A Marriage Made in Texas (The Brothers Kincaid) (9 page)

Gabe took a long pull of his beer before setting it down and looking at her. “He left. Maybe he got sick of watching you and lover boy there cozy up to each other. I know I did.”

Astonished, she stared at him. “We were not cozying up to each other. The reverse, if anything. Jay couldn’t have thought that.”

“I don’t know what he thought, but I can tell you it’s been giving me some bad moments.” His mouth thinned into a grim line. “You’re not thinking about taking that slime bastard back, are you?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said crossly. “Why would Jay leave like that?”

“You spent the last twenty minutes oblivious to anyone but your ex-husband. What’s the poor sucker
supposed to think?” He took another sip, closed his eyes and rolled his head. “Well, at least I don’t have to go break Barry’s face. Again.”

Gabe was exaggerating. Surely Jay didn’t think she and Barry… Yet obviously something was bothering him, or he wouldn’t have left without even waiting to speak to her.

“I need you to do something for me, Gabe. Will you take the girls home and put them to bed? I’m going to find Jay and clear this up.”

“Yeah, I’ll take care of Roxy and Mel.” He paused, then added, “Good luck. You’re gonna need it.”

J
AY LEFT
the Scarlet Parrot for a very good reason. If he’d had to watch Gail and her ex-husband gazing into each others’ eyes for one more damn minute, he’d have thrown up. So he left.

He picked up his glass and took another sip of whiskey, feeling the burn as it went down. He rarely drank hard liquor, but tonight seemed like an appropriate night for it. Cradling the glass in his palm, he slumped down and leaned back against the couch cushions.

Fluffy laid her head on his thigh and gave a heartfelt sigh when he scratched behind her ears. Fudge, with her head on Fluffy’s rump, wagged her tail, but was apparently too comfortable to demand equal treatment. The dogs weren’t supposed to lie on the furniture, but right then he didn’t give a shit about
dog hair on the fabric. Besides, he liked having the company.

No, he was a lot more concerned about the fact that he’d fallen for a woman who, apparently, hadn’t quite finished with her ex-husband.

Gail had sworn she didn’t want to get back together with Summers. Maybe he
was
overreacting. All she and her ex had done was hold hands. And gaze at each other. And totally ignore everyone else in the place.

Hoping to block that image, he poured more whiskey into the glass and took another drink. It didn’t help. Much. The doorbell rang. Fudge opened one eye, but Fluffy didn’t budge. “Some watchdogs you are,” he told them, and went to answer it.

He opened the door to Gail. Figuring it was her move, he didn’t speak.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

He shrugged and stepped aside.

She walked into the family room. Pausing by the couch, which the dogs still sprawled on, she looked down at the table. “Rough night?” she asked, gesturing at the partially empty whiskey bottle.

“It didn’t start out that way,” he said, and took a seat on the couch. “Want a drink?”

“No, I want to know why you left the Scarlet Parrot. I was supposed to meet you there, remember?”

“I remember.” He took a drink. If he didn’t watch it, he’d be drunk. He took another sip. At this point getting drunk seemed preferable to the current con
versation. “You’re the one who appeared to have forgotten that.”

She sat down beside him. “Is that what this is all about? You’re upset because I was talking to Barry and didn’t rush right over when you came in?”

“No, Gail. All this—” he waved his glass and some of the liquid sloshed out, dripping onto his pants “—isn’t because you were talking to your ex-husband. It’s because you were totally wrapped up in your ex-husband. Hell, there could have been a fire and the two of you wouldn’t have noticed.”

“I—we— He’s Roxy and Mel’s father. I have to talk to him. You’re being ridiculous.”

“Yeah? Then why are you twisting your hands together like you do when you’re nervous?” Her hands stilled and he smiled grimly. He got up and with some difficulty, managed to convince Fudge and Fluffy to go out in the back yard.

A moment later, he came back in. She was sitting just where he’d left her, hands clasped together on her knees and eyes brooding.

He sat down again, careful to keep some distance between them. “Let’s get this over with. Then you can go home and I’ll finish off this whiskey and feel really bad in the morning.”

She gripped his arm. “Do you honestly think I came over here to tell you I’m getting back with Barry?”

“The thought crossed my mind.” He started to take another drink but she snatched the glass out of his hand and set it on the table with a bang.

“Stop that. You’re only making matters worse.”

That was a matter of opinion. He found the numbing effect of the liquor quite pleasant. A lot more so than thinking about Gail and her ex together again. “So what was that deep conversation about? Your kids?”

Her gaze faltered and fell. “No. Barry apologized for what he did during our marriage. For walking out, among other things. He wants us to try again.” Her eyes lifted to Jay’s. “I told him no.”

He searched her face, looking for answers. She wouldn’t out and out lie to him. But Jay wondered if there wasn’t more to it than that. “And now you’re regretting you turned him down.”

“Of course I’m not!”

“You’re still tied up with him. Because of your daughters, you always will be.” Gail and Barry shared a bond that would never break. Because Barry was her children’s father. “A part of you is bound to be thinking how much easier your life would be if you just went back to him.” He closed his eyes and added, “Roxy would be happy. I’m sure Mel would be too.”

Gail took his hand and squeezed it. “Jay, look at me.”

He opened his eyes. Her eyes were blue, and troubled. Earnest. Honest. He touched her hair, so blond, fair and pretty, skimmed his fingers over her cheek before his hand dropped away. “Why is it I can’t look at you without wanting you?”

She smiled ruefully. “I don’t know, but I’ve wondered the same thing about you.”

“Barry wants you back.”

“I know he
says
he does. But I don’t want him back, Jay. I don’t trust him, and I don’t love him. I made sure he believed me. Do you?”

“I don’t know.” He wasn’t thinking clearly, and with Gail so close, smelling so good, looking so…sweet, damn it, he didn’t know what to do. “I want to.”

“Then believe me.” She kissed him, slid her tongue inside his mouth, put her arms around him. Pulled him to the floor with her.

“I want you,” she said, her voice low and husky, tempting. “Only you. Make love to me, Jay.”

So he did. And he buried his reservations, just as he buried himself in that soft, yielding body.

G
AIL STARED AT THE WAND
in her hand, the plus sign glowing like a neon sign. Positive. She was pregnant. Which, since she’d been throwing up every morning for the past four days, shouldn’t have come as such a shock to her. Yet it had.

How could she be pregnant? They’d used birth control faithfully. The condom hadn’t broken. No possible way should she be pregnant.

She looked at the wand again.

Still positive.

What was this, some kind of cosmic joke? Surely once in a lifetime had been enough.

Thank God she’d taken a sick day. She couldn’t possibly have concentrated on work. Not when her world was busy falling apart. She told herself not to be overly dramatic, but the lecture didn’t help much.

Barry had the girls this weekend. Gail had a date with Jay tonight. He’d told her he had a surprise for her and to come to his house. She’d bet her surprise topped his.

She crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over her head. Maybe if she went back to sleep, some brilliant answer to her problem would occur to her.

Yeah, right,
she thought as she dozed off.
If I was that lucky, I wouldn’t be pregnant.

L
ATER THAT EVENING
, Gail stood on Jay’s doorstep for a solid ten minutes, trying to get up the nerve to ring it. She’d considered telling him she was sick and canceling, but first off, he’d have come over to see her regardless, and secondly, there was no point putting off telling him the news. Waiting wouldn’t make her any less pregnant.

He’s a decent man,
she reminded herself.
He’s not going to murder you.
Sucking in a deep breath, she jabbed her finger on the bell.

Jay opened the door, pulled her inside and kissed her before she could say a word. Just like every time he kissed her, her knees wobbled, her blood heated, and her mind turned to mush. Before she could weaken, she put her hand on his chest and turned her head. “Jay, we have to talk.”

His arms encircling her waist loosely, he kissed her cheek. “Okay, but can’t I kiss you first?”

“No, because then we’ll wind up in bed, and we have to talk.”

He let her go, then put his fingers under her chin and tipped it up, studying her. “You look a little pale. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”
Just pregnant, that’s all.

“Are you hungry?” He took her hand, pulled her with him into the kitchen. “I thought I’d cook for us. I’ve got chili simmering. It should be ready in a little while. Do you want a beer or a glass of wine first?”

Touched that he’d gone to so much trouble, she started to say so. Then the spicy smell hit her nostrils, strong and overwhelming. Her stomach rolled, twisted on a wave of nausea. She clapped her hand over her mouth and made a dash for the bathroom.

She made it, barely. After heaving up the crackers she’d eaten earlier, she felt a little better. During pregnancy, she remembered, certain smells had always gotten to her, no matter the time of day. One more sign, as if she needed any more.

She splashed cold water on her face, rinsed her mouth out and used some of Jay’s mouthwash. Peering into the mirror, she combed her fingers through her hair. She looked, she thought, like one of the walking dead in the horror stories Roxy loved.
Great, just terrific.

Jay was waiting by the door when she emerged, arms crossed, one shoulder leaning against the wall. “I take it you don’t like chili.” Though he smiled when he said it, he looked concerned. “I turned it off. If I’d known, I’d have made something else.”

“No, I love chili. Ordinarily. It was very sweet of you.” Still a bit unsteady, she asked, “Can we sit down? In the den?” No way would she risk the kitchen again.

“Sure.” He put his arm around her and led her to the couch, as if afraid she’d keel over without support. Then he sat beside her, took her hands in his and kissed them. His gaze met hers, concerned, questioning. “Tell me what’s wrong. Are you sick?”

She shook her head. Took a deep breath and just told him, straight out. “I’m pregnant.”

His expression turned blank as he stared at her. “You’re—you’re pregnant?”

“Pregnant.” She nodded. “Yes.”

He dropped her hands and got up, pacing away a moment before returning to stand in front of her. She braced herself, wondering if he’d yell at her, blame her, like Barry had done when she told him about Roxy, all those years ago.

“We’ve been using birth control. Every time.”

Though he didn’t raise his voice, didn’t sound accusatory, she felt a twinge of defensiveness all the same. “I know.” She lifted a shoulder. “One of them must have leaked. Or something.”

“I don’t remember—” he began, then shook his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “No, how it happened doesn’t matter at this point. Have you taken a test? How sure are you?”

“I took a home pregnancy test this morning. It was positive. If you want, I’ll take another test, but I’ve got all the symptoms. I’m late, my breasts are tender, and the kicker, of course, is the morning sickness.” She made a frustrated gesture, waving a hand. “I’ve been throwing up for the past four days, every morning, regular as clockwork. I’m sorry, Jay, but I’m sure.”

He blew out a breath and sat down again. Resting his forearms on his thighs, he shook his head and muttered, “Pregnant. Wow.”

Her throat tightened so she could hardly breathe.
“I’m not trying to screw up your life, but I thought you should know. So we can talk about it and decide…what we’re going to do.”

He turned his head to look at her, lifted an eyebrow. “Do? That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

If possible, her heart sank another level. “I can’t have an abortion. I won’t.”

He straightened and glared at her, for the first time showing some expression. Mostly irritation. “I wouldn’t expect you to. Is that what you thought?”

She tossed a hand in the air. “How was I to know how you’d react? We don’t even know each other all that well. We’ve only been dating a few weeks.”

“We’ve known each other for five years.”

“Casually. We never talked about anything like this.”

He sighed and leaned against the back of the couch, his legs stretched before him. “Come here.” He put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her next to him, tucking her head onto his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”

He held her silently, offering comfort. It worried her that he could make her feel better by doing nothing more than holding her in his arms. Tears stung her eyes. Blinking rapidly, she willed them away. Tears wouldn’t help now. Nothing would. “What are we going to do?”

“The obvious solution.” His hand skimmed up her arm, soothingly. “We get married.”

Gail jerked herself out of Jay’s arms and stared at
him. “Get married? Are you crazy? You can’t be serious.”

“Damn right I’m serious. I don’t joke about things like marriage.” He’d never asked a woman to marry him. Not Carla, not anyone. Of course, he hadn’t exactly asked Gail. Maybe that’s why she was so bent out of shape.

“I want you to marry me, Gail.” And if part of him wasn’t so sure about that, then he’d just have to deal with it later. Marrying Gail was obviously the right thing to do, and he would do it.

“Jay.” Her expression changed from shocked and surprised to touched. “It’s really sweet of you, and I appreciate you asking me very much, but you don’t want to marry me. You’re not in love with me.”

“Are you sure about that?” Because he wasn’t.

She frowned. “Well, if you are, you sure haven’t mentioned it before now.”

He touched the back of his fingers to her cheek, smiled. She had some color back now, as if arguing with him had steadied her. Now that the first shock had passed, he was beginning to get used to the idea. Besides, he was a practical man, and in this situation, marriage was the only logical course of action. But he owed it to both of them to be as truthful as he could be.

“I don’t know about love. I’ve had a couple of serious relationships in the past, thought I was in love, but they never worked out.” He’d thought, after Carla, that he simply wasn’t cut out to be married. To have a wife, kids. Looked like he’d been wrong.

He picked up Gail’s hand, rubbed her wrist with his thumb. “I care about you, Gail. I want to be with you.” He smiled and added, “I’m damn well addicted to you.”

She patted his knee with her free hand. “That’s sex, not love.”

“Great sex.”

“Good sex isn’t enough to base a marriage on.”

“It’s fantastic sex, and it sure doesn’t hurt.”

She gave him a dirty look, but didn’t speak.

“I care about you,” he repeated. “You care about me. And the baby is mine. My responsibility.”

“You don’t have to marry me to take responsibility,” she insisted. “There are plenty of ways to be responsible without getting married.”

“So what’s your solution? If you don’t want to marry me, what do you suggest we do?”

“I’m not going to keep you from your child, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I’ll have the baby and we’ll figure something out. Later, when we need to. I won’t show for a few months, at least.”

Her chin had that determined tilt to it. She’d taken a stand and would stubbornly adhere to it. He’d seen it before, when she felt strongly about something. Time to hit her with the big guns. “And what do you plan to tell Roxy and Mel?
Oh, gee, girls, I’m having my lover’s illegitimate child, and no, we’re not getting married.”

A flood of color rushed to her cheeks, but she answered steadily enough. “I’ll think of a way to tell them. Women have babies alone every day.”

Not my baby,
he thought. “This isn’t New York or L.A., Gail. You’re not a celebrity in a town where your sex life is a continuous scandal, and no one cares if the father of your child is a sperm bank or a movie star.” She shook her head, started to speak, but he held up a hand and continued, “You’re living in a small town on the Texas coast. They don’t have the same attitude toward illegitimate kids…and their mothers.”

“News flash, Jay, this isn’t the fifties. No one’s going to think a thing about it.”

“How sure are you about that? Sure enough to risk hurting your daughters?”

“I—of course I don’t want to hurt the girls.” She jammed her fingers in her hair as if she wanted to pull it out. Repeated desperately, “We can’t get married.”

“Think, Gail. Do you really want Roxy and Mel to have to face the gossip? About their mother? You’ve lived here all your life. You know what it’s like. And you know what label they’ll slap on our child. Bastard,” he said deliberately. “Is that what you want?”

She closed her eyes, put her head in her hands. Long moments later, she looked at him. “I’ve never told you about my marriage.”

“Not much,” he said, wondering where she was heading. Her hands were clenched in fists, resting on her knees. “I know your ex is a jerk, and I know he wants you back. What else do I need to know?”

“I was pregnant with Roxy when Barry and I married.” She shot him a wry smile. “Barry wasn’t
thrilled about it. At first, he went ballistic, but he did marry me, eventually. I was young, stupid, in love. I thought it would work. It didn’t.” She gave a humorless laugh. “He made a pass at Cat just two weeks after the wedding. I let him convince me he hadn’t meant anything by it, that Cat had overreacted.” Her hand passed over her eyes. “God, I can’t believe I was so dumb.”

“You loved him, you wanted it to work. That’s not dumb.” He hated that the bastard had hurt her so badly. No wonder she was gun-shy.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, shrugging the would-be comfort away. “I have my daughters, and Barry can’t hurt me anymore. But after my marriage ended, I swore I’d never again marry anyone for the wrong reasons.” Her gaze lifted to his. “So you see why I can’t marry you, Jay. It wouldn’t work. I have first-hand experience with a shotgun wedding.”

“No one is holding a gun to my head, Gail. I want to marry you.”

She patted his hand. “No, you don’t. You feel obligated to marry me, which is a whole different subject. I’m trying to save us both a lot of heartache.”

“You’re being stubborn and unrealistic.” He didn’t just feel obligated, he was obligated. “Would it be so bad, to marry me?”

She stared at him a long moment and then her mouth lifted in a half smile. “No,” she said softly. “I think if we did get married I’d be a very lucky woman.” Her gaze dropped and she shook her head. “Everyone will say I…trapped you.”

“Both of us know that’s not true. What else is going on?”

She was silent for a long moment, biting her lip. Jay put his arm around her and pulled her close, against his side. He kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. “Come on,” he said softly in her ear. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“The girls.” She smiled sadly. “Well, Roxy. She hasn’t been pleased about us dating. Can you imagine what she’ll do if I tell her I’m going to marry you? And then eight months later, we have a new baby.”

He couldn’t deny Roxy was a problem. But was it as bad as Gail thought, or was Gail using Roxy’s resistance as an excuse? “You said you thought she’d come around. You were willing to keep dating me until she did. She doesn’t hate me, does she?”

“No, but this will crush her hopes about her father and me.”

“She has to accept sometime that you aren’t getting back with her father. And you have another child to think of besides Roxy and Mel.” He laid his hand on her stomach. “Our child.”

“I’m thinking about all of them. That doesn’t mean I know what I should do.”

“I think we could be happy together. You, me, the girls. The baby.”

“Do you? Really?” She gazed into his eyes solemnly. “Or are you just saying that because you want to do the right thing, and you’re convinced that’s marrying me.”

“Do you believe I’d lie to you about something so important?”

“Barry did,” she said, as if the words were forced from her.

“I’m not Barry. And I’m not lying. I think we could all be happy. Together. If you’re willing to try.”

“I hope you’re right.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Their tongues met, tangled. She moaned, leaning toward him as the kiss grew hotter, more urgent. She moved closer, or maybe he pulled her so her breasts lay against his chest.