The Unexpected Wedding Gift

“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.