His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage

“If we’re making confessions, so did I,” she admitted without looking at him.

He grimaced. “I should have gone home before I gave in to temptation.”

Her pale eyes touched his face like loving hands. She’d never known anyone like him. She didn’t think there was anyone else like him. He’d colored her dreams, become her world, in the years since that one incredible night.

She didn’t answer him. He glanced at her and laughed hollowly. “Which doesn’t change the past or bring us any closer to a solution,” he mused. “You’re not liberated, and I’m a confirmed bachelor.”

She toyed with her seat belt. “Are you really? I used to think that your father made you wary of marriage. He and your mother were totally unsuited, from what everybody says.”

“Everybody being my sister, Vivian,” he guessed. “She doesn’t remember our mother.”

“Neither do you, really, do you?” she wondered aloud.

“She died and left him with four kids,” he told her. “He wasn’t up to raising even one. I’ve always thought that the pressure of it started him drinking, and then he couldn’t stop.”

His face hardened with the words, and she knew he was remembering the bad times he’d had with his father.

“Mack, do you really think you’re like him?” she asked softly.

“They say abused kids become abusive parents,” he replied without thinking, and then could have bitten his tongue right through for the slip.

She only nodded, as if she’d expected that answer. “So they say. But there are exceptions to every rule. If you were going to be abusive, Vivian and Bob and Charles would have been sitting in the school counselor’s office years ago. They could have asked to go into foster care any time they wanted to.”

“Vivian would never have given up shopping sprees,” he pointed out.

She swiped gently at his sleeve. “Stop that. You know she loves you. So do the boys. You’re the kindest human being I’ve ever known.”

A ruddy color ran up his high cheekbones. He didn’t look at her. “Flattery?”

“Fact,” she countered. Her fingers smoothed over his sleeve lazily. “You’re one of a kind.”

He moved his shoulder abruptly. “Don’t do that.”

She pulled her fingers back. “Okay. Sorry.” She laughed it off, but her face flushed.

“Don’t get your feelings hurt,” he said irritably, glancing at her. “I want you. Don’t push your luck.”

Her eyes widened.

“You still haven’t got the least damned notion of what it does to me when you touch me, do you?” he asked impatiently. “This stoic exterior is a pose. Every time I look at you, I see you in that velvet dress, and I want to stop the truck and…” He ground his teeth together. “It’s been a long dry spell. Don’t make it worse.”

“What about Glenna?” she chided.

He hesitated for a minute and then glanced at her with a what-the-hell sort of smile and said, “She can’t fix what she didn’t break.”

Her eyebrows reached for the ceiling. “You don’t look broken to me.”

“You know what I mean. She’s pretty and responsive, but she isn’t you.”

Her face brightened. “Poor Glenna.”

“Poor Dave What’s-his-name,” he countered with a mocking smile. “Apparently he doesn’t get any further with you than she does with me.”

“Everyone says he’s very handsome.”

“Everyone says she’s very pretty.”

She shook her head and stared out the window, folding her arms. “Vivian is barely speaking to me,” she said, desperate to change the subject. “I know she’s jealous of the way Whit flirts with me. I just don’t know how to stop him. It almost seems as if he’s doing it deliberately.”

“He is,” he said, his expression changing. “It’s an old ploy, but it’s pretty effective.”

“I don’t understand.”

He pulled up at a stop sign a few miles outside Medicine Ridge and looked at her. “He makes her think he isn’t interested so that she’ll work harder to attract his attention. By that time, she’s so desperate that she’ll do anything he wants her to do.” His eye narrowed angrily. “She’s rich, Nat. He isn’t. He makes a good salary, for a teacher, but I had him investigated. He spends heavily at the gambling parlors.”

She bit her lower lip. “Poor Viv.”

“She’d be poor if she married him,” he agreed. “That’s why I object to him. He did get a girl in trouble, but that’s not why I don’t want him hanging around Viv. He’s a compulsive gambler and he doesn’t think he has a problem.” He looked genuinely worried. “I haven’t told her.”

She whistled softly. “And if you do tell her…”

“She won’t believe me. She’ll think I’m being contrary and dig in her heels. She might marry him out of spite.” He shrugged. “I’m between a rock and a hard place.”

“Maybe I should encourage him,” she began.

“No.”

“But I could—”

“I said no,” he repeated, his tone full of authority. “Let me handle it my way.”

“All right,” she said, giving in.

“I know what I’m doing,” he told her as he pulled the truck onto the highway. “You just be ready at five.”

“Okay, boss,” she drawled, and grinned at his quick glare.

Natalie was on pins and needles waiting for five o’clock. She was dressed by four. She’d topped her short hair with a glittery green rhinestone hair clip that brought out the emerald of her eyes and made the green velvet dress look even more elegant. When the Lincoln pulled up in her front yard and Mack got out to meet her on the porch, she fumbled trying to lock her door.

He took her hand in his and held it tight. “Don’t start getting flustered,” he chided gently, looking elegant in his dinner jacket and matching slacks. The white shirt had only the hint of ruffles down the front, with its black vest and tie. He was devastating dressed up. Apparently he found her equally devastating, because his glance swept over her from the high heels to the crown of her head. He smiled.

“You look nice, too,” she said shyly.

His fingers locked into hers. “I’m rather glad we aren’t going to be alone tonight,” he murmured dryly as they walked toward the car. “In that dress, you’d tempt a carved statue.”

“I’m not taking it off for you,” she told him. “You’re a confirmed bachelor.”

“Change my mind,” he challenged.