“Freedom, I guess, to say and do what I want, when I want, how I want.”
Gabe made a mental note not to push Maggie into anything she didn’t want from here on out. “What else?” he asked seriously, able to tell from the look on her face they were getting to the heart of things.
Maggie looked him straight in the eye, and stated softly and firmly, “I want to know any marriage I am in will last—the way my parents’ marriage did. They loved each other and were totally committed to each other until the day they died. I want that, too, Gabe.”
“As do I,” Gabe replied solemnly. He knew better than anyone that children needed both a mother and a father. He had lived through the heartbreak of a broken marriage and a broken family and knew it was better for children if parents weren’t divorced.
Maggie swallowed hard, pushed her food aside. “We’re talking about making some pretty big promises here, Gabe,” she warned, lifting her gaze to his.
Gabe took in the sudden trembling of her limbs. “That scares you, doesn’t it?” he observed gently.
Maggie lifted her slender shoulders in an elegant shrug. “Doesn’t it scare you?”
“Not as much as being without you does,” he said. He stood, drew her into his arms, and smoothed the tousled hair from her face. “You don’t have to give me an answer tonight, Maggie.” He kissed her lightly, persuasively. “Just think about it. Think about the life we could have if only we gave this marriage a real chance.”
Chapter Twelve
Maggie awakened in Gabe’s bed, knowing she had been very very thoroughly loved the night before and feeling every inch his wife. She lay quietly for several minutes, savoring the warmth and strength of his body wrapped around hers.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Gabe said, his hands softly stroking her hair.
Her heart brimming with tenderness, Maggie snuggled closer. She loved the warmth and solidness of his chest, and the tender way he held her in his arms. She kissed his shoulder. “You’ve made it impossible for me not to think about it.”
Gabe shifted his weight and rolled onto his side. He bent his elbow and propped his head on his hand as his eyes met and held hers. “Does that mean you’re leaning toward saying yes?” he asked softly.
Of course she was thinking about saying yes, Maggie thought wistfully. She wanted to be Gabe’s wife—in the real sense—more than anything in this world. She just wasn’t sure they had the kind of passion that could last. That kind of passion required love. And thus far, though she knew she was indeed in love with Gabe, he had not once mentioned the feelings in his heart.
Not sure, however, that an enduring love for her wouldn’t well up in his heart, given more time, Maggie remained silent. She had pressured her first husband into marrying her, into eloping, and had ended up with only disaster on their wedding night, when it turned out he didn’t love her after all. She didn’t want to ruin her blossoming relationship with Gabe. She wanted to let their feelings grow naturally and just see what developed.
Uncertain, however, how to explain all that to Gabe, without making him feel guilty and prompting an ultimately false but well-meant declaration of feeling from him, Maggie bit her lower lip, took a deep breath.
The phone rang.
“Saved by the bell.” Maggie blew out a sigh of relief and grinned as she reached for the phone, and handed it to him,
Reluctantly, Gabe put the receiver to his ear, murmured a sexy hello. He listened, then said, “Hi, Mom. No, you didn’t wake us. What’s up?” He paused again. “Sounds fine. Yeah, Saturday night it is.” He hung up. Clamped an arm about her waist and drew her closer once again. “Since we didn’t want a reception or a wedding, the family has decided they are throwing a beach party in our honor tomorrow evening,” he told her as he fitted one of his hair-roughened legs between hers. “It’s going to be at Chase’s.”
Maggie groaned as she thought about the last round of Deveraux betrothal parties she had attended—on Chase’s arm. “Any chance we could forget to attend?” she asked, not sure she wanted to remind anyone of that.
An exasperated expression on his face, Gabe traced her lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “I have a feeling Luis, Enrico and Manuel would come looking for us if we did.” His expression sobered and he dropped his hand, and sat up, looking ready—albeit reluctantly—to take on the day. “Mom invited them and their families, too. And—” he slanted her a warning glance over his shoulder “—she asked me to tell you to fax her a complete list of everyone you want invited to this shindig no later than noon today, so they can give everyone enough time to make plans to attend. She also wants to know if we want to register for gifts.”
Maggie tugged the sheet around her breasts, shook her head. “No. That would feel dishonest.”
Without warning, Gabe shifted again, so he was lying over top of her, his legs braced on either side of her. He propped his weight on his elbows and framed her face with his hands. “It wouldn’t have to be, if you agreed to make our marriage a real one,” he prodded softly.
Maggie caught her breath as her heart swelled with unspoken love. She steadied herself and searched his eyes. “I don’t want to rush things,” she said quietly.
“We’re not.” Looking all the more masculine and determined, Gabe bent his head and kissed her then—her eyes, her lips, her hair—until she believed in the promise of their future as much as he. Tenderness welled in his eyes, his low voice. “The truth is, Maggie, I should have pursued you and made you mine a long, long, long time ago.”
“YOU LOOK HAPPY,” Manuel told Maggie when he and his brothers arrived to begin work on Gabe’s kitchen once again.
I am happy, Maggie thought. Happier than I had ever dreamed of being. And it’s all because of Gabe. And the wonderful, womanly way he’s made me feel. “As well I should be,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding the unspoken implication behind Manuel’s remark as she spread grout over the ceramic tiles she had set the evening before. “This job is going great. And we’re almost right on schedule.”
Manuel turned his head sideways, and studied her from that angle. “Somehow, I think it’s more than that,” Manuel drawled in a low, teasing voice.
“Mmm-hmm,” Enrico agreed, visibly pleased.
“She really is glowing,” Luis said affectionately.
From all that lovemaking last night and again this morning after we awakened, Maggie thought.
“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” Manuel said, stepping nearer and studying Maggie even more closely.
Maggie froze self-consciously, despite her efforts to project an outward cool. “What would make you think that?” Maggie said, trying not to flush.
“Just the way you look,” Luis decided, after a moment.
Enrico nodded. “That’s the way my Maria looks, every time she is with child. Sort of blissful and full of hope and happiness.”
Which was, Maggie thought, exactly the way she felt, despite the fact Gabe hadn’t once said he loved her, or even come close.
Aware the guys were waiting for an answer, and that they had become the only family she had in the year since her parents’ death, Maggie admitted reluctantly what she would not have even discussed otherwise. “As far as I know, I am not pregnant,” she confessed with a disappointed frown.
“But you wish you could be,” Manuel said.
Maggie ducked her head and continued spreading the grout with slow, deliberate strokes. “I know you guys love me, but I really don’t want to talk about this with you, okay?” she said.
She didn’t want even to think about the possibility of her and Gabe having a baby until it was real. She felt as if she was wishing and hoping for enough as it was, in just wanting him to love her as much as she loved him
To her relief, the guys sighed, shrugged and eventually got down to work, too.
Maggie finished the tiles, then went back to her office, wrote up and faxed off the guest list to Grace. Only then—unable to help herself
—did she walk into the bathroom and open her medicine cabinet. There, on the top shelf, was the home pregnancy kit she had bought herself the day she had decided to try and become pregnant, husband or no husband.
What if Luis, Manuel and Enrico were right? she wondered nervously.
What if she was already pregnant with Gabe’s baby?
Wasn’t it time to find out? she wondered as she picked up the box and turned it over to look at the instructions.
Or should she wait another day or two or three?
MAGGIE COULDN’T SAY why it was, except that she was afraid her mysterious new glow was all due to her love for Gabe—but she didn’t want anything spoiling her newfound happiness, including the knowledge she wasn’t yet pregnant. So she put the box back in the medicine cabinet, and decided the test could wait another week or more.
What she wanted now was simply the joy of being with Gabe.
Besides, she reasoned, the tension and anxiety of becoming a real Deveraux—in the minds of his very protective and loving family—was challenge enough for one weekend.
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?” Gabe said, as he and Maggie got ready for the crab feast at Chase and Bridgett’s beach house.
“Why would you say that?” Maggie asked, as she slipped on a pair of tangerine slacks and a striped tangerine-and-white boatnecked top with three-quarter-length sleeves.
Gabe grinned in amusement as he spread shaving cream on his face and jaw. “Because,” he explained as he reached for his razor, “that’s the fourth outfit you’ve had on in the last half hour, we’re ten minutes late already and you’re still nowhere near being ready to go.”
Maggie went into the adjacent bathroom to watch him shave. Her back to the mirror, she perched on the opposite edge of the double sink. “What if it turns out bygones can’t be bygones?”
Gabe shrugged his broad shoulders carelessly. “They already are, remember? You went to a Deveraux party a few weeks ago. That welcome-home gig for Bridgett. Everyone was very cordial to you.”
Yes, Maggie thought, they had been. But then she hadn’t expected them to be rude—the Deveraux clan was far too classy and polite for that. Unfortunately, in Maggie’s estimation, the situation wasn’t as simple as Gabe would like to think. She watched Gabe shave with long, careful strokes of the blade. “I was on your brother’s arm that night.”
Gabe rinsed the razor, and started on the other side of his face. “He just took you to the party and then handed you over to me. And that was to show everyone that he no longer held any grudges.”
Maggie inhaled the minty smell of his shave cream. “I know.”
“Everyone was nice to you that evening, weren’t they?” Gabe continued conversationally, as he shot her a baffled glance.
“Very nice,” Maggie conceded.
“Then…?” Gabe tilted his head up and drew the blade beneath the underside of his jaw.
Figuring her hair had been in hot rollers long enough, Maggie took her hair down and dropped the curlers, one by one, into the case on the counter. “I hadn’t run off and secretly married you then, and caused a little mini-scandal that your parents had to deal with.”
“So?” Gabe shrugged as Maggie ran a brush through her hair, arranging her curls in a bouncy, face-framing style. “They would have only been mad at us if we had ended up in the tabloids, made things even more difficult for my mom in the wake of her being fired from the network and dragged the Deveraux name through the mud. Thanks to our boffo appearance on the ‘Rupert and Casey Show’ that didn’t happen.”
Determined to be practical about this, even if Gabe wasn’t, Maggie put her brush down on the counter. “But a scandal could still erupt if anybody found out how and why we really got married,” she said firmly.
Gabe splashed water on his face, then blotted it with a towel. “No one is going to question why we eloped,” he said, just as resolutely, as he poured aftershave lotion on his palms and rubbed it over his face.
Inhaling the brisk sandalwood-and-spice fragrance clinging to his face, Maggie hopped down from the counter. Unable to help noticing how handsome Gabe looked in just khakis, she tore her eyes from his bare muscled chest and met his eyes once again. “How can you be so sure?” she said softly, wondering why she was the only one of them who had a persistent sense of impending disaster nagging at her.
Gabe placed his hands on her shoulders. Abruptly, he looked as deeply satisfied as he did whenever he was gallantly rushing to someone’s rescue, or solving a medical problem for a patient. “Because all people have to do is look at us to know that our marriage has become a real and joyous one, in every way,” he told her in a low, self-assured voice. “And there’s no tabloid story in a happy marriage—no reason for familial disapproval. Therefore, because we have finally fixed things between us, there’s no reason for anyone—including my parents or the rest of my family—to be unhappy with us.”
As much as Maggie was loathe to admit it, Gabe had a point. All Tom and Grace Deveraux had ever wanted for any of their kids was for them to be happy and productive. Once that criteria was met, they had no complaints. Ditto the rest of the Deveraux clan. She shook her head at him, even as she basked in his supremely confident grin. “You’re awfully sure of yourself,” she teased.
“Sure of us,” Gabe corrected, as he caught her around the middle, brought her against him and delivered a scorching kiss that soon had her insides tingling. “Now come on.” He took her by the hand, and led her into the bedroom, where he quickly tugged on his shirt. “Let’s get this show on the road! And get the party started!”
TO GABE AND MAGGIE’S mutual relief, the Deveraux family welcomed Maggie every bit as warmly and enthusiastically as Gabe had predicted they would. Maggie’s fears abated, she immediately relaxed and began to enjoy herself.
Satisfied the evening ahead was going to be a pleasant and cordial one, Gabe left Maggie talking kitchens with his mother and went off with Chase to help build the fire where they would cook the evening meal.
“How is Jane Doe doing?” Gabe’s aunt Winnifred wandered over to ask as soon as they had selected the spot for the fire.
“If all continues to go well, she’s going to be released day after tomorrow,” Gabe said. Seeing Luis, Enrico and Manuel and their families arrive, Gabe lifted his hand in a wave. They all waved back and then began unloading food from their vehicles. Smiling, Maggie directed them up the steps and into Chase’s beach-house kitchen, where Bridgett and her mother Theresa Owens were supervising the set-up of the casual buffet.
“Any idea yet who she is?” Jack Granger asked as he moseyed up to join the group on the beach.
Gabe shook his head as he lowered his shovel and began digging a pit in the sand. He paused to fill both his aunt and his friend in on the appearance of the red-haired girl who had left the note stating that Jane Doe did have a family—the family just didn’t know they were related to Jane Doe.
“I don’t suppose you’ve figured out who the red-haired girl is,” Tom Deveraux said, as he too joined the conversation.
Gabe shook his head as he and Chase continued to dig a hole big enough for the fire. “We’ve had all the fourth-floor nurses on the lookout for her, but she hasn’t shown up to see Jane Doe. Not that they are aware of, anyway.” There were no guards on the fourth floor, so anyone could slip in and out.
“What about the request for information at the TV station? Has anyone come forward with pertinent information?” Gabe’s mother asked.
“No,” Gabe released a frustrated breath. “So they finally stopped running it.”
“What about Harlan Decker?” Jack Granger asked. “Has he come up with anything yet?”
Gabe shot a glance at Maggie—who seemed to be having a great time up on the deck—talking to Chase’s new wife, Bridgett, and her mother.
Gabe paused, thinking how lovely Maggie looked, with her cheeks all flushed and her blond curls ruffled by the wind, then he reluctantly turned his thoughts back to those gathe
red around him, and the conversation at hand. “The last time Aunt Winnifred talked to him, he thought he might be getting close,” Gabe said.
“Well, I for one would really like to see Jane Doe united with family,” Grace said, as she carried a load of kindling over and set it down on the sand.
Gabe lifted his brow in amazement as he and Chase began building the fire. He turned to his mother. “You’ve met her, too?”
Grace nodded. “I stopped by the hospital the other day. I wanted to meet the genteel lady who had gotten so much press, yet still remained a mystery.”
Winnifred turned to Grace and asked curiously, “Did Jane Doe put the sheet over her head when you were talking to her?”
Grace shook her head, adding, “But then she didn’t look at all familiar to me, the way she did you.”
“Maybe Jane was afraid you’d identify her if you spent too much time talking to her or looking at her,” Amy suggested, as she brought over the cast-iron cooking grate that would rest atop the fire.
“She does seem to want to keep her identity a secret,” Gabe admitted, as he fitted the kindling in between the larger chunks of wood. Although he really couldn’t figure out why, unless Jane Doe feared she might be declared mentally incompetent to manage her own affairs and/or put in a nursing home against her will by well-meaning or greedy relatives.
“Do you think this Jane Doe knows who she is?” Harry, Aunt Winnifred’s butler, asked, as he brought over a bucket of crabs ready for cooking.
“I’m not sure,” Gabe allowed. He stepped back while Chase lit the fire. “But one thing is certain—Jane Doe is holding back a lot more than she is telling, in hopes of staying in the hospital a few more days.”
“Can’t you keep her hospitalized?” Amy asked sympathetically as the fire slowly took hold. “Just until she trusts us enough to confide the details of her situation, whatever it is.”
Gabe shook his head in mute disappointment. “The rules about that are pretty strict,” he told his family honestly. “We can’t keep anyone who isn’t sick in the hospital. And the hospital needs the bed.”
My Secret Wife Page 16
