“I’d like you to tell me who that woman is and why she came here looking for you. And I’d like to know why she thinks she’s ruined our wedding day.”

“She claims she’s the mother of my child, Julia.”

The room tilted and, for a moment, she feared she was going to pass out. Too much excitement, she told herself. I’m imagining all this.

He sighed. “And there’s more. His mother doesn’t want him.”

The heaviness in his voice filled her with foreboding. “What else are you trying to tell me, Ben?”

“She wants me to take him. And if I refuse, she’ll put him up for adoption.”

“So what did you tell her?”

“You know the answer, Julia. I’ll take him, of course.”

He’s a man of cool sophistication.

He’s got pride, power and wealth.

At the top of his corporate ladder, he’s a ruthless businessman—an expert lover….

His life runs like a well-oiled machine….

Until now. Because suddenly he’s responsible for a BABY!

HIS BABY

An exciting new miniseries from

Harlequin Presents®

He’s sexy, he’s successful…and he’s facing up to fatherhood!

The Unmarried Father

by Kathryn Ross

The Unexpected Wedding Gift
Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PROLOGUE

THE portable phone rang just as he finished shaving. Wedging it in the angle between his shoulder and jaw, he strapped on his watch and headed for the bedroom. “Ben Carreras.”

“Ben, it’s Marian.”

“Hey,” he said, checking the time. “I’m just about ready to leave for the airport, but I wasn’t expecting you to get here for another hour. Did you catch an earlier flight?”

“No,” she said, and something about the pause that followed left the hair bristling up the back of his neck.

“What’s up, Marian? Are you okay?”

Another pause, this one, too, fraught with some sort of tension. Then, “I won’t be coming to Vancouver tonight, after all.”

His relief left him feeling slightly ashamed but the fact was, he’d been dreading her visit. When she’d first mentioned flying in from Calgary to spend New Year’s Eve with him, he hadn’t thought quickly enough to wriggle his way out of it. The truth was, though, the relationship was going nowhere and needed to be brought to an end. He’d planned to tell her so before she left.

“Gee,” he said now, poking his finger in the drink he’d poured earlier and swirling the melting ice cube around, “that’s too bad. Did something unexpected come up?”

“In a way.” Another pause, while she cleared her throat. “I can’t see you again. Ever.”

It was as if a load of bricks rolled off his back. Fighting to keep the elation out of his voice, he said, “Oh? Something I did, or didn’t do?”

Her sigh filtered over the long-distance connection, clear as the winter wind likely sweeping through across the prairies even as she spoke. “No. It’s just that…well, I haven’t been exactly straight with you. The thing is, I’m married, Ben.”

He tightened the towel sliding low on his hips and thought it was just as well she couldn’t see his grin. “No kidding! Kind of a sudden decision, wasn’t it?”

“Not really. Wayne and I have been together for three years.”

Frowning, he picked up his glass. Something here didn’t compute. “You mean, you’ve known him for three years.”

“No,” she said again. “I mean we’ve been married for three years.”

He paused with his drink halfway to his mouth.

“Are you telling me that all the time we’ve been seeing each other, you’ve had a husband waiting in the wings?”

“Yes.”

He swallowed a mouthful of the Scotch to try to rid himself of the sudden bad taste in his mouth. “What took you so long to get around to telling me, Marian?”

“I’m sorry. I know I probably should have said something sooner.”

He heard the little-girl wheedling tone in her voice, like a kid hoping if she sounded cute and sorry enough, no one would notice she’d told one lie after another and finally painted herself into an impossible corner.

“There’s no ‘probably’ about it,” he said coldly. “If a guy’s out there gunning for me for getting it on with his wife when he’s not looking, I’ve got a right to know.”

“It wasn’t like that, Ben,” she protested on a hic-cupping little sob. “When I met you at the beginning of October, Wayne and I were separated. I thought my marriage was over. But he’s had a change of heart. He wants us to patch things up and give it another go, and so do I.”

Another semi-tearful sniffle gurgled down the line, followed by a man’s voice muttering in the background like a Rottweiler getting set to square off against a poodle. The irate husband putting in his two bits’ worth, no doubt!

“There’s no use trying to talk me out of it,” she said hurriedly. “We’re finished, Ben.”

Damn right, lady! The pity of it is that we ever got started.

“I’m sorry if this hurts you.”

“I’ll survive,” he said. And how! “Have a nice life, Marian. I hope things work out the way you want them to.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Goodbye, Ben. And happy New Year.”

CHAPTER ONE

THE speeches were over, the ceremonial cutting of the cake done. During the lull in proceedings, waiters moved among the tables, refilling champagne flutes or, for those bored with Perrier Jouet, pouring two-hundred-dollar half bottles of ice wine as casually as if it were common tap water. On the dais at the far end of the ballroom, a ten-piece dance orchestra replaced the string quartet that had provided the dinner music.

If he’d been asked, Ben would have settled for a less fancy wedding. In fact, all he’d have needed to make it perfect was Julia. But he hadn’t been asked. His new mother-in-law had taken charge, consulting him only when she absolutely had to, and even then not quite managing to control the grimace creeping over her patrician features at the thought of his becoming part of the family.

“The man’s in bathrooms and kitchens, for pity’s sake!” he’d once overheard her exclaim to one of her golfing cronies. “Oh, Julia can protest all she likes that he’s president of his own company and there’s a mile-long waiting list of clients begging to have him design for their homes, but I hardly consider being able to build a few fancy cabinets a passport to society.”

“I’d give my eyeteeth to have his team work on my kitchen,” the friend had replied. “Marjorie Ames brought him in to do hers and the value of her house shot up past the million-dollar mark as a result.”

Unimpressed, Stephanie Montgomery had tossed her expensively permed head in contempt. “He’s still nothing more than a glorified plumber, as far as I’m concerned.”

But Ben didn’t care what she thought of him. He had Julia; his love, his life, and now, at last and forever, his wife.

Her left hand rested on the table beside him, soft and graceful, the broad gold wedding band he’d placed on her finger not three hours before anchored behind her diamond solitaire engagement ring. The realization, again, that out of all the men she could have had, she’d chosen him—him!—left his throat thick with emotion. He hadn’t known it was possible to love like this.

He slewed a glance her way, wanting to capture again in his mind the image of her as she was on this, their wedding day. He’d known she’d be a beautiful bride, because she was a beautiful woman in every sense of the word. Still, the sweep of her dark hair caught up in the jeweled tiara holding her veil in place, and her profile backlit by the late July sunset mirrored on the tall open windows, stole his breath away. She looked magical, an angel, so lovely he couldn’t find the words to tell her how moved he was by the sight of her, or how incredibly lucky and blessed he felt to have been the one to win her heart.

From his seat two places farther down the table, Jim, his best man, leaned back and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, pal, you’re drooling!” He smirked.

Ben grinned back and mouthed a reply. “I’m allowed to. She’s my wife!”

Over the band’s subdued intro, the emcee, an old friend of the bride’s family, hem-hemmed into the microphone and called on the groom to lead the bride in the first dance. Feeling as if his heart would burst with pride, Ben pushed back his chair and helped Julia to her feet.

Looping the end of her train over her wrist, she took his hand, smiled up at him and followed him into the middle of the dance floor. He felt he should say something profound, something they’d both remember forty years from then. But the only words that came to mind were the mundane and clichéd, May I have this dance, Mrs. Carreras? And she deserved better than that; she deserved the best life had to offer. So he kept his mouth shut and contented himself by placing his right hand possessively in the small of her back and urging her close, the way only a husband had the right to do.

Her silk crinoline billowed around them, disguising the fact that her hips nestled snugly against him and, thank God and whoever designed her wedding gown, hiding his body’s uncontrollable reaction to her nearness. He could well imagine her mother’s horror, if she’d known; her whispered outrage. He allowed himself to become aroused, Garry! Right there on the dance floor! He couldn’t even wait until they were in the honeymoon suite before letting his animal lust get the better of him. That pervert publicly humiliated us and embarrassed our daughter on the most important day in her life!

Except Julia wasn’t embarrassed. She might have blushed a little when she realized the effect she was having on him, but that didn’t prevent her from snuggling up a little closer and lowering her lashes in blatant, seductive promise of the night to come.

Blowing out a breath, Ben returned Mrs. Montgomery’s unblinking gaze. Like it or not, Stephanie, old dear, your lovely daughter’s my wife now and until death us do part! How we choose to conduct our relationship is no longer any of your business.

“Do you recognize the song they’re playing?” Julia’s voice at his ear, her breath soft and sweet against the side of his neck, brought his attention back where it belonged.

“‘If Ever I Should Leave You,”’ he said, bending his head so that his mouth grazed hers. From the sidelines, a dozen flashbulbs exploded as the photographers captured the moment. “Our special song. You must have chosen it.”

“Yes. Mother would have preferred a classical waltz, but I put my foot down. I wanted something that would have particular meaning for us. I love you so much, Ben.”

Emotion swept over him again, a tidal wave of such colossal proportion he hardly knew how to cope with it. They’d met during the intermission of a return engagement of Camelot, the previous February, and within minutes he’d decided she was the woman he was going to marry—a crazy idea, given that he wasn’t the impulsive kind and all he knew about her was her name, that she had beautiful, dark brown eyes and that she stood about five eight in her high heels.

Still he hadn’t let that stop him from inviting her out to lunch the next day, though he’d shown up expecting that, away from the romance and drama of the musical, she’d turn out to be no more special than any other pretty, well-dressed woman-about-town. That she was just as appealing in the light of a cold, blustery winter’s day was a bonus, but it was her warmth, her intelligence and her lively interest in other people that ensnared him forever and made him determined to flatten every objection her parents threw up in their efforts to discourage the marriage.

“I’ll prove myself to them,” he’d promised her.

“Why?” she’d said. “I’m the one you’re marrying and you don’t have to prove a thing to me.”

“I love you, too,” he murmured now, forcing the words past the knot in his throat and knowing they didn’t begin to convey the depth of his feelings for her. “There’s never been anyone like you, Julia. I want to give you the whole world.”

“I don’t need the whole world. I only need you.” She slipped her hand up his shoulder and caressed the back of his neck in long, slow strokes. “Remember the words to our song, Ben. That’s exactly how I feel about you.”

The impact of her touch sizzled clean down to the soles of his feet, with particularly graphic effect on his most susceptible quarters. Retaliating, he nuzzled her ear, flicked his tongue in its sweetly perfumed hollow and gloried in her muffled gasp of pleasure. “How soon can we sneak away from this shindig?”

“Not until you’ve done your duty and danced with my mother and the bridesmaids, and I’ve tossed the bouquet,” she said primly. But the way she nudged against him, the gentle pressure of her thighs against his, told another story, inciting him to reckless abandonment of protocol. Waltz with his dragon of a mother-in-law when he could be making love to his wife? Fat chance!

“Keep this up and I’ll disgrace both of us right now,” he threatened, tightening his hold of her. “Do you know how badly I want to take you away from here and have you all to myself, Julia? Have you any idea how often, in the last five months, I’ve dreamed of holding you in my arms all night long?”

Her lovely eyes, so big and dark they reminded him of velvet pansies, clouded with apprehension. “What if I disappoint you?”

“You couldn’t,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Everything about you delights me.”

“But I’ve never…we’ve never…”

“I know. But it hasn’t been for lack of desire on my part. It’s just that I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted to do everything right. And if that sounds crazy to you—”

“It doesn’t,” she said, stroking his face and reaching up to kiss him full on the mouth. “It’s sounds perfect to me, just the way you’re perfect.”

The flashbulbs exploded again, temporarily dazzling him. Blinking, he waited a moment for his vision to adjust, aware of nothing but the woman in his arms.

“I’m a long way from perfect, sweetheart,” he said, as the music slowed to a stop and a smattering of polite applause rippled around the room. “I’ve made my share of mistakes, just like any other man.”

“I’ll find a way to make you pay for them.” Laughing, she pulled away from him. “And you can begin by dancing with Mother.”

Reluctantly, he let her go. “Can I make it your grandmother, instead? Felicity’s more my type and she’s already admitted she likes to jive.”

She pressed her forefinger to his mouth. “Behave! Amma’s bad enough, without your encouraging her to be worse! As it is, she’s probably going to arm wrestle all the unmarried women out of the way when I toss the bouquet. Haven’t you noticed how outrageously she’s flirting with every man in the place?”

“No,” he said, both captivated and a little alarmed at the way she clung to her childhood name for Felicity. For all her sophistication and professional success, in many ways she was a very young twenty-three. Sometimes, he’d caught himself wondering if she was too young—for him, and for marriage—but then she’d surprise him with her maturity and he’d forget his reservations. “I’ve only got eyes for you.”

“Just as well, my darling husband, otherwise I’d scratch them out!”

He loved the way she leaned against him when she said that, the intimate smile she turned on him as they walked back toward the head table. It was how he’d always imagined marriage should be: the private jokes, the exchanged glances that made words unnecessary, the silent communication of body language that said I love you from across a room packed with other people.

“I’ll remember that,” he said, as he handed her over to her father for the next dance, and prepared to square off with her mother.

Stephanie Montgomery perched on her chair as if it were a throne and she the reigning monarch. When she saw him making his way toward her, she lifted her head and flared her aristocratic nostrils, the way a queen might when being approached by a particularly smelly stable boy.

Refusing to let her spoil any part of such a special day, Ben did his best to live up to her impossible standards, practically bowing as he said, “May I have the honor of this dance, Stephanie?”

“I’d be delighted.”

She didn’t look delighted; she looked resigned, and as mightily offended as if he had horse manure clinging to his clothes.

Not deigning to accept the hand he extended, she stalked ahead of him onto the floor. Exasperated, he followed, keeping a respectful ten paces behind. “I’d like to thank you again for everything you’ve done to make today so memorable,” he said, trotting her sedately around the floor.

“No need. You already did when you made your little speech. And I can’t imagine that you’d have expected anything less than the absolute best. Julia is our only child, after all.”

“Of course.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I give you my word I’ll make her happy. She’ll never have reason to regret marrying me.”

“Actions speak louder than words, Benjamin. Let’s wait and see where things stand a year from now.”

Over her head, his glance connected with Julia’s. The pride in her eyes gave him the wherewithal to put aside his urge to throttle her mother and to try, one last time, to strike some sort of truce instead. “The renovations at the house should be finished by the time we get back from the honeymoon. I hope you and Garry’ll both come to visit us, once we’re settled.”

“Unlikely,” she said. “If you really wanted Julia to remain close to her family, you wouldn’t have chosen to live practically in the United States of America. If she wants to see us, she can come to us. Our home, after all, will always be hers and our door always open to her.”

The woman should have been left out on the hillside at birth! Grinding his teeth, Ben gave in to temptation and spun her around with enough vigor to almost knock her clean out of her spindle-heeled shoes.

Punishment followed swiftly, in a way he never, in his worst nightmare, could have anticipated.

“Who is that person and why is she intruding on a private function?” she suddenly squawked, raising her eyebrows so far they almost disappeared into her hairline. “Is she one of your guests whom you’ve neglected to introduce to me?”

“No, Stephanie,” he said, his patience at an end. “Surprising though it might seem to you, I’m not such a boor that—”

But the reply fizzled into horrified silence as his glance latched on to the woman hovering at the double doors leading out to the foyer where he’d stood at the head of the receiving line not two hours earlier. Flaming red-gold hair caught in the light from the chandelier behind her, she peered at the crowd, clearly searching for someone.

He shook his head, as if doing so would bring him out of the sudden nightmare in which he found himself. This was his wedding day; a day that belonged to Julia and him and the future. His past had no place here. She had no place here.

In his panic, he stepped on Stephanie’s foot, then compounded the sin by ditching her completely. “Just where do you think you’re going?” she exclaimed, outrage lending an unpleasantly shrill edge to her voice.

Loath though he was to give his mother-in-law any more ammunition than she thought she already had, Ben had more pressing concerns on his mind just then than appeasing her, the most immediate being to whisk the newcomer out of sight before Julia noticed her.

Weaving a hasty path among the guests impeding his progress, he finally reached the doors. “What the devil do you think you’re doing here, Marian?” he asked roughly, grabbing her by the elbow and hustling her across the foyer to the private suite reserved for the bridal party. The luggage he and Julia would need for the honeymoon was stowed there, along with their passports and travel tickets. Her going-away outfit, something the color of wild orchids, hung on a padded hanger from a brass coat stand.

“I had to see you,” Marian whimpered. “We need to talk.”

“What?” He stared at her incredulously. “We haven’t spoken in months. And in light of our last conversation, I can’t imagine there’s anything left for either of us to say.”

“You’ll change your mind when you hear what I have to tell you.”

“Marian,” he said, hurriedly closing the door to prevent anyone witnessing the conversation, “I got married today. You just gate-crashed my wedding. Have you lost your mind?”

Tears glazed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. When I went looking for you at the address they gave me at your old apartment, the workmen at your new house just said you were here at a wedding. They didn’t tell me it was yours.”

She sort of crumpled onto the little gilt sofa next to a full-length mirror and sniffled into a tissue she fished out of the big quilted bag slung over her shoulder. For all that he wished she were a million miles away, she made a pathetic sight and Ben couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. “What happened, Marian? Didn’t the reconciliation with your husband work out?”

“Sort of. But it won’t last, unless you agree to help me.”

He rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Why do I feel as if I’m speaking in foreign tongues here? I just got married! My wife is probably wondering where the devil I’ve disappeared to. As for the conclusions my mother-in-law’s arrived at…” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Hell, they don’t bear thinking about!”

She glared at him through her tears. “If you think you’ve got problems now, wait till you hear what I’ve got to say! And you can take that look off your face, Ben Carreras, because in light of the relationship we once had, the very least you owe me now is—”

“Don’t go there, Marian,” he advised her tersely. “Our relationship, if it could ever have been called that in the first place, is over. It never really began.”

“You didn’t feel that way when you slept with me, though, did you?”

“Are you here to blackmail me?” he asked, his voice sliding to a dangerous whisper.

She shrank into the corner of the sofa. “No. I wouldn’t be here at all, if there was any other way out of this. But there’s more at stake here than just your future or mine, Ben. There’s the baby’s.”

He’d spent most of his thirty-two years facing reality, knowing firsthand that even the most fleeting happiness always came with a price. Over the last five months, though, he’d grown complacent; had woken up every morning marveling that life just kept getting better.

But with Marian’s last words hanging in the air like an ax waiting to fall, he knew he’d been lured into a fool’s paradise. “What baby?” he asked, guessing ahead of time what her answer would be.

“Yours,” she said.

Of course, it was a trick, a lie. One she was more than capable of perpetuating. After all, she’d kept a husband hidden away in the woodwork for the better part of two months.

So why was dread creeping over him like a shroud? Why did the only part of his mind still ticking along recognize that, in this instance at least, she was telling the truth?

Still, he tried to deny it. “I don’t think so. If I’d gotten you pregnant, you’d have mentioned it long before now.”

“I wasn’t sure he was yours,” she whispered, the tears she’d held in check at last running free. “He might have been Wayne’s. I hoped he was.”

“I don’t see how there could have been any doubt, unless you were carrying on with both of us at the same time.”

In a desperate attempt to ward off the nightmare web closing around him, he tossed out the remark almost glibly. But the flush that ran up her face and the guilty way she avoided his eyes stripped the black humor from his words and left them revealed for the ugly truth they were.

Stunned, he lowered himself next to her on the sofa. “Tell me I’m wrong, Marian!”

She spread her hands helplessly and said again, “I’m sorry!”

“For what? For cheating on your husband? For lying to me from the day we met? For telling me you’d taken care of contraception when you’d clearly done no such thing? Well, here’s a news flash for you, Marian. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t begin to cut it!” He heard his voice, tight with anger, bouncing back from the walls and fought to bring it under control. “Tell me this is some sort of sick joke.”

“It’s no joke,” she whimpered. “I wish it were. All through the pregnancy, I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. But the baby’s yours, Ben. I know that for a fact because we just got the DNA tests back from the hospital and there’s no way he could be Wayne’s.”

Almost sick with anguish, Ben dropped his head into his hand. “Assuming this isn’t another lie, what is it you want from me now? Money?”

“No,” she said. “I want you to take the baby.”

He looked up at her, stunned. “Take him where?”

“Home with you. I can’t keep him. Wayne’s willing to forgive me having an affair, but he won’t be saddled with another man’s child. If I want my marriage to last, I have to give up the baby. That’s why I’m here. But if you don’t want him either, I’ll place him for adoption. I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to keep my husband. And I do. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”

“How can you love a man who forces you to give up your child?” he exclaimed.

She shrugged. “I’m not strong like you, Ben. I need someone to lean on.” And as if that explained everything, she stood, slid the bag from her shoulder and dumped it at his feet. “I could never cope alone with a baby.”

He looked from her to the bag, then back again. “What’s that for?”

“It’s got things in it that you’ll need. Diapers and formula and things like that. What did you think? That I’d stuffed the baby in it?”

“After all the other stunts you’ve pulled, I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“I’m not completely without feelings, you know,” she cried, flinching at the disgust he made no effort to hide. “He’s my child, too. I carried him inside me for nine months. I gave birth to him.” She drew in a breath and there was an air of desperation about her when she continued, “I have to do what’s best for him. I have to keep him…safe.”

Safe? Given the context of the exchange, the word struck an odd, if not ominous note.

“So what’s it to be, Ben?” she said. “Are you willing to raise him, or do I call Social Services and put him in their hands?”

CHAPTER TWO

BEFORE he could begin to sort through the chaos in his mind, let alone formulate a reply, the door opened. He heard the swish of silk and the sound of footsteps halting on the threshold. As if from a great distance, Julia’s voice came to him, warm with concern and full of love. “Honey? Is everything all right?”

And following right after, in a tone rife with suspicion and censure, her mother’s question, fired across the room like an arrow aimed with mortal intent. “I think you owe us an explanation, Benjamin. Who is this woman and what is so urgent about her business that you felt justified in walking out on your own wedding in order to accommodate her?”

Mutely, he turned and met Julia’s gaze. Tried to tell her with his look that this was not how he’d have had things turn out; that he’d have given his right arm to have spared her the hurt and humiliation about to be heaped on her. But the ability to communicate without words, which been so easy on the dance floor, deserted him when he needed it most.

He saw inquiry on her lovely face. Curiosity. Kindness. And just enough anxiety to dim her radiance to a soft glow.

“We’re waiting, Benjamin,” his mother-in-law reminded him.

“Go away, Stephanie,” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“If it affects my daughter—and from the look on your face, I can only suppose it must—then it most certainly does concern me.”

He felt cold all over. Cold and angry and afraid. In the space of fifteen minutes, everything had changed. All that he thought was his for the rest of time was seeping away, and he was helpless to stem the bleeding. “Julia,” he said tightly, “what I must tell you is for your ears alone and I’m not about to have your mother decide otherwise. Either get her out of here, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

“Mother?” She turned, appealing to the woman with upturned palms. “Please leave us alone.”

“With that creature?” Stephanie gestured to where Marian wilted against the back of the sofa. “Not a chance, my dear! If she stays, so do I.”

Ben’s anger turned to rage at that, burning so white hot that his vision blurred and a kind of madness possessed him. He’d never been a violent man but, at that moment, two things came to him: he was capable of murder if that’s what it took to protect those he loved; and he loved Julia more than life itself.

Fortunately, the door opened again to reveal Felicity Montgomery, perhaps the only person on the face of the earth able to stop Stephanie in her tracks with a single glance. “There’s a man with a baby waiting in the foyer,” she said. “He seems to think his wife’s in here and he’d like to know if she’s accomplished what she came to do.”

“I think we’d all like to know the answer to that, but no one’s talking,” Stephanie snapped. “Why don’t you invite him to join the party, Mother Montgomery? Maybe he’ll be more forthcoming.”

But Felicity had learned a thing or two in her seventy-nine years. She didn’t need anyone to spell it out for her to pick up on the hostility and tension muddying the air. “I think not, Stephanie,” she said. “Ben, you look troubled. Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes,” he said. “Get Julia’s mother out of here before I wring her interfering neck!”

“Consider it done, dear boy,” she replied serenely, taking a firm hold of his mother-in-law’s elbow and steering her toward the door. “Come along, Stephanie. You heard the man.”

The silence they left behind was almost worse than the belligerence that had preceded it. It spread over the room like poisonous gas, paralyzing the three remaining occupants. It seemed to Ben that the space separating him from Julia was too vast for him ever to find his way back to her.

Marian was the first to speak. “Do you want me to wait outside, as well, Ben?”

He nodded, too full of pain to trust his voice.

Leaving the bag where she’d dropped it, she made her way to the door, hesitating only when she reached Julia. “I’m very sorry to spoil your wedding,” she said. “I hope you’ll believe me when I say that was never my intention.”

“Leave it, Marian!” he barked, the thought of Julia hearing the news from anyone other than him restoring his powers of speech in a hurry.

Throughout the exchange, Julia remained motionless, her solemn gaze never once wavering from his face. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked, when they were finally alone.

“No,” she said. “I’d like you to tell me who that woman is and why she came here looking for you. And I’d like to know why she thinks she’s ruined our wedding day.”

The seconds ticked by as he searched for a way to soften the blow he had to administer, but no matter how he wished it could have been otherwise, in the end a swift, sharp thrust of the sword was the most merciful. “She claims she’s the mother of my child, Julia.”

The room tilted and, for a moment, she feared she was going to pass out. Too much excitement, she told herself. Too much champagne. I’m imagining all this.

Blindly, she reached behind her, fumbling for something—anything—against which to support herself. Her hand closed over the doorknob and she squeezed it hard, hoping it would disintegrate into thin air and prove she was dreaming.

Instead, it pressed against her palm, cool and smooth and hard as glass. So hard and unforgiving that it pinched her wedding ring against the pad of flesh on her finger. Swallowing painfully, she asked the only question that mattered. “And is she telling the truth?”

“She might very well be, yes.”

“How long have you known?”

“I just found out.”

“I see.”

But she didn’t, not at all. Pressing her lips together, she let go of the doorknob and folded both hands in front of her, knowing he was watching every shift in her expression, knowing he was waiting for her to give him some sort of sign that she understood what he’d said.

She couldn’t do that. Her mind was empty, a great barren void. The pity of it was that her heart didn’t follow suit, because the ache in her chest was crushing the life out of her.

“Julia,” he finally begged, “say something, for God’s sake! Give me hell. Tell me I’m the world’s biggest jerk. Scream at me, if it’ll help. But please don’t just stand there like a wounded deer waiting for another bullet to put an end to your misery! You have to know it’s killing me to do this to you, today of all days.”

“What’s her name?” she said.

He flung up his hand. “What does it matter?”

“I’d like to know.”

“Marian,” he said harshly. “Marian Dawes.”

But he hadn’t always felt like that, spitting out the name as if he couldn’t bear the taste of it…or of her. When he’d made love to her, he’d have murmured the word, called her sweetheart, and honey, darling—all the endearments Julia thought he’d reserved especially for her.

With a little cry, she collapsed on the floor, crippled with the pain of it all. In a flash, he was at her side. She saw his hands, strong and tanned and capable, reaching for her. And in her mind’s eye, she saw them touching another woman, in places he’d never touched her.

“Julia…sweetheart!”

“Don’t,” she cried, when he went to lift her, but he swept her up anyway and carrying her over to the sofa, sat down and cradled her next to his heart.

The ridiculous, overblown skirt of her wedding dress flipped up like a saucer, so that anyone walking into the room would have seen nothing but her white satin pumps and white lace stockings, and the silly blue satin garter he was supposed to throw over his shoulder to all the single men attending the wedding.

“Julia, I love you,” he said. “No matter what else you might be thinking, please believe that.”

She forced her next question past the aching lump in her throat. “Did you love her, too?”

He shook his head and she thought perhaps his mouth trembled a little before he managed to say, “No. Not for a moment. I’ve never loved anyone but you, Julia.”

“But you made a baby with her.” Once again, the images flashed through her mind: the naked intimacy that had to have taken place; the fact that, even if he’d never loved Marian Dawes, he’d still managed to…!

Had it happened in his apartment, in the bed he’d so steadfastly refused to let his fiancée ever lie in? Or in a cheap motel, on some dark country road?

Oh, she couldn’t bear any of it! “Let go of me,” she croaked, struggling to free herself and inching as far away from him as she could get in the tiny room. “I don’t want you touching me—not after you’ve touched her!”

He wiped his hand over his face, and she had to look away because she found the weariness and grief in his eyes too dangerously moving. “What do you want me to say? I’m a man, not a god. I made a mistake. I was a damn fool. It’s all true, Julia, but it doesn’t change the fact that I apparently have a son.” He sighed. “And there’s more. His mother doesn’t want him.”

The heaviness in his voice filled her with foreboding. “What else are you trying to tell me, Ben?”

“She wants me to take him. And if I refuse, she’ll put him up for adoption.”

“I don’t believe you! What kind of mother could do that?”

“The kind whose husband won’t accept the child that resulted from an extramarital affair.”

Extramarital affair? Dear lord, was the horror never going to end? Distraught beyond anything she’d ever experienced before, Julia pressed her fingers to her mouth for a moment to stop herself from crying out loud. “So what did you tell this paragon of feminine virtue?” she asked, resorting to sarcasm when she was able to speak because only by fueling her sense of outrage could she keep herself together, and she’d rather be dead than let him see how he’d devastated her.

“You and your mother showed up before I gave her my answer.”

His reply was so evasive, so unlike him, that her next question was redundant. Still, she had to ask, even though having her suspicions confirmed would merely tighten the strands of misery threatening to choke her. “What would you have said, if we hadn’t been so inconveniently interrupted?”

“You know the answer, Julia. I’ll take him, of course.”

So there it was, the coup de grâce. Less than twenty feet away, over two hundred guests were waiting for the bride and groom to show up and go through the final hoopla associated with wedding receptions. She was expected to radiate happiness. To toss her bouquet blithely over her shoulder. To gaze adoringly at her groom, and ride off with him into the sunset in the certain belief that the happy-ever-after, which surely every bride had the right to expect, was hers for the taking.

And instead, her brand-new husband had smashed her dreams and left her with one of only two choices: she could go along with his proposed actions, or she could leave him and file for a divorce.

A sour aftertaste filled her mouth. No, not a divorce. A marriage had to be consummated before that became necessary. So a quick and easy annulment would do the job, and just like that, the marriage would be over before it had really begun.

“Have you once thought of what this means to us?” she asked him bitterly. “Of how it affects our marriage?”

“It’s all I can think of, Julia.”

“Oh, I doubt that! You’ve managed to think ahead to the point that you’ve decided to assume responsibility for a child without even knowing for sure if you’re his father. You’ve managed to reduce our wedding day to a fiasco. You’ve betrayed me and everything we’ve planned together. But not once have you asked my opinion about what you should do next. The word ‘we’ hasn’t once entered the conversation.”

“All right, I’m asking you now,” he said, his blue eyes so empty and cold that she shivered. “What would you have me do? Tell Marian to take her problems somewhere else?”

“Would you, if I asked you to?”

“No,” he said flatly. “That’s not who I am, Julia. I don’t walk away from trouble, and I don’t turn my back on helpless babies. I thought you knew me better than that.”

“So did I,” she said. “Obviously, I was wrong. I didn’t take you for the kind of man who’d have an affair with a married woman.”

“I didn’t know she was married at the time.”

“But you knew enough to sleep with her. To make a baby with her.”

He rolled his eyes wearily. “Guilty on both counts. Sometimes, a man’s brain lies below his waist—especially when a woman makes a determined play for him.”

At that, the tears she’d fought to repress flooded her eyes. “I made a play for you,” she said brokenly. “I practically got down on my knees and begged you to make love to me. I might not have had your old flame’s experience and expertise to back me up, but I didn’t just fall off the turnip cart, either. I’ve read books. I’ve seen movies where a man and a woman make love. I know the mood has to be right, and I did everything I knew how, to make it right for you. But you somehow managed to keep your brain and—” she glared at his fly “—your…other thing separate. How come you never got them mixed up when I tried to turn up the heat?”

“Because I love you,” he said. “I love you enough to let you go, if what you’ve just learned leaves you too disappointed in me to give our marriage a chance to survive.”

“But not enough to choose me over some other woman’s child!” Oh, she hated herself for saying that, for being so selfish that she’d punish an innocent baby for his father’s crimes! And she hated Ben for bringing out the worst in her. She had not known she could be so small, so mean-spirited.

“Would you still want me, if I did?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t feel as if I know you at all. You aren’t the man I fell in love with.”

“Yes, I am, Julia. I’m just not perfect, and neither is life. And if you thought being married to me was going to be one long bed of roses—”

“I didn’t!” she insisted, furious that he was trying to put her on the defensive. “I’m not a child. Every marriage goes through its rough spots. But I hadn’t expected ours would be fighting for survival within hours of our exchanging wedding vows. When I promised to love you, for better and for worse, I…never thought…!”

The sobs rose up, choking her into silence.

“Neither did I,” he said softly. “And I admit this is about as bad as it can get. I admit what I’m asking of you is unfair. So the next move is up to you. Do you want me to go next door and tell everyone to go home because we’ve decided to call it quits? Or will you stand by me and give us a chance to prove to all those naysayers lined up behind your parents that we’re up to whatever challenge life throws at us?”

He was a dirty fighter, bringing her parents into things like that! He knew her pride would never allow her to prove they’d been right when they’d said that marrying a man she’d known less than six months was rushing headlong into disaster.

But was pride enough to keep their marriage afloat? Because that was about all she had to fall back on. Oh, if she looked honestly into her heart, she knew she loved him still. But what use was love without trust, and how could she ever trust him again?

As if she weren’t beleaguered enough, the door flew open behind her and a man barged into the room. From his opening salvo, she could only suppose he must be Marian Dawes’s husband.

“We’ve hung around long enough, Carreras!” he fairly bellowed. “Make up your mind. Are you taking the kid or not?”

Marian, her face pale and drawn, hovered behind him, a tiny bundle clutched in her arms. Even Julia, drowning though she was in her own misery, couldn’t help feeling sorry for what the woman must be going through. To have to choose between her child and this brute of a man—how could he ask this of her?

“I’ll take him,” Ben said, at which Marian let out a sigh, walked over and handed the child to him.

Julia could hardly bear to watch as Ben looked at the baby. Awkwardly, he reached out a finger and pushed aside the blanket covering its face. She heard his indrawn breath, saw the startled expression in his eyes and knew in an instant that, even if she had been his first love, she was no longer his only love. There was recognition in the gaze he turned on that little face, and wonder, and the primitive determination to protect that only a parent can know—all those things she’d expected he’d never experience until he held their first-born in his arms.

A hand closed over her shoulder, and she turned to find her grandmother at her side. The compassion in Felicity’s eyes undid her. Lips trembling, Julia reached up and clung to her. “Tell me what to do, Amma, please!”

“It’s not my place to say, my angel. You’re facing a hard decision and it’s likely only the first of many. But whatever you decide, Ben is your husband, and I’d ask you not to forget that.”

“This isn’t fair!” she wept.

“No, it’s not.”

“I hurt so much.” She pressed a fist to her chest.

“How could he break my heart like this?”

“His own heart’s breaking, too, Julia. One only has to look at him to see that.”

She slewed a glance his way, hoping he wouldn’t notice, and found her gaze locking with his. The naked pleading in his eyes could have melted stone.

She was only vaguely aware of Marian Dawes and her husband leaving, of the sudden blast of music from the reception as the doors leading to the ballroom swung open, of her grandmother urging her forward. All her attention was fastened on the man she’d married.

The sight of him drew her like a magnet. Even at that late date, she was still hoping for a miracle, for someone to leap out from behind the curtains and shout, “Hey, this is all a big mistake. Some other guy’s the father. Go back to your wedding and the lovely life you planned. This isn’t your problem.”

But when she finally drew abreast of Ben and looked down at the baby he held awkwardly on the palms of his hands as if it were a tray of food, her heart plummeted. Because any hope she’d entertained that he might not be Ben’s son was instantly dispelled. He was a miniature carbon copy of her husband.

Numbly, she stared at the thick dark hair, the olive complexion, the brilliant blue eyes, and accepted the inevitable. Only Ben could have fathered this child.

“Your father is out of patience, Julia,” she heard her mother exclaim from the doorway, “and I am frankly mortified at your behavior.” Then, as Felicity murmured a protest, “No, Mother Montgomery, I won’t be put off again! Surely even you cannot dispute that, as mother of the bride, I have the right to know why Julia and this man she’s married have chosen to abandon the guests who’ve come here today to help them celebrate their wedding.”

“I’m afraid your mother’s right,” Felicity said.

Slowly, Julia raised her eyes and again met Ben’s anguished gaze. “Yes,” she said. “Amma, will you stay with…will you stay here until we come back?”

“Of course. Here, Ben, give the baby to me.”

“Ba…by?” The way her mother’s outraged shriek sank to a horrified whisper would have struck Julia as comical in any other circumstances. As it was, she could only be grateful that, in Stephanie Montgomery’s book of social etiquette, keeping up appearances ranked above all else.

“That’s right, Mother,” she said, hooking her train over her arm and sweeping toward the door with as much dignity as she could muster. “What else would you expect to find wearing a diaper and wrapped in a receiving blanket? A stuffed turkey?”

How he and Julia made it through the next hour, he didn’t know, because even a moron could have cottoned on to the fact that, between the first dance and their final exit in a shower of confetti and rose petals, something had gone terribly wrong between the happy couple.

The bride refused to make eye contact with the groom and tossed her bouquet as if she were heaving a live grenade into enemy lines. The smile stretched over her mother’s mouth more accurately resembled the rictus of a woman in extremis, while the expression on her father’s face would have stopped traffic. But if any of those well-dressed, well-bred, upper-echelon society guests happened to notice, no one was crass enough to remark on it.

Of course, the honeymoon plans had to be scratched. Instead of changing their clothes and heading for the airport, he and Julia climbed into the limousine in all their wedding finery and directed the driver around to the back of the country club where Felicity waited with the baby. The switch took place with furtive, undignified haste. Fortunately, the black-tinted windows in the vehicle hid the infant carrier strapped to one of the rear seats as the car sped down the driveway and headed south to White Rock.

Frequently, as they crossed the city, Ben began to speak. But one glance at Julia’s profile, and the words, inadequate at best, dried up completely. She sat as if made of stone, blind and deaf to everything around her, especially the man and child sharing the back of the limousine with her.

When they were only a few minutes short of their destination, he made a last attempt to reach her. “I love you, Julia. I need you. Please try to hold on to that. No matter how bad things seem, if you’ll believe in me, in my love, we can win this. We can make it.”

“The baby’s crying,” she said.

Astonished, he looked over at the little scrap of life that was his son and saw movement beneath the blanket, heard a mewing that sounded more like a kitten in distress than a human being. What was he supposed to do? He knew next to nothing about babies except that they needed attention at both ends rather often, yet it seemed to him that removing the child from the safety of the baby carrier wasn’t smart. What if the car swerved suddenly, or slammed to a stop? What if he dropped the baby on its head?

“I guess whatever’s bothering him can wait,” he muttered. “We’ll be at the house in another five minutes or so.”

She tilted her head, as though to say, Suit yourself. He’s your son, and continued to stare unblinkingly at the back of the driver’s head.

By the time they finally drew up outside the house, the mewing had escalated into an irate squawk. Leaving him to deal with that as he saw fit, Julia stepped out of the car and stalked to the front door. The driver followed with their luggage. Ben brought up the rear with the baby shrieking at the top of his tiny lungs.

“How do I make him stop?” he asked, once they were inside.

“Don’t ask me,” Julia said. “I’ve never had a baby. But I’d imagine whatever’s in the bag your lady friend left with you might provide some answers.”

“She’s not my lady friend, Julia,” he said edgily.

“Your former lover, then.” Turning to the mirror hanging above the hall table, she ripped off her wedding veil and tiara. “It’s been a long, not to mention devastating day, and I’m tired. I’ll take one of the guest rooms and leave the master suite for you, since you’ll be requiring extra space.”

“Julia—!” he began. But he was drowned out by the baby’s crying and even if he hadn’t been, she wasn’t interested in listening to anything he had to say. Deftly hoisting her skirt over her arm, she disappeared up the stairs.

He couldn’t blame her. Outwardly, he might appear to be functioning on all eight cylinders but inside he was a mess. How she must be feeling he could only begin to imagine. And the devil of it was, he couldn’t make consoling her his first priority.

Picking up the baby, he tried to soothe it by propping it against his chest. Its head flopped forward as if it hadn’t been properly connected to the neck. The hand he’d placed under its little rear end felt suddenly wet and clammy. Something smelled.

“Cripes!” he muttered as some sort of drool bubbled down the front of his shirt. “You’d better have come with a book of instructions, kiddo, or you and I are in for a rough ride.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE house had five bedrooms. Julia chose one at the other end of the upstairs hall, as far away from the master suite as possible. Fortunately, the renovations had almost been completed and although the furnishings were minimal, they’d do. Anything was better than being in the same room with Ben and the baby. That she could not have endured. She’d have slept in the garage first.

The room smelled of fresh paint and lemon oil. There were no pictures on the walls, no knickknacks on the dresser, no reading lamps, nor even sheets on the bed. The windows were bare and the only light came from an antique brass fixture in the middle of the ceiling.

It showed her stark reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door. She looked like the bride of Frankenstein—wild-eyed and as white as her wedding dress.

Almost everything about the wedding had been white—the flowers, the cake, the limousines. Even her bridesmaids had worn white. It had been her mother’s idea. “Why not?” she’d said, when Julia had questioned the need for quite such an extreme fashion statement. “It’s not only chic, it’s a proclamation of your innocence. You’re entitled to be married in white, unlike most brides in this day and age. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but to my way of thinking, women who’ve behaved like alley cats before marriage have no business parading down the aisle and trying to pass themselves off as virgins when they finally decide to settle down with one man.”

Just as well Ben had worn black. At least it matched his morals.

A sob caught Julia off guard and as another wave of misery overtook her, she tugged frantically at her dress. She could not bear its smothering softness a moment longer. She heard the pop of tiny buttons pulled roughly free, the tear of fine silk. Heard the ping of hand-sewn seed pearls and crystal bugle beads rolling across the polished oak floor. And didn’t care. The dress and everything it signified were a farce.

“Julia?” Ben’s voice, right outside the door, had her swallowing her sobs. “May I come in?”

And witness her standing there in nothing but her stockings and the strapless merry widow that showed more of her breasts than it concealed? With her hair standing on end and her face streaked with mascara and her eyes all puffy and red from crying? “You may not!”

“I’ve brought up your overnight bag. I figure you’ll be needing it.”

“Leave it outside the door.”

She heard his sigh, loaded with frustration and even a hint of annoyance. As if she was the one who’d ruined everything! “Have it your way.”

I wish I could, she thought, listening to his footsteps fade down the hall. If I had my way…

But what was the use in thinking along those lines? In a few weeks’ time, she’d turn twenty-four. She’d stopped believing in fairy godmothers years ago. No one was going to come along and change things back to the way they’d been yesterday. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

How could she and Ben possibly make their marriage work when the trust she’d believed in so completely was based on a myth? Her mother was right: she didn’t know him. The outward trappings might not have changed. He was still six feet, three inches tall. His eyes were still blue, his smile as heart-stoppingly sexy as ever. But inside, where it counted, he was a stranger.

She’d thought she knew everything about him. They’d spent hours, days, exchanging life histories. She knew he’d inherited his black hair and olive skin from his Texas born Spanish-American father, but that his blue eyes and rangy height came from his Canadian mother’s Norwegian ancestry.

She knew he’d been born on a train stranded halfway across the Canadian prairies in a January blizzard; that his parents had left Texas and come back to his mother’s homeland to start a new life on a farm in northern Saskatchewan, left to her by an uncle she never knew.

“Trouble was,” he’d told Julia, lying stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace in his apartment, with his head in her lap, “they hadn’t the first idea what they were taking on. They thought they were coming to a pretty log cabin beside a lake ringed by majestic evergreens. What they got was a tar-paper shack with an outdoor privy, a well whose pump should have been retired years earlier, the closest body of water a slough frozen solid eight months of the year, and summers plagued with mosquitoes and black flies.”

“But they were happy,” she’d said hopefully, because she found their story so touchingly romantic.

“Hardly! They had no concept of the bone-cracking, deep-freezing cold of the Canadian north, and no idea at all how to work a farm, which is a tough undertaking even for people born to the life. We survived those early years only through the generosity and pity of neighbors who came to our rescue an embarrassing number of times.”

“But, in the end, they made a go of things?”

“In the end, they lost everything, including their lives. I was ten at the time, and winter was particularly vicious that year. To try to keep the house warm, my clueless father overloaded the woodstove and burned the place to the ground. The neighbors came running—again—but there was nothing anyone could do. The place went up like a rocket.”

He’d swung himself to a sitting position and hunched forward over his knees so that she couldn’t see his face, and his voice had been hoarse with emotion when he’d continued, “I’d been sent out to bring in more wood, and I’ll never forget the noise or the heat as that pathetic shack literally exploded into a ball of fire, or the hiss of sparks landing on frozen snow.” He’d drawn in a long, shuddering breath. “Or the screams of my parents trapped inside.”

Julia had wrapped her arms around him and warmed the back of his neck with her tears. “Oh, Ben!” she’d murmured brokenly. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d shaken his head, impatient with himself and with those poor people who hadn’t lived long enough to see what a fine man their son had become. “My mother’s dreams of happy-ever-after were slapped down time and again by my father’s inability to provide for his family. He was a dreamer, a poet, as unsuited to that corner of the world as a palm tree is to an iceberg, and unwilling to adapt. Yet she loved him regardless and would have been lost without him. It was just as well they both went together.”

“But what about you? You were just a child. Who took care of you?”

“The same people who’d taken care of us all from the day we set foot in the area. For the next six years, I was passed around from one family to another, depending on who had a bed to spare and who could afford to feed another mouth.”

“Weren’t there any relatives who could have taken you in?”

“No. And it was a matter of pride in that kind of tight-knit group for people to look after their own, without interference from government agencies or the like.”

Desperate to find some sort of silver lining to the story, she’d stroked his hair and murmured, “But that was good, wasn’t it? Better than being sent away to live with strangers?”

“I guess. But for all that those good people tried, I never fit into their stalwart Norwegian community. Blue eyes and lanky height notwithstanding, I was as much an alien as if I’d landed from Mars, marked with my father’s genes and because of my resemblance to him, tarred with the same brush of incompetence. No matter how hard I tried, whether it was working from dawn to dusk on the land or scoring the winning goal for the local ice hockey team, I was still the son of that impractical fool Carreras, who’d been too busy writing rhyming couplets about the northern lights to learn the rudiments of survival.”

He’d turned around and looked at her long and seriously then. “I dropped out of school when I was sixteen, Julia. One day, I left Saskatchewan on a Greyhound bus, bound for wherever I could get for the price of the ticket I could afford, and ended up in Vancouver. I don’t come from old money, with a university education and enough influential relatives to ensure my automatic entry to the best clubs. Sure, I’m CEO of my own company, but I seldom wear a business suit and until recently, I didn’t drive a fancy car. So I understand why your folks think I’m not good enough for you. But I promise you this. I’ll never let my wife go short of anything—not food, or shelter, or decent living conditions. If I have to work the clock around, seven days a week, to provide a good life for my family, I will. I’ll prove myself worthy of you and I swear I’ll never give you reason to regret marrying me.”

He’d spoken with such heartfelt sincerity but words, she now realized, were cheap when they weren’t backed up by actions. Before she’d had time to grow used to the feel of his wedding ring on her finger, he’d broken his most sacred promises. How could he have done that, if he loved her the way he claimed he did?

Weary from going over the same ground time and again, but too strung up to sleep, she turned off the light and opened the window. The night sky was so clear that she could see all the way to Washington State and the ghostly shape of Mount Baker, snow-covered year round, riding the horizon to the east. To the southwest, the waters of Semiahmoo Bay lapped quietly against the shore.

The scent of roses drifted on the warm air, and night-scented stocks. There was a sliver of moon casting a rippled path of light over the sea. If she leaned out far enough, she could just catch the glimmer of lights from the sidewalk restaurants lining Marine Drive. There’d be music and laughter down there; the clink of wine-glasses, the flickering glow of candles throwing shadows over the flowers spilling from the planters and hanging baskets outside each establishment.

It was a night made for lovers, for honeymooners; for lying beside one’s new husband in the moon-splashed darkness and discovering what true intimacy was all about. But she had never felt more alone. Ben was only a few yards away, yet the distance between them was such that he might as well have been on the other side of the world.

Thinking about it, about him, brought the disappointment and hurt surging back with a vengeance, enough that it might have overwhelmed her all over again if another sound hadn’t penetrated the quiet.

She stopped in the act of turning away from the window and listened. It came again, from somewhere in the house, the thin heart-rending wail of a very new baby. Ben’s baby.

She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to know why it was crying. But nor could she ignore it. An only child herself, she hadn’t been exposed to infants. Her experience with them was so slight, it was negligible. Yet she knew instinctively that the poor little mite was missing its mother and she couldn’t bear it.

Turning on the light again, she rummaged through her overnight case for something with which to cover herself since she had no intention of venturing forth in her undergarments. The only item she found was the satin nightgown and matching peignoir—white, of course—that had been a trousseau gift from her mother. It was a lovely thing, lavishly embroidered with lace inserts, too frivolous and romantic by far for the present situation, but it would have to serve.

The upper floor was in darkness when she stepped into the hall but there was light showing below. Silently, she made her way to the top of the staircase, not daring to think too far ahead, not knowing if she could do anything to soothe the baby, knowing only that she could not ignore its pitiful cries.

She was halfway down the stairs when a stream of light from the kitchen flooded into the lower hall. A moment later, she froze as Ben appeared.

He’d removed his dinner jacket, left his bow tie hanging loose around his neck and had undone the top button of his dress shirt. He had a tea towel slung over his shoulder and was holding the baby as if it were a football, resting its head against the fingertips of his right hand and its little bottom on his palm of his left hand, with its legs tucked into the crook of his elbow.

He was humming to the child and jiggling it much too energetically. Her heart jumped with fear as he negotiated the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Another inch or two to the right, and he’d have banged the baby’s head.

Be careful! she wanted to cry out. Watch where you’re going and don’t toss him around like that unless you want him to get sick to his little stomach. Hold him so that he can hear your heart beat, not as if you’re about to try for a touchdown!

Perhaps she made a sound, or perhaps she moved because Ben suddenly stopped in his tracks and glanced up, trapping her as she hovered with one foot extended toward the next stair. She wanted to look away, to run back the way she’d come, but he would not release her from his gaze.

The seconds spun out, marked by the quiet tick of the Vienna clock hanging opposite the front door. At length, Ben said, “He threw up all over me but he’s asleep finally.”

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