Mail-Order Matty

Which might explain why she was willing to marry a man she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade, a man who had probably never even seen her at all, not even when they had stood face-to-face.

“Matty?”

She had been gazing into the throngs hurrying toward gates or ticket counters, so the deep voice behind her left shoulder was a surprise. But she didn’t spin around. She took a deep breath, then another for good measure, before she turned.

For the first time in eight years she was face-to-face with Damon Quinn. And this time he couldn’t fail to see her.

“Damon.” She created a smile from the turmoil within her. “I wondered if we’d ever find each other.”

“I saw you get off the plane, but…” His voice trailed off.

She didn’t want to finish his sentence, but she did. “You didn’t recognize me. I’m not really surprised. There’s no reason why you should have.”

But she recognized him, both with her eyes and the distinctive fluttering inside her that had characterized every glimpse she’d ever had of him.

“You don’t look like your photograph.”

“The hair’s different. I know.” As she spoke, she did not have the self-control to resist examining him. Damon was older, but every bit as beautiful as she remembered. And beautiful was the right word, not because he was in the least bit feminine, but because handsome failed to drive right to the heart of the matter. He had the face of an angel, or at least a tormented poet, wide cheekbones, a rock-solid jaw and dark eyes that burned like smoldering coals, even when he was at his most casual. His black hair was too long, and it curled over his forehead, his nape and ears in a style that more than suited him. It defined him somehow, his perpetual distraction, his flouting of convention, his disdain for the inconsequential.

“More than your hair is different,” he said after he had studied her, too. “You’ve grown up.”

“Then you remember me?”

He smiled a little. “What’s it to be, Matty? Bare-bones truth? Or something a little gentler?”

“I’m totally incapable of telling a lie. And eight years ago you never took the time to try.”

Some internal scorecard seemed to register a point in her favor. “I remember you, but vaguely. And only now that you’re here.”

She was pleased somehow. She hadn’t expected that much. “I did grow up, but I haven’t changed a lot. Carrollton’s pretty much the same as it was when you left, and I’m afraid I am, too.”

“A woman who was too afraid of change wouldn’t find herself in this situation.”

She laughed lightly. “A woman who knew how to hold a few glasses of champagne wouldn’t have, either.”

His smile broadened, a flash of emotional lightning that transformed him into someone more approachable. “Right, the champagne. Soon to become my favorite drink, since it’s brought you here.”

Before she could respond, he took her elbow, as if to guide her through the crowd. “Did you get your luggage? You wouldn’t have had time for that, would you?”

She had been fine—Or nearly fine—until that moment, coasting along on excitement and curiosity. But now she was blindsided by an attack of nerves. “Damon, we’re…uh…not heading right out, are we? I mean the plane—”

“No. I had the good sense to book the last flight of the afternoon to George Town. We can’t take this any way that approaches normal, but I thought we could at least spend the afternoon getting to know each other before we go off to get married.”

“But we can’t get married right away. There’s the license.”

“That’s all a formality, but you’re right. You’ll still have a few days to decide once we’re there.”

“And so will you.”

He looked down at her from his six feet of solid masculinity. “I’m not going to change my mind. I know everything I need to know about you.”

His words weren’t surprising. She knew he had checked her background with a thoroughness usually reserved for top-level security clearances. And she knew why.

As Damon silently guided her through the crowds and toward baggage claim, she thought about everything that had transpired since she had awakened in horror on the morning after her birthday party to find that the letter Liza had penned to Damon was gone.

She remembered how panic had seized her, and she had awakened her friends to demand that they tell her exactly what they had done with the letter. Felicity had been as horrified as she was, but Liza had been philosophical. “He’ll see it was done in good fun,” she’d said. “He’ll have a good laugh and toss it right out.”

But Matty hadn’t been so easygoing about something that had, in its own excessive way, revealed too much of her heart. She had felt wounded and vulnerable, and she had sat down that night to write Damon a real letter apologizing and explaining. “It was my twenty-seventh birthday,” she’d written, “a time to look backward and forward. My friends and I were talking about what I wanted from life by the time I was thirty, then we started in on the first of too many bottles of champagne. I almost never drink, Damon. I shouldn’t have had so much that night. I’m afraid I acted like an idiot. Please forgive me, and if you remember me at all, please try not to include this with the rest of your memories.”

She had wished him the best of luck, sealed the envelope and driven it right down to the post office. Writing the letter had helped a little. At least Damon would know the first one had been a prank and a mistake. She had hated the fact that he would probably think she was immature and featherbrained, with too much time on her hands, but she had realized there was nothing more she could do.

His birthday card had arrived two weeks later, and his first telephone call a week after that. “I wasn’t advertising for a wife, and you weren’t really applying to be one,” he’d said, just minutes into the conversation. “But, Matty, I’m in a desperate situation here, and I don’t know where else to turn.”

And then he had proceeded to outline his dilemma.

“That looks like the right carousel up ahead.” Damon gestured to a baggage carousel that was slowly circulating, although by now there were only a few pieces left on it. “Point out which are yours when they come around and I’ll get them off.”

Matty glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was wearing dark slacks and an ivory dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His sports jacket was loose and casual, a natural open-weave fabric that seemed perfectly suited to tropical living.

“Your hands seem to be full, Damon.”

He looked down at the bouquet of carnations he had been choking since she’d first turned around to face him. Then he looked up at her and grinned. “They’re for you. I’d completely forgotten I had them.” He held them out.

“They’re lovely.” Actually, they might have been lovely once, but the white paper stapled around them was crumpled now from fingers that had gripped it too tightly, and Matty suspected the stems were mangled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’m not as calm as I thought.”

“I’m sure if there was a handbook on mail-order marriages that would be on the first page. I guess our palms are supposed to sweat and our hearts are supposed to beat double time.”

“Is yours beating double time?”

“Triple.” She heard her voice waver. She had talked herself into coming here with a bravado she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had marched in to her supervisor at Carrollton Community Hospital to give her resignation, and she hadn’t even considered the immediate promise of a pay raise if she would just rethink her decision. Without a backward glance she had rented her house to Liza and Felicity and said her goodbyes.

And somewhere along that path she had used up all her stores of courage.

Damon took her hand. The gesture so surprised her that she froze. She knew her eyes gave her away. She excelled at warm good cheer, at encouragement and empathy, but right now she needed someone to give all those things back to her.

“Matty…” His voice was kind, even kinder than she remembered. “I’m not going to pressure you. I know I’m asking too much. Let’s just get to know each other today. One step at a time. Okay?”

“Damon, look at you. There have to be a dozen women who would have said yes to marrying you, women you know well, women you’re attracted to. I’m nearly a stranger. Why me?”

He had answered that question before, but he seemed to sense her need to watch his face as he explained once again. He linked his fingers with hers, and her heart skipped erratically.

“Not a dozen. But I do know some women who might have said yes. None of them could offer what I really need. The only question is whether you need Heidi and me enough to take this step. Do you?”

The answer was yes, of course. Perhaps there had been a thousand possibilities for her future, but somehow, after Damon reentered her life, she had only glimpsed two. She could continue at Carrollton Community taking care of other people’s beautiful babies, continue living in the house and town she had lived in all her life, continue wondering what the world was like outside that small frozen speck on the map. Or she could accept Damon’s astounding offer of marriage and motherhood and a new life on a distant tropical island.

In the end the choice had been easy, because the second possibility had come attached to Damon Quinn, a man she had once loved with unrestrained passion. And this gift of Damon in her life once more, even under these strange and unromantic circumstances, had been too tempting to reject.

“I’m here,” she said. She would not reveal more of her heart than that.

He seemed to think it was answer enough. “Let’s get your suitcases, then we’ll go somewhere for lunch.” He squeezed her hand before he dropped it. She felt absolutely alone when he was no longer touching her, but she lifted her chin and managed a smile.

* * *

Matty Stewart was not what Damon had expected. He had done his research, probing, in-depth research that should have distilled the essence of the woman. He knew how she had sacrificed a normal youth to care for her father. He knew that Frank Stewart’s illness had been long and difficult, an illness that had taken his strength and finally his mind, and that Matty had given him tender, unremitting care until his death two years ago.

And he knew that she was regarded by hospital supervisors and colleagues alike as one of the finest nurses ever to walk through Carrollton Community’s doors. If she had faults they tended toward the most admirable. She was too accepting of others’ faults, too giving, too undemanding. Everyone seemed to like and trust Matty, from the man-eating head nurse in maternity to the lowliest emergency-room clerk. They all went to Matty if something special needed to be done, and most of the time she was able to satisfy them.

Her personal life was just as flawless. To make ends meet she had shared her home with two of Carrollton’s most eligible women, and the three seemed to be close and loyal friends. The other two were well liked, but everyone seemed to think it was Matty who glued their friendship together. There were no hints of competition for men or prestige. At home, as at the hospital, Matty seemed determined to believe the best and give her best.

Knowing all that and more, Damon had expected someone subtly different from the woman who had been waiting at the information booth. First, he had been surprised to feel such an instant tug of attraction toward her. She wasn’t really pretty, not in any classical sense of the word, but she had a vibrant, natural smile and smoky hazel eyes that never looked away when she spoke. Her creamy skin was flawless, and her hair was fine and silky. Her best points were subtle but undeniable. She was not a woman a man might pick out in a crowd, but once exposed to her, she would nibble away at his concentration until she had his undivided attention.

Damon knew there was no man in Matty’s life. Caring for her father had made that impossible, and then there had been months of readjustment and, naturally, grief after his death. By the time fate had allowed her to seek a relationship, the pool of eligible men in Carrollton had been small. But now that he’d seen her, no excuses seemed good enough. Why hadn’t some man noticed her anyway? Had she been so busy taking care of everyone around her that no one had seen she could be more, much more, if she was just given the chance?

“All this sunlight!” Matty spread her hands as if to catch sunbeams to store away. “Damon, I’ve never seen light like this. It’s like liquid gold.”

“This will seem overcast compared to the island.” Damon watched Matty examine the restaurant where he had brought her to have lunch. He hadn’t chosen it carefully; in fact, he didn’t even remember its name. But he had been here before with Arthur Sable, the man who owned Inspiration Cay, and he had remembered that the food was good and the location close enough to the airport to make it easy to get back that afternoon.

Now he was glad he had thought of it. Wide windows looked out on a narrow blue inlet adorned with the requisite seagulls and palm trees. Light wood and tropical prints completed the statement indoors, where Latin rhythms competed with rattan-trimmed ceiling fans for dominance of the warm spring air.

Matty loved it. He hadn’t intended to impress her, but clearly he had. She seemed more relaxed here. She had even stopped toying with her iced-tea glass and the wedge of lime perched on its sugared rim. For the last few minutes she had even seemed to forget that the man sitting across from her was her husband-to-be.

“Are those hibiscus blooming against the wall?” Matty pointed to her left.

He nodded. “And the purple flowers behind them are bougainvillea.”

“Paradise.”

“The last man to own Inspiration Cay spent a fortune on landscaping. It’s gone wild, but Arthur prefers to leave it that way.”

“Jungle appeals to me. Things that grow and thrive without restraint, abundant good health…”

“You’ve seen little enough of that, haven’t you?”

She seemed startled, whether at his insight or her own guileless revelations he didn’t know. “Not enough, I guess,” she admitted.

“Was that one of the reasons you said yes to this arrangement? Because you needed to be away from illness and suffering?”

“For a while, maybe.” She folded her hands. “I’m good at what I do, but it’s possible I need to do something else, something I might do even better.”

“So you need some time to think? To reconsider your life?”

“Does that bother you?”

“Absolutely not. It reassures me. I’m not sure I could go through with this if I thought I was the only one of us who was going to benefit.”

“Don’t forget Heidi.”

“I couldn’t possibly. She absorbs every waking minute. You’ll see, once we get to the island.”

“Damon, tell me the whole story. You’ve told me bits and pieces on the telephone, enough to get me here. But I need to know it all. How you feel about Heidi’s mother, why you didn’t marry her. How she feels about you and Heidi, too. Where and how I’ll fit in.”

And that was the other way that Matty didn’t fit with Damon’s picture of her. He had expected a woman so eager to please, so accommodating, that she wouldn’t ask pointed questions or show the wealth of insight that was a part of the real Matty Stewart. He found her perceptions unnerving at the same time that he found them refreshing. She did not suffer from self-absorption, but on the other hand, she was too intelligent not to recognize the problems that might affect her own happiness.

He tried to cull out the things in his past that didn’t matter and cut right to the things that did. “I met Gretchen in Washington, D.C. She had just ended a relationship with another man, and she was looking for someone to take up the slack. She’d be the first to tell you that. She was very clear about it to me.”

He paused as their server brought them steaming bowls of spicy black bean soup and garnished them with a splash of sherry and dollops of sour cream. He watched Matty lift her spoon and begin to eat. Her hands were unadorned, no rings, no polish on her short nails. Just broad strong hands that looked as if they could solve a multitude of problems, hands that probably rarely fluttered or trembled.

“And what was she to you, Damon?” she asked.

“She was a one-night stand that lengthened into weeks,” he said bluntly. “She was in no hurry to move on, and I was in no hurry to get rid of her. We were both new to the city, and lonely. When she finally found an apartment in Arlington, I helped her move. We saw each other less and less as the weeks went by, and finally, when it was time for me to leave D.C., I couldn’t even catch her at home to say goodbye.”

“So you didn’t know she was pregnant?”

“It’s the nineties, Matty. When we had sex I was careful to protect us both.” He read her expression. “Technology is imperfect. It failed us one night. I didn’t think too much about it, since Gretchen seemed to think it was the wrong time in her cycle to matter.”

“Damon…” She returned to playing with the wedge of lime. “Could she be lying about who Heidi’s father really is?”

“No. The timing’s right, and Gretchen swears that Heidi’s mine. I was there when the condom broke. I have to accept responsibility.”

She nodded, and he knew that accepting responsibility was something she would understand completely.

“Gretchen never contacted me until after Heidi’s birth. She says she intended to keep her, that she thought it might be a lark. Gretchen likes to be entertained, and she thought Heidi would be endlessly entertaining. Two weeks of staying up all night with a screaming infant cured her of that. Gretchen can act decisively when she needs to. She realized her maternal instincts were nonexistent, but she felt a responsibility to her daughter. So she sat down and listed the alternatives, and I was at the top.”

“How did you feel when you discovered you were a father?”

“Furious.”

Matty cocked her head, and her eyes searched his. “But you took Heidi anyway? Out of responsibility?”

“I had begun my research on Inspiration Cay.” He drummed his fingers on the table and tried to decide how much of that story to tell her. He settled on only the most salient details. “This work is my whole life, or at least it was then. I was sure that having a baby on the island with me was impossible, unthinkable. So I flew to Arlington to help Gretchen make arrangements to place Heidi in a good adoptive home. You know the kind I mean. Two devoted, educated parents with love and time to give her, both things I was sure I couldn’t manage. And then I saw her and held her.” He looked away and shrugged. He was still embarrassed at the depth of his attachment to the squirming, screaming scrap of humanity who was his umbilical cord into the future.

“And so you brought her back to the island?”

“It seemed the right thing to do. Gretchen wanted it that way. Officially we’ll share custody, but I doubt she’ll ever be much of a presence in Heidi’s life. She’ll breeze in with gifts and kisses, whisk her off to Disney World and back again. But she can’t meet Heidi’s emotional needs, and she knows it.”

“How do you feel about Gretchen, Damon? It sounds like she’s going to be part of your life for a long time.”

“Are you asking if we might take up where we left off?”

She didn’t look away. “This whole situation is strange enough. If another woman is involved, it’s impossible.”

“Gretchen and I were briefly attracted to each other. The attraction was briefer than the relationship, and that was brief enough. I don’t hate her. I have a grudging respect for her willingness to give birth to Heidi instead of the obvious alternative, and then for her willingness to find the best solution for Heidi’s future. But Gretchen will be a part of Heidi’s future, not mine. After I realized I was going to raise Heidi, I asked Gretchen to marry me, and she said no. We were both profoundly relieved that that was out of the way, because our marriage would have been an unqualified disaster.”

He let that dangle a moment before he added the clincher. “But Heidi won’t be a part of my future at all if Gretchen’s parents have their way. And that’s where you come in.”

“I can’t believe they have a prayer of getting custody. You’re her father.”

“I’m a father without a real job, at least the way the court sees it. A father living on a remote island in the Bahamas without a doctor, a grocery store, a church, a school. A father with no experience caring for a baby and no time to do it properly. I can’t hire help. Most older women with good credentials would find life on the island too lonely and harsh. And a younger woman would look suspicious to the courts.”

“Like a live-in lover?”

“Exactly. Not the kind of role model a child would need.”

“Why did Gretchen choose you over her parents? She could have handed Heidi over to them and never even told you that you were a father.”

“In Gretchen’s words, the Otts are rigid and incapable of either love or understanding. They exist to do their duty, and they see Heidi as a duty and nothing more. Gretchen’s childhood was miserable. She’s not much of a mother, but she doesn’t wish that kind of life on Heidi.”

“Would the Otts be content if you just allowed them to visit when they wanted?”

“I’ve spoken to them once. They made it clear that they intend to control Heidi’s upbringing. They see Gretchen as a failure and Heidi as their chance at redemption in the eyes of their church and community.”

“So there’s no compromise in sight?”

“They want all or nothing. If I retain custody, I don’t think they’ll even want to see her. And if they get custody, they’ll throw up every possible roadblock to keep me from visiting.”

Matty was silent as the server took away their soup and plunked down the sandwiches they had ordered. Damon had eaten half of his before she spoke. “You told me during our first phone call that your attorney thinks you’ll have no problem keeping Heidi if you’re married to me.”

He understood that she needed to hear the reasons again. He obliged her. “You’re not a stranger, Matty, or at least the court won’t see it that way. We were friends in college—”

“We weren’t.”

He went on. “We knew each other. A case could easily be made for a friendship that continued through the years and turned into a romance. No one will ask for proof. We stayed in touch, fell in love…” His voice trailed off, and he sipped his tea. Everything tasted like ashes.

“You don’t like this, do you?”

“I like losing my daughter less than I like lying.”

Her eyes were grave. “And I have all the perfect qualifications to be Heidi’s mother.”

“Matty, you have nothing in your past that anyone could object to. And you’re a pediatric nurse, one of the best. No one could question Heidi’s safety or your loving care of her. If we marry, my attorney believes the custody hearing will be a formality and nothing more.”

“How long?”

He wasn’t sure what she was asking, but he was sure how important the answer was to her. She looked as if everything in both their futures depended on it.

“How long before I’ll know if I retain custody?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. “No. How long before you can safely divorce me?”

There were still half a dozen questions she could be asking, questions he might not even comprehend. The ashes in his throat seemed to sift deeper, layering his heart. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward, but he didn’t touch her. “If you can only make a brief commitment to us, this can’t work. I might be at Inspiration Cay a year, a month, a decade. And as long as I’m there, Heidi’s vulnerable.”

“A decade?” She voiced the question softly. “And then a divorce when you no longer need me?”

Now he understood exactly what the question was, and he was almost giddy with relief. “Matty, have I ever mentioned divorce? I’m not planning to divorce you the minute I don’t need you anymore. Heidi needs a mother, not a baby-sitter. She needs the emotional ties that Gretchen can’t give her. I don’t know how long our marriage will last. Maybe we’ll grow to hate each other despite every effort not to. Maybe you’ll decide you need more than I can give you. I can’t see the future. But I’ve never thought this was going to be less than a real marriage. Maybe we have to pretend about our past, but not about our future.”