Adopt-A-Dad

“Jenny, don’t worry,” he told her gently. “They’re not after us, guns blazing. This is not a bad movie. Sure, Gloria will have told them you intend overstaying, but you’re not illegal yet. No matter how much money and influence she has, she can’t bribe the department to throw the entire weight of the law into finding someone who hasn’t broken the law yet. Even if they found us—”

“They’d deport me.”

“They wouldn’t.” He put a hand out to touch hers. “You’re my intended bride, and we’re heading off to get ourselves married before our son in born. There’s not a way in the world they can stop us.”

“Then why aren’t you stopping off to collect your toothbrush?” she asked, and he grimaced.

“Sharp, aren’t you?”

“I have a lot hanging on this,” she told him. “And I need honesty here.”

“Okay.” He put his hands on the steering wheel and focused on the road. He still had the top down. The sun was on their faces, and they were heading toward the border for all the world like a married couple on vacation.

“It’s just that I don’t know Gloria,” he confessed. His brow was furrowed, his red eyebrows beetling in concentration. It was a gesture that was peculiarly Michael, and Jen was discovering how much she liked it. And the sound of his voice…

“Gloria sounds like an elderly, aristocratic nutcase, and my first reaction is to discount a heap of your fear,” he said. “I can’t figure her intentions, but I’m trained never to underestimate an enemy I don’t know. So I’m assuming the worst—that she has the resources to fight for what she wants.”

“But—”

“Once we’re safely married, there’s no way she can touch you,” Michael said, cutting across her protest. “I know how to look after my own. But let’s get married before we go taking any chances.”

THEY ARRIVED at El Paso late, far too late to get married that night. They’d stopped briefly to eat, but Jenny was so nervous Michael had barely time to bolt a burger before she was edging him back to the car.

“I told you, Jenny. There are no blazing guns.”

“I just don’t trust her. She’s known all along what I was doing. Now she’ll be thrown right off track, and I don’t know what she’ll do.”

Her nervousness was infectious, and by the time they reached the decent, plain hotel Michael knew, it was as much as he could do not to look over his shoulder.

He felt crazy to be worrying about an elderly aristocratic female half a world away.

Never underestimate an enemy you don’t know.

“Do you have a suite with two bedrooms?” he asked the woman at the hotel desk, and Jenny looked at him, startled.

“No, sir,” the woman said primly. “We have adjoining rooms with a communication door.”

He thought about that for all of two seconds and rejected it absolutely. “Nope. A twin room, then.”

“Certainly, sir.” She cast a curious glance at Jenny. Married couple having a fight, the clerk’s face said, and the tension in Jenny’s eyes confirmed it.

“You sleep well, then,” she told them as she handed over the key. “And…” She took a deep breath and beamed at the pair of them. “If I can butt in here… You’re such a lovely couple and with the baby so close, well, whatever’s bothering you, you try real hard to sort it out. Those twin beds are on rollers. If you want, they roll together real quick.”

“GREAT!”

“What’s the problem?”

Jenny had plunked herself on the farthest bed and was glaring at her intended husband as if her life depended on it. “She thinks we’re married,” she snapped.

“Get used to it, Jenny,” he said lightly, but there was an underlying seriousness beneath his words that had her staring. “We’re going to have to play this as if we mean it.”

“Why?”

“The immigration officials won’t give you a green card unless they think this marriage is real. The judge we see tomorrow has to waive the three-day license period. He won’t do that unless he thinks this is a real marriage and we’re only rushing it because of the baby. So we convince everyone we’ve been falling in love over the last few months, and the day before you were due to walk out of my life, I proposed and you fell into my arms.”

“But—”

“And we don’t convince them by sharing separate bedrooms.”

“We’re not married yet, Michael Lord,” she said with asperity. “I don’t see why we have to share tonight.”

He paused, but there was no room for dishonesty between them. This was too important.

“You’re afraid of what Gloria can do,” he said. “I don’t know Gloria and I don’t know what her resources are, but I don’t trust what I don’t know, and I want you where I can look out for you. I don’t want you down the hall.”

“You think…”

“I don’t think anything,” he said wearily, “but I’m taking no chances. We’re a couple, Jenny. Get used to it.”

EASIER SAID than done. Jenny was so tired she should be asleep on her feet, but she was so aware of Michael that every nerve in her body was still wide awake and screaming that there was a man in her bedroom—a very large, very…well, very male man.

A man who for the past few months had been her boss and was now to be her husband.

It was too unnerving for words. She went into the bathroom, washed, changed into her pajamas and made a dive for the bed. Safely there, she hauled the bedclothes up to her neck and then glanced over to see Michael sitting on the other bed laughing at her.

“Very sexy,” he approved, his eyes dancing. “Baggy pajamas wide enough to hide a small house. Just what I’d always dreamed my bride would wear.”

“Yeah, well, you try being eight months pregnant and figure how to be sexy,” she snapped, glowering. “Go get your own pajamas on.”

“I don’t have pajamas,” he said soulfully. “The drugstore only carried toothbrushes and razors—not pajamas.”

“That’s your problem.” Her voice was breathless. “I’m going to sleep.”

“You do that, Jenny,” he said, his voice gentling. “You must be beat.”

She was, at that. Why else would the sound of the concern in his voice make her want to weep?

It was too strange for words. She lay with her eyes closed as she listened to him head for bed—listened to him wash and use his brand-new toothbrush and then secure the room.

He didn’t just lock the door. He was taking no chances. He hauled his bed across the doorway so no one could enter without stepping right over him. Surely the precautions were unnecessary, Jenny thought sleepily, but she felt safer all the same.

She lay still until she heard him slide beneath the sheets, pummel his pillows, then settle down. The sound of his deep, even breathing was infinitely reassuring.

She shouldn’t let him do this, she thought, but there was no way she’d stop him. Not now.

“Michael?”

“Mmm.” He sounded half-asleep already.