Marriage by Mistake (28 page)

Kelly tilted her head. A querying look came
into her eyes. She put a hand on his arm. "Did you want to say
something?"

He certainly ought to say something. He ought
to say that a relationship between them would never work. He ought
to say they had to stop kidding themselves here.

But, dammit, he wasn't going to.

I like you
. Kelly had told him that
yesterday. The words echoed through him like precious jewels. Dean
wasn't ready to expose them for what they really were, an outer
shell, no more. He wanted to keep them, just a little longer.

For one more day.

Dean stared at Kelly while the tension that
had been riding him since the previous evening mysteriously
relaxed. He felt a slow smile crawl over his face. One day. It was
the perfect way to combine his desire with his responsibility. He
wouldn't give those marvelous words back    yet. He could
do that    tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow he'd go back to the
sober, pragmatic fellow who knew better. Tomorrow he'd deal with
everything.

But today?

Well, today...wouldn't count.

"Dean?" Kelly asked. "What is it?"

Dean's smile grew. Instead of telling her how
these matters really worked, instead of warning her not to get too
attached, he let the sun warm his face, he heard the pleasant lap
of water against the boat. He luxuriated in the sensation of
Kelly's little hand on his sleeve.

"Yes, I want to say something." He heard a
laugh in his voice. "I want to say I'm having fun."

For today, a small inner voice reminded him.
Dean ignored it. He knew what he had to do tomorrow. But for
now...? Feeling reckless, feeling almost giddy, he touched Kelly's
cheek. "Today," he said, "I'm going to have fun."

Kelly smiled. Dean laughed. Swiveling at the
sound, mama duck headed her brood quickly back toward the shelter
of the lily pads.

###

Kelly had hoped the quiet ride on the swan
boat would relax Dean. She wasn't prepared for the transformation,
however, once they got off. He didn't reach into his jacket pocket
for his cell phone. He didn't look at his watch. Instead he
rearranged his palm around her hand to get a better grip and
smiled.

"So," he asked, looking down at her. "What's
next?"

Kelly's lips parted. He wasn't going to run
back to his office? He wasn't going to plead some kind of business
emergency to sort through his emotions? She closed her mouth and
cleared her throat. "Um, well..." An afternoon at the Parker House
occurred to her, but she knew they weren't ready for sex. Dean had
turned some sort of corner, to be sure, but it wasn't yet love.

If it was love, he would have said so.

He wore a big grin, however, an appealing
one, as he turned to face her. Still holding Kelly's hand, he began
to back up the path. "Have you toured downtown Boston yet?"

"Have I toured?" Other than the walk between
his office and the Parker House, that was? "No."

"Good." Dean's smile broadened. "Then I can
show you the sights."

"Oh." Kelly couldn't help staring. He really
had
turned a corner. He seemed happy, eager...relaxed.

Dean turned to face forward again. He pulled
her along. "The Freedom Trail. That should be sufficiently hoke
   er    " He broke off and his face turned
red.

"Hokey?" Kelly guessed, and tilted him a
look.

To her surprise, Dean laughed. An outright,
unconsidered laugh. "All right, hokey," he admitted. "But I think
you'll enjoy it."

"Because it's hokey."

Dean threw her sidelong glance. "If the shoe
fits..."

"Then I ought to wear it?" Kelly laughed,
too. Then they shared a look, smiling, connected. Kelly felt a
hiccup of pleasure. Well, this was...unexpected, a truly different
side to Dean, joking and spontaneous.

She found herself stepping closer, hooking
her arm with his. Okay, maybe she should question this new side of
Dean, maybe she should wonder what was really going on. Maybe she
should, but she wasn't going to. Heck, why ruin a perfectly good
moment?

For one day, she could just enjoy whatever
was.

###

It was the closest Kelly had seen Dean come
to the Dean she'd first met in Las Vegas. He looked happy, he had a
sense of fun, he laughed.

They started out on the Freedom Trail, the
red-brick line that wound through downtown. After two churches and
a cemetery, however, they decided to abandon the formal, tourist
path.

"Maybe I didn't have you pegged so well,
after all," Dean said, coming up behind Kelly where she roamed,
frowning, amidst three-hundred-year-old headstones.

She looked up at once, alert and concerned.
But he seemed to be taking his miscalculation in stride.

"Let's try the Haymarket," he said, and took
her arm. Adaptable, unruffled. And casually taking possession of
her as if    well, as if they belonged together.

That felt awfully good. "Let's," Kelly
agreed, and held onto him.

Arm-in-arm then, they strolled through the
Haymarket. Buyers and sellers argued over the price of vegetables,
and fish lay in gleaming silver piles. Dean steered Kelly around
spilled vegetables and the odd fish head.

"Two hundred years of rats have been cleaning
up here after hours," he told Kelly. "Speaking as an expert in the
field, I can tell you by now it's built into their genetic
code."

She laughed.

From Haymarket they ducked into the relative
sanity of Faneuil Hall, where carts lined up under glass awnings
sold everything from Red Sox banners to hand-carved sculptures.
Dean waited patiently while Kelly debated between buying a straw
scarecrow or a wooden chess set for Robby. Not once did he evince a
desire to be out of her presence or doing something else. Not once
did he check his telephone or his watch.

As Kelly paid for the chess set, she felt a
deep contentment. She didn't know what had prompted this about-face
behavior on Dean's part, but she did know she liked it. This was
good for him.

And it wasn't so bad for her, either.

She felt wanted, she felt appreciated. She
felt like she was getting to know a man who might actually come to
care for her.

She turned, wrapped bag in hand, to find Dean
watching her with an arrested expression. "What?" she asked. Lord,
she hoped the castles she'd been building in the air weren't
showing on her face.

To her relief, Dean shook a smile back on.
"Nothing." He lowered his head closer to hers. "I'm just enjoying
myself."

Kelly met his eyes. "You're enjoying
yourself." She dared to add, "for a change."

Dean's smile went crooked. "For a change." He
straightened and took the bag from her hand. "Are you hungry?"

"I'm ashamed to admit it, after that fancy
lunch..."

"Gourmet food is notoriously unsatisfying.
Come on. I'll take you to a place where they know how to fill you
up."

###

A neon sign in an upstairs window of the
North End building announced this was 'Josefina's.'

Dean led Kelly through a street-level door
and up a narrow staircase. Wonderful smells drifted down to meet
them, garlic and tomato and basil. At the top of the staircase
stood a large woman in a white apron. Her eyes widened when she saw
Dean.

"
Signore
!" She opened her arms. "We
have not seen you for ages. You eat somewhere else, you bad
boy?"

"No, no, Josefina. I haven't eaten a thing
since I last saw you, not one bite."

"
Pagliaccio
. A liar on top of
everything else."

"It's the God's honest truth. "

Josefina gave Dean a mock box on the ears,
something Kelly was amazed to see him put up with, much less appear
to enjoy. The older woman blinked when she noticed Kelly bringing
up the rear.

"Oh-h-h." Her expression turned astonished.
"Look what we have here."

"Kelly," Dean supplied.

"Kel-ly." Josefina took hold of Kelly by the
shoulders and beamed. "My, but this is    Don't you
worry,
signore
. We take good care of your girl. We give her
the extra-special treatment. We put out all the gos."

"Pull out all the stops, I think she means,"
Dean confided to Kelly.

"I'm sure anything you do would be great,
Josefina. It smells wonderful in here." Kelly smiled, liking the
woman immediately.

Josefina's beam managed to pick up wattage
and she let loose a stream of happy-sounding Italian. "Come, come,"
she said at last. "I give you a place to sit. Sit, sit, sit."

The upstairs room looked to have been
originally the living room of an apartment. One wall had been torn
down to add the living room of the next apartment over. The
lighting was dim and the décor simple.

Josefina led them to a table by the window,
intimate, candle-lit, and with a view of the village-like North
end. The way Dean took his seat told Kelly this was a usual
spot.

She picked up her linen napkin and raised her
brows. "Something tells me this isn't where you take investors for
power lunches."

"No." Dean smiled faintly as he rearranged
the placement of candle and flower vase. "I come here alone."

Kelly's ironic smile faded. She'd assumed
this was a trysting spot, a place to bring the odd lover. Instead,
he'd brought her to his private haunt.

She tried to think up something flip to say
in response, but couldn't. Dean was letting her into his real life,
deeply into it.

Their eyes met over the checked linen
tablecloth. Kelly felt her heart beat fast and hard. "Well," she
said at last, her voice no more than a whisper. "You aren't alone
tonight."

"No." Dean's faint smile faded. "I'm
not."

###

The day Dean had chosen for his enjoyment was
quickly drawing to an end. He'd strolled through the time
aimlessly, basking in Kelly's emotions. He'd let her joy and her
affection wash over him like so much rare elixir. Deliberately,
he'd refrained from questioning the endurance of such emotions.
What did endurance matter when he was only counting on a single
day? For the span of one day their emotions weren't going to
change.

But the day was nearly over. The dial on the
dashboard of his Lexus read 11:53 when he pulled the car into its
spot in the garage. It took a few minutes to gather Kelly's
purchases from the trunk, a few more to walk up to the house. Dean
figured it had to be past midnight by the time they got to the
hallway outside Kelly's bedroom door.

His day was officially over.

It was time to return to reality. Reality was
the temporary nature of emotions. Reality was that passion and all
its by-products didn't last. Reality was the huge mistake it would
be to rely on mere feelings.

But reality was awfully hard to come by when
Kelly turned at her bedroom door, when her tremulous smile made his
insides clench.

"I want to tell you," she whispered huskily.
"I had a really nice day."

I liked you. You were good for me. As good
as I was for you.
Drawing in a deep breath, Dean tried to still
her fantasy voice in his head. "Yes," he said gruffly. "It was a
nice day." And just one day, he struggled to remind himself. He had
to get away from fantasy, back to reality.

Kelly's smile crooked. "And now it's
over."

Yes, it was over. All over. That had been the
deal Dean had promised himself on the swan boat. But as his groin
stirred traitorously, a voice whispered slyly in his head.
It's
not quite over yet
.

Kelly's lashes lowered. "Things are different
now, aren't they?"

Whoa. Even as desire stirred, Dean knew he
couldn't have her believing anything was different. Hell, he might
start believing it, himself. Yes, he'd let down his guard, he'd
allowed himself to enjoy her company, but that didn't mean anything
essential had changed. Whatever they'd felt for each other today
wasn't real. It wasn't lasting. Such things never were.

Before he got a chance to say anything of the
sort, however, Kelly reached out to put a finger in the middle of
Dean's chin. He stood immobilized. The smell of the salt of her
skin reached his nose, the leather from the car seat, and even a
hint of the garlic they'd had with their dinner. The whole magical
day seemed encapsulated in Kelly's finger.

Reality began to slip.

Kelly smiled softly. "I don't know what it
took for you to let go, to loosen up today, for you to trust me,
but I know it was a lot. And so...thank you." Her eyes came up to
meet his.

Reality continued its downward slide.
Swiftly. The look in her eyes... She'd had a good time, as good a
time as he'd had. He'd done that    for her. He'd
been
able
to do that. The ancient part of Dean, the part that had
elected to take the day off, surged upward again.

He didn't want this to go.

Not yet.

As Kelly gently lowered her finger and made
to step back, he cast frantically for something, anything, to
prolong the moment, the time    the connection.

"I like you."

Kelly froze. It took Dean a second to realize
he was the one who'd uttered the words. He'd just told Kelly he
liked
her. Out loud.

Terror warred with the most bizarre access of
joy. It was true, of course. He did like her. A lot. But
   Oh, there were so many but's. Nevertheless, his joy
continued to grow, along with his terror. What would she think of
this?

"Oh, Dean," she murmured, while her face went
all soft and warm.

That was it. The end. He affected her.
He
did. The ancient warrior inside Dean, the rebel who
refused to face reality, charged in with the strength of an armed
battalion. Any thought of being responsible flitted into
nothingness.

What was responsibility compared to
this
, this new and incredible sensation?