her with when he’d arrived at her apartment. She felt both hot and cold at the same time, and knew it was nerves that made her feel vaguely ill.
Was she doing the right thing? She was agreeing to a loveless marriage for the sake of making a baby. Yet, as she thought of her baby niece and imagined a baby of her own, she shoved all doubts from her mind.
She swallowed hard as the justice of the peace cleared his throat and began the ceremony that would make Chance and Lana man and wife.
No traditional wedding gown and tux for this couple. Lana wore a pale pink dress and Chance wore a brown suit that emphasized the golden streaks in his hair and the deep green of his eyes.
They had invited no family members to see their exchange of vows. Both of them understood their wedding was not a cause for celebration, but rather a bargain made between two consenting adults. A business deal of sorts.
“Are you sure about this?” Chance asked beneath his breath as the justice of the peace spoke of commitment and the bonds of matrimony. She hesitated only a moment, then nodded.
One corner of Chance’s mouth turned up and for just a moment his eyes sparkled with amusement. “And you promise me your daddy is not going to come after me with a shotgun when this is all over?”
Grateful for his smile, she quickly returned it and felt an easing of the tension between them. “I promise,” she replied.
She had spent the most difficult hour of her life the day before with her mother and father, telling them she was marrying Chance in order to help him gain his inheritance. She didn’t tell them what she intended to get out of the arrangement. She felt a little guilty in that she suspected her parents assumed this would be a marriage in name only for the sole purpose of helping Chance.
Even knowing this marriage was hardly a marriage at all, Lana couldn’t help the way her heart thundered as the justice of the peace spoke the words that bound her, at least temporarily, to Chance.
Practically in the blink of an eye, the brief ceremony was over and Chance was instructed to kiss his bride. Again Lana’s heart bumped against her ribs as it beat too fast, too hard.
He bent his head and she closed her eyes. His lips barely brushed against hers, a brief dance of warmth there only a second, then gone.
“Let’s get out of here,” he murmured.
Lana chided herself for her momentary disappointment. What had she expected? That he’d wrap his arms around her, gaze deeply into her eyes, then kiss her with a passion that would steal her breath away? Not in this lifetime, she chided herself, and certainly not in this marriage.
“We need to get over to Walter Bishop’s office and give him a copy of the marriage certificate,” Chance said the moment they left.
They got into Chance’s sports car and headed for the lawyer’s office. Lana tried to think of something, anything, to say, but Chance’s silence and his stony expression deterred her.
She hadn’t asked him about girlfriends. Was it possible he had a special somebody back in Wichita? He’d said he never intended to get married, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a significant other.
She frowned. If he did have somebody special in his life, why wasn’t she sitting in this car with him now? She suddenly realized she knew little about the man she had just married.
She’d known him as an angry, troubled sixteen-year-old who had been sent to the Coltons for a year of foster care in an effort to cool down the heat between him and his father. But Lana didn’t really know what kind of man Chance had become in the intervening years.
“This will just take a minute,” Chance said as he pulled up to the curb before Bishop’s law office. “You want to come in or wait here?”
“I’ll wait here,” she said, then hurriedly added, “unless you’d like me to come in.”
He frowned. “I’ll be right back.” He got out of the car and disappeared into the building without a backward glance.
Lana stared down at the bouquet in her lap and tried to still the nerves that still jangled inside her. She’d performed her end of the bargain and she assumed that later tonight Chance would do his part to fulfill his end of their pact.
Tonight she was going to make love with Chance. Tonight she was going to make love for the very first time in her life. Again a cold wave swept through her at the same time a flush of heat rose inside. She had never been so nervous in her entire life.
Think about the end result, she told herself. Don’t be nervous, just concentrate on the fact that nine months from tonight you might be holding a beautiful baby of your own. Her heart swelled at the thought.
Lana had always wanted children, but since her niece’s birth her want had grown into something much bigger. She was a nurturer at heart, and longed to nurture her own child.
She jumped as Chance opened his car door and slid back behind the wheel. “Everything all right?” she asked.
“Fine. Walter says it will take several weeks for everything to be signed, sealed and delivered. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me at the ranch.”
It was just after two in the afternoon when they pulled into the Reilly ranch. Immediately Chance disappeared down the hall and into the bedroom, and Lana stood uncertainly in the kitchen, wondering what would happen next.
Would he want to make love right away? With the midday sun shining through the windows? Her cheeks burned at the very thought. She’d certainly prefer the darkness of night for her first foray into the act of lovemaking.
She whirled around as he came back into the kitchen, surprised to see that he had changed out of his suit and into a pair of worn jeans and a black T-shirt.
“I’m going to do a little work out in the barn,” he said, his gaze not quite meeting hers. “I’ll be back in later.” Before the words had completely left his mouth he was gone, disappearing out the back door.
Lana remained standing in the center of the kitchen for a long moment. She knew it was ridiculous to feel neglected, to feel cast aside and unloved.
She was unloved, at least as far as Chance Reilly was concerned. She was a necessity in his life at the moment and it was stupid to get her feelings hurt just because he’d hightailed it out of the house to work in the barn on their wedding day.
She went into the bedroom—the master bedroom where she would be spending the night with Chance. She’d spent the day before bringing more of her things over from her apartment, and Chance had spent part of the day transforming the room from Sarge’s to his own.
A new multicolored bedspread covered crisp new sheets. The spread was a splash of color in an otherwise colorless room, but she knew it was Chance’s need to brand the room with something of his own.
The top of the dresser held an array of items—several bottles of cologne, small change and a pack of matches from a café in Topeka, Kansas, with a phone number written in pencil across the front.
Lana was certain it was a woman’s number. Chance probably had a woman waiting for him in every city when he traveled. And why wouldn’t he? He was handsome and incredibly sexy and had just enough bad-boy
