think I’m joking?” she demanded, all fake belligerence.
“Not for a minute,” Jonathon conceded. And the really pathetic things was, he was being honest. In this moment, watching her trying to cajole him into laughing, it was all too easy to imagine falling in love with her. Smart, funny, never taking herself too seriously. Wendy was the whole package. Men who wanted things like a wife and family were probably waiting in line for a woman like her. Too bad he wasn’t one of them.
“Just don’t forget why I’m doing this. This isn’t a favor to you. This isn’t because I’m a nice guy. Don’t romanticize me. Don’t forget, not even for a minute, why I’m here. Why I’m doing this.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her expression suddenly serious but a little bemused, as if she had no idea where he was going with this. “Remind me then. Why are you doing this?”
He was struck—not for the first time—that she wasn’t merely cute, but truly beautiful. With her swoopy little button nose and her pixie dimples, her face had more than its share of cuteness. But she was also lovely, with her dark—almost violet—blue eyes and her luminous skin. Her beauty had an ephemeral quality to it. Like a woman in a Maxfield Parrish painting.
He was so struck by her beauty that for a second, he forgot her question. Forgot that he was trying to direct this conversation. To remind her that he wasn’t some hero.
“I’m doing this for the same reason I’ve done everything else since I was eleven. I’m doing this because it serves my own goals. It serves FMJ.”
She gave him an odd look, as something almost like pity flickered across her expression. “If you didn’t want me to romanticize you, then maybe you shouldn’t have tried to give me a big nasty chunk of your fortune. So I’m going to reserve the right to think you’re not the heartless bastard you pretend to be.”
“You have to believe me when I tell you that everything I’ve done for you was for my own benefit. Keeping you in California was the best thing for FMJ. Marrying you is the best thing for FMJ. That’s the only reason I’m doing it.”
Finally she nodded. “Okay. If you want to keep insisting you’re so coldhearted, then I’ll try to remind myself as often as possible. We’ll start with the prenup, okay? We’ll ask Randy to rewrite it so I have to pay you twenty percent of my money. How does that sound?” She smiled as she asked, but it looked strained.
“Wendy—” he started.
“At the very least, we’ll put Randy out of his misery. We’ll go with the bare-bones prenup. Everyone walks away with what they had when they came into the marriage.”
He sighed. It wasn’t what he wanted. Not by a long shot. But he was starting to realize that when it came to Wendy, he wasn’t ever going to get what he wanted.
She paused at the door and looked over her shoulder, her forehead furrowed in thought. “The thing is, Jonathon, if you really were a heartless bastard, you wouldn’t have warned me off.”
The next few days passed in a blur of planning and activity. Wendy often felt as if her life was moving at double time while she was stuck at half speed. She’d felt like that ever since she’d gotten that fateful call about Bitsy, less than two weeks before. Her shock and grief were finally beginning to recede into the background. Though she no longer faced the daunting challenge of moving back to Texas, agreeing to marry Jonathon had created even more turmoil in her life.
True to his word, Jonathon managed to cram in considerable work on the proposal for the government contract, delegating things he normally would have handled himself. Ford and Kitty flew home immediately with their daughter, Ilsa. Matt and Claire arrived a few days later, having cut short their honeymoon, something Wendy still felt bad about. Claire insisted that seventeen days in a tropical paradise was enough for anyone and that she wouldn’t miss the wedding for anything. Her reassurances didn’t make Wendy feel any less guilty.
The Sunday before the wedding, she was still half-asleep watching a rerun of Dharma & Greg wishing Peyton seemed half as drowsy. Jonathon had eventually convinced her that she should move into his house. Since they were planning on being married for a year or more, he pointed out that people were unlikely to believe they were truly in love if they weren’t living together. The night before she’d pulled out her trusty suitcase and hoped to pack the bare essentials once Peyton fell asleep. If she could stay awake herself. She’d leave her other belongings for some later date.
She hadn’t slept well since… well, since taking Peyton, and her exhaustion was creeping up on her. Frankly, it had been all she could do to drag herself out of bed this morning. The middle-of-the-night feedings were just not her thing. She was sitting on the sofa, blearily rocking back and forth, wondering if she could get Babies “R” Us to deliver a rocking chair by the end of the day, when the doorbell rang.
It was a bad sign that it took her so long to identify the noise.
She set the bottle down on the side table, stumbled to her feet and pried the door open, praying that no one on the other side would expect coherent conversation.
She frowned at the sight of Kitty and Claire. She’d only known Claire for seven months, but the concern lining the other woman’s face was obvious in the crinkle between her brows. As if to distract from her frown, she thrust forward a pink bakery box with the Cutie Pies logo stamped on the top.
“We brought food!” Claire announced, her tone overly chipper. “We just flew in from Palo Verde this morning. I made this batch just before I left.”
Claire owned a diner in the small town of Palo Verde, a couple of hours away. Jonathon, Ford and Matt had grown up in Palo Verde. If Claire had baked whatever was in the box, she couldn’t wait to dive in. And if fate was kind at all, the box would be filled with the spicy, dark chocolate doughnuts that the diner was known for.
Kitty gave Wendy a once-over, then announced, “Since you’re obviously too tired to invite us in, why not just step aside.” She held out her hands. “Here, hand me the baby. You take the doughnuts. Please, eat some before I fight you for them.”
Mutely, Wendy handed the fussy Peyton over to Kitty.
Kitty Langley was the kind of woman who looked as if she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. The jewelry-store-heiress-turned-jewelry-designer had lived in New York until falling in love with and marrying Ford the previous year. How that woman could look glamorous while cradling a baby in her arms, Wendy didn’t know. But she did envy the skill, since she was pretty sure she herself looked as if she was recovering from the flu.
Wendy happily traded baby for doughnuts.
Though her arms ached from the hours of holding Peyton, the bone-deep weariness melted a bit as she sank her teeth into the dense buttermilk doughnut.
“I’m not sure why you came,” she muttered past a mouthful of heaven. “But, frankly, I no longer care. You can hold me at gunpoint. Rob me. Even take the baby. Just leave the doughnuts and I’ll be happy.”
Kitty stifled a smile as she pressed her bright red lips to the crown of Peyton’s head. “You’re in that too-exhausted-to-be-tired stage, aren’t you?”
After
