The Right Bride

Chapter Thirty-Nine


CAMERON ARRIVED HOME and found Shelly having a fit because the staff wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. She wanted to get the house in order for the wedding, but Marti stepped in and told her she couldn’t move any of the furniture. He pointed out she shouldn’t be doing anything like moving furniture when she was pregnant. He’d never forget the look on her face, almost like she’d forgotten.

He made everyone dinner, disappointed Marti didn’t come down to join them. He made enough for all of them, but as he was cleaning up the kitchen, she came in long enough to grab a bottle of water, banana, and a spinach, chicken, and berry salad, and go back up to her rooms.

The whole time she was in the kitchen, she spoke on the phone in Italian. Maybe it was Italian. It sounded like Italian. He wondered how many languages she spoke and how and why she’d learned them all. He wondered if she was talking to a friend or doing business. He still had no idea what it was she did for a living. Hell, the woman didn’t even speak English when it was a business call.

He spent the evening avoiding Shelly and doing homework and playing with Emma. Shelly went on and on about the plans for the wedding. She talked about the flowers, the caterers, the tables and chairs she’d ordered to be set up on the back lawn. He didn’t care about any of it.

When he thought about Marti, he was hard as stone. When he thought about Shelly, his rock-hard cock turned into a limp noodle. He wondered if he’d spend his marriage thinking about Marti in order to make love to Shelly. He wondered if he’d ever be able to make love to her.

After putting Emma to bed, he went to Shelly’s room to talk to her. The minute he’d stepped through the door, she complained her back ached from the pregnancy and would he rub it for her. He’d have a lot more nights like this once she rounded with the pregnancy. She claimed a headache and refused to engage in more than a few words, despite his best efforts to talk to her about their future.

She tried to seduce him, but the more she tried, the less interest he could muster. Eventually he grabbed her hands, stilled them, and pulled her next to him on the bed. He covered with a lie, telling her he hadn’t slept well since George’s death and he was exhausted.

How many lies would he have to tell over the coming years?

Marti, and his thoughts about her, were the reason he hadn’t slept, not George. After he’d made love to her in the rain and she’d left telling him he’d left her no choice, he’d stayed up wondering what she meant. She planned to leave, which made it even harder to sleep. He was afraid he’d wake up and she’d be gone.

He woke up in Shelly’s bed, the woman he didn’t want snoring at his side. Disgusted with himself, he rubbed his hand over his tense neck. He was supposed to be happy about marrying her. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about another woman, or wanting another woman. A man in his prime with a beautiful woman in his bed, he should have been able to make love to her hard and fast and long.

He rolled off the bed. His jeans weren’t even buttoned and he didn’t have his shirt on. He glanced at the clock. After one in the morning, he didn’t want Emma to find him in Shelly’s room. After the wedding, he’d explain to her a wife and husband slept together, but not until then. He didn’t know why he was putting it off, he just was.

He walked out of Shelly’s door and ran smack into Marti in the hall.

“Well, I guess I don’t have to ask what you’re doing up.” She looked at his unbuttoned jeans and the shirt in his hands. “Well, I guess you aren’t up anymore. I’m sure Shelly took care of it for you.” She couldn’t help it. She was angry. He was on her side of the house and sleeping with Shelly right across the hall from her rooms.

“I wasn’t doing anything. If you want to know the truth, I couldn’t.”

“Sure. It’s one in the morning and you’re half naked and sneaking out of her room because you didn’t sleep with her. I’m not blind, or stupid.”

“I did not sleep with her.” Frustrated, he dropped his head and stared at the floor and her pretty bare feet. “What are you doing up anyway?”

“Working. Why do you even care?”

“I care about you. You’re working every night and into the morning. You’re pale and you look ill. You don’t take care of yourself. You hardly ate anything tonight. And what the hell where you doing eating pie and olives for lunch? That’s not a proper meal, or even a good one,” he said and made a face of disgust over her choice of lunch foods.

“Like I said, why do you care?”

He pushed her up against the wall and held her there with his body. “I care, dammit. Don’t you think I wish and hope everyday for you? Don’t you think I’d rather it was you who is pregnant, rather than Shelly?”

“Wish granted.” She planted both hands on his hard, bare chest and shoved him away. She tried to move on to the stairs and head for the kitchen for something to eat, but he stopped her.

“What do you mean, ‘wish granted’?”

“You want me to be pregnant and not Shelly. I am, and I’ll bet everything I have she’s not.”

“You aren’t pregnant. You’re lying. You just don’t want me to marry her.”

She threw up her hands. “Are you kidding me? Why is it you take her side over me every time and on everything? She tells you she’s pregnant and you believe her. I tell you I’m pregnant and you call me a liar.”

She grabbed his hand and marched him straight through her bedroom into her bathroom. “You want proof. Fine.”

She opened the drawer and pulled out one of the pregnancy tests. She pulled down her pants, sat on the toilet, and peed on the stick.

“Marti, for God’s sake. This is ridiculous.”

She capped the stick, put it on the counter, wiped, and flushed the toilet. She pulled up her pants, faced him, glaring.

She took out the other three tests she’d already taken over the last few days and held them up to him.

“Sometimes we need to be reminded good things can happen, even when we’re in the worst of circumstances.”

She put the first test down on the counter.

“Sometimes we need to be reminded even when there is death, life brings us hope.”

She put another test on the counter.

“Sometimes we need to be reminded when someone makes us feel like we’re worthless, another can make us feel like a god.”

She put the test on the counter. She pointed to the test she’d just taken.

“Sometimes we are reminded people are willing to tell the truth and back it up, no matter what the cost.”

He stared at all the tests. They all had two lines indicating she was pregnant. Beyond stunned, he had no words. He’d called her a liar to her face.

He’d put that hurt look on her face again.

“Don’t worry, Cameron. She was pregnant first, so you just go ahead and marry her. Your child with her will have the full time father it deserves. My baby will be just fine having a part-time dad, because he’ll have a mother who wants him and loves him. Shelly doesn’t want to be a mother. You know it, and I know it.”

She took a steadying breath. “You wanted me to prove I’m pregnant and I have. I wouldn’t lie to you. I thought you’d know that much about me. Now, I see just how little you really do know about me, and it makes me sad. How can you love me when you don’t even know me? The answer is you don’t.”

She put her last pregnancy test box on the counter.

“Why don’t you make her prove it? In all this time, you never once thought to make her take a test you can pick up at the drugstore.”

She turned and left the room, grabbing her purse from her bed and left the house.

Cameron, rooted to the floor, stood in the bathroom staring at all the pregnancy tests when he heard her car engine rev up and she drove away. Her words echoed in his mind. She thought he didn’t love her. He’d called her a liar. She didn’t want him to marry her. She thought she came second because Shelly had gotten pregnant first.

She doesn’t think I love her.

It kept ringing in his mind. She doesn’t think I love her.

She was gone and he didn’t know if she’d be back. He didn’t even know where she would go. He didn’t know how he’d find her.

She was having his baby and he didn’t know her last name.