ripped apart when things don’t go right. To be honest—”
A log tumbled to the hearth, sending sparks shooting up the chimney. Mac leaned forward as if he were going to promptly go over and tend the fire, but Kelly was afraid she’d never get him talking this way again. “Please. Finish saying whatever was on your mind.”
“Well, you might find this hard to believe, but this marriage you and I put together is the first one that ever appealed to me.”
“You have to be kidding. Why?”
“Because I think we’ve got freedom in this relationship that other couples never have. We can make our own rules. We don’t have to do one thing that doesn’t work for the two of us. You want to do the whole house in pink—be—lieve me, Kelly, I don’t care, go for it. If you don’t like anything, all you have to do is say. I’m sure we’ll have to compromise on all kinds of things—but neither of us have love or emotions tangled up in this. We can be honest with each other.”
Kelly fell silent, studying her new husband. She could have guessed Mac would value honesty and freedom in a relationship. With his heavy responsibilities, he’d go nuts with a high-maintenance mate—or even a friend—who demanded constant attention. And as always, his expression was self-contained, those wonderful dark eyes of his unreadable. He didn’t seem lonely. Yet his settling for so little sounded terribly lonely to her. “You don’t believe in love, Mac?” she asked softly.
“Sure. I believe in all kinds of love. Love, loyalty, family, taking care of your own—”
“But not the other kind of love? Between a man and a woman?”
Mac finished the last of his scotch in a gulp, and met her eyes squarely. “I believe the power of hormones can be a hell of a lot of fun—but if one of the things you’re worried about is whether I’ll be faithful to you, rest your mind. I can’t say I’m fond of a celibate lifestyle, but right now...hell, it seems to me we both have our hands full and will for some time. It’d go against my grain to cheat while I was wearing a wedding ring—and whether we’re sleeping together doesn’t change that. However...”
“However...?”
“However... Chad could come back. Or you could find someone. So could I. That’s why we worked out all those prenuptial legal papers, to protect you and the baby no matter what happens to us. There’s no such thing as an overnight divorce, Kelly, but we’ve made it as easy as possible to sever the tie if either of us wants to. As long as we’re careful to build this right, we won’t have the hurt and ange and emotional baggage that usually goes with a split up Either we make this work or we’ve lost nothing. We’ve still done the right thing for the child. We’ve still done the right thing to protect you at this moment in time.”
And doing the right thing was obviously a critical thing to her husband, Kelly mused, but there was still a gaping hole in this discussion. He’d asked for nothing from her—except honesty. Maybe Mac didn’t want her to have any real place in his life, but she was living here now. There had to be needs she could fill, things she could do for him to at least balance all the things he was doing for her.
But before she could say anything else, she heard a clock chiming in the front hall. One, two, three...abruptly she realized that the clock was going all the way to twelve. In seconds it was going to be the new year.
Mac was diverted by the clock chimes, too, and suddenly stood up with a chuckle. “It looks like we’re both running on empty, but do you have enough milk there to toast the New Year?”
“You bet.” She leaned forward to grab her milk glass.
“We made it through one incredibly unusual day—thanks to the bride’s willingness to kick the groom in the shins when he forgot his lines. Did I remember to say thank you for that?”
“No, but, um...you could pay me back now with a little help.”
His eyebrows lifted. “What?”
She rolled her eyes with an embarrassed laugh. “I was trying to stand up for this toast. Only I think I’m stuck. should have known better than to sit in this chair—the cushions are so deep, and the only thing I can get gracefully out of these days is a straight chair. I feel like an ungainly elephant—”
Before she could even try to scooch forward again, Mac swiftly hooked both her hands and pulled her up. The serious mood was obviously broken, Kelly thought, and they could talk another time. Right now she just figured on toasting the New Year with him and then packing it in. But for just that instant when he helped her up, her protruding tummy grazed against his flat abdomen. And her hands...for some reason he didn’t release her hands for another whole millisecond. His grip was warm and strong, his touch sparking an electric rush in her pulse.
She’d felt the same sizzle when he’d kissed her at the wedding. She was positive, then and now, that she was imagining it. He was being kind. He’d frankly brought up sex with her, several times now, with the same ease he’d mentioned having macaroni and cheese for dinner. He thought she was in love with his brother. There wasn’t a single rational reason in the universe to think he felt an ounce of attraction for her.
And she didn’t. She really didn’t.
But for that miniscule second, the muscle in his jaw tightened and some kind of emotion flashed in his eyes. Something bleak and stark. Loneliness. Aloneness. As if he realized—as she did—that a normal bride and groom would never be ending their wedding night this way.
It was just an impulse, while he was already standing as close as a heartbeat, to wrap her arms around him. She didn’t want to give her new groom a stroke, and hugs weren’t part of their deal. Maybe a hug was presumptuous, but she didn’t care. That look of stark loneliness got to her. Everyone needed a plain old affectionate hug sometimes, the warmth of a connection to someone else. If he had a heart attack, then he’d just have to have a heart attack.
He stiffened like a poker when her arms curled around him.
But then he unbent.
Holy cow, did he unbend...
Three
Mac poured another mug of coffee—his fourth that morning—and carried it to the window. The sun hadn’t even thought about waking up until past eight. The horizon still had the pink-pearl luster of dawn, making the snowy landscape look as pretty and innocent as a Christmas card—but there’d sure been nothing innocent about the blizzard winds last night. He estimated there were two fresh feet of snow on a level, which wouldn’t be that hard to plow out, except that nothing was on a level. Some of the swirling, eddying drifts were taller than him.
With Kel pregnant, he got antsy at the thought of her being cut off from doctors and civilization, even if the city was as shut down as they were. Still, he had a pickup with a blade. He could have their country driveway cleared in a few hours, but for damn sure no one was going anywhere this morning.
Hearing the thump of a distant footfall from upstairs, Mac immediately spun around. The kitchen was lit up brighter than a hospital surgery. Granted, the teal blue counters and Italian-tile floor were a tad littered, but he’d been working like a dog. Four pans jostled for space on the stove, one for eggs, one for bacon, one for muffins and the last for pancakes. The table was crowded with lined-up boxes of cereal and bowls heaped with apples and oranges and melons—he’d been challenged to find space for silverware, particularly after he’d
