I can’t promise I’ll behave myself this time. It’s been a very long time for me.”
Her eyes widened. “It has?”
“I haven’t been with a woman since before Selena died.”
The stricken look on her face made his gut tighten. “Was this …? I mean … you don’t feel guilty, you don’t feel like …?”
“Do I feel like I betrayed my wife?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“No. It wasn’t about that. There was no woman that I wanted to be with. I’d dated casually and I had put that behind me. I was married for seven years and I still wanted the stability it offered. Yet I didn’t want to get married again, either. That didn’t leave me with a lot of options.”
“And then you got stuck with me,” she said, her smile sad now.
He shifted to his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “I didn’t want to get married again because my marriage was such a disaster in the end,” he said, finally saying what he’d never before voiced out loud. “Selena and I no longer shared a bed, or much of anything else. There was no way for me to reach her anymore, and I stopped trying. Then she was killed in the car accident while I was away on business. I wasn’t even there to hold her hand while she died. It was my job to protect her, and I didn’t.”
“Oh, Max.” She buried her face in his chest as he cupped the back of her head, stroking her hair. “You couldn’t have protected her from that.”
“I should have been there for her. At the very least I could have done that. I could have tried harder to make her happy.”
“If she wouldn’t talk to you there was nothing you could do to make her. She chose not to share with you.”
“One person cannot bear all the blame when a marriage dissolves. She was fragile, and life forced her to endure things that would have wounded a much stronger person. I had a duty to my wife that I didn’t fulfill.”
Her expression turned fierce, a golden spark lighting her eyes. She put her hand on his cheek. “We have a duty to each other, Max. To make this work. I promise I’ll never close up like that on you. I won’t freeze you out. We’ll always talk.”
He kissed her softly on the corner of her lips, then more firmly as he rolled her underneath him. The feeling that swelled in his chest when she made that promise was far too much, far too intense. It shouldn’t matter. His relationship with Alison was about passion, and their baby. Nothing more. Emotions simply didn’t enter the equation.
But that simple vow kept pounding through him as he made love to her, fueled his desire for her. And when she cried out his name during her orgasm it pulled feelings from his hardened heart that he’d no longer imagined himself capable of.
“YOUR belly is starting to show.” Maximo put his arms around Alison from behind and caressed her bare midsection. She had been examining herself in the mirror in the master suite, sucking in her expanding stomach.
She swatted at his hand. “Just what every woman wants to hear!”
“It’s sexy.” He nuzzled her neck and kissed the hollow just beneath her ear. “You must know how sexy I think you are.”
She knew. Maximo had spent all night showing her just how sexy he thought she was. It had been a revelation. She’d discovered a whole, huge part of herself she hadn’t even known existed. A part of herself she’d spent far too long suppressing. She’d given her control over to Maximo for a while, and it had been freeing in a way she’d never imagined it could be. And now that they were out of bed she had her control back, and her heart was still intact. She could do this. She could maintain her independence and have a relationship with him. She wasn’t going to love him, or need him in any way beyond the physical.
“The feeling is definitely mutual.” She turned and wound her arms around his neck and traced his squared jaw with her fingertip. A tidal wave of possessiveness crashed over her. He was so very handsome. And he was hers. “I’m going to hold you to that forsaking all others bit in the marriage vows.”
“I will keep my vows, Alison. Why take them otherwise?”
“Millions of people make the same vows all the time. It doesn’t guarantee the promise will be kept.”
“It may surprise you to know that I’m familiar with the issues people face in marriage.”
She winced. “Sorry, but I told you I’d talk to you if I had issues. I just wanted to let you know I was feeling possessive.”
He offered her a tight smile. “I appreciate that. Maybe if Selena had talked to me we wouldn’t have grown so far apart.” He moved away from her and walked to the closet, pulling out a T-shirt and shrugging it over his head. “Of course, even saving our marriage wouldn’t have changed anything in the end.”
“You couldn’t have saved her if you were there, Max. It was an accident. It wouldn’t have changed anything. You did what you could in your marriage. It isn’t your fault that she wouldn’t talk to you.”
He shook his head. “She depended on me. I should have tried harder. Instead I got frustrated. I worked more. I should warn you that I’m not a very good husband. I’m not good at reading emotions. I travel a lot. I get absorbed with my business.”
She put her hand on his arm. “You’re a good man, Maximo. You’re going to be a good husband, and a wonderful father. In my line of work I’ve dissolved more marriages than I care to think about, and then, at the Children’s Advocacy Center I saw a lot of men who were lousy husbands and fathers. You’re not like them.”
“You say that, Alison, and I think you even mean it, but you’ve only known me for three weeks. Selena had seven years to grow disenchanted with me.”
“I think all marriages can lose their luster if you let them,” she said firmly. “But we’re getting married for a reason.”
“The baby.” He put his hands over her rounded belly and rested her palm over them.
“Yes. That reason is never going to go away. We’ll always have our child in common.”
“And that’s enough for you?”
She gave him a level stare, her eyes never wavering from his. “It has to be, doesn’t it?”
He nodded firmly. Decidedly. “Yes.”
“Then it is. We’re going to make this work for our child. We’re going to make a family. That’s all that matters. When I make my vows I’ll keep them.”
Maximo ignored the tightening sensation in his chest. Ignored the voice in his head berating him for allowing this woman to settle for so much less than she deserved. “Then you would be in the minority.”
She shrugged one delicate shoulder. “I’m used to that by now. I was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin until last night, remember?” She gave him a sly
