Jennifer Greene - The Honor Bound Groom

He stood up with a smile. “I was wondering if you got lost.”

“I’d probably better tell you now—I’ve got the geographical sense of a deaf bat. I can get lost in a room with one door. You’ve got a beautiful home, Mac.”

“Your home now, too.” He motioned to the piled suitcases. “I had your things moved this afternoon so you wouldn’t have to be carrying anything on your own—but I couldn’t guess on the bigger items like furniture. I thought we could go over to your apartment in a few days? And then you could choose whatever you wanted to bring here—”

“Um, most of my stuff is pretty much early-attic. I don’t think anything is exactly going to fit in here too well.”

“We’ll find room. Or just move some of my things out. For that matter, if you want to redecorate or change something, all you have to do is say. And in the meantime, I didn’t mean to dump everything here—or leave it for you to carry. But without asking you first, I didn’t know where you wanted to sleep. Do you remember the upstairs?”

“To be honest, no.” Actually she remembered the master bedroom—Mac’s bedroom—with embarrassing clarity. But she’d been too nervous that day to pay much attention to anything specific about the house.

“Well...upstairs there are five spare bedrooms. I figured you’d want to choose two—one to fix up for the baby and one for you? But I didn’t know which ones would suit you without asking. I also thought, you must be exhausted after this long day—maybe you’d just like to pick a bed to sleep in tonight, and save any other decisions until tomorrow or when you feel up to it.”

“That sounds fine. I really don’t care where I lay my head tonight.” Kelly thought this was going like a dream—only too much so. He didn’t seem to notice that her suitcases looked like Little Orphan Annie had come to visit. A small tray on the coffee table held two glasses—the one with milk was obviously considerately meant for her. He’d eased into discussing the sleeping arrangements the same way he’d handled the wedding, the drive, everything—Kelly didn’t know what she expected, but it was never this level of perception and thoughtfulness. He was taking care of her as if she was precious china, for Pete’s sake, when he’d been stuck with this marriage no different than she had.

“We can either go upstairs now and get you settled in...or maybe you’d like to just put your feet up in front of the fire and unwind for a while—”

“Mac.” She reached for the glass of milk and gulped down a slug. “Don’t you dare say one more kind thing. You’re just making me miserable.”

“Miserable?” Instantly he quit messing with the fire and surged to his feet. “Hell, why didn’t you say something? It is the baby? Are you sick—?”

“No, no, it’s not that kind of miserable. I just feel...look, I’m disrupting your whole life. It’s one thing to believe we had good reasons for doing this, and another to figure out how to be comfortable together. Everywhere I look you’ve got this great house all set up for a bachelor, and suddenly you’re stuck with a woman who goes in for lace curtains and a pink couch. Somehow we’ve got to figure out how to talk the same language.”

Mac looked confused. “There’s no problem, Kelly. If you want lace curtains in here—”

“No. Holy kamoly. No. They’d look awful.” The mental picture of frothy curtains against the rich, dark heart-of-redwood almost made her laugh. “I didn’t mean I cared about anything like that. I just...would you mind if I asked you some blunt, nosy questions?”

“Of course not. Shoot.” He settled in one of the massive forest green chairs and motioned her to take the other.

She considered a straight chair—knowing how hard it was to get in and out of anything these days—but the only straight chair in the room was a mile from Mac. So she sank into the luxuriously fat cushions of the chair across from him and started in. “There are so many things we talked about before. I know you realized how frightened I was the night I was attacked—”

“I know. And I just wish I could change things, Kelly, but I’m afraid criminals tend to prey on a family like the Fortunes.”

“I understand that now. But when I fell in love with your brother, I’m afraid I never even thought about his being a Fortune—or how that could affect me or my child.” She chugged another gulp of milk. “What I’m trying to say, though, is that your asking me to marry you solved so many things. Just from the angle of protection alone, I’ve got you behind me, and the Fortune family and those nice big, tall gates.”

“And your baby will have a name.”

She nodded. “Yes. He—or she—will have the last nam he’s entitled to, and the family relationships that go with that. Securing a future for my baby—Mac, that’s everything to me. But we’ve been through all that, too. All those pa pers you had me sign. They were all a benefit to me. To my child. You even built an easy out for me into all those legalese papers—”

Mac cocked a black-stockinged foot on the coffee table From his quizzical expression, he still didn’t understand where she was leading this conversation. “The trust we se up for the baby was to secure his future no matter what we choose to do down the road. And we talked about this Kelly. You’re especially vulnerable now, this late in a preg nancy—and right after the baby’s born, too. But those cir cumstances aren’t going to be the same, down the pike, and that means you could want to make different choices. We both agreed there’s no reason this marriage has to last if i stops working at some point.”

Kelly again made a gesture of frustration. “Yes. Al that’s great. I know all the advantages for me and the baby But that’s just it. It’s so one-sided. What on earth is in this arrangement for you?”

Mac’s eyebrows arched as if the answer to that question should have been obvious to her. “It was because of my brother that you were put in danger. We may never know if that jerk meant to kidnap you, but there’ve been kidnap pings in the family before. Con artists, thieves, blackmai schemes tried on us. And your relationship with Chad mad the society columns often enough to make the public awar that you’re pregnant with a Fortune child.”

“But it was Chad who put me in that situation. Not you None of it was your fault, Mac.”

“Fault, no. But responsibility is a different thing. We had a problem on the table that had to be solved—keeping you and the child safe. If fixing that were as simple as hiring security for you, anyone in the family could have done it. It wasn’t that simple. You weren’t raised in this kind of family. There were risks you had no possible experience to know how to cope with. And money alone was no way to do right for the baby, either.” Mac hesitated, and then reached for the glass of scotch from the tray. “Did Chad ever tell you much about our family?”

“Some. Not much. I know your mother died when you were around ten—which had to be terribly hard for you. And I know you’re the oldest, that there’s a big age gap between you and the twins. I’ve met Chloe, because she and Chad were so close—”

“Thick as thieves,” Mac concurred. “And much as I love them, both of them are hell on wheels—my father just seemed to lose heart after Mom died, let them run wild. But Chad has had the hardest time finding his way. I know his good qualities, and I know you do, too. But growing up, I was so much older that I really felt to blame for not being a stronger influence.”

She shook her head. “I understand what you’re saying. You felt extra responsible because the baby was Chad’s. But this was still your brother’s mistake. And mine. Not yours.”