Adopt-A-Dad

“I—I appreciate this,” she stammered. “You don’t know how much.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said sleepily. “You wanted rescuing and I rescued you. You have no idea how satisfying it is. Maybe I always knew I wanted to be Sir Lancelot and rescue a few damsels in distress.”

She furrowed through her memory bank. “I thought Lancelot was taken up with Guinevere—the king’s wife.” She frowned. “Did Sir Lancelot rescue damsels, as well?”

“Sure he did,” Michael said easily into the dark. “In his pre-Guinevere days he was quite a boy. He dashed around on his white charger rescuing maidens all over the place.”

“What, lots of maidens?”

“Yep.”

She smiled into the dark. “Didn’t it get a bit crowded? Up on his horse, I mean?”

“It might have,” he agreed reflectively. “I guess he must have had some sort of system. You know, when the horse got crowded, the damsel on the back fell off, the dragon got her and he had to rescue her all over again.”

Silence.

“I don’t think, then,” she said at last, staring at the darkened ceiling, “that I want to fall off. Not quite yet.”

“Then you just hang on for all you’re worth, Jenny,” he said, and he chuckled into the darkness. “And let’s see where this dratted horse takes us.”

THEY WERE married at eleven the next morning.

It was the strangest wedding Jenny had ever attended, though in fairness she’d only been to the formal white weddings the British were so good at. Although her wedding to Peter had been quiet, they’d done it in a church, she’d worn white, and a vicar had married them in his crimson robes.

The man who married Michael and Jenny was a portly little judge in a too-shiny suit. He’d known Michael from way back and greeted him like a long-lost friend.

“I never thought I’d see you facing a shotgun marriage,” he said jovially, and Michael grinned.

“Have you any idea how hard it is to persuade a girl to marry you these days? Independent, single-minded females—”

“Hey, she sounds just like the sort of wife you need.” The judge beamed at Jenny. “Step right up, girl, before he changes his mind. If there’s one thing I’d like to see this boy do, it’s marry.”

So they married, exchanging rings bought half an hour before at a cheap jeweler’s in the next block. A secretary witnessed their signatures, and the entire process took just fifteen minutes.

“And not a moment too soon, by the look of it.” The judge inspected the last of the documents and nodded his satisfaction. “That’s that, then, and I’m glad to make your little one legal.” He fixed Michael with his sternest look. “You look after them, you hear?”

Michael smiled and took Jenny’s hand, for all the world as if he was a real-life husband.

“Yes, sir,” he said softly. “I intend to do just that.”

“Then there’s only one thing left.” The judge grinned.

“What’s that?” Michael asked.

“You may now kiss the bride, boy.” He chuckled. “My favorite part. My wife says it’s the only reason I aimed to be a judge. Go ahead, boy. Kiss her like you intend to kiss her five times a day for the rest of your lives. Or more.”

He had no choice. Michael looked into Jenny’s confused eyes, and he knew this was what he must do. He must kiss her.

But for an obligation, it didn’t hurt one bit. He gathered her into his arms, and his mouth met hers, and what was meant to have been a formal kiss of acquiescence suddenly became much more than that.

He felt her softly yielding to him—but he sensed the tremor running through her and tried to kiss away the doubts and the fears and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

And somewhere in that kiss, something changed between them—something that would stay changed for all time. Because when he pulled away—finally—after a kiss that had gone on forever and must have satisfied any onlooking judge, it felt as if he was tearing himself apart to let her go.

It was as if in her touch, he was where he needed to be, he thought dazed. Forever.

That was crazy. He needed emotional attachment like a hole in the head!

And Jenny… She looked at him while their hands were still linked. He could see the faint indentation where his mouth had pressed against hers—like a shadow—and he could see matching shadows of doubt and fear in her eyes.

And the fear had deepened.

IT DIDN’T END there. There was a day of legal formalities in front of them. “One of the reasons I brought you to El Paso is that we can do everything at once,” Michael told her. “We’ll get your immigration forms filled in here and take the first steps to get you legalized. That way if immigration officials are waiting when we get back to Austin, they won’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Or Gloria.”

“Or Gloria,” he agreed gravely.

“She’ll be so angry. She seems so demure, so ladylike, but she has such power.” Jenny shivered in the warm sunshine, and Michael’s hold on her arm tightened. She’d been subdued since they’d left the judge’s office.

“There’s nothing she can do to touch you now, Jenny. Nothing.”

“I know that.” But still she shivered.

MARRYING WAS EASY compared to immigrating. The forms Jenny filled in were endless.

She and Michael went from one bureaucratic counter to another, and her guilt deepened all the while.

“You shouldn’t be here. You should be at work. You know you had appointments today,” she told him.

“You sound like my secretary,” he teased, and she glared at him.

“That’s what I am underneath all this pregnancy-bride stuff. Ellie won’t know where you are. She’ll be worried.”

“I called this morning and told her secretary I wouldn’t be in.”

“Did you tell her why?”

“I didn’t give her a reason, no.”

“But you’re always in,” Jenny said, alarmed. “She’ll be worried sick, especially if you’re not at home if she tries to contact you. You call her right away.”

“I don’t need—”

“Michael, people care about you,” she said sternly, finding a shadow of her old autocratic self. “Even if you don’t believe in emotional attachment, they do. Call.”

His eyebrows rose, but the look on her face told him she wasn’t kidding. It was her best schoolmarm look, and he answered accordingly.