A Bride For Saint Nick

by Carole Buck

  “It’s okay to cry, Andy,” he said.

  Andy snuffled again, then lifted his head. His light brown lashes were spangled with tears and his nose was running. “D-did you ever?”

  “Did I ever…what? Cry?”

  “Y-Yeah.”

  John hesitated. If truth be told, he’d almost broken down while the doctor had been suturing Andy’s head wound. He’d been helping to hold the boy still during the procedure. It didn’t matter that his doing so had saved Andy the indignity of being strapped down. He’d still felt like the worst kind of traitor. A peculiar sense of shame—and a desperate wish that it could be himself on the table, not a blameless little child—had pushed him to the emotional edge.

  Andy dragged the back of his right hand under his nose. “Like, did you cry when you got your owwies?”

  It took John a moment to figure out to what this last word referred. Then he realized that Andy was studying the scars on his neck and temple. The child seemed intrigued rather than repulsed by them.

  “Yes,” he finally replied. The answer was stark, a distillation of the ordeal he’d endured after the accident in which his alter ego—the sham man to whom Suzanne Whitney had given herself—supposedly had been killed. “I cried when I got my owwies.”

  “Were you little?”

  “No. I was a grown-up.”

  Andy was silent for several seconds, apparently needing some time to absorb the idea of an adult male shedding tears. Eventually he volunteered in a close-to-conversational tone, “I’m almost five.”

  “Oh?” John was grateful for the change of subject, to say nothing of his young charge’s calmed-down mood. “When’s your birthday?”

  “Febber-rary eleven. My mommy marked it with a stick-on star on the ‘frigerator calendar at my house. I’m not sure how many days ‘til then, though. I haven’t counted up yet.”

  “February eleventh, huh? Have you given much thought to what kind of presents you’d like?”

  “Not really. I wanna wait and see what Santa brings me.”

  “Smart move. Still, I’ll bet you have a few ideas in the back of your head.”

  “Well, yeah. One.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A baby.”

  John nearly choked. He’d expected Andy to say he wanted a truck. Or some toy soldiers.. Maybe even a computer. Whatever it was that little kids were hot on these days. But a baby?

  “You want a…baby?” he finally managed.

  “Uh-huh. A boy baby. I could help take care of him, you know? ‘Cept for the poopy diaper stuff. Baby poop really stinks. I could teach him things, too. And be the boss, cuz I’d be bigger. That’d be really cool. Only I don’t think it’s gonna work out. There has to be a daddy to plant the baby seed, see, and I don’t have one. I asked Mommy if we could do it by ourselves but she said no. I think she was kind of upset.”

  “Well…I can understand why she might be.” John considered asking about the man who’d “planted” Andy himself, but quickly discarded the idea. It really was none of his business. Then his thoughts shifted. For one singularly ill-advised moment, he contemplated the notion of the child he and Suzanne Whitney might have had, had they met and come together under different circumstances. A could-have-been, should-havebeen sense of regret seared through him.

  “Are you a daddy, Mr. Gullible?” Andy asked, sniffing.

  John cleared his throat, shaken by the depth of the yearning he’d just felt. He’d never seen himself as a candidate for fatherhood. To discover that he had the urge to—

  “Mr. Gullible?” his young companion pressed.

  “No,” he responded, managing to blunt the edge of the word before it left his tongue. He let the mispronunciation of his last name pass. It wasn’t important. “No, Andy. I’m not a daddy.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  Andy sniveled loudly and wiped his nose. “How old are you?”

  Still a bit off-balance, John had to take a second to think. “I was thirty-eight in November.”

  “Thirty-eight?” It was difficult to tell whether the little boy was impressed or appalled. Maybe a little of both. “Wow! That’s a lot more years than me, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is.”

  There was a pause. Andy heaved a sigh and leaned his head against John’s chest. After a moment he asked in a curious voice, “Will my owwie be on me forever? Like yours?”

  “You mean, will you have a scar?” He began rubbing the boy’s back again. It occurred to him that he couldn’t recall the last time he’d held a child, much less tended to an upset and hurting one. He was acting on instincts he’d had no idea he possessed. He just hoped that he was doing what he should, the way he should.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well—”

  “I have a mark on me from when I was borned. Mommy says an angel kissed me.”

  “That’s not really…uh…” John grimaced, uncertain how he should respond. Just because a child seemed sanguine about someone else having scars didn’t mean he was going to take kindly to hearing that he would likely have one of his own. This was something for a parent to handle, dammit!

  “Bryan at school has a scar on his belly.” There was a hint of envy in this statement. “His ‘pendix blew up or something. He shows people all the time. ‘Cept Miss Jenkins says it’s bad manners. ‘Specially at lunch.”

  “Well…you may have a scar, too, Andy,” John said carefully. “Not like mine, though. Or, uh, Bryan’s. And once your hair grows back, people probably won’t notice it very much.”

  The little boy shifted and looked up at him quizzically. “What if I got bald? Would people notice my scar then?”

  “If you got…bald?” Good grief. Where had the kid come up with such a scenario? “I suppose. Yes. People probably would notice your scar if you were bald.”

  “And then I’d have to tell how it came from a dumb swing, huh. Like, if somebody asked about it. They’d think I was a weenie.”

  “You could always make up a more interesting story.”

  “You mean, lie?”

  The boy sounded genuinely shocked. John winced inwardly, realizing that he’d stepped over an ethical line without even thinking about it. “Forget that,” he quickly retracted. “I think you should stick with the truth.”

  “That’s what Mommy says,” Andy responded forthrightly. Then he frowned, his expression growing thoughtful. “But sometimes…a made-up story can be just for fun, right? ‘Stead of bein’ a bad lie. So, what if I said my scar came from a…uh…uh…Indian? Yeah! From an Indian who tried to scalp me! And I could tell how I fought him—”

  “Andy—”

  “I’ll take care of those insurance forms later!” a female voice declared from the other side of the examining-room door. “Right now I’m going to see my son!”

  Something in the fierce, brooking-no-argument tone of this assertion compelled John to his feet. He stood, lifting Andy as he rose.

  “Mommy!” the little boy cried shrilly, squirming around. “Mommy!”

  The door to the examining room swung open. A woman rushed in, her shoulder-skimming blond hair flying, her blue eyes wild with anxiety.

  The woman was Suzanne Whitney.

  Chapter 2

  “Andy,” Leigh McKay whispered as she kissed and cuddled her beloved son. “Oh…Andy.”

  “M-Mommy.” Andy gulped convulsively, burrowing his forehead against her shoulder. “I was w-waiting and waiting and you didn’t c-c-come!”

  Guilt struck like a stiletto blade, slicing to the very core of Leigh’s soul. She tightened her embrace, reliving the abject terror she’d experienced during her mad-dash drive back from Brattleboro following a panicked telephone call from Dee Bleeker. Although she’d taken the precaution of leaving her assistant a contact number for every single stop she’d planned to make on her business rounds, Leigh doubted that she would ever be able to forgive herself for being out of town on this day. Andy had needed h
er and she hadn’t been there!

  “I know, sweetie,” she responded throatily. Her vision wavered. She blinked hard, telling herself she could not give way to tears. “I know. And I’m so, so sorry. But Mommy’s here with you now, Andy. Mommy’s here…and everything’s going to be all right.”

  Her son began to cry. Leigh let him weep, recognizing that he needed the release after all he’d endured. Holding him close against her heart, she rocked back and forth in a gentle rhythm.

  “There, there,” she crooned, massaging Andy’s heaving shoulders with tender fingers. No matter that earlier in the day her thoughts had focused on how swiftly he was growing up and how soon he might be pulling away from her. At this moment, he was her baby. Soothing his hurts and making him feel secure again were the only things that mattered to her.

  “M-M-Mommy…”

  “Mommy’s here,” she repeated, wincing as she looked at the section of his scalp that had been shaved for stitching. The doctor had said that Andy was going to be fine. He’d also said that her son had been extraordinarily lucky. “Mommy’s with you. Shh. Yes. Yes. Everything’s okay. I know what happened was very scary. And your head must be hurting you a lot right now. But it’s going to be all right, Andy. Shh. Shh. Oh, honey. You’ve been so good. So brave. Just the best boy who ever was.”

  The tear storm only lasted a few minutes. As wrenching sobs moderated into sloppy sniffles and intermittent hiccups, Leigh shifted a portion of her attention to the man from whose arms she’d more or less snatched her son when she’d burst into the examining room.

  He was standing a few feet away, his eyes fixed on her and Andy. Tall, with a leanly powerful physique, he exuded an aura of tautly leashed energy. His dark hair was disheveled and heavily threaded with silver. His coarse-skinned face was harshly angular, its features cast in an uncompromising and less-than-symmetrical mold. Scarring on the left side of his neck and left temple shocked at first glance, then somehow integrated into a very compelling whole.

  He could have been downright ugly—physically revolting, even—for all it would have mattered to Leigh. She’d heard, very briefly from Thalia Jenkins, what this man had done for her only child. She knew that her mother’s heart would have taught her to see him as a hero, no matter how unattractive he might have appeared to the rest of the world.

  The intensity of his silent, unblinking scrutiny was unnerving. Even more disturbing was the shock of connection she experienced when his eyes met hers. Her pulse scrambled in response to the dark, deliberate look. Her breath shortened. Her palms grew moist while her mouth went bone-dry. Had she been standing rather than sitting, her legs probably would have given way beneath her.

  He was a stranger, she thought dizzily. A man she’d never seen before in her life. Yet for one mind-blowing moment, she would have sworn that she knew him. And that he knew her.

  Intimately. Absolutely.

  In ways she scarcely knew herself.

  Which was insane. There was only one man who’d ever tapped into the secrets of her heart and soul.

  Only one man who’d shown her that she possessed a capacity for passion of which she’d never dreamed.

  That man, Nicholas “Saint Nick” Marchand, was dead.

  She’d wept for him—and for the irreparable changes loving him had wrought in her life—more times than she could count. What she’d felt for him, because of him, she never expected to feel again.

  “Wh-who—?” she faltered.

  The stranger took a step toward her, a slight hitch in his stride marring the fluency of the movement. Leigh had the impression that he intended to make some kind of physical contact with her. She shrank back in her seat. The man stiffened, obviously picking up on her involuntary withdrawal. An expression she couldn’t interpret streaked across his distinctive face. Although she sensed that he wanted to do otherwise, he remained where he was.

  “I’m John Gulliver.” The low, faintly raspy sound of his voice sandpapered Leigh’s already badly abraded nerves. There was nothing familiar about the way he spoke. She would have taken an oath on that in court. Nonetheless, something inside her seemed to quiver in recognition.

  Leigh drew a deep breath, fighting for control. The emotional equilibrium she’d struggled so hard to recover after the devastation she’d suffered five and a half years ago seemed to be unraveling into chaos. The news of her son’s accident had rocked her badly, of course. But what she was feeling now—

  “Go home, Mommy?” Andy suddenly pleaded, sounding very, very young.

  The door to the examining room swung open. “Ms. McKay?” someone questioned. “Is everything all right?”

  Her heart pounding like a tom-tom, Leigh glanced distractedly from her son to the person at the door and back to the disturbing stranger. She bit her lower lip, abruptly realizing that she’d forgotten his name. She knew he’d identified himself to her just a few moments ago, but she couldn’t remember what he’d said.

  “M-Mommy?”

  “Take care of your son, Ms. McKay,” Andy’s dark-haired savior counseled softly, his gaze dropping briefly to the child in her arms before returning to her face. His eyes bore deeply into hers. “He’s a very special boy.”

  Again, Leigh had the unsettling impression that the man wanted to reach out and touch her. But he didn’t. Instead, he paused for a beat after he finished speaking, then turned on his heel and walked out.

  John Gulliver took a deep drink of Scotch, trying to come to terms with the life-altering implications of the discovery he’d made scarcely three hours ago.

  God save him, he had a son.

  Or, rather…Nicholas “Saint Nick” Marchand had a son.

  The evidence was indisputable, he told himself as he knocked back another mouthful of liquor. The last time he and Suzanne had made love—

  Leigh, he corrected sharply, giving himself a swift mental kick. She’s Leigh McKay now. Remember that.

  Although he’d been aware of Suzanne Whitney’s new identity, thanks to his protracted conversation with Marcy-Anne Gregg, he’d persisted in thinking of her by her “real” name. He knew that he was going to have to stop doing so or risk making a potentially irreparable mistake the next time he saw her.

  And there was going to be a next time. No matter his previous resolutions about trying to maintain a discreet distance from his—Saint Nick’s—former lover. It was now impossible for him to stay away. The revelation of young Andy McKay’s existence had changed everything.

  The last time he and “Leigh” had made love had been a little more than five and a half years ago, on the night of May tenth. Her four-going-on-five-year-old son had been born on February eleventh.

  Nine months later. Almost to the day.

  He had to be the boy’s father! Forget prophylactics. No form of protection—and he’d always made it a point to practice so-called “safe” sex—was one-hundred-percent effective.

  More to the point: Suzanne—Leigh, dammit!—had been a sexual innocent when she’d yielded herself to the man she knew as Nicholas Marchand. There’d been no other lovers in her virginal life. He’d practically had to teach her how to kiss, for heaven’s sake! And although she’d eventually evolved into an exquisitely satisfying bed partner, she’d retained an astonishing degree of modesty throughout their affair. While he’d been able to coax her into baring her body in front of him once or twice, he seriously doubted that she’d ever seen him totally nude.

  Though undeniably provocative, her reticence had frustrated him at times. He believed that lovemaking should be reciprocal. A balancing of erotic give-and-take between two people. He’d never been able to persuade Suz—All right, all right! He would remember! Her name was Leigh. He’d never been able to persuade Leigh that her pleasure was as important to him as his own.

  John shifted, acutely conscious of a sudden tightening in his groin. He drained his glass and set it down. Raking his disfigured right hand through his already mussed-up hair, he steeled himself against a potent rush
of sexual hunger. Searching for distraction, he glanced restlessly around what he’d been informed was probably the last available hotel room in the area.

  That he’d secured the accommodation—in a small inn on the outskirts of town—had been a rare stroke of luck. According to the proprietor of the lodging, there’d been a cancelation just moments before he’d phoned.

  Asked how long he intended to stay, John had hesitated. He hadn’t thought things through that far. In point of fact, he hadn’t thought things through at all. He was lurching from moment to moment, still reeling from the shocking events of the past few hours.

  Then, suddenly, he’d recalled Andy’s artless comment about waiting to see what Santa brought before coming up with a list of potential birthday gifts. Impulsively, he’d inquired about the possibility of remaining at the inn through Christmas.

  No problem, had been the pleasant reply.

  He’d detected a hint of suspicion when he’d shown up at the front desk to register for a three-week-plus stay carrying nothing more than a small overnight bag and a personal computer. An offhand allusion to luggage problems and the presentation of his “platinum preferred” credit card had seemed to ameliorate most of the doubts about his desirability as a guest.

  Any lingering uncertainties had been decisively dispelled when he’d thought to offer his Gulliver’s Travels business card. The proprietor had not only recognized the name, he’d also begun talking about the wonderful old couple the agency had arranged to stay at his inn a few months back during the height of the fall-foliage season.

  John clenched and unclenched his hands. The garrulous Marcy-Anne Gregg had said nothing to him about Leigh McKay’s having a son. Of course, he hadn’t thought to inquire about the possibility. Why should he? He’d inferred from a number of the older woman’s comments—including the one hinting at matchmaking aspirations involving her best friend’s unmarried grandson—that Leigh was still unattached. The notion that she might be a single mother had never entered his mind. If it had…