“Kissing makes babies,” one small scamp offered, and the other boy hooted with scorn.
“Stupid, they’ve already made a baby. She’s as pregnant as my mom was when she had Sarah. I’ll bet she’s about to bust at any minute.”
“Then what do they want to kiss for?”
Sarah’s older brother was unable to find an answer for such a tricky biological question. “Yuck! How would I know?” He giggled, threw Jenny and Michael a scornful glance and raced away with his buddy.
What do they want to kiss for?
Their words lingered, funny, yet profound. What did they want to kiss for? Jenny looked deep into Michael’s eyes and she knew exactly why.
Peter! No!
The stab of memory caught her by surprise. Why was she doing this? What promises was she breaking now? She took a deep breath and pushed away. “Michael, I don’t want…”
“Me to kiss you?” He smiled at the distress in her face. “Honest? I very much want to kiss you.”
“I can’t.”
“Jen…” He rose from his kneeling position and sat on the bench beside her, taking her hands between his. All of a sudden her fingers felt cold, and he frowned. “It’s too soon, isn’t it? Because of Peter.”
“I…” She shook her head. How to make him see the impossible? “He’s only been dead seven months,” she said miserably.
“I understand.”
“No.” She pulled her hands away, pushed her curls out of her eyes and stared bleakly at the river. “I don’t think you do.”
“So tell me,” he said softly. Her eyes flew to his.
“You don’t-you can’t-this has nothing to do with you. I thought you never intended to get near anyone again.”
“I’m doing it for the dog,” he said promptly, and his answer was so pat she frowned in confusion.
“The dog?”
Lightness was needed here. He was thinking fast. Anything to take the panic from her eyes.
“Every orphan needs two parents,” he explained soulfully. “I ought to know that. Your baby needs two parents, so I offered, thinking we could get into the domesticity bit later. But now we have Socks, and the need is urgent. We need to indulge in domesticity right now, or Socks risks a deeply disturbed adolescence.”
“And domesticity means kissing?”
“Definitely!”
“You know, Socks might not be the most stable adolescent to work on,” Jenny said cautiously, trying for laughter, and Michael shook his head in disbelief and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Shh. You’ll give the dog a complex. Let’s just go back to playing doting parents. Do what doting parents do.” He smiled at her-that heart-stopping smile that had her insides doing back flips-and tried to draw her into his arms. But she somehow managed to pull away.
“No.”
“Then tell me why.” His smile died again. Okay. Maybe humor wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe honesty was the best bet. “There’s all sorts of electricity between us, Jenny, and I don’t understand it one bit. It’s caught me by surprise, but my instinct here is to go with it. To see where it leads.”
“To see if we can fall in love, you mean?” she asked cautiously, and he nodded.
“I guess that’s what I do mean.” He caught his breath, overwhelmed by what he was about to say. “Maybe…maybe it’s already happened.”
“You’re saying you love me?” Her eyes widened in incredulity. “After four days?”
“Hey, I’ve known you for over five months. Every weekday for five months.”
Her jaw dropped. “Yeah, right. And you spent all that time treating me like I was part of the furniture.”
“I didn’t.”
“Every morning I had the same thing for morning break,” she said with asperity. “What was it?”
“Huh?”
“Ha! I told you you didn’t notice!”
“How would I know if you had tea or coffee. Does it matter?”
“I had chocolate milk,” she said with dignity. “Straight out of the carton.”
“Jen…”
“No.” Despite her attempt at lightness, the distress was still in her voice. “No way. It’s true you’ve only just noticed me. There’s no way I’m letting you commit here, Michael Lord.”
Let him commit? Let him commit?
“Hell, woman, I want to commit,” he roared. “Damn it, I’ve spent most of my life running scared of commitment. Now I’ve decided I want to go the whole nine yards, and you say you don’t? But I can feel you do!” He made a grab for her again, but she drew back and rose from the bench.
“No!” This time there was no laughter at all. There was fear.
He saw it, and his indignation died at once. He didn’t follow, just stayed sitting, watching her.
“Tell me, Jen,” he said softly. “What’s bothering you? What are you fearful of? Me?”
“No.” She hesitated. Maybe he had to know. She had to explain it to herself.
“Peter married me fast,” she said.
“How fast?” He didn’t make a move. He had the impression that if he did, she would retreat into silence. “Sit, Jen. And tell me.”
There was a long, drawn-out silence, and then, slowly, she sat and started speaking. And when she did, her voice sounded as if it came from a long way away.
“We met one fabulous weekend at the home of mutual friends,” she said. “Or rather, they weren’t really mutual friends. Henry and Kate were friends of mine, and Peter knew Henry from university. Henry had gone home to Peter’s for the weekend while they were undergraduates, and Gloria had pink fits because Henry’s mother worked as a char, and Henry was a scholarship student.”
“Gloria disapproves of the unmoneyed?”
“Absolutely. So Henry became a bone of contention between them. Whenever Peter wanted to infuriate his mother, he’d extend his friendship with Henry. When Peter had a fight with his mother, he took off to visit Henry. He even told her that. He was off to stay with his unsuitable friends.”
“Oh, great.”
“Of course, I never knew that till later,” Jenny said, her voice bleak. “All I knew was that Henry’s friend was drop-dead gorgeous, and he swept me off my naive nineteen-year-old feet. We were married before I could blink-before I found out that he was marrying me so he could marry a totally unsuitable woman to get at his mother.”
“He must have been nuts.”
“He was very mixed up,” Jen said sadly. “I’m not saying he wasn’t attracted to me. Like me and you, there was this…thing.”
“Like me and you?” He paused, hating the comparison. “So it’s the same?”
“I don’t know.” She flushed and looked at him. “No. It’s not. At least I don’t think so. With you I feel-” She broke off as he moved fractionally toward her, and her hands came out as if to fend him off. “No. I don’t know what I feel. But I do know that I’m rushing into no commitment here. You married me as a kindness, and there’s no way I’m taking it further. I’ve had one man already who was stuck with me.”
“Is that what Peter was?”
“Oh, yes. Honorably stuck, but stuck all the same,” she said bitterly. “He was a mix…half his father, whom I gather he admired because he had such a stiff upper lip and was all honor-he died some time ago-and half his mother, whom you’ve seen. And a bit of rebellion, which made him seem vulnerable. He just didn’t know where he fitted in. But he made me promise…” Her voice died away.
“He made you promise what?”
Her chin tilted, trying to make him see. Trying to make him understand a little.
“He regretted it, you see,” she said, faltering as she fought for the right words. “He tried to break free of his aristocratic bonds, and it didn’t work. So when he was dying, he made me promise to raise our child as he ought to be raised-as the next earl.”