“You really mean it?”
“I mean it.” He grinned, lessening the tension. “Hey, there’s a few things we should clear up before we make a final pact.” He thought hard. “Like, I hate custard.”
“We’re not living together!”
“Maybe we have to, for a while at least. Tell me you won’t make me eat custard.”
She choked. “Hey, it’s good for you.”
“You make custard, and the deal’s off.”
She managed a wavering smile. “You drive a hard bargain. But okay. As long as I don’t have to eat pumpkin.”
“No pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving?” He sounded shocked, and she chuckled.
“I’ll make you Spotted Dick instead,” she promised, and his brows rose.
“Spotted Dick?”
“My very favorite dessert. England’s soul food.”
“You eat something called Spotted Dick?”
“Sure do.” She chuckled. “And so will you.”
“What am I letting myself in for? Aagh!” He clutched his stomach in mock horror and then managed a shaken grin. “Okay. I guess I can live with that. What else should we work out? You don’t snore too loud?”
“Nope.”
“Or watch WWF wrestling on TV?”
“Nope again.” She smiled. “You?”
“Nope. Promise.”
“And you don’t decorate your apartment with Playboy centerfolds?”
“I’ll move ’em all into my bedroom,” he said magnanimously, and she laughed again. Then her smile died.
“Michael, you won’t expect… I mean…”
He knew what she was asking, even though she couldn’t bring herself to say it. “No, Jenny,” he said. “No way. This marriage is in name only. I promise you that.”
She believed him. Maybe she was being a fool, but she looked into his deep green eyes and she trusted him. Absolutely.
But she’d been down that road before. Trusting a man whose reasons for marrying her weren’t what they seemed.
“You don’t fly aerolites?” she asked, and there was a faint tremor in her voice.
“No, Jenny, I don’t fly aerolites. Do you?”
“What do you think?” She grinned, her good humor flooding back. Okay, this was crazy, but it was better than the alternative-getting on a bus and heading for Mexico alone. A million miles better. “I’d weigh down any aerolite so much it wouldn’t make it two feet off the ground.”
“Only for a little bit,” he said. “Until the ninth earl is born.”
“Not the ninth earl,” she said sharply. “Baby Morrow. That’s all.”
“How about Baby Lord?” he asked. “Does that make sense?”
“I…” She stared at him in confusion. “I don’t know.”
“We have heaps of time to think about that,” he said, and turned on the ignition. “Meanwhile, if we’re getting married today-”
“Today?”
“Can you think of a good reason why not?”
“I…”
“Didn’t think you could,” he said smugly. “Okay, Jenny, let’s go find us a preacher.”
THEY HEADED for the border.
“El Paso,” Michael said as he turned his car onto the highway. He was thinking as he moved, discarding plan after plan and coming up with the one that made most sense. “It’s the only place we can get everything done.”
“I thought… Can’t we marry here? In Austin? Or even Las Vegas? It’d be simpler.”
She was still afraid, Michael thought as he turned the car toward the border. She was expecting any minute that the men in suits would come at them with sirens blazing and cart her forcibly away to the dreaded Gloria.
“By the time you see any immigration official-or Gloria-we’ll be married,” he said softly. “The advantages of El Paso are twofold. First, there’s a judge near there I know from my days on the force. If it’s for me personally and I tell him the baby’s on the way, he’ll waive the three-day license period so we can marry right away. He’d even enjoy it. Second, it’s a border town, so we can fill out all the immigration forms and get the rubber stamps and signatures you need to make you legal. By the time you get back to Austin we’ll be so legally correct, officialdom won’t have a chance.”
“But…” Her voice faltered. She still looked pale, and he couldn’t help noticing how many times she glanced behind them.
“Jenny, don’t worry,” he told her gently. “They’re not after us, guns blazing. This is not a bad movie. Sure, Gloria will have told them you intend overstaying, but you’re not illegal yet. No matter how much money and influence she has, she can’t bribe the department to throw the entire weight of the law into finding someone who hasn’t broken the law yet. Even if they found us-”
“They’d deport me.”
“They wouldn’t.” He put a hand out to touch hers. “You’re my intended bride, and we’re heading off to get ourselves married before our son in born. There’s not a way in the world they can stop us.”
“Then why aren’t you stopping off to collect your toothbrush?” she asked, and he grimaced.
“Sharp, aren’t you?”
“I have a lot hanging on this,” she told him. “And I need honesty here.”
“Okay.” He put his hands on the steering wheel and focused on the road. He still had the top down. The sun was on their faces, and they were heading toward the border for all the world like a married couple on vacation.
“It’s just that I don’t know Gloria,” he confessed. His brow was furrowed, his red eyebrows beetling in concentration. It was a gesture that was peculiarly Michael, and Jen was discovering how much she liked it. And the sound of his voice…
“Gloria sounds like an elderly, aristocratic nutcase, and my first reaction is to discount a heap of your fear,” he said. “I can’t figure her intentions, but I’m trained never to underestimate an enemy I don’t know. So I’m assuming the worst-that she has the resources to fight for what she wants.”
“But-”
“Once we’re safely married, there’s no way she can touch you,” Michael said, cutting across her protest. “I know how to look after my own. But let’s get married before we go taking any chances.”
THEY ARRIVED at El Paso late, far too late to get married that night. They’d stopped briefly to eat, but Jenny was so nervous Michael had barely time to bolt a burger before she was edging him back to the car.
“I told you, Jenny. There are no blazing guns.”
“I just don’t trust her. She’s known all along what I was doing. Now she’ll be thrown right off track, and I don’t know what she’ll do.”
Her nervousness was infectious, and by the time they reached the decent, plain hotel Michael knew, it was as much as he could do not to look over his shoulder.
He felt crazy to be worrying about an elderly aristocratic female half a world away.
Never underestimate an enemy you don’t know.
“Do you have a suite with two bedrooms?” he asked the woman at the hotel desk, and Jenny looked at him, startled.
“No, sir,” the woman said primly. “We have adjoining rooms with a communication door.”
He thought about that for all of two seconds and rejected it absolutely. “Nope. A twin room, then.”
“Certainly, sir.” She cast a curious glance at Jenny. Married couple having a fight, the clerk’s face said, and the tension in Jenny’s eyes confirmed it.
“You sleep well, then,” she told them as she handed over the key. “And…” She took a deep breath and beamed at the pair of them. “If I can butt in here… You’re such a lovely couple and with the baby so close, well, whatever’s bothering you, you try real hard to sort it out. Those twin beds are on rollers. If you want, they roll together real quick.”
“GREAT!”
“What’s the problem?”
Jenny had plunked herself on the farthest bed and was glaring at her intended husband as if her life depended on it. “She thinks we’re married,” she snapped.