Elizabeth Bevarly - The Newlyweds

“So I have no trouble getting pregnant,” Logan deduced from his explanation. “Or, at least, the woman I’m pretending to be has no trouble getting pregnant,” she clarified. And then her smile returned. “Not that I, myself, have any problem in that regard, mind you,” she said. “None whatsoever. That’s a negatory on that. Nada. Nil. Zilch. Zero. No worries at all on that score.”

“Mothered a number of little Logans, have you?” Sam quipped, smiling in spite of himself.

This time Logan was the one to tuck her hands into her pockets and rock back on her heels smugly. “Well, none that I’m aware of,” she said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“Look, Logan,” Sam began.

“You’re going to have to stop calling me that,” she interjected before he could go any further.

“What?” he asked, not sure what she meant.

“You can’t keep calling me Logan,” she told him. “You’re supposed to be my husband.”

Oh, yeah, he thought. “So then…I should call you, what? Babe?”

She cringed noticeably. “Okay, granted, that’s what a lot of older husbands might call their trophy wives—”

“I’m not that much older than you, Logan,” Sam interjected this time. Because he wasn’t that much older than she was. Dammit.

Her response was another one of those teasing little smiles that he was beginning to kind of like. Until he remembered that he shouldn’t like them, because he was Special Agent Samuel Jones working a case. Period.

Then she ignored his interjection by finishing, “I just don’t think I could respond to being called Babe in any way other than by throwing my drink into your face. So we’ll just have to settle for Bridget.”

Fine, Sam thought. He could call Logan that.

“And I’ll call you…?” she asked.

Hmm, he thought. Lord and Master had a certain ring to it. Or maybe Master and Commander. Or The Good Master. Or—

“Sam,” he finally said. “Sam is fine.”

“Sam it is, then.”

Until she said it aloud like that. Then he remembered he’d needed to be Special Agent Samuel Jones for this job. He should have asked her to call him Samuel. Because when she called him Sam, it made him feel like Sam. In fact, it made him feel better than Sam. It made him feel…

No, he probably shouldn’t think about how it made him feel. So instead, he thought about the case. The case where he had to be an indulgent, infertile millionaire who wanted to impregnate his beautiful, bodacious wife but couldn’t, so they’d be trying to adopt through her family’s pet project, the Children’s Connection.

Oh, man, he really wished they’d assigned someone else to this case.

“I need to call my parents,” Logan—or rather, Bridget—said, interrupting his thoughts, for which he was extremely grateful. “I’m going to get an earful from my mom for not calling or stopping by the house before now.”

“Tell her we’ll see her tomorrow,” Sam said.

“We?” Logan—he meant, Bridget—echoed.

“Yeah, we,” he said emphatically. “You and me both. Your mother is the one who set up our meeting with the adoption counselor at Children’s Connection. Pennington thought it would give us that much more credibility. I thought you knew.”

Logan—or, rather Bridget—sighed heavily and lifted a hand to her forehead, pushing her hair back from her face in what was clearly a gesture of exasperation. “I don’t know anything,” she said, sounding more tired than ever. “I haven’t spoken to my mom for a week. This whole thing just came about so quickly and out of nowhere. A few days ago, I thought I was going to be working in Vienna on a matter of national security. Now, suddenly, I’m back in Portland pretending to be a stay-at-home wife whose greatest desire is to become a mother. And my mom and dad are going to want to see me tonight. And, really, I want to see them, too.” She lifted her other hand, too, cupped it over her forehead and sighed again. “Even if I do feel like my brain is about to explode.”

For one brief, fleeting moment, Sam actually felt sorry for her. She looked so exhausted, so confused, so…human. Delicate, even. Like someone who had been carrying around a heavy load for way too long and was desperate to put it down someplace safe for a while so she could rest. And he found himself wanting to offer to take it off her hands for a while, so that she could get the rest she needed, preferably by lying down next to him. What was really odd was that, in that moment, that was all Sam wanted to do. Just lie beside her. Just be close to her. For as long as she needed him to be there.

Then she dropped her hands back to her sides, squared her shoulders and lifted her head. And he remembered that she was a federal agent, just like him, and she knew she couldn’t afford delicacy any more than he could. She didn’t need him, he thought. She didn’t need anyone. Just like Sam didn’t need anyone, either.

“Keep it brief at your parents’ house,” he gently advised her. “Tell them you’ll see more of them tomorrow. Then come back here and get some sleep. You’ll need to be at your best tomorrow if we’re going to pull this thing off. We need to be convincing as newlyweds and prospective parents. We’ll have to go over this with your mother before our appointment, anyway. She’s going to go with us to Children’s Connection and introduce us to the woman who’ll be handling our case. Laurel Reiss is her name. She’s actually currently on leave because of a family situation, but she’s doing your mother a favor, being our case worker. Your mother thought she would be best for the job.”

“Does Laurel Reiss know about the investigation?” Bridget asked.

“I’d wager she knows there’s an investigation ongoing,” Sam said. “Considering how workplace grapevines operate, there probably isn’t anyone at Children’s Connection who doesn’t know about the investigation, and we’ve questioned quite a few people there. Laurel Reiss may very well be someone the agent assigned to the case has talked to, but she doesn’t know that you and I specifically are a part of it.

“As far as everyone at Children’s Connection is concerned, nobody, and I mean nobody, knows you or I work for the FBI, except for your mother and sister—everyone’s being given our history according to our cover story. And your mother, father and sister are under strict orders not to reveal our true identity to anyone, orders they’ll follow, because they know it could endanger you if the information got out. So when we go to Children’s Connection tomorrow, it’s as Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Jones, wealthy, upscale newlyweds who have recently relocated to Portland and who are anxious to start a family, but can’t, so they want to adopt.”

Bridget nodded. “Mrs. Samuel Jones,” she repeated. She lifted her left hand and surveyed the heavy golden ring on the third finger. It matched the larger one Sam wore, both of them, Pennington had joked, a wedding present from the Bureau. “I never, ever, thought I’d give up my name for anyone,” she said.

And Sam had never, ever, planned on asking anyone else to take his name again. But he had asked someone to do that once upon a time. And the woman he’d asked had agreed to do it. Then she’d made a mockery of his name. And him. He wasn’t likely to let something like that happen again.

“It’s only for show,” he reminded her. “I doubt it’s even real gold.” He lifted his own left hand and wiggled his fingers against the strange weight. It had been a while since he’d worn one of these. And the one he’d owned before had only been a cheap bit of gold-plated metal that had turned his finger green. Appropriate, really, all things considered.

“Oh, it’s real gold,” Bridget said, turning the ring first one way, then another. Even in the dim illumination from the lamp, it caught the light and threw it back in a bright twinkle.