“And some things about you never change,” she retorted, hauling her arm back without success to aim with another cushion. “Here’s Michael Lord, resorting to indifference because he might just get hurt if he gets involved.”
“That’s deep, Shel,” he said appreciatively. “You been doing a psychology course on the quiet?”
“I don’t need a psych-”
And she stopped dead.
“I don’t need…” he prompted, but she was no longer concentrating on what she was saying. Her eyes had grown as huge as saucers, and she was staring at his hand as if it had grown another thumb.
“Michael,” she said, and her voice sounded strangled and far away.
“What’s wrong?” It was Garrett who asked the question. Michael had seen where she was looking and gave an inward groan. He knew what was coming. How could he have thought they wouldn’t notice?
“Shel, what’s happening?” Lana was distracted enough to pull away from Dylan’s arms and rise in instinctive protective mode. The siblings might fight as much as they liked, but if there was the faintest thing wrong with one of them, the rest of the brood sensed it in an instant. And reacted accordingly. “Shelby?”
“He’s wearing a wedding ring,” Shelby whispered in horror. “Michael, you’re not married!”
Michael considered this for all of ten seconds. He stared at his family, thinking of one smart reply after another.
None seemed right. In the end, there was only one thing he could think of to say. After all, they had to know sometime.
“Well, yes,” he said softly. “I guess you could say that I am.”
LANA SAT DOWN. It was as if her legs had suddenly gone from under her. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
On the floor, baby Greg looked up in wide-eyed interest. The world was a wonderful place, his infant eyes declared, and his uncle Michael was fascinating if he just stood still.
Which was what he was doing. As were his siblings. Michael looked around at his family, and they stared back like so many frozen statues.
“It’s someone…” Lana gave a soft moan, finally recovering her voice. “Oh, no. It’s someone from the casino?”
“Hell, Lana.” Michael shook his head in disbelief. This at least he could handle. “Will you get it into your head that I hit the gambling scene for a whole three months after Dan was killed? Sure, I was off the rails, but that’s over. You and Shelby have spent the last two years worrying about me.”
“I’ve been worrying, too,” Garrett volunteered. He took Michael’s beer can from his hand. “It’s the Morrow woman, isn’t it?”
“The Morrow woman?” Michael’s eyes narrowed. What sort of a description was that?
“The Morrow woman?” Lana moved. She grabbed Michael’s beer can from Garrett’s hand and thrust it at Dylan, as if it was getting in the way of what was really important. She was practically gibbering. “What Morrow woman?”
But Michael was no longer listening. He was facing Garrett head-on. The Morrow woman? It sounded like an accusation.
“Who told you about Jenny?” he demanded, his voice dangerous.
“Jenny?” Shelby’s voice was practically a squeak. “Who’s Jenny? You’ve married a woman called Jenny? I don’t know any Jenny.”
“Ellie was looking for you on Friday morning,” Garrett told Michael, ignoring his sisters. His eyes didn’t leave Michael’s face. “She called me and told me there’d been a problem with your secretary.”
“Your secretary?” Lana gasped. “Jenny, as in Jenny-your-temporary-secretary? You’re married to Jenny, your secretary? I know Jenny. She’s lovely. But she’s pregnant. She’s huge. Michael, she’s-”
“Well, there you are. I don’t have to tell you anything about it,” Michael interrupted dryly. “You’ve figured it all out for yourselves.”
“Catch me, Dylan,” Lana said dramatically. “I’m going to faint.” And she collapsed with theatrical effect onto the sofa and into her husband’s willing arms. There was laughter in her eyes, but there was no matching laughter in Shelby’s. Lana’s world had expanded with her husband and child, but Shelby’s life still revolved around her brothers and her sister. Her eyes were filled with undiluted horror as she struggled from the sofa to face him.
“Michael, you haven’t…” Shelby was staring at him as if he’d been caught walking naked at midday. “Of all the… No. Tell me you haven’t.”
“Surely there were alternatives,” Garrett said uneasily. “Ellie said the woman’s life is in a mess, but…”
“You know, Garrett,” Dylan said conversationally from the sofa, his arm holding Lana comfortably against him, “if I were you, I’d stop calling Michael’s new wife ‘the woman.’ I’m watching Mike from down here, and every time you say it his face turns blacker.”
That stopped them dead. Garrett and Shelby stared at Dylan, then turned to stare at Michael.
His expression was like a thundercloud.
Lana made a noise that was somewhere between a squeak and a gasp, then somehow collected herself. She hauled herself out of her husband’s arms and bounced up to stand before Michael. She took his hands in hers and fixed him with the Lord look-the look that told him he wouldn’t get away with anything but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“Of course she’s not ‘the woman.’ She’s Jenny and she’s really, really sweet,” she said warmly. “And you’ve married her. So tell us all about it, Michael. Don’t leave a single thing out, and don’t tell us any lies. Just tell us.”
Michael looked at his sisters’ troubled faces and gave an inward shrug. What the heck? They needed to know. These guys were his family. And somehow…so was Jenny.
So he did as ordered. He told them everything, while they stood and took it in with various degrees of disbelief and incredulity.
“Well,” Lana said at last, plonking herself down at Dylan’s side again. “Well.”
“She’s eight months pregnant?” Shelby asked in a distant voice. “You mean, she’s found herself a father for her child? When you had nothing to do with it? Of all the conniving-”
“Sort of like me and Lana,” Dylan said softly, holding his wife. “Like me finding a mother for Greg when Lana had nothing to do with it. Conniving like that, do you mean? Careful, Shelby.”
“It is not like that,” Shelby snapped. “You guys love each other. She-she trapped him.”
Michael’s brows lowered. “I offered, Shel.”
“But you don’t love her?” she demanded, wheeling on Michael with anger. “Of course you don’t love her! Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. Home, I guess.”
“Your home?”
“No, her home.”
“You don’t plan on living together?”
“Not yet.” He frowned. Not until he could make her see sense. Tomorrow maybe?
“Well, that’s something.” Shelby looked relieved, but Garrett was shaking his head.
“Mike, do you have any idea what sort of legal minefield you’ve put yourself into?”
“I can handle it.”
But Lana’s mind had gone off on another tangent. “You’re married to a woman who’s eight months pregnant and you don’t know for sure where she is?” she demanded, bouncing up from her husband’s hold again to face Michael head-on. Her indignation was palpable. “What if she goes into labor?”
“She has a phone.”
“She knows where you are?”
“I have the cell phone.”
“She’ll call you?”
“I…yes.” He fell silent. Would she? She’d promised.
Maybe she wouldn’t.
She would.
“You’re worrying about her, aren’t you?” Lana said triumphantly. “You care about her.”
“Lana, she’s my secretary. She might have been hired as a temp, but she’s the best assistant I ever had. This way…this way I get to keep her.”
“As your secretary?”