Robin Nicholas - Man, Wife And Little Wonder

“According to my lawyer, it does.” Johnny’s reply was grim. Marriage had not likely been his first solution to his problem. But it was evident he meant to follow through on his lawyer’s advice, that he meant to marry her.

“I realize I’m asking a lot. But I intend to make this worth your while by paying off the mortgage on your farm, whatever the outcome in court.”

Heat burned Grace’s cheeks. He was paying her to marry him. Nothing could have made it more clear—he still saw her as something less than a desirable woman.

“Once I have guardianship of Gracie, and Mother gets back to her tea parties, we can divorce.”

Nothing except that.

Grace felt a flare of indignation. Worse, she felt all of fifteen again, desperate for Johnny to see her as a woman. A woman in love with him...

Her heart missed a panicked beat. She couldn’t do this.

She was about to tell Johnny so when his gaze cut to Gracie, and she saw a fierce protectiveness come into his eyes, tinged with a trace of desperation. She caught her lip. Johnny, who had never needed anything but his motorcycles and the successful dealership and repair shop he’d started in Chicago, needed her help with Gracie.

Suddenly aware of the quiet, she realized the chair had stopped creaking and Gracie sat watching them, her eyes revealing the sadness inside her.

A sense of fate rolled over Grace. But she only whispered to Johnny, “I don’t know. I need time to think.”

But she couldn’t think clearly standing so close to Johnny. She walked over to the styling station and summoned a smile for Gracie. She pumped the chair as high as it would go, rewarded when Gracie’s lips curved and the little girl leaned to watch the floor descend. She didn’t use the booster chair, because she wanted Gracie to feel like a big girl.

“Just, uh, cut a little off the bottom...” Johnny’s voice trailed off at her baleful stare.

Grace spun Gracie to face the mirror. “How would you like your hair cut, Gracie?”

Gracie stared at her pink tennis shoes. Johnny shifted, and this time Grace warned him clearly with her gaze to keep quiet.

“Like yours,” Gracie finally said.

“Excellent choice.” Grace smiled, her heart turning over. No one had ever wanted to look like her before.

She set to work, tying a pink plastic apron beneath Gracie’s chin. Aware of Johnny’s close regard, she wondered if he noticed that her once long brown hair now swung neatly at her shoulders, that she wore a touch of makeup and a fashionable denim jumper over her crisp white T-shirt. She thought of the ill-fitting clothes and unstyled hair she’d had in high school. She hadn’t exactly been prom material.

But then, in his own way, neither had Johnny.

She parted Gracie’s silky hair while Johnny circled the room, skirting hair care displays and the potted plants she’d been watering. His straight nose wrinkled over the lingering scents of solutions and shampoos. He eyed the photos on the wall of models with elaborate hairdos, coming to a halt before the cash register. Behind it, she’d hung a picture of Elvis sporting a ducktail, in deference to the retro look.

“I remember that picture,” he said.

Of course he remembered. Her parents had been Elvis fans, in their thirties during Elvis’s heyday of movies and songs, when they’d fallen in love. The front hall of the old farmhouse where Grace had lived since her parents’ deaths had been decorated with photos of Elvis when she and Janelle and Johnny were teens. The one time she’d danced with Johnny had been in the living room to a slow Elvis tune.

“Can’t Help Falling In Love.”

Grace shook off the wistful feeling that came over her and gazed at Johnny with a critical eye. He was handsome with his hair cut in that crisp wedge, falling sexily over his forehead. With a ducktail he would look like a devastatingly young Elvis.

He turned then and caught her staring. Hiding her attraction, the way she’d always done, she said haughtily, “A shampoo and trim would do wonders for you.”

Johnny’s gaze glinted right back at her. “I have a barber in the city. And he doesn’t give shampoos.”

Grace turned away to hide her grin. She’d missed the exhilarating rush that came with sparring with Johnny. She’d missed Johnny. Before she could stop the thought, Grace imagined, as she had long ago, what it would be like if he really wanted to marry her.

But he’d come back for Gracie’s sake.

They needed to talk and so she hurried little Gracie’s trim along. Grace was aware from the way Johnny jingled his keys in his pocket that his patience was running out.

Johnny managed not to reach up and push his hand through his hair. He was due for a trip to the barber but he’d be damned if he’d sit in that chair with a pink bib tied around his neck.

Gracie seemed to enjoy getting her hair cut, though. And her smile cut right through to Johnny’s heart. He knew the pain that lurked beneath the surface, knew how Gracie cried in the night, how she clung to him if he had to leave her for a short while, afraid that, like her parents, he wouldn’t come back.

Johnny didn’t leave Gracie anymore. He ran his business by phone. He’d stopped partying, stopped everything for Gracie. He’d turned his world upside down to make her happy. He wasn’t going to lose her now to his parents.

Which meant, according to his lawyer, that he had to clean up his act. Provide a loving home life to rival that of his respectable, wealthy parents. What a joke.

Gracie wasn’t going to grow up in the same cold environment he and Janelle had. Not if he could help it. Not if Grace would marry him.

Frowning, Johnny contemplated Grace. She and Janelle had exchanged occasional letters. Through Janelle he’d learned that Grace was hanging on to that farm by a thread, and that there was no special man in her life. Maybe his proposal was a little sudden, but he could see that she wanted to help Gracie. He couldn’t understand what held her back.

But then, Grace had always been independent. Though she’d never let him down, she’d never been as easily swayed as Janelle to help him in and out of mischief.

He trailed his gaze the length of Grace’s body, over the soft curves that rounded the angles she’d had as a teen. Grace had almost seemed like a sister to him back then, but now...

Snipping little Gracie’s bangs expertly with scissors, Grace caught his gaze. “What?”

“I’d pictured you married by now,” he lied, a little shocked to think he’d imagined that slip of a dress falling to her ankles.

“I pictured you married by now to a bleached blonde wearing spandex.” Grace pursed her lips against a smile. “Spandex over silicone.”

He laughed. A spark of fun had always lurked within Grace even though her life, which had revolved around her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease and resulting financial struggles, had forced her to be responsible and serious. It occurred to Johnny that she didn’t deserve to wind up married to someone like him, even for a little while. She deserved a happily-ever-after kind of guy, one who believed in the game of hearts and flowers and rings. One who believed in love.

But she was just the kind of girl he needed to marry, with her wholesome country upbringing. And he knew she would be good for Gracie, the way she’d been good for shy Janelle.

Grace leaned to snip Gracie’s bangs, her dress hugging her curves—a woman’s curves. Johnny narrowed his gaze. Grace might have acquired a boyfriend in the past month. She might already be engaged to some other guy. He scanned her busy fingers for a ring, but she was moving this way and that, clipping Gracie’s hair, and he couldn’t see. He shifted impatiently.