Was he insane to think of marrying a woman he didn’t love, didn’t even know all that well except as the mother of his three-year-old daughter?
No.
The answer stayed the same. It made sense. So much sense, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of the possibility before. He wondered if Lynn had.
Maybe it would have occurred to him before if he didn’t find the idea of a temporary marriage abhorrent. He was old-fashioned in believing that a wedding vow should be kept. No matter how convenient it would be to take Lynn and Shelly into his household, he wouldn’t have considered proposing if he didn’t think they could make the marriage work for the long haul.
The teakettle whispered and gave a little hop.
He heard a footstep a second before Lynn said, “Good morning.”
There she was in a new, nubby cotton bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, with her tousled hair, sleepy eyes and sweet smile reminding him sharply of his—no, her—daughter on early weekday mornings. Yet there was nothing childlike about her. The bathrobe sagged open above a loosely knotted tie, giving him a glimpse of flowery flannel and creamy throat and chest with a sprinkling of cinnamon freckles. He had to tear his gaze from the first swell of breasts beneath a lacy edging on her nightgown.
“Good morning.” After hearing his scratchy voice, he cleared his throat. “Did I wake you?”
“No, I just didn’t sleep well.” Her gaze flew to his. “Oh, dear. There’s no way you did, either. I wish you’d let me take the couch.”
“Maybe next time.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” Lynn advanced hesitantly into the kitchen. “Your water’s boiling.”
“It is?” The kettle was rattling on the burner, steam bursting out. “Oh. Right. Can I get you something?”
“I’ll make a cup of tea.” She stood on tiptoe and took down a copper canister that held tea bags.
Adam wanted to take a step across the tiny kitchen, wrap his hands around her waist and bury his face in her wild, soft curls.
Hands fisting, he managed to stay put as she murmured under her breath and got out a mug, adding sugar and one of those tea bags that brought the scent of oranges and spice into the kitchen. With an apology, she took the step to him, but reached past him for the kettle. Adam stood frozen as she poured boiling water into first her own cup and then his.
“Are you hungry yet?” she asked.
“Um? Oh.” The grit was in his throat again. “No.” Still he didn’t move, watching as she took her mug to the table. “Were the girls still asleep?”
Her smile was fond. “Rose was giving little snorts. Shelly has her head under her pillow.”
She’d momentarily distracted him. “Rose sounds like a little pig when she’s deep under. I’ve wondered if her tonsils will need taking out.”
“Well, snoring is not hereditary,” she said in amusement. “Brian didn’t, and I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
So she slept quietly. Would she burrow like Rosebud did when she slept with him? Would she murmur under her breath, the way she did when she was puttering around the house? Would he wake to find her head on his shoulder?
He grabbed his mug and took a scalding gulp. The burst of caffeine failed to clear his head.
“I’m not looking forward to going home,” he said abruptly. Okay, it was a beginning.
Lynn looked up in surprise. “You’re welcome to stay another day if you’d like. I know Shelly would be pleased. In fact, stay as long as you’d like. Are you taking the week until New Year’s off?”
“No, I wasn’t planning to.”
Actually, a generally disappointing Christmas retail season was playing hell with the stock market. Right now, he didn’t give a flying you-know-what.
He took another gulp of coffee, then tried a new tack. “I was thinking.”
“Yes?” Her eyes were wide and clear, a gray as luminous as the dawn sky.
“I’ve thought of a solution to this back-and-forth business.”
Her lips parted and he imagined that her expression became wary, but she said nothing.
“Will you marry me?”
She stared at him for the longest time. Adam shifted uneasily.
“Say something.” He sounded gruff. Defensive.
“I…” Lynn swallowed. “You mean as a…a sort of convenience?”
“At first.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs. “For the girls. We can take it slowly.” Dimly he realized that this wasn’t coming out the way he’d intended it to. He sounded as though he was proposing a cold-blooded legal contract, not a flesh-and-blood marriage. “I’m not saying we’ll get divorced. Down the line, I mean.” Oh, yeah, that was coherent.
“I thought maybe we could make it work,” he stumbled on. “You and me.”
He’d have sworn she hadn’t blinked in two minutes. The owl-like stare had him twitching like a second-grader in trouble with Teacher.
“Is this another way of convincing me to sell the bookstore and move to Portland?” she finally asked.
“No.” Yes. Of course he wanted her to. She’d no longer need the income.
No, he realized in confusion, he didn’t want her to give up something she loved. Besides, he liked this house, its creaks, the sound of the ocean always throbbing in the background.
“I thought,” he tried again, “that for now we could commute. I could come over here two or three days a week, and you could bring Shelly to Portland on the days when the bookstore is closed. We could be together most of the time without changing anything.”
Who was he kidding?
But she didn’t call him on it. Instead she continued to study him with grave eyes. “You’re serious,” she said at last.
“Damn straight I am.” He was getting irritated. “It would let you be Rose’s mother, me be Shelly’s father. It would solve all our problems.”
“But…marriage.”
She hadn’t considered the possibility, he could see. She was too shocked.
“We get along well. We want the best for Shelly and Rose.” They had to talk about sex. “I won’t push you into the marriage bed, but I thought, down the line…” He’d said that already. Spit it out, he told himself. “I find you attractive. I can wait, but I don’t, uh, find the idea unappealing.” The palms he rubbed on his thighs were sweaty now. “If you do…”
“I…” Suddenly she wasn’t looking at him. “No, I suppose not. I just hadn’t…” Her voice died away.
“I hadn’t, either.”
“Marriage.”
He wished she’d quit saying the word in that incredulous way. “I think we can pull it off.”
Her pretty greenish-gray eyes flashed with annoyance. “Pull it off? We’re not talking about a corporate merger. Or…or a buyout.”
He went to her at last, sitting across the tiny Formica table. “Lynn, I won’t pretend to be in love with you. I haven’t thought of you that way. But I like you, and I do love my daughters. Both of them. I know you do, too. Can’t we learn to love each other, too?”
Her soft exhalation sounded as if he’d landed a blow to her body. She seemed to sag inside that thick chenille robe. “I need to keep the bookstore.”
“That’s fine.”
She looked fiercely at him. “It’ll mean compromises for you, too.”
Hardly daring to breath, he agreed, “Of course.”
“Then—” her eyes closed briefly, and when she met his gaze again, hers was dazed “—yes. I’ll marry you.”
He was shaken by a surge of exhilaration out of proportion to the deal they’d just struck. Disquieted, he hid a response that was partly sexual. Instead, he stood, took a step and kissed her cheek.
“Good,” he said inadequately. “When?”
“I…I suppose there’s no reason to wait.” She still sounded shell-shocked. “My parents are here.”
He kept a tight rein on his gratification. “We can apply for a license today.”
A tremor passed through her. “All right.
”
“You won’t regret this,” he said quietly.
This time she visibly shuddered. “I hope and pray you’re right. But for Rose and Shelly…”
She’d do anything. He’d counted on it. And it scared the hell out of him to think of what they were going to do for the sake of two toddlers.
THEIR WEDDING DAY DAWNED clear and cold, with a wind that sliced through overcoats. Lynn’s minister had agreed to marry them when he heard the details of their situation, although he had expressed reservations about marriage as a solution.
So there they were, gathered in the small white church two blocks from the oceanfront, a tiny cluster at the altar. Lynn’s mother and stepfather had come, of course. A friend of Lynn’s was maid of honor; likewise, Adam had asked Ron Chainey, his closest friend, who was also his business partner, to drive over from Portland to stand as best man. He told his own parents about the wedding but didn’t expect them to come and wasn’t surprised by their absence. Jennifer’s parents he hadn’t invited. Their shock was too evident, their fear that he would forget their Jenny.
Lynn wore a navy-blue sheath with creamy pearls, her hair in a loose roll. With him in a dark suit and white shirt, the two of them looked as ready to attend a funeral as a wedding.
The brightest note was provided by the two flower girls in matching white dresses with frothy full skirts—Grandma Miller had outfitted them. Each carried a small basket filled with dried rose petals that the girls scattered in front of the altar.
“Dearly beloved,” began the minister, an older, balding man whose doubts were as plain as his kindness. He talked about duty and affection and “for better or worse.” Standing beside his bride, Adam listened, but the words rolled over him. He’d never expected to hear them again as a participant.
Jenny, forgive me, he thought, but she wasn’t real to him right now. Lynn was, although she felt more like a stranger than ever.
“To love and to cherish…”
Would love come? The very idea felt like a betrayal of the wedding vows he’d made long ago. But even they had said “till death do us part.” Jenny was gone, Lynn here.
All he had to do was turn his head a fraction so that he could see the flower girls, both wide-eyed and radiant.
“You mean, Lynn will be my mommy?” Rose had asked, with such hope his heart had flipped over. “And she’ll still be Shelly’s mommy, too?”
“That’s right,” he’d said gravely. “And I’ll be Shelly’s daddy. You’ll have to share me. Do you mind?”
She had shaken her head hard and squeezed him around the neck. “Shelly’s my best friend,” Rosebud whispered.
“Now she’ll be your sister.”
They held hands during the ceremony, looking enough alike in their white dresses, with their hair done the same and sprinkled with glitter, that he could see how they might have been mistaken for each other as infants. Closing his eyes, he could just summon the glimpse he’d had of his newborn daughter being handed to a nurse, body slick with blood and God knows what else, fuzz of brown hair damp against her head, eyes squeezed shut and mouth forming a circle as she drew air for a first sob.
If only they had banded her then…
“Do you, Lynn Marie Chanak, take this man, Adam Thomas Landry, to be your lawfully wedded husband…”
Jenny would still be dead. Was this so bad?
“I do,” Lynn said clearly.
“Do you, Adam Thomas Landry, take this woman, Lynn Marie Chanak, to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health…”
For better or worse.
He stole one last glance at his daughters and said, in a strong, confident voice, “I do.”
CHAPTER TEN
LYNN STOLE A LOOK at the man sitting at the other end of the couch—the new couch, the one bought today, only hours after she’d let that same man slip a wedding ring onto her finger. He was her husband, she thought in disbelief that leaped to life every time she let herself realize what she’d done.
She was married.
She gave her head a small shake that failed to reorient her. This had been the strangest day of her entire life, which was saying quite a bit considering she’d also had the experience of discovering that her baby had been switched with another in the hospital. It was another strange day on top of a string of them. Her mother telling her about her father, then Adam asking her to marry him, totally out of the blue.
Her parents had urged them to take a short getaway by themselves. In a panic at the idea of being totally alone with her new husband, Lynn had made excuses. Adam had seemed relieved, which bothered her a little bit. Hadn’t he been the one to talk about sex and how he wanted this marriage to last? Obviously, he wasn’t consumed with lust for her.
Which should have left her feeling relieved and didn’t. Lynn told herself it was natural to have her ego mildly bruised by his lack of enthusiasm. Déjà vu. She was back in the halls of her high school, invisible to popular boys.
Adam wouldn’t have noticed her then, and didn’t seem all that eager now to do more than legally claim his daughter.
The end result today was that instead of a romantic wedding getaway, wanted by neither party, Lynn and Adam had left the girls with Lynn’s mom and step-dad and had driven to Lincoln City for lunch. Even that minor social step wasn’t an overwhelming hit. Conversation was stilted. Mostly they discussed their future schedule, how to commute with the least fuss and make room in each other’s homes. She felt as if she were discussing the logistics of a publisher’s fall campaign with the rep.
Only, these logistics had to do with where Adam could keep his underwear and toothbrush and where she would sleep.
“Rose can have several drawers in Shelly’s dresser,” Lynn suggested, in her practical mode. “That way you won’t have to pack each time for her. I have space in my closet for some of your things, too, if you’d like. Maybe we could add some wire shelves, or…” Momentarily she balked at picturing his shirts hanging next to hers, at the idea of him wandering bare chested into her room in the morning to search for clean clothes. Lamely she added, “Well, whatever you need.”
She suspected he would look very nice bare chested. Although dark haired, he wasn’t a hairy man as, strangely, her blond husband had been. She imagined smooth, tanned skin over supple muscles. Did Adam work out regularly? There was so much she didn’t know about him.
She tuned back in to see him pulling out his wallet. Lynn was embarrassed to realize she hadn’t even noticed the waiter presenting the check. Had she been staring at him the entire while?
If so, Adam hadn’t noticed. A slight frown suggested he was as pensive as she was. While counting out money, Adam looked at her. “There’s going to be plenty to work out, isn’t there?”
It boggled the mind. Astonishment washed over her with the cold force of an ocean wave. She’d never done anything so impetuous.
He cleared his throat. “I thought we could go shopping while we’re here. If I’m going to be at your place half the week, we need a new sofa. It doesn’t exactly count as a wedding present, considering I’m buying it for selfish reasons, but I want you to pick it out.”
Selfish reasons. That meant he intended to continue sleeping in the living room. He’d give her time.
He didn’t want her.
Of course, it was relief that had her nodding like an idiot. What else could it be? “I shouldn’t let you spend the money, but…okay.”
In the furniture store, she sucked in a breath at the first price tag she turned over.
Adam gripped her arm and moved her past a mini-showroom that featured chintz-covered furniture and an armoire so rustic you could get a splinter from opening a cabinet door.
“Don’t worry about price. Let’s get something decent. Preferably a sleeper.”
Don’t worry about price. Imagine being able to say something like that. Imagine meaning it! she marveled.
Somehow, he continued to grip her arm. Occasionally his hand moved to t
he small of her back as he steered her. At the hospital that first day, she’d resented his masterful attitude. Today, she was too numb. Too aware that she had just married this man. Someday, the big hand gripping her arm might un-hook her bra, cup her breast, slide under the hem of her nightgown…
She gulped. He gave her an sidelong look but didn’t comment.
They finally agreed on a brocade sofa that pulled out into a queen sleeper. Lynn didn’t watch him write the check for such an unbelievable amount. When he joined her where she stood contemplating a cherry end table, Adam said, “I talked them into delivering it this afternoon.”
And paid extra, she was willing to bet. She only nodded. “Do we need to get home, then?”
He glanced at his watch. “I suppose we should.”
The salesman ushered them out the front door. “Mr. Landry, Mrs. Landry, I hope you’ll come again.”
Mrs. Landry. I’m a married woman, Lynn thought, stunned.
The couch arrived less than an hour after they got home. The two husky teenage boys carried her old one out with them.
Lynn still couldn’t decide whether buying a sofa was symbolic of how far apart she and Adam were, how unreal their marriage, or whether it had been an act of intimacy: the first home furnishing they’d chosen together. Nesting.
Her discomfiture was increased when, presumably to be tactful, her mother and stepfather decided to drive up to Cannon Beach and go out to dinner, leaving Adam, Lynn and the girls to have their first evening as a family.
She had to keep telling herself nothing was different. Adam had spent the night before. She’d spent the night at his house. The only difference now was that they’d taken a legal step to clarify custody of the girls.
Annoyingly, her mind summoned words she didn’t want to hear. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. Do you take this man…
She heard her own voice, soft and fervent, I do.
The traditional ceremony had not asked, Do you take this man’s daughter?
She had known the promises she was making, as Adam had known the ones he made.
Whose Baby? Page 14
