THE HONOR BOUND GROOM Read online

  She'd known he was alone, seen it, sensed it, but she wasn't sure Mac had a clue how wildly, painfully lonely he'd been. She closed her eyes and kissed him back, her pulse rushing, rushing, emotions clambering in her heart—the need to give, to hold, to protect this man who wasn't supposed to need any of those things. For sure, she'd never imagined he could need her. Yet his vulnerability swept her under, made an ice-cold night transform into a magically wondrous place. His head surged up for air, yet he dipped right back down another kiss, this one involving tongues and teeth, this one waking up a whole brood of tigers…

  Her jacket was gaping open, because as of two weeks ago she couldn't zip it anymore. Still, there were bunches of winter clothes between them. So many that he couldn't touch her in any intimate way, yet her breasts tightened and swelled with a sweet-hot ache and desire-coiled heat deep in the center of her. Her tummy tucked against him and her fingers knuckled tight at her nape, willing him not to stop kissing her, willing this moment to never end. Her being with him made sense, heart-sense, like nothing had been right in her life before this and everything suddenly was.

  The baby suddenly kicked. Hard. Hard enough that she surfaced from that magic spell, hard enough that her lips curled in a smile that became part of their kiss. The little one's movements were such an instinctive, natural part of Kelly now that her response was invariably feeling a smile come from the inside out. Mac felt the baby move, too.

  Glued this close, even with all their coats and sweaters, he couldn't have missed it. His head shot up.

  "What on earth … that was junior?"

  "Uh-huh." She still had that smile. Sharing the baby with him only felt like more magic, just not quite of that same hot tempestuous brand.

  And Mac smiled back at her for one precious, poignant second … until his expression suddenly seemed to freeze. He jolted back a step and dropped his hands as if he'd been handling hot potatoes. "What the hell are we doing, Kelly?"

  "Necking on the front porch like a couple of teenagers?"

  "Like a couple of people who've lost their minds, more like. Here you're pregnant and it's freezing cold out here…" He sucked in a breath. Guilt stained his face with color. "And the problem isn't the temperature. Kel, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking of—"

  Her mind was still operating on stun-power, her pulse still charging from the way he'd been with her moments before. But she told herself to get a fast grip, because some instinct warned her that however she handled this really mattered. "It's okay. There's nothing to be sorry for," she said gently.

  "Not on your part. But I didn't mean to—"

  She straightened his coat lapel. "Neither of us meant that to happen. But it did. So we both gave into an impulse. So we both needed to hold on to someone else for a moment. Does that sound like a crime to you?"

  "Of course not, but—"

  "I started this, not you. And I honestly didn't mean to start anything … awkward, Mac. We both seemed really sure that sexual feelings would never be a problem in this unusual relationship of ours. But I grew up on daily doses of hugs and kisses and a ton of affection. My mom used to say that no one should have to survive a day without a hug. And I realize you may not want that kind of thing. From me. So I'll try to be careful, but I admit that being pregnant has made me even more emotional, so I just can't promise I won't accidentally touch you. If you're going to be offended—"

  "Kelly, nothing you could do would offend me," Mac said swiftly.

  His lips were still parted to say something else, but she interrupted before he could. "Good. That's a worry off my mind. Like you said, we can make our own rules for this relationship. Nothing's a problem if we just honestly talk it out—and I'm headed in, Mac. In fact, I think I'm headed straight upstairs for a warm bath and bed. I'm really beat."

  As they walked in the house and stashed their coats, she tried to keep up an easy patter, thanking him for dinner, for coming to the class, making some natural small talk about his travels and how his business had gone. He answered in half sentences, not clipping her off but just sounding distracted. But she felt his eyes on her as she climbed the stairs.

  Her heart was clanging like a heavy fire engine bell until she turned the corner upstairs out of his sight.

  Mac didn't want her. She'd known that from day one. And the last thing she'd ever intended was to wake that sleeping tiger, because she never wanted him to know how attracted she was. Still, she refused to regret that embrace.

  Mac had been incomparably good to her. She needed to bring him something in the relationship. Not sex. Not behavior that would embarrass him. But her husband's whole life was hounded with responsibilities that never quit. He needed to laugh. To loosen up. To be around someone who didn't call him Mr. Fortune and wasn't expecting something from him all the time.

  It wouldn't kill him to suffer through a hug now and then.

  As long as she didn't do anything crazy like fall in love with him, Kelly didn't think there was a lick of harm.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  «^»

  "No, don't waste your time digging for personal scandal—you know I hate that kind of thing. I couldn't care less if he were a cross-dresser. That's not my business—and his business life is all I'm interested in. What I want is the most complete financial dossier you can put together on Gray McGuire. Preferably by yesterday." When Mac heard knuckles rap on his office door, he twisted around with the phone still tucked to his ear. He motioned for his cousin Jack to come in. "Call me as soon as you've got anything, even if it's at home, okay? And thanks, Sterling." By the time Mac hung up from talking with the corporate attorney, his cousin had closed the door—a sure sign there was trouble—and was prowling the teak-and-leather office as if he were too restless to sit down. At thirty-one, Jack Fortune was young to be vice president of marketing, but Mac had watched him grow and thrive in the role. Usually they touched base daily, but Mac's piled-high desk was testimony to what few hours he'd been in the office this whole last week.

  Truth to tell, he wasn't denting the crisis pile very fast. Kelly was on his mind more than work. But Jack wouldn't have stopped if there weren't a problem, and Mac threw out a business question as he tried to gauge his cousin's mood. "Any chance you found out anything more about Gray McGuire?"

  "I put out some feelers, but I didn't hear back anything that you haven't already heard. He's CEO of McGuire Industries. He does computer-related stuff—nothing in common with our business—so I don't have a clue why he'd be trying to buy up stock in Stuart Fortune's Knight Star Systems. You still think he's trying to pull off a takeover?"

  "I don't think. I know. But I just can't make sense of it. McGuire's gone at this like he has a vendetta-watching, waiting for the company to hit a rough patch and then pouncing to take advantage. But we're no competition to him. I can't find any connection at all. Still, we've got good people working on it. Something'll surface." Mac dropped that subject. Talking business obviously wasn't engaging his cousin's attention. He watched Jack throw himself in the saddle leather chair across from the desk, then lurch right back up to repace the office like an antsy cat. "What's on your mind?"

  Jack pointed to his blond head. "You see this gray hair? It's all caused by women."

  Offhand, Mac didn't see a single gray hair, but he cocked a foot on his desk with an empathetic grin. "If you came to ask my advice on women, you're out of luck. I just found myself married to one. As far as I can tell, this is a shock to the system on a par with being suddenly hit with a tornado."

  That brought a chuckle. Jack relaxed enough to lean against the tall teak credenza. "And that reminds me—I'm supposed to grill you. The whole family expects me to give you the third degree on how it's going with the new bride."

  "So tell them it's going fine. I admit I'm still a husband-in-training, but Kelly's a sweetheart."

  "That's the best you can do? That's not even an appetizer for the women in the family. They want details. They want di
rt. Preferably they want juicy details about your sex life."

  "Afraid they'll have to go hungry. They should know by now I don't participate in one of those gossip-feeding frenzies," Mac said dryly. He suspected that Jack might be as curious as the rest—or these questions wouldn't have come up—but his cousin at least respected that Mac just wasn't one to confide about his personal life. A good thing, because Mac wasn't about to tell anyone that he was petrified of his new bride.

  From nowhere, unbidden, unwanted, memories from that starlit night a week ago seeped into his mind … the look of Kelly's red mouth, swollen from his kisses, the never-expected fire of desire in her eyes, the stupid, crazy feeling of longing and need that had somehow snipered all his common sense.

  Even seven days later, guilt still made his stomach muscles clench. My God, she was almost eight-months pregnant and had been through nonstop stress, and he'd come on to her like a horny teenage boy. He'd spun that memory in his mind a dozen times and still couldn't explain or excuse his response to her … and worse yet, that hadn't been the end of it. Thinking of all the things Kelly had done to him over this past week made him instinctively pat his shirt pocket for antacids. Hell, he was fresh out. And his cousin had started pacing the office again. "I can't believe you've got a woman problem, Jack. I thought you swore off that whole half of the human species after your divorce."

  "I did, I did. Unfortunately, taking up a nice, safe celibate lifestyle didn't make Sandra disappear. She called me this morning. She's thinking about getting married again."

  "So where's the problem? She can make some other guy's life hell instead of bugging you."

  "That part sounds fine. But she's sabotaged every time I'm supposed to get Lilly. Three years old and my daughter barely knows me. And if Sandra marries again I'm afraid she'll try to make it that much harder."

  Mac paused. "Money always talked to her before."

  "Yes, greed works. I've been down that bribery road before, no reason I can't try it again." Jack sighed. "It just bites my pride and sense of ethics both—she thinks she wins every time I give her money. And what bugs me the most is what the whole mess says about my judgment in women—that I ever picked her for a wife, much less for the mother of my daughter."

  "I think sometimes it's pretty hard to tell what's in a package from the way it's wrapped."

  They talked life and business for a few more minutes, but when Jack finally left, Mac suddenly felt more restless than his cousin. He pushed out of his office chair and hiked over to the wall of windows. Below, Minneapolis had turned winter-gloomy. The pretty holiday trimmings were gone, the snow turned old and crusty gray, traffic snarling like normal again. Mac looked, but all he saw in his mind's eye was Kelly. She was "wrapped" in such a normal package. The silky-fine blond hair, the soft blue eyes, the sunshine smiles … she was cute; she was real; she was attractive in entirely her own way. But there was nothing in her appearance to warn a man that she was more dangerous than a firecracker in a closed room.

  One week of marriage and his nerves were in shreds. It was that Hugging Thing, Mac thought morosely.

  Touching her was never supposed to be a problem. For damn sure, he never thought sex would be. Her being in love with his brother should have guaranteed his wiltability, no matter how attractive he found her—and yeah, Kelly had told him several times now that she would never have married Chad. But what Mac really heard were hurt feelings. However real that hurt, it didn't mean that her love had died, and her confessed inexperience only affirmed for Mac that Kelly was never a woman to sleep with a man lightly.

  Only she'd brought up that hugging business—and she'd made it sound as if she'd grown up so used to physical affection that she couldn't survive without her daily hug quota. Mac never remotely assumed she was counting on him for a hug source—that wouldn't even make sense with their particular relationship—but all week long, all this complicated stuff kept happening. Like this morning, she'd been laughing and joking her way through an insane breakfast of pickles and cereal. Then she'd burned some toast—like who cared?—only suddenly her eyes were welling with these horrible, big, fat tears.

  A few days before that, they'd had a couple of little electronic crises. Damned if he knew how she'd crashed a hard drive and sabotaged two VCRs in a single day, but Mac had always believed in facing reality. Kelly was an electronic nimwit—that was clearly going to be their reality—so he'd come home with another VCR and a personal computer for her. Now how on earth was he supposed to know that would make her cry again?

  And she did other things. Weird things. Like make him a mess of spareribs and a rhubarb pie, when his own family didn't know those were his favorites. Like bringing him home a box of malted milk chocolates—which he hadn't been addicted to since he was a kid—and for no reason. She hung up his coats and tuned to the stock market report over breakfast and kept the kitchen stashed with oatmeal-raisin cookies. And then there was the afternoon she'd so gravely tried to listen to him about how to work the security system, and still somehow managed to set off every alarm on the whole property…

  Mac clawed a hand through his hair. None of those circumstances precisely required a hug to fix them, only when she reached out her arms, he never felt he had a choice. She was pregnant and she'd had all this stress. He couldn't make her feel rejected. He couldn't upset her.

  He never thought marriage was easy—hell, he hadn't escaped rings all these years because he had any illusions on that score—but Kelly was supposed to be different. Even before proposing marriage, his role in her life had been mirror-clear to him. He had a job—to keep her safe. He needed to turn around the mess his brother had made, and make both Kelly and the baby's life secure. That was a job he was uniquely qualified to do. His whole life, he'd been a problem-solver, not a problem-causer.

  He didn't fail people. Ever.

  Only he'd never expected this confounded hug thing to come up. He'd never expected that she'd want to touch him, much less that he'd respond to her as if she were the only woman in the entire universe who had ever mattered. Hell. The damn woman was becoming the sunshine of his life.

  Mac squeezed his eyes closed, thinking that he had an outstanding reason not to go home until late tonight. The family had saved him by putting together a surprise for Kelly, so he had some extra hours to make sure he worked this out in his head before seeing her again.

  But Mac didn't really need that time. He knew exactly what had to be. Kelly needed to be able to trust him. She needed to know that she could count on him. Her getting under his emotional skin only made it more imperative that he not fail her in the things that mattered. Which meant—cut-and-dried—that he needed to keep his hands off her. Mac knew what was right. He just had to do it. Kelly pushed back her coat sleeve to glance at her watch.

  "Benz, we really need to get home. I appreciate your taking the time to show me around the area, but—"

  "Yeah, I didn't want you getting lost if you took off on your own sometime. Lots of twists and turns in this neck of the woods."

  Kelly started to respond, then fretfully twisted her watchband instead. Something strange was going on. She just couldn't figure out what it was. They'd left the house right after lunch, because Benz asked for her help picking out a birthday present for Martha. That was fine, only after shopping he'd then gotten the idea she should familiarize herself with the neighborhood. And that was also fine, except that Benz had been cruising at twenty-five miles an hour on back roads with nothing but woods and more woods for ages now.

  "It's past four," she ventured again. "The thing is, I don't know what time Mac's coming home from the office—"

  "Believe me, he won't be home this early. Not tonight."

  "How come you're so sure of that?"

  "I just know, that's all." Benz shot her a mysterious smile.

  Benz just wasn't a man to pull off a mysterious smile. He was obviously trying to hide something from her, but they finally seemed to be on the road headed home. She could
wait to hear what his surprise was. Her mind was on Mac.

  He'd come home tired, she suspected. And there'd be no one to unplug the phones and make him put his feet up for a few minutes if she weren't there. After living with him for a week, the handwriting was on the wall. Calls came in at all hours of the day and night. Some were family, some business, but neither contingent seemed to appreciate that Mac had a life and was entitled to some downtime.

  As the tall gates came into view, Kelly dove in her purse for a brush and fresh lipstick. Maybe their marriage was still new, but she'd already figured out she didn't want to be one of his burdens. Too many people called Mac with problems. Too many people expected him to leap in and rescue them from a tough problem, and it grated like a fingernail on a chalkboard that she was one of them. He never acted annoyed to be stuck with a pregnant stranger who accidentally destroyed all his electronic equipment. In point of fact, he was so ceaselessly considerate and kind that he was driving her half crazy.

  But Kelly figured she could fix that. She was still struggling to find a place in his life—not an intrusive place, not to be in his way. She hadn't and didn't expect Mac to love her. And she was well aware that Mac was uncomfortable with her impulsive hugs—but he was getting used to them, she thought. The darn man needed hugs. He needed someone he felt free to be downright crabby with. He needed someone, for God's sake, who wasn't always asking or expecting something from him.

  Never. Never had she met a man more worth loving or who had so many special loving qualities—not, Kelly assured herself, that she was falling for him. Mac never had to know that these simple physical gestures were increasingly turning her knees to jelly. She'd just find some way to deal with that. This wasn't about her. It was about finding a way to make this relationship good for Mac, not just for her, and it was so obvious that he needed … but abruptly her thoughts were interrupted when the house came into view.