of emotional stuff. The way she intently listened, the dot of freckles on her nose, those slim long legs…

  When he realized his gaze was traveling down the highway of her body parts—again—he pulled himself up short. Time to change the subject. And since she seemed determined to wander around some dicey topics in this conversation, he figured it was as good a time as any to confront a tough one. "I think the family'll quit bugging you with all that embarrassing advice after tonight."

  Her eyebrows arched in question. "Why do you think they'll quit?"

  "Because they saw you in my arms, Tiny. God knows, there's no shortage of ruthlessness in my family—but that's business. Every one of them is a sucker for love, which is what they thought they were seeing."

  There now. It was her turn to flush and look edgily unnerved. "Mac, I didn't hug you or do anything else to fake them out. I didn't realize they were watching. I was just excited when you came in, I couldn't wait to tell you about everything—"

  "I never thought you were doing anything manipulative, Kel. But I do think we've got a building problem that needs taking out." He hesitated. "You have to know there's chemistry between us. And it's not going away. Affection is one thing, but you're not hugging me like a brother. And I'm sure as hell not hugging you back like you were my sister."

  She went still, her gaze studying his face. He remembered when she used to skitter around him in the office, as if he intimidated or made her uncomfortable. For damn sure he never wanted to go back to those days, but at least he'd known what she was thinking then. "Would you rather I made sure not to touch you?" she asked carefully.

  "No."

  Her eyes never budged from his. "Are you telling me you want nothing to do with this chemistry?"

  "No," he said again, and then irritably rubbed the back of his neck. "I just don't think it's a good idea to pretend it isn't there. You can't solve a problem you're not willing to face. I don't think either of us were expecting this particular little dragon … and we'd both better be honest about where we think this relationship is going."

  "All right," she said slowly. "From the beginning you said we could create this marriage by our own rules. By whatever worked for us. And it seems to me that's exactly what we're doing, Mac. Exploring. Each other." She hesitated. "Do you think it'd be such a terrible idea if we ended up physically close?"

  Now how had he ended up in the hot seat again? It was her feelings Mac wanted to understand, not his. Faster than a sniper's bullet, images of making love with her flooded his mind—but what "he" wanted had nothing to do with this. He rubbed the back of his neck. Again. "What I think is that making love complicates a relationship—and that's not a complication you volunteered for when we first made this alliance. I don't want you worried that you can't trust me. I don't want something starting accidentally and ending up with something you regret. I'm also watching you get more and more physically uncomfortable the closer you get to term. So I'm not for ignoring the attraction as if it didn't exist. But I'm suggesting we table it until after the baby's born."

  He had no idea how she'd respond, but he wasn't expecting a suddenly loosening of her shoulder muscles and a soft, easy smile. "There's no question about my trusting you, Mac. And okay—that sounds like a plan to me. As long as you're not going to deny me my daily quota of hugs—"

  He felt relieved they were back to lightweight teasing. "Hugs are still in the program, Tiny."

  "Well … if we've got all that straight, I have to say I'm downright groggy tired. I'm going to take the baby and me off to bed." She leaned over, pressed her lips to his forehead before he could guess she intended to do it, then awkwardly climbed to her feet. Halfway to the door, she called back, "Um, Mac?"

  "What?"

  "Don't even think about reaching for that screwdriver."

&n
bsp; "I beg your pardon?" She hadn't even turned around to see what his hand was or wasn't reaching for.

  "I'll finish the high chair in the morning. It's just a tiny bit obvious that you don't know an O ring from a washer. Actually it's a relief to know you're a mechanical klutz. It makes up for me being such a klutz with electronic stuff." His vocal chords were primed to defend his macho mechanical abilities, but she'd already turned the corner out of sight. Mac leaned back and tossed down the screwdriver. God knew how many legs the high chair would have ended up with if he'd tried finishing the assembly job.

  Every lamp and light was on in the room, cheerily illuminating the wall-to-wall ribbons and bows and boxes. Yet it was funny, how all the life disappeared once Kelly left. His mood seemed to drop like a deflating balloon.

  Still, Mac shagged a hand through his hair, thinking at least that touchy little talk had gone well. He didn't understand her, but that wasn't news. Actually she seemed to confound him more each day—but that wasn't news, either.

  She hadn't directly said she wanted to sleep with him, but Mac would have self-destructed long before the age of thirty-eight if he couldn't recognize dynamite by now. The explosive potential was there. He was no stranger to passion, but no woman had ever responded to simple kisses, basic touches, with the open, giving, heart-blind passion as she did. She wanted him. And he damn well wanted her back—like a craving in his blood and a hot claw around his heart—except that he was too worried about the "why." Maybe she felt gratitude or as if she owed him something. Maybe living together had created a propinquity problem. Maybe she was at such a vulnerable time in the pregnancy that her emotions were just wildly volatile—volatile enough to at least make her temporarily forget his brother.

  Postponing any action until after the baby was born would give her breathing space to think, Mac believed. Weeks down the pike, she'd feel more secure. More on her feet. She could well decide she didn't need him for a damn thing—much less for sex. Waiting, giving her plenty of time to think, was simply the honorable thing to do.

  Mac climbed to his feet, and started turning off lights. Minutes later he climbed the stairs for bed, thinking that he'd sworn to make this right for her and he damn well would.

  But for the first and only time in his life, he thought: honor sucked.

  * * *

  In the middle of the might, Kelly was suddenly wakened by the baby's exuberant kicking—directly on her bladder. With her eyes barely open, she climbed out of bed with a hand instinctively stroking the taut skin of her abdomen. Her little one was a night owl. Kelly stumbled toward the door, so used to these nature calls in the middle of the night that she needed no light on to guide her down the hall to the bathroom.

  She felt the thick cushioned carpet on her bare feet, the chill night drafts whispering around her nightgown, then the icy tile of the coral bathroom off the nursery. Still, she didn't mind her sleep interrupted. Somehow these predawn interruptions seemed a uniquely private time between her and the baby. The sensation of the little one growing inside her, moving all the time now, always invoked a precious feeling of wonder. The rush of huge, engulfing love she felt for the baby was like nothing else.

  She'd never doubted wanting the little one. Even when she first discovered she was pregnant—knowing how disappointed her mother would have been at her morals, knowing Chad had disappeared and she'd been foolish to believe he loved her—her wanting the baby had never been a question. If she'd known how to contact Chad, she would have tried, but only because it seemed wrong not to inform him. He'd been vocal about not wanting children. She knew he was alone. She knew exactly how hard it was to be a single parent from her own mother's struggles. But her mom had also taught her about courage and strength, and Kelly had never felt deprived of love, could feel the power of that love for her baby from the start. She'd felt guilt over the poor choices she'd made, but never, never, even an ounce of regret.

  Yet in the pitch-black bathroom with the numb-the-toes-cold tiles, one regret surfaced in her mind. She wished—suddenly, fiercely, painfully—that Mac were her baby's father.

  The baby quit kicking and went back to sleep. She rinsed her hands, vaguely dried them on a towel and then stumbled back into the hall toward her bedroom. From nowhere in the dark she collided with something solid and hard and warm. Her forehead felt the spank of a chin. Her leg cracked against his unyielding shinbone.

  And then Mac's hands reached out to gentle and steady her. His bark of a groggy chuckle sounded hoarse from sleepiness and pain both. "Hell. I figured this was one of your three o'clock potty runs, but I got up just to make sure you weren't sick or something. I didn't have in mind sending us both to the emergency room from the injuries of crashing together. You okay?"

  She felt his knuckles brushing against her cheek, the gesture tender, soothing, as if he could feel if she were okay in the complete darkness. "I'm fine. Really, Mac."

  "Okay. Sleep good, Tiny." His hands dropped. He really was still asleep, because she heard him careen off a wall as he aimed back for his bedroom.

  And Kelly awakened like a slam then, thinking how hugely she'd lied. She wasn't fine. She wasn't remotely fine. Her stinging leg and throbbing forehead would recover in a few seconds. But she was in love with him and falling deeper every day.

  He was so good to her. That was part of it, but it was discovering Mac's secrets that was slowly, inexorably proving her undoing. It was watching him fumble with a screwdriver and pretend he knew what he was doing. It was watching him caretake and protect too damn many people—and God she didn't want to be one of those people ceaselessly counting on him—but he didn't seem to even know what a special, rare, giving man he was. It was seeing his aloneness. It was watching him give, so willingly, from that huge heart of his. It was knowing his addiction for oatmeal-raisin cookies. It was his shock when she did something for him. It was his instinctively getting up in the middle of the night to make sure she was okay.

  How was she not supposed to love him?

  As she curled up back in bed and snuggled deeply, darkly, under the covers, she reminded herself that he'd only married her from a sense of responsibility. And she'd only add to that feeling of responsibility if Mac knew she loved him.

  She had to get tough. She had to stay quiet. She simply refused to hurt this man who had been so incredibly good to her.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  «^»

  Swiftly Kelly pushed open the gold-rimmed doors to the Fortune company lobby and charged toward the elevators. George, the security guard, had walked her in, but this late in the day—past six—she was hoping most of the employees had gone home. She hadn't been back inside the Fortune headquarters in a month now, and any other time she'd have loved to catch up with old friends. Tonight, though, she was not only in a hustle, but her ski parka and cranberry sweat suit and snowboots didn't exactly fit with the Fortune formal dress code. Particularly carrying a bulky satchel, Kelly figured she looked more like an aspiring bag lady than a corporate wife.

  Well, there was no help for it. Glamour and women with submarine-size tummies just didn't go together, and with any luck, she wouldn't run into anyone except for Mac's secretary.

  Luck was on her side. Once the elevators whooshed open on Mac's floor, she didn't see a soul until she hiked into the outer office. Ellen immediately rose from her desk chair. Typically Mac's secretary was dressed with immaculate taste, a gray-and-taupe dress, her silvery hair twisted in an elegant bun—but her smile was warm and welcoming. Kelly never had to worry about putting on the dog for Ellen—she protected Mac better than a bulldog, which was all it had taken for the two women to become friends.

  "Kelly! It's good to see you. I'll get Mr. Fortune right away—"

  "No, no, I didn't come here to interrupt him. I just talked with him on the phone a couple hours ago, so I know he's tied up with meetings."

  "Well, yes, he is. But if he knew you were here—"

  "It's okay. I didn't come to s
ee him. I just came to drop something off." She dropped the satchel on Ellen's desk. "I'm on my way to childbirth class—originally Mac had planned to go with me, but when I heard what a horrendous meeting schedule he had today, I told him to skip it. But since I was in town, anyway … well, you know how he is. He'll go for fast food if there's no time to catch a real dinner. And he'll likely pick Mexican, because he loves it—"

  "And likely hot Mexican, because he likes that even more." Ellen's eyes were already twinkling. Maybe her style and manners were formal, but she and Kelly had the same certain insider information on the boss. "And then he'll be—"

  "—Sick to his stomach and cranky. So I just brought him a dinner he could microwave." Kelly didn't mention there was another package in the satchel. Mac would find it, and Ellen didn't need to know.

  They'd survived a month of marriage as of today. She thought Mac deserved a reward, but what to give him was the problem. Her heart wanted to put together a romantic dinner, but her heart was increasingly, stubbornly, dumb where Mac was concerned. An intelligent, eight-month-pregnant woman shouldn't have her mind on sex all the time—or on seducing a husband who didn't want to be seduced. Really, any gift of sentiment or expense or that hinted of romantic was only likely to put that cautious, patient, wary look in Mac's eyes. And she'd seen more than enough of that in the last couple of weeks. So she'd come up with a gaily wrapped package of gourmet jelly beans—five pounds—and since that was one of his secret vices, she figured it would make him smile.

  "I'll make sure Mr. Fortune gets the dinner," Ellen promised her.

  "Thanks a bunch…" Kelly had just turned around to leave when Mac's office door opened.

  A blond beanpole in a suit backed out, saying, "Yes, Mr. Fortune, I'll have it for you by tomorrow."

  Following him, one of the chemists in a lab coat hovered another second in the doorway before saying, "Okay, Mr. Fortune. No sweat."