A Bravo Christmas Reunion

They faced each other across the cramped entry area.

“You’re back early….” She forced a smile, feeling suddenly strange about all this: the two of them, the baby, all the ways he’d denied her seven months ago, the secret she’d kept that she had no right to keep, a secret as pointless as it was wrong.

Because, in the end, here he was again. Back in her life. Determined to look after her and the baby whether they needed looking after or not.

“I took a few days off,” he said with a scowl.

“You never take days off.”

“First time for everything.”

“I thought you had…meetings.”

“I did. I made them quick. I cleared my calendar. For tomorrow and the next day.” His eyes held a flinty gleam and the determined set to that sensual slash of a mouth told her that he had plans. Plans concerning her and the baby and their future. Plans that he would implement within the next forty-eight hours—whether she liked them or not.

Hayley kept her smile in place. “Your coat?” He shrugged out of it. She hung it up, along with her own. “A drink?”

“No. Thanks.”

Seeking a little good cheer—as well as an excuse to put some distance between them—she went to the tree. Dropping to an awkward crouch, she plugged it in. The Christmas lights came on, so happy and bright. Festive.

In all the years of her lonely childhood, there had always been a tree: in the group home, where she went between families. And in the various foster homes. And there was always at least one gift for her under each of those trees. So that she’d come to think of Christmas as something special, something magical and glowing in an otherwise drab life lived out in a series of other people’s houses. Christmas was colorful, and optimistic, with joyous music that brought a fond tear to her eye.

Funny, but Kelly said she felt just the same way about the holidays….

“Come on.” Marcus was there, standing above her. He held down a hand. She put hers in it, shocked at how good it felt—to touch his long, strong fingers again….

Oh, she would have to watch herself. She was just a big sucker when it came to this man.

He pulled her heavy body upward and she let him, leaning into him a little—but not too much. And as soon as she was upright, she stepped back, away from the delicious temptation to press herself and their baby against him, to find out if he would put those lean arms around her, if he’d cradle her close and put his lips to her hair.

She asked, “Have you eaten?”

“It’s not necessary for you to—”

“Not the question. Did you have dinner?”

“No.”

“I made spaghetti last night, before you…dropped in. There’s plenty left. I’ll just heat it up and do the salad. Have a seat. The remote’s right there on the arm of the couch. Watch the news. It won’t take long….”

He stared at her for several seconds. She wondered what he might be thinking. Finally, with a shrug, he went over to the couch and sat down.

A short time later, she called him to the kitchen. He turned off the news and came to join her at her tiny table. They ate mostly in silence. She found her small appetite had fled completely. Dread was taking up what little space there was in her stomach. Still, she forced herself to put the food in her mouth, to slowly chew, to grimly swallow. The baby needed dinner. And really, so did she.

When they were through, Marcus got up and cleared the table while she loaded the dishwasher and wiped the counters. Then they went to the living room. He took a chair and she sat on the couch.

Her pulse, she realized as she sank into the cushions, had sped into overdrive. Her palms had gone clammy. And her stomach was aching, all twisted with tension. The baby kicked. She winced and put her hand over the spot.

“Are you sick?” He frowned at her. She shook her head. “Just…dreading this conversation.”

“You’re too pale.”

“I’m a redhead. My skin is naturally pale.”

“Paler than usual, I mean.”

“Can we just get on with it? Please? Tell me what you want and we can…take it from there.”

“I don’t want to upset you.”

She folded her hands over her stomach. “I’m fine.” It was a lie. But a necessary one. “Just tell me what you have in mind. Just say it.”

“Hayley, I think…” The words trailed off. He looked at her through brooding eyes.

“What? You think, what?” She fired the question at him twice—and as she did, somehow, impossibly, she knew what he was going to tell her, what he was going to want from her. It was the one thing she’d been beyond-a-doubt certain he wouldn’t be pushing for.

But he was. He did. “I think we should get married. All things considered, now there’s a kid involved, I think it’s the best way to go here.”

Married. The impossible word seemed to hover in the air between them.

Now that there was a baby, he wanted to marry her….

She unfolded her hands and lifted them off her stomach and then didn’t know what to do with them. She looked down at them as if they belonged on someone else’s body. “Married,” she said back to him, still not quite believing.

“Yes.” He gave a single nod. “Married.”

She braced her hands on the sofa cushions and dared to remind him, “But you don’t want to be married again. Ever. You know you don’t. You told me you don’t.”

Did he wince? She could have sworn he did. “It’s the best way,” he said again, as if that made it totally acceptable—for him to do exactly what he’d promised he would never do.

Okay, now. The awful thing? The really pitiful thing?

Her heart leaped.

It did. It jumped in her chest and did the happy dance. Because marrying Marcus? That was her dearest, most fondly held dream.

From the moment she’d met him—that rainy Monday, two months out of Heald’s Business College and brand-new to Seattle, when he interviewed her for the plum job of his executive assistant—she’d known she would love him. Known that he, with his piercing, watchful eyes and sexy mouth, his wary heart that was kinder than he wanted it to be, his dry sense of humor so rarely seen…

He was her love. He was the one she had been waiting for, dreaming of, through all her lonely years until that moment.

Marriage to Marcus. Oh, yeah. It was what she’d longed for, what she’d hoped against hope might happen someday.

Because she loved him. She’d known from the first that she would. And within weeks of going to work for him, she was his. Completely, without reservation, though he refused to touch her for months.

She waited. She schemed.

And then his divorce became final. She went to his house wearing a yellow raincoat, high heels, a few wisps of lingerie and nothing else.

At last, they were lovers. No, he didn’t love her. Oh, but she loved him.

God help her, she sometimes feared that she would always love him. And her love…it was like Christmas to her. It was magic. And bright colored lights. It was that one present with her name on it under a new foster mother’s tree.

“Hayley?” His voice came to her. The voice of her beloved. Dreamed of. Yearned after—and yet, in the end, no more hers than all the foster families she’d grown up with.

She pressed her lips together, shook her head, stared bleakly past him, at the shining lights of her tree.

“Damn it, Hayley. What do you want from me? You want me to beg you? I’m willing. Anything. Just marry me and let me take care of you. And our baby. Let me—”

“Stop.” The sound scraped itself free of her throat.

He swore. A word harsh and graphic. But at least after that, he fell silent.

She met his eyes. “What if there was no baby, if I wasn’t pregnant…?”

“But you are.”

“Work with me here. If I wasn’t. Would you be asking me to marry you now?”

A muscle danced in his jaw. “I would, yes. I love you.”

The lie was so huge, she almost smiled. And the knot that was her stomach had eased a little. She felt better now. She knew she could hold out against him, against her impossible dream that he would someday find his way to her, that at last he would see she was the only one for him.

But he hadn’t found his way to her, not in his secret heart. And he never would.

“Marcus. Come on. You’re lying.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Please. This is not going to work.”

“The hell it won’t. I came here to see you, didn’t I, showed up at your door last night? And I had no damn clue about the baby then.”

Okay. Point for him. But hardly a winning one.

She challenged, “You’re telling me you came here because you realized you couldn’t live without me?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t want to go another day without me at your side? You came here intending to ask me to marry you, after all, to beg me to give our love another chance and be your bride at last, to make you the happiest man on earth, make all your dreams come true?”

He looked at her steadily. It was not a pleasant look. “Damn you, Hayley. I want to marry you now. Why does it matter what I would have done if you hadn’t been pregnant?”

“Is that a real question?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you really want to know why it matters?”

“Yes. I do.”

“All right. It matters because in all my life, except for the sister and brother I found in June at my mother’s deathbed, I’ve never had anyone to really call my own. I’ve worn other people’s hand-me-downs, lived in other people’s houses, been the extra kid, the one who didn’t really belong. The one who never had a home of her own.”

“I’m offering you—”

“Wait. I’m not finished. What I’m trying to say is that I had no choice, about the way I grew up. But I do have a choice now. When I get married, I’m going to finally belong to someone. Completely. Lovingly. Openly. And the man I marry will belong to me.”

“I will belong to you. I’ll be true to you, I’ll never betray you.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t. You’re not the kind to cheat. Except in your secret heart.”

“That’s not so.”

“It is. You know it is. You’ll never belong to me, Marcus. You belong to Adriana. You always have and you always will.”