“Worse? You mean there’s something worse than calling one’s wife darling? Does the FBI know about this?”
“Being funny isn’t going to help you this time, Rich Manning.” She’d known it would be impossible to talk to him. He turned everything into a joke.
“All right,” he said, lowering his voice. “Tell me what other horrible felony I’ve committed.”
“It was the way you looked.” To illustrate her point, she crossed her eyes and let her tongue dangle from the corner of her mouth.
“I looked like that?” he challenged in disbelief. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Not exactly like that, but close.” She held herself stiff.
“What was that silly expression supposed to be?”
“You with a besotted look.”
“Besotted? Who uses a word like besotted?” He gave a short, abrupt laugh.
“I do. And I wasn’t trying to be cute.”
“I never looked like that in my life.” Rich walked over to the round oak table, then frowned when he saw the pile of tissues. “You’ve been crying?”
“I … I have a cold.”
He shook his head. “I thought you were never going to cry over another man.”
“I … I didn’t intend to…. I probably wouldn’t, either, but I’m pregnant and, like you said, my hormones are all screwed up, so don’t take it personally.”
“What’s happened to us?” He advanced several steps toward her, stopping just short of taking her in his arms. “Jamie, love…”
“Don’t say that!” she cried, her voice rising to near-hysteria. Calling her his love was too painful, like taunting her with the one thing she truly wanted and couldn’t have.
“What?” He raised his hands, palms up, in sheer frustration.
“Don’t call me your love.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because I’m not.”
“What do you mean?” Rich glared at her.
“You don’t love me and I … I can’t tolerate it when you pretend you do.” The words poured out of her until she was shouting, shaking with the force of her anger.
“I do love you,” he said quietly.
“Oh…right.” She wouldn’t have thought Rich would lie to her about something so serious. It offended her that he’d try to pass off as truth what she knew to be false.
“You mean you honestly didn’t realize that?” He came forward, but for every step he took, Jamie retreated two.
“Because it isn’t true!”
“How can you say that after the other night?”
“Don’t confuse good sex with love.” Jamie didn’t know what had made her say that, but she couldn’t stop. She wore her pride like a protective cloak. She’d been hurt so many times before. Her trust had been violated, her heart bruised. She couldn’t go through all of that again, especially with Rich, whom she loved so desperately. It was safer if he believed she didn’t care.
“So that’s all it was to you—good sex?”
“Yes, of course. You don’t think it was anything more, do you?”
With each word she threw at him, his anger increased until it flashed like fire from his eyes.
Jamie’s back was flattened against the wall, her fingers splayed against it. She longed to tell him their times together had been the most beautiful, the most meaningful, of her life, but she lacked the strength.
She’d never known how exhausting it was to lie.
“I suppose you want me to prove it,” he said.
“Yes,” Jamie returned flippantly, since that was an impossible task.
Not meeting her eyes, Rich marched past her with purposeful strides. He slammed his suitcase onto the floor, opened it and dug through his clothes until he found what he wanted—apparently a white business envelope with some kind of logo on the upper left side.
Without a word he stepped over to her fireplace, reached for one of the long-stemmed matches she kept on the mantel and struck it against the brick. The flame sprang to life. Cupping his hand over it, Rich knelt and held the match to the white envelope, which he’d set on the grate. Within seconds the paper was nothing more than charred ashes.
At first Jamie didn’t understand what he was doing. It came to her gradually, until each breath she drew was more painful than the one before. Rich had burned the marriage agreement they’d had drawn up before the wedding. The one they’d both signed.
The tears that crowded her throat refused to be contained anymore. They leapt to her eyes, burning, smarting. Her throat ached with the need to breathe, her sobs desperate to escape.
She must’ve made some sound, because Rich, whose back was to her, turned slowly. His eyes slid to hers, until Jamie thought she’d drown in those blue depths.
Could she believe? She was afraid to hope that what he’d said was true and that he did indeed love her. Hope was so fragile, so easily shattered.
Dare she believe?
Love had always been so disappointing. It had stripped her of her pride, stolen her aspirations. Cheated her.
Did she dare trust her heart again?
“I’m not interested in a marriage of convenience with you any longer, Jamie,” he said evenly. “I haven’t been, since the night I found you with Floyd what’s-his-face. I realized then that I love you and probably have for years, only I hadn’t realized it. Condemn me if you will, but it’s the truth.”
Jamie’s heart quickened. Tears streamed down her face and she brought her fingers to her lips, knowing it would be impossible to speak. Instead, she held out her hand to him, her shoulders trembling.
Rich was there a second later, hauling her into his arms. His mouth unerringly found hers, and he lavished warm, moist kisses on her quivering lips.
“I hope all this emotion means what I think it does,” he murmured against the curve of her neck.
Jamie’s tears fell without restraint. The emotions within her were too primitive, too deeply rooted to allow her the luxury of responding with words. Her hands framed his face as she spread eager kisses wherever she could. Trying to convey everything in her heart, she cherished him with her lips, kissing him again and again until they both shook with passion.
“Jamie…” Rich tore his mouth from hers and stared searchingly into her face.
“I love you,” she managed in a breathless whisper.
His smile was more brilliant than a rainbow after the fiercest storm. “I know.” He wore a cocky grin as he swung her effortlessly into his arms and walked to the bedroom.
Tenderly he placed her on the bed and moved over her. When he kissed her, their passion flared to life, with no reservations, no holding back.
“Tell me what you said wasn’t true,” he pleaded. “Tell me our lovemaking touched you the same as it did me.”
Jamie tried to answer him, reassure him it had been her pain talking, her disillusionment, but she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. Smiling, she gazed up at him, letting all the love in her heart spill into her eyes. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
They made love gently, slowly, and when they’d finished, they held each other. For a long time neither spoke.
They kissed after a while and Rich rolled onto his back, taking her with him. His hand caressed the small of her back. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love our baby, too.”
“I know…. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
Content, Jamie nestled against him, pressing her ear to his heart, which beat solidly in his chest. Her own heart was radiant with emotion. She’d tried to close herself off from love, but Rich had made that impossible.
His hand reached for hers. Palm to palm. Heart to heart.
And Jamie felt—finally—like the married woman she was. A wife deeply in love with her husband. A woman deeply loved by a man.
Epilogue
The brightly decorated Christmas tree stood in the corner of Rich and Jamie’s spacious new living room, in front of a large bay window that overlooked Puget Sound.
Jamie sat with her swollen ankles elevated while Rich brought her in a cup of tea from the kitchen. He’d insisted on doing the dishes and Jamie hadn’t argued. She was tired and crabby and impatient for their baby to be born.
“We really should take down the tree,” she said. Christmas had passed several days before.
“Take down the tree?” Rich objected. “We can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Junior wants to see it.”
“Rich,” Jamie muttered, her hands resting on her protruding stomach. “I’ve got news for you. Junior has decided he’d rather not be born. He’s hooked his foot over my ribs and says he’d rather stay right where he is.”
“You’re only three days past your due date.”
“It feels like three months.” She’d given up any hope of seeing her feet back in October.
“Can I get you anything else?” Rich asked. “A pillow? Your knitting? A book?”
“Stop being so solicitous,” she snapped.
“My, my, we are a bit testy this evening.”
“Don’t be cute, either. I’m not in the mood for cute.”
“How about adoring?”
“Maybe…but you’re going to have to convince me.”
“Perhaps I should try for the besotted look.” He crossed his eyes and dangled his tongue out of the side of his mouth, imitating the impression she’d done of him earlier that year.
Despite her low spirits, Jamie laughed and held her arms out to him. “I love you, even if you do look like a goose.”
Rich sat on the ottoman facing her. “I love you, too. I must, otherwise I wouldn’t be this worried.” The humor left his eyes as he leaned forward and placed his hand on her stomach. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”
“Are you really worried?” He tended to hide his anxiety behind a teasing facade, and Jamie had been so consumed by her own apprehensions that she hadn’t taken the time to address Rich’s.
“I’m anxious.” His hands gripped hers and he raised her knuckles to his mouth and gently kissed her fingers.
“So am I! I want this baby to be born.”
“I can hardly believe how much I love him already,” Rich whispered, his eyes serious. “At first, the baby was something we talked about. When I learned you were pregnant I was so excited I could’ve walked on water. Then a few weeks later, we were living together. This summer we sold your condo and moved here. That was only the beginning of all the changes in our lives.”
“I know.”
“Then Junior started getting sassy, constantly moving around, letting us know he was there.”
“He—or she,” Jamie said with a grin.
“I’ll never forget the first time I felt him—or her—move.”
“I won’t, either,” Jamie said.
Rich smiled that lopsided grin of his that never failed to disarm her. “Everything’s changed, hasn’t it?” Once again his blue eyes brightened. “This child is part of you and me—the very best part of us both. Every time I think about him, I get all soft inside. I want to hold him in my arms and tell him how much his mother and I wanted him. Or her,” he added with a smile. “Enough to go to exorbitant measures.”