She looked kind of pitiful, like she might cry some more. “I hate lying to them.”
“It’s not a lie,” he insisted.
The voice of Mary Baldwin rose up inside him. She would definitely think omitting several pertinent facts constituted a lie. He wondered how well she would take the idea of him marrying her daughter.
Matt dialed the number and held out the phone to Cathie.
“I can’t,” she said, shaking again. “You do it.”
He pulled her against his side, so she wouldn’t run away, as Mary came on the line. It was a good thing one of them could tell not-quite-lies so well. That skill was going to come in handy before they were done. “Hello, Mary.”
“Matt? I hope you have some news for me. How’s my girl?”
Here we go. No time like the present. “She’s fine, but she’s going to be my girl. I finally talked her into marrying me.”
No lie there. It had taken a great deal of talking to convince her.
“What?”
“You heard me. She’s going to marry me.”
There were shrieks from the other end of the phone, then tears, then laugher. He’d forgotten how loud the Baldwins could be when they were happy. Before long, Cathie’s parents were both on the line. They didn’t offer a single objection to entrusting their only daughter to Matt, much to his surprise. They welcomed him warmly back into the family, claiming that in their eyes, he’d always been one of them. They’d just make it official now.
“Matt, I need a moment alone on the phone with my little girl, if you don’t mind,” Mary said. “Especially if we’re going to pull off a wedding in three weeks!”
Matt handed over the phone. Cathie pulled her knees to her chest and the phone to her ear.
“Yes,” she said. “If Daddy performs the service, Brett can walk me down the aisle… I love Grandma’s wedding dress. It’s perfect… Whatever decorations are put up for Christmas at the church will be fine. It’s one less thing to worry about… No, just a small thing at home afterward. We just want everyone there.”
She was doing fine. She and Mary would have to work so hard to pull off the wedding so quickly, Mary would hardly have time to ask questions.
And then he heard Mary’s voice say, “You love him, don’t you?”
Oh, hell.
The whole plan would fall apart. Cathie wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.
It got quiet for a minute. He wished he’d taken more time to convince her this was the right thing to do and that it was no big deal. Hell, the house was so big and he worked such crazy hours, he’d hardly ever see her and the baby. And his debt to the Baldwins would be paid.
Cathie looked up at him like he was the only solid thing in her world at the moment. She put a hand to her still-flat stomach, and he held his breath, waiting to hear what she’d say. If she’d just think of the promises he’d made her. He’d meant every one of them. He would be here for her and her baby, no matter what. They could make this work.
You love him, don’t you?
“I do,” Cathie whispered.
Matt nodded, telling her with his eyes that it was the right thing to do, and then he could breathe again, hadn’t even been aware that he’d stopped. Life was so strange sometimes.
A moment later, the conversation was over. Matt took the phone from Cathie’s trembling hand and put it back on the table at his side, then faced Cathie again. “You okay?”
“My mother asked me if I loved you, and I told her that I do. For what you’re doing,” she rushed on breathlessly. “For me and the baby. I do love you.”
“I know.”
He understood exactly what she meant, but found himself remembering the last time he’d heard those words. They’d come from her then, too. She’d been sixteen and mad as hell.
I love you, Matt.
He’d thrown it back in her face, as if the words hadn’t meant a thing to him, as if she didn’t, either. She’d been wrong, of course. Not that it was so surprising she might think she loved him. She loved so many people. Everyone. Nearly everything. She was extravagant with it, as if there was an abundance of it inside of her, and it was nothing to add one more person to the list of those she loved.
It seemed to come so easily to her, too. Love. It was one of the things about her that had fascinated the crazy, half-wild boy he used to be.
He’d always thought she was begging to get hurt, by loving so easily and so generously. Which, no doubt, was what had happened. She’d fallen for some guy who was completely undeserving of her. It still made him furious, just thinking about it.
He wanted to tell her there was nothing to love. That it was all an illusion, bound to do nothing but hurt her even more, if she persisted in believing in it still.
But her words rolled around oddly inside his body, rattling around his brain, floating around in his chest and the pit of his stomach.
Just words.
They’d scared him so much all those years ago, and somehow sounded so good to him now.
Chapter Four
Matt reverted back to form so quickly and so completely, Cathie thought she might have dreamt that crazy twenty-four hours in which he’d magically appeared in response to her hastily scribbled prayer, heard all her secrets, then talked her into marrying him.
If not for the phone calls from her mother as they planned a wedding—hers and Matt’s—for the day after Christmas, she wouldn’t have believed it actually happened.
Matt became the polished, confident businessman once again, orchestrating their marriage as he might a business deal. Cathie talked to his secretary as often as she spoke to him, and when she did, he was fast-talking, making decisions in a split second, trying to pay for everything and handle everything.
He arranged to have her things moved into his house after the wedding, wanted her to have an entirely new wardrobe, which seemed ridiculous until he pointed out that it couldn’t look like he wasn’t providing for his wife. She swallowed her pride and spent his money as sparingly as possible, so that if she needed to look like Mrs. Matthew Monroe on occasion, she could do it without embarrassing him.
Matt insisted that she see an obstetrician, the best in town, a woman who came highly recommended by three of his female staff members.
He drove her to the appointment himself—the only time she saw him in that three weeks—and played the attentive husband-to-be perfectly. She tried not to catch her breath every time he got too close, tried not to let those old dreams of her and Matt, together and in love, seep back into her head. How would she be able to breathe once they got married and he was nearby all the time?
The doctor was friendly and thorough. Alone in the exam room with her, Cathie asked for an AIDS test and one for sexually transmitted diseases. A man had gotten her pregnant, after all. She had to consider he might have given her something else, too. The doctor merely nodded, promising to call with the results. She said the baby was just fine and calculated Cathie’s due date as July 15.
Matt wanted her to see his house, had offered to let her make any changes she wanted, but the house was the last thing on her mind.
She had to figure out what she was going to do. Try to slip into his life as unobtrusively as possible? Be grateful for what he was doing and for the fact that she’d