Momentary Marriage (29 page)

Thank God, she’d kept the apartment. She’d go back to the home she’d made for herself and remind herself that she could make it on her own.

Please, please, please, don’t let me be pregnant,
she prayed with silent desperation. Not because she wouldn’t love his baby, but because she couldn’t afford to love
him.

If she could only get away from Jared, maybe she could heal herself.

Remembering that Jared had a five o’clock meeting that would put him home a little after six, Kelsey made a point of leaving the office early.

With blank and mechanical preciseness, she unlocked the apartment door and went to the bedroom. Packing the things she needed immediately took her less than an hour. The rest could be boxed up later.

She buzzed the doorman to help with her bags and get her a taxi.

Having deliberately left herself only a few minutes, she sat down and wrote a note.

Jared,

I spoke with Amy. She tells me she’s through with Doug. He’s a lost cause and she hates him now. I realize our agreement had a specified time, but that was more for my benefit than yours. You’ll never have trouble getting sex. Now that it doesn’t matter what Doug believes about us, we should probably end the charade.

Thanks for everything.

Kelsey

Angrily brushing back the sudden rush of tears, she left the note on a table in the foyer along with the apartment key.

It was a simple as that.

They’d married because of Amy and Doug. Now it was over.

*
**

Jared stared numbly at the note in his hand. He felt paralyzed with shock. What the hell was going on? He’d left her this morning with no indication of coming home to this.

She’d seemed tired, a little tense, but there had been no hint that she was thinking of…leaving him.

The panic that hit him when he read the note shifted to a deep, horrible fear. She couldn’t really mean it. He’d had a year, damn it, a year to win her love. She couldn’t change the rules now!

He crumpled the note in his hand, striding through the living area to their bedroom. Flinging open drawers and closets, he found confirmation. She’d taken some and left the rest.

Jared sank onto the bed, Kelsey’s note still clenched in his fist. He wasn’t done.

He’d find her, make her listen. Hell, if nothing else, he had a verbal contract. She, at least, had to give him the rest of the year.

He couldn’t live without her. The thought was completely unacceptable.

*
**

Kelsey sat cross-legged on the floor in the living room of her apartment, trying to ignore the nagging ache in her back. Wearing flannel boxers and a tee-shirt, she absently rubbed at her damp hair with a towel, feeling as wrung out as an old sponge.

Somewhere between losing her lunch at work and crying her eyes out in the shower, she’d started her period.

No baby.

No sweet-faced snuggly with his father’s eyes, and certainly no Jared, not that there’d ever been any real hope of that. No matter how she reminded herself that his interest in her had little to do with
her
, she still cried at the loss.

She’d said goodbye to her heart and there was no getting it back. Any sane woman would have been grateful not to be pregnant. Kelsey couldn’t work that emotion into the grief, desolation and sadness.

The whole episode had only shown her how much she needed and wanted Jared. How much she loved him, despite all her intentions.

The door buzzer sounded.

In spite of herself, she tensed. Not moving, she heard it ring again. And again.

When the rude sound came a fourth time, she got up and went to the intercom. “Yes?”

“Let me in.” Jared's voice sounded grim.

She pushed the button, knowing she should have expected him. He certainly wasn’t the type of man to let her leave without an explanation.

As she struggled to formulate the words that would send him away as simply and painlessly as possible, he knocked on the door.

Kelsey opened it, almost afraid to look at him. People said a woman looked different when she was in love. He couldn’t know, mustn’t guess. Jared played every card to get what he wanted. If getting her to have children for him was what he wanted, he was capable of using any weakness on her part to get her cooperation.

“What the hell is going on?” he said, shutting the door behind him with a snap.

She backed into the small living room, drawing in a deep breath like an actress before her big speech. “You got my note. I just don’t think we need to—“

“I could let you lie to me for five minutes,” he interrupted, “but I’m really not in the mood, so I’ll save you the trouble and tell you that I found the receipt from the pregnancy test.”

“What?” she gasped.

“On the floor in the bedroom,” he said, his expression implacable.

“I—“ She sank into a chair, not knowing what to say. Anger radiated off him in waves. Standing in front of her, his expression icy, he waited. She’d never seen him like this before.

“So you were just going to keep this little secret to yourself?” Jared demanded, fury in every rigid line of his body. “You leave me, not bothering to tell me that you’re pregnant, and go on with your life?”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said in a low voice, acutely aware of him standing in the midst of her tiny apartment, his presence as overwhelming as a black wall of smoke.

“And I’m supposed to take your word for it,” he sneered. “Obviously you bought the test for some reason. You must have suspected you were pregnant for days and never said a word to me. I come home and you’re gone.”

“I’m not pregnant,” she told him, meeting his eyes. “Really. I thought I might be, but I’m not.”

“And you left without telling me. You weren’t planning on telling me you might be pregnant.” He stood in her apartment, his face as cold as an arctic stone.

Kelsey rubbed a hand over her eyes. “I don’t know what I was planning. Yes, I left. No, I didn’t tell you I thought I might be pregnant.”

“So,” he said in an angry voice, “it’s over. Just like that?”

“Amy says she’s through with Doug,” Kelsey said, feeling herself on the verge of tears. Mired in her own pain, Amy was withdrawing into herself, not responding to Kelsey’s calls, making excuses not to get together. The estrangement ate at Kelsey. Because of her own past sins in leading Doug on, she’d become a part of her sister’s pain. “Doug’s an idiot. A fool, according to Amy, and she’s done with him.”

“How exactly is that pertinent now?” Jared’s eyes were hard.

“It’s no use,” Kelsey said jerkily, getting up and facing him. “I’ve screwed up Amy’s life and Doug’s life, and our getting married hasn’t fixed anything.”

“And that’s it? You don’t need to be married anymore, so we’re done?”

She cleared her throat, fighting the lump there, muttering. “You don’t need a wife to find a lover.”

“But I have a wife,” he reminded her nastily. “You are my wife. In the eyes of the State of
New York
. Before God and our assembled families. Most importantly, we had a deal.”

“Your parents will understand,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her face. “Hell, they’re perfect. They’d love and accept you if we went on national television and told the world the truth about our marriage!”

“My family’s opinion isn’t under discussion here,” he said implacably. “We made an agreement. A year of cohabiting and everything that entails. You owe me the rest of the twelve months.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she begged, not bothering to try and hide the trail of tears now sneaking steadily down her cheeks.

“We had a deal,” he said again, his jaw tight.

How had she ever thought him tender? He was all chilly granite now, the fire of his anger kept tightly inside him. God, she loved him, Kelsey thought, a wave of it hitting her. Wanted to throw herself into his arms and tell him she’d never leave him. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t promise forever to herself, much less to him. She might as well get it over with.

“It’s not a negotiable thing, at this point,” he said. “Get your clothes and let’s go home. You made an agreement. I help you deceive your sister and Doug. You live with me and sleep with me for a year as my wife.”

“Well, I don’t particularly feel like having sex with you,” she snapped, anger springing up alongside her grief and miserable confusion. “I didn’t sell myself into prostitution.”

She saw the kindling light in his eyes and wondered for a moment if she’d gone too far.

“No,” he said with a soft note in his voice that left her more shaken than his anger before. “Not prostitution. A year of mutually pleasurable, conjugal intercourse. Now, get your damned clothes!”

“I’m not coming back!” she yelled. “You’re just being a manipulative tyrant!”

“Manipulative,” he echoed in disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You!” she spat, her heart pounding in her chest like an
animal in a trap. “You’ve been trying to talk me into getting pregnant! From the beginning, you wanted to get a child from this marriage. I’m just a means to an end and you’ve never been honest about it! I didn’t sign on for motherhood!”

“What?” he thundered, his brow darkening further.

“You tried to get me off the pill,” she panted. “Tried to get me to agree to having your child. You even told my mother we were going to have children.”

“Your mother misunderstood,” Jared snapped.

Kelsey gasped. “Don’t give me that! You as good as admitted to me that you promised her grandchildren. You
asked
me to have children with you! Don’t try and deny it.”

“I’m not denying it.” He stood staring at her for a moment, his eyes fathomless.

“You asked me,” she repeated, her voice shaken with everything that lie between them. She loved him. God, she loved him and she was afraid it would kill her.

“I want children,” he said, his words harsh, “but I don’t need to or want to trick a woman into having them for me.”

“You suggested it,” Kelsey said, trembling so hard she sat back down in the chair. “Then, you said I should get off the pill—“

“I’m getting accused of trickery because I was worried about your health!” he asked in incredulous anger.

“A-and then I couldn’t find my pills that time,” she faltered. “They just disappeared….”

“My God!” He sounded stunned. “You think I stole your pills to get you pregnant?”

Lowering her head into her hands, she sobbed silently, feeling as if she were being torn apart inside.

“Do you trust me so little? This is what you think of me? That I’d trick you into something as significant as having a child with me?”

Unable to look at him, the incredulity in his voice shredding what little composure she had left, she wept. Kelsey felt her tears dripping through her fingers, each hot drop soaking through the flannel pajamas she wore.

“Not every man sees children as objects to be obtained or discarded at a whim,” he told her, a mixture of contempt and pity in the words. “Regardless of your own personal experience.”

She said nothing, struggling to slow her weeping as she grasped for restraint. It did no good to rail against losing him. Losses of the heart were inevitable. She should never have let herself fall in love with him. She’d known he was the man she couldn’t just walk away from.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” he said suddenly in a detached voice that didn’t match the burning intensity in his eyes. “If love never lasts, marriages never last, why does it matter if you have children without love? If you had met a man and fallen in love with him….”

He stopped, seeming to labor with himself a moment before going on. “If you’d fallen in love with someone and married him rather than marrying me for your sister’s sake, would you have then had children with him?”

Trying to control the soft hiccupping breath in her throat, Kelsey wiped again at her tear-wet face and stared at him. “What do you mean?”

He stood in her small living room, his face dark as a moonless night, his hands shoved into his pants pockets in a posture seeming both defiant and resigned. “You want to have children. You told me that. So, in what circumstances do you see yourself having them? By yourself after making a withdrawal from some sperm bank?”

She made an instinctive gesture of denial. “No! I’d never want a fatherless child.”

“But if love never stays,” he said with soft urgency, “how does that work? You’d have a child with a man you loved, believing the two of you would eventually divorce? Yet, you are
so opposed to having a child with me? Whom you plan to divorce.”

Staring at him, she realized he was trying to voice the dilemma she’d been unconsciously struggling with herself. Believing that children deserve parents who love each other, how could she ever have a child when she couldn’t believe love lasted? Any child of hers would be hurt by his parent’s eventual separation, just as she’d been hurt by hers.

Kelsey dragged a breath into her tight, burning lungs, her gaze fixed on his.