Cathy Thacker - My Secret Wife

In name only, of course.

But still, she thought as she rubbed the place on her finger where the wedding band had been, she was no longer the free woman she had been just a few hours ago.

Nor was she really his wife.

They were just…friends.

Casual friends, she reminded herself fiercely, who were going to have a baby together as soon as they could get her pregnant the newfangled way. All that would involve would be plastic cups and syringes and hospital gowns and feet in stirrups.

There would be no champagne, no roses, no romantic dinners for two. So why, she wondered, as Gabe turned his car into a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through lane, were her palms all sweaty and her heart in an uproar? It wasn’t as if the vows they had just said meant anything. Noticing she had taken her ring off, Gabe removed his wedding band, too, and shoved it in the pocket of his starched white dress shirt.

Abruptly looking as if he felt as uncomfortable and ill at ease as she did sitting side by side in his small sports car, Gabe held the wheel with one hand and loosened his navy and khaki tie and undid the top button on his shirt with his other. He braked as they reached the microphone, then turned to her, a bit impatiently. “What would you like?”

Maggie scanned the menu and tried not to think how awkward this all was. Neither of them had been nearly this tense on the way to get married. “I’ll have a chicken sandwich, fries and a lemonade,” she said quietly.

Gabe ordered that for her, and a burger meal for himself.

As he drove around to the first window, Maggie reached for her purse.

Gabe held up a hand before she could get out her wallet. “I’ve got it,” he stated firmly as he pulled cash out of the pocket of his khaki trousers. Two minutes later he turned back onto Route 17. “Open mine for me, would you, please?” he said.

Grateful for something to do besides look at Gabe and notice how handsome he was, Maggie flipped open the box, then looked at the thickness of the sandwich inside. Two patties, two slices of cheese, lettuce, pickles, onions and catsup.

Gabe caught her frown and glanced down. “Probably not the smartest thing to be eating while I’m driving, is it?” he observed with a beleaguered sigh.

Maggie shrugged, knowing it didn’t have to be a problem if they didn’t want it to be. “We could stop,” she suggested.

“No.” Gabe’s jaw was set. “I can do it. Just hand it to me, would you?”

Maggie knew a man with his mind made up when she saw one. Her father had often had that very look on his face when he’d made a bad decision and decided to soldier through and stick to it nevertheless. “Okay,” she said, just as agreeably. She picked the sandwich out of its little brown box.

“Just squish it together some so it’s a little flatter,” Gabe directed.

Maggie kept her skepticism to herself and did as directed. “I don’t know about this,” she hedged. The sandwich looked and smelled delicious, but the eating of it threatened to be awfully messy.

“It’ll be fine,” Gabe said, taking the sandwich.

One bite later, the first glob of catsup hit his thigh.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gabe said stubbornly, as he continued to eat and drive.

“Okay,” Maggie said, wondering what it was about men in general that made them have to do things their way, even if it was clearly the wrong way. “It’s your clothing. But at least let me put a napkin or two underneath.”

She opened one up all the way and, being very careful not to touch his thigh, laid it across the leg of his tailored khaki dress slacks. The napkin slid to the floor the next time he braked, along with the two bits of lettuce he had dropped.

Maggie put down her own sandwich long enough to add another napkin, but this one she tried to angle around his well-muscled thigh so it wouldn’t slide off. Unfortunately, that had her touching him, ever so slightly, for about two milliseconds. If one discounted the slight tensing of his facial muscles, he didn’t seem to mind.

In a rather moody silence, he finished his sandwich. She finished hers—a lot more neatly since she was able to use both hands. As they worked on their drinks and fries the silence continued to stretch out between them, and Maggie wished she had taken him up on his offer to have a quiet dinner together somewhere on the way back to Charleston, but it was too late for that. And meantime, it looked like that one glob of catsup was really sinking into the fabric of his trousers, despite Gabe’s half-hearted effort to dab it off with a crumpled napkin.

“You need some water on that stain,” Maggie said.

“Don’t have any,” Gabe said. Keeping his eyes firmly on the road, he pulled his tie even looser and unfastened another button on his shirt.

“I think I do.” Maggie rummaged in her purse and came up with a small bottle of water. She took an unused napkin, wet it, and was about to hand it over when Gabe frowned all the more.

“I really don’t want to mess with that, Maggie.”

Maggie eyed the spreading orange stain and warned right back. “If you don’t get it off before it dries, you could ruin those slacks.” She saw no reason to let his male pride be the cause of that.

“Then you do it,” he ordered with a disgruntled frown. “Otherwise, just let it be, and I’ll take it to the dry cleaners when I get home.”

And forever remember their wedding night as the night he also ruined a perfectly good pair of dress pants? Maggie didn’t think so.

Frowning too, she added a little more water to the napkin, leaned over and pressed the damp cloth to the orange stain on his trousers. Saw it dim somewhat, as she carefully dampened and blotted, and knew that one more good effort on her part would probably keep his pants from being ruined forever.

She was just about to take care of it when Gabe turned suddenly into a church’s vacant parking lot, brought his sports car to a quick stop, and caught her wrist in his hand. “Stop,” he commanded fiercely.

And looking down, Maggie saw why.

NOT EXACTLY the way he’d thought he would get aroused on his wedding night, Gabe thought. But here he was, with a hard-on to rival any he had ever had. And Maggie sitting beside him, looking as pale and stricken as any virgin bride about to be led to the bedchambers of a husband she barely knew.

Only they weren’t going to consummate their marriage.

Not the usual way.

And her touching him this way was only reminding him of that.

A riot of pink color flooding into her cheeks, Maggie snatched back her hand. “Oh, Gabe, I’m sorry,” she said in a low, trembling voice.

So was Gabe. Because now he knew, if he hadn’t before, just how much he desired her. And always had. Even as he saw how truly innocent she was at heart. She might have been engaged to his brother—the magazine editor and authority on modern men and their lives and desires and problems—but Maggie didn’t know a damn thing about him and his needs. And given the exceedingly stricken way she was staring at him, probably never would, Gabe thought, his spirits sinking even more.

“Forget it,” Gabe said, doing his best to mask his disappointment as he thrust his sports car back into gear and headed back onto the coastal highway.

“I never—”

“I said forget it!” Gabe commanded gruffly as two things happened simultaneously: the outskirts of Charleston came into view, and the cell phone on his dash began to ring.

Glad for the diversion, Gabe took the call, then turned to Maggie as soon as it ended. “I’ve got to go straight to the hospital,” he told her. “I don’t have time to drop you first.”

“No problem,” Maggie said. She offered him a stiff smile. “I can get a cab.”