Surrogate and Wife

“This?” he asked archly.

“This.” She waved her hand back and forth between them. “If any kind of arrangement between us is going to work, we can’t have this kind of flirtatious banter.”

He raised an eyebrow, studying her with obvious humor. “Flirtatious banter? So you think I’m flirting with you?”

Despite his teasing manner, there was a spark of intensity deep in his gaze that unsettled her even more than his flirting.

Boundaries, she reminded herself. Get back to setting boundaries.

“I think you’ll flirt with any woman within earshot.” He didn’t seem insulted by the observation. Or perhaps he just didn’t see it as an insult. “But I don’t want you to flirt with me. It would lend too much intimacy to the marriage.”

“‘Too much intimacy to the marriage.’ Now there’s a phrase you don’t hear very often.”

“And while we’re on the subject…” She felt her throat beginning to tighten, and paused just long enough to clear it. Discreetly, she hoped. “I’m sure you’ll agree there should be absolutely no…intimacy between us.”

His lips twitched as if he was barely containing his laughter. “No intimacy? You mean like no flirting? You already covered that.”

“No, I mean no intimacy.” She felt her cheeks begin to burn. Damn it, why should this discussion embarrass her? She was a grown woman, for goodness sake. “No physical intimacy.”

She’d forced herself to say the words without hesitating or stuttering. But she couldn’t force her mind not to stumble over the images automatically produced. The two of them together, lying naked in a tangle of sheets.

Her reaction surprised her. She didn’t want Jake Morgan. She couldn’t want him. Not in their present situation. Not ever.

The only thing that surprised her more than her reaction was the flash of corresponding heat she saw in his gaze.

In an instant it was gone. Replaced by a teasing twinkle in his eye and a cocksure grin on his lips.

“So you think I won’t be able to resist you? You think once we’re living together, we’ll both cave to temptation unless we set up all these rules beforehand?”

“Certainly not. It just seemed wise to— Wait a minute, what do you mean once we’re living together?”

“Well, there’s no point in us getting married if people aren’t going to see us living together, right? I was thinking your place, ’cause I assume it’s bigger, but if you want to bunk down here, be my guest. But I’ve got to warn you, in your condition, I don’t really think you should be sleeping on the sofa, and there’s only one bed. I may be willing to give up my social life for this, but I’m not willing to give up my bed.”

Her mind reeled as he babbled on about the comforts of his bed. He wanted them to live together? How could she possibly maintain her equilibrium—her emotional distance—with him living under her roof?

“No. Absolutely not.” She shook her head, hoping she sounded very judicial, hoping her tone brooked no argument. “Cohabitation has disaster written all over it.”

Either he didn’t pick up on her no-one-argues-with-the-judge attitude, or he just didn’t care. Because he said, just as firmly, “No, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. If we’re legally married, but don’t live together, that’s way too suspicious. Hatcher—or someone else—will figure out something’s wrong.”

“You’re right, of course.” She sighed with resignation. “So what now?”

“We’ll need to have a real ceremony,” he said. It doesn’t have to be in a church if you don’t want it to, but we’ll both have to invite some friends. Preferably friends from work, so that plenty of people will know. We’ll need a story for how we met and why we’re getting married so quickly. We can mention the baby if you want, but we don’t want it to look like that’s the only reason we’re getting married.”

“Not the only reason? You can’t expect people to believe we’re actually in love.”

“That’s exactly what I expect them to believe. For this to work, we need to make people believe it.”

Four

In less than a week she’d be married.

They’d tentatively scheduled the wedding for Friday at the courthouse. She’d make the appointment Monday when she went in to work. Sure, being married by a J.P. lacked romance, but in this case that wasn’t a bad thing. Besides, it had the added benefit of guaranteeing that everyone she worked with would know about the wedding within hours, Hatcher and the other district judges included.

But no matter how many times she told herself this was the only solution, it did nothing to diminish the sinking feeling in her belly. Or her racing thoughts. She was getting married. To Jake Morgan of all people!

Sunday night, as she lay in bed, trying to sleep, she couldn’t keep that one terrifying thought from pounding through her head.

She’d gone to bed early, exhausted from spending the day emptying out her spare room for Jake. Despite her protests, he’d insisted on giving up his apartment entirely, since it would look suspicious to keep it. So all of his furniture would be incorporated into her house or kept in the storage shed out back. After all her work she’d been sure her fatigue would take over and allow her to sleep. Yet here she lay, eyes wide open, heart beating too fast, thoughts racing too quickly for sleep to settle over her.

She felt so jittery, she actually jumped when the phone rang. Alarm shot through her as she snatched the phone from its cradle.

“Stew?”

“No, it’s Jake.” His voice sounded low and lazy through the phone lines. “Were you expecting Stew to call?”

Soothed by the tone of his voice, she sank back against her pillow. “No. But usually no one calls this late, so…never mind. It’s silly.”

“So you assumed something was wrong with Beth?”

“Yes.” You only needed one alarming late-night phone call to fear them for life, and she’d had several. Mostly when she was young and she and Beth still lived with their mother. She didn’t like that he found her so transparent, so she quickly changed the subject. “Did you need something, Jake?”

“I’m sorry I called. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known it would upset you.”

“I’m not upset,” she lied.

“In my defense, it’s not that late.”

She glanced at her bedside clock. Only 9:23. Dang it, he was right. Most people were still up watching the Sunday night movie.

“But I guess,” he continued without waiting for her response, “that pregnant women tire easily and go to bed early. These are the kinds of things I’ll have to get used to.”

Now that was a disconcerting thought. “Why did you call, Jake?”

“I was thinking about our story.”

In the background she could hear the faint murmur of a TV. “Our story?” she asked.

The sounds faded, as if he’d just turned down the volume with the remote. “The story of how we met, remember? We need to get our story straight, because when people find out we’re getting married, they’re bound to ask.”

She could picture him so clearly in her mind. Lounging on that leather sofa, his legs stretched out onto the battered wood coffee table, phone in one hand, remote in the other, football game on ESPN.

Shaking her head to rid herself of the image, she said, “That’s easy. We met at Beth and Stew’s wedding.”

“We met at their wedding eight years ago and now—outta nowhere—we’re getting married? Naw, that doesn’t make sense.” He chuckled. “I bet you’re a terrible liar.”

Lying in the dark, she felt distinctly disadvantaged. So she flipped on the light beside her bed, stacked a couple of spare pillows behind her and sat up. “I’m a judge. We’re not supposed to be good liars.”

“Is that part of the job description?” he teased.

“No, but it should be,” she said wryly. And then felt annoyed with herself for letting him lure her off the subject. “About this story, we should keep it as simple as possible. And close to the truth, if we can. If you think we really need one.”

“Come on, everybody’s got a story. And when a couple gets married, everyone wants to hear it.”

“I disagree. Not everyone has an interesting story, and surely few people care enough to ask about it.”

“How did Beth and Stew meet?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple as she thought about it. “I guess it was their freshman year at UT. She was working at that little sandwich shop across from campus.” She couldn’t keep from smiling as a few of the details came back to her. “Even though he was vegetarian, he’d always order a Philly cheesesteak, because they took so long to make and that gave him more time to talk to— Wait a second. Surely you’ve heard this all before.”

Jake chuckled. “Of course I have, but you just proved my point. Everybody has a story.”

“Maybe,” she reluctantly admitted.

“Definitely. Tell me something. How did your parents meet?”

Kate chewed lightly on her lip, unsure what to say. Her parents had met in a bar during one of her mother’s frequent bouts of drunkenness. Nine months later, when Kate was born, her mom couldn’t remember her lover’s name. Couldn’t narrow the field of possible fathers down to just one guy, for that matter. The most Kate had ever been able to get out of her mom was, “He was probably either the cop from Austin or the salesman from Dallas. Or the trucker from Ohio.”

Whichever guy it was, it didn’t make for the kind of story she wanted to share. So she lied.

“They were high school sweethearts. Their first date was the homecoming dance. They married young.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. More an amalgamation of stories from her adopted parents and her various foster parents.

Since it would never hold up under questioning, she asked, “What about your parents? How did they meet?”

He didn’t answer right away, and she thought she heard a refrigerator door open and then close on his end of the line. A second later she heard him take a drink.

Probably of beer. Instantly she pictured him standing with his shoulder propped against the kitchen doorway, the way he’d stood the other night.

Why did he feel the need to get a beer before answering such a simple question? Was it possible she wasn’t the only one prevaricating about her past?

“Jake?” she prodded. Then felt guilty for being so nosy. And for jumping to conclusions. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Actually, he rescued her from a burning building. Saved her life.”

“Really?” Now that she hadn’t seen coming.

“Yeah, really. It was…”

When he didn’t speak for several seconds, she offered, “Very romantic, I imagine.”

She could picture it. The terror of being trapped in a burning building. The certainty that death was near. And then, out of the smoke, appears a handsome, broad-shouldered firefighter come to carry the damsel in distress to safety. It was the stuff of fantasies.

“Romantic? Sure. But it’s a really bad way to start a relationship. When my dad was injured in the line of duty and had to take early retirement, I think my mom was more upset than he was. I don’t think she ever forgave him for being just a man.”

Something in his voice tugged at a part of her deep inside. He sounded so serious. So pensive.

This vulnerability disconcerted her. She didn’t know how to talk to him when he was like this. Didn’t know how to keep up her barriers against him. So she said nothing.

There was another long pause from his end of the phone. More sounds of him swallowing.

The image of him drinking from a beer bottle crept into her head again. She could practically see him. The way he tipped his head back. The way his Adam’s apple slid up and down the column of his neck as he swallowed. The beads of condensation that formed on the bottle, moistening his fingers.

She wasn’t a fanciful person. In fact, she’d been accused on more than one occasion of having no imagination at all. So why couldn’t she turn off the images of Jake in her mind?

Was it merely the unnatural intimacy that came from talking to him on the phone while lying in bed?

That must be it.

“Look, I should go.” She glanced at the clock. “Now it really is late. At least for a pregnant woman.”

“Yeah, I suppose so—wait, we don’t have a story yet.”

“Can’t it wait till tomorrow? We could talk after work.”

“By then it’ll be too late. You’re making our appointment with the justice of the peace tomorrow, right?”

“Yes. I was going to do it over lunch.”

“When you do, the women you work with will want details.”

“The women I work with? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, come on, don’t pretend to be offended.” That teasing warmth was back in his voice. “Women are the worst about this kind of thing.”

She opened her mouth to disagree, then snapped it closed. He was right, of course. There would be at least a dozen women at the courthouse pumping her for information the second she scheduled an appointment with the J.P. Her court clerk, Meg. All the female court reporters. Not to mention the other judges. And Kevin would be just as bad as any of the women.

Did she dare share the truth with even him? If she did, there would be the inevitable questions about why she hadn’t told him about the pregnancy in the first place. What a mess.

“You’ve gotten pretty quiet over there. You fall asleep?”

I wish.

“Okay, so we need a story by tomorrow. Surely you have some idea already or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

“What about Beth and Stew’s New Year’s Eve party?”

“What about it?”

“We could say we ‘fell in love’ that night. We were both there, right?”

“Yes.” She went every year, even though she normally didn’t enjoy large parties. But on New Year’s Eve it just seemed wrong to stay home watching repeats of Law & Order. “But so were about fifty other people. All of whom would know we barely spoke to each other that evening.”

“Come on, no one will remember that. It was a New Year’s Eve party. A lot of people were drinking.”

“I wasn’t,” she pointed out.

“Well, of course you weren’t.”

“Hey—”

“I’m sure you never drink in public. Wouldn’t suit the image of the judge, would it?”

Actually, she didn’t drink out of fear of turning into her mother. But that certainly wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted him to know.

“But even you,” he continued, “as sober as you were, do you remember what every other person at the party was doing?”

Mostly she remembered the unending boredom of listening to Paul—Beth and Stew’s accountant—describe his two-week glacier cruise to Alaska. But other than Paul, she couldn’t remember how anyone else spent their evening. And despite how long it had felt, her conversation with Paul had lasted only twenty or so minutes.

“Okay, then,” she conceded. “We ‘fell in love’ at the party. So we’re set with a story.”

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