Daddy Christmas Read online

His eyes roved her with leisurely abandon, taking in everything about her. “Have you had dinner yet?” He leaned forward and brushed his lips casually across her cheek.

  Gretchen did not return his distinctly southern greeting. She had promised herself she would remain irritated with him so as to remind herself not to start depending on him. But it was hard when he looked so damn glad to see her, so at ease. Struggling to contain the joy bubbling up within her, she hefted her backpack onto one shoulder. “Sure haven’t,” she replied breezily. Good grief. She certainly hoped he wasn’t expecting her to cook for him tonight. That would be too much.

  He removed the backpack from her shoulder, frowning when he discovered how heavy it was. “Want to go out to eat?”

  Gretchen favored anything that would help her avoid being alone with him in a truly intimate setting. She’d started to feel like a wife in the twenty hours or so they’d spent together as a married couple. That feeling had faded while he’d been away. She didn’t want it coming back again. Not if it meant she had to get used to living without him all over again. And yet they had to spend some time together, work out some plans for the future, for their baby’s sake. Maybe a crowded restaurant was the way to go.

  “Sure.” Gretchen tried hard not to notice how devastatingly handsome he looked in the tan corduroy slacks and dark-brown cashmere sweater designed like a long-sleeved polo shirt. She preceded him inside the house and watched him set her book bag gently on the parson’s bench in the hall. “When and where?”

  Matt turned toward her, unable to tear his gaze from her upturned face. “How about now, and any place you choose?” he asked softly.

  Gretchen had been having a lot of cravings lately, for the strangest things. She hadn’t indulged any of them. Maybe it was time she did. “How about County Line barbecue?” She didn’t know why, but she had been yearning for their hot homemade bread, spread with creamy butter.

  “Sounds good to me,” Matt said genially.

  “Just let me freshen up a bit first,” Gretchen said, swiftly stepping past him.

  While he continued catching up on his mail—quite a lot had accumulated during his absence—she went upstairs. A quick look in her closet confirmed what she already knew. She had nothing to wear. Nothing that was dressy enough for an evening out with Matt and still comfortable. She might not have gained much weight so far, but her waist had definitely expanded. She could feel the waistband of her jeans cutting into her. Another few days and she wouldn’t be able to zip them up at all. She would have to do as Marissa had suggested and switch to maternity clothes.

  But she wouldn’t think about that tonight.

  Tonight she would concentrate on the fact that Matt was back, and he’d looked glad to see her. Maybe they would never be married in the usual sense; maybe they would never even share a bedroom for anything more than an occasional night of lovemaking; but maybe they could still be friends, Gretchen thought confidently. Tonight was the perfect time for them to get to know each other even better.

  * * *

  “STOP EYEING my pickle,” Matt teased.

  Gretchen finished the last of her potato salad and put her fork down next to her plate. “Not to worry, Matt,” she replied dryly, having also demolished generous portions of tender mesquite-smoked beef brisket, tangy cole slaw and ranch-style beans in short order. Maybe it was her pregnancy, but she couldn’t recall ever being so hungry, or the food at the famed Austin restaurant tasting so good. “Your dill pickle is safe,” she said, patting her midriff contentedly. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”

  He grinned and continued to work on his own man-size combination platter of chicken and brisket with equal gusto.

  “Besides,” Gretchen said, “pickles are not what I’ve been craving.”

  He quirked a brow as he sipped his iced tea. “What have you been craving?”

  Truthfully? You, Gretchen thought wistfully, then immediately banished the thought.

  It was presumptuous of her to be thinking about sleeping wrapped in his arms again, never mind making wild, hot passionate love with him. But she was thinking it, Gretchen admitted honestly to herself, and had been for days now. Every night he had been away, she had dreamed about him. Every day he had been away, she had thought of him constantly and missed seeing him more than she could ever have imagined possible.

  What Matt was thinking and feeling, however, was less clear. She knew he was glad to see her. He hadn’t stopped smiling or talking since they’d driven to the restaurant. But beyond that, who knew? To read him better, she would have to get to know him better, Gretchen thought. And there was no time like the present to get started on that.

  “So, how are your kids doing?” she asked, turning their attention from current affairs to a more personal subject. “Did you talk to any of them while you were in West Texas?”

  Matt grinned, his affection for his college-age children evident. “All of them, as a matter of fact.”

  “And?” Gretchen sipped her milk and waited with bated breath.

  “They mentioned something about wanting to have dinner at the house with us soon.”

  That sounded ominous. Gretchen watched as Matt took another bite of mesquite-grilled chicken smothered in barbecue sauce. “They’re still suspicious, aren’t they?” she asked unhappily.

  Matt shrugged his broad shoulders acceptingly. “They all know it’s not like me to do something on a whim.”

  Then why did you? Gretchen wondered. Was it the baby or something more that had prompted Matt to come to her rescue? Did she even dare to hope they could ever have more than they had agreed upon when they’d entered this marriage? All she knew for sure was that going out with him like this was a very intimate and therefore unsettling experience. Just as living in his home, with or without him, was a very intimate and unsettling experience, because it made her feel as if they were married, in more than name only.

  Pulling herself together, Gretchen forced herself to smile and look at Matt. “So what did you tell them?” she inquired cheerfully.

  Matt flexed his shoulders restlessly and sat back in his chair. As he moved, his long legs nudged hers under the table sending a ribbon of warmth shooting through her.

  “I set a date for the first weekend in March,” he said. His lips tightened matter-of-factly. “It was as long as I could stall them.”

  Finally she was picking up some emotion she could decipher. “So you don’t want to do it, either?” she guessed softly. Trying to form a new family unit, with Gretchen playing the part of the kindhearted yet undeniably reluctant stepmother, would not be easy. Adding to the trouble was the fact that Matt’s kids were not exactly welcoming her with open arms.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to see them—I do,” Matt said, leaning forward his feet planted on either side of the chair, his knees warmly—unconsciously, perhaps—on the outside of hers. “The problem is I don’t want to have to deal with their suspicions that this marriage of ours is not on the up-and-up.”

  Gretchen drew a breath, not sure whether it was the topic of conversation or the warmth and closeness of him making her pulse skitter. She lifted her eyes to his, feeling she could drown in the gray depths. “Do you think we made a mistake not leveling with the kids in the first place?”

  Again Matt shrugged. “You know what they say, hindsight is always better. If we’d had more time, we might have pulled the marriage together more smoothly, I guess. Considering the pressures we were dealing with, however, we had all we could handle coping with our own ambivalence. Add to that a wealth of other complications...”

  “Such as?”

  His mouth crooked up ruefully. “That I am their father and they are at a vulnerable age and I’m trying to set an example. As long as Luke, Sassy and Angela can remember, I’ve been impressing upon them the need to be responsible, to look before they leap, to do not just what I say but what I do, to live an honorable, decent life. Yet here I am, having gotten you in the worst kind of trouble....” His v
oice trailed off. He shook his head in silent self-reproach, as if, even after all this time, he couldn’t believe their predicament.

  “So you’re embarrassed about the situation, too,” Gretchen said gently.

  He rolled his eyes and groaned. “Aren’t you?”

  Gretchen was quiet a long moment. Then, relaxing enough to admit she felt the same, she grinned and, wary of the other diners around them, leaned forward to whisper, “Hell, yes. I never ever thought that I, Gretchen O’Malley, would ever be in a predicament like this.”

  Matt clasped her hand and lifted it to his lips, kissing her knuckles reassuringly. “But we are,” he reminded her, lowering her hand to the tabletop again.

  “And you’d like to keep the predicament private.”

  His hand tightened protectively over hers. She could feel the tension flowing abruptly through him.

  “Wouldn’t you?” he countered bluntly.

  Gretchen nodded, relieved to have some of their most troubling thoughts out in the open. “Yes. Like it or not, I have to be practical here.” She looked at him, willing him to understand. “I’m going to be applying for teaching jobs when I graduate. School boards can be very narrow-minded. Most teaching contracts carry morals clauses. I would not want to find myself or my child at the center of any public controversy, either before or after I got hired. I would never want our child to be the object of hurtful gossip or innuendo.”

  “And the less talk there is about us now, the less chance there will be gossip dredged up later.”

  “There’s also no reason to upset your children unnecessarily, Matt. You’re right. They do look to you to set an example. We don’t want them following in our footsteps,” Gretchen said ruefully, turning her glance toward the large windows that overlooked Austin’s picturesque Bull Creek.

  “No, we certainly don’t. Having a child is a huge responsibility. None of them is old enough or mature enough to handle it at this point.”

  “Nevertheless, they will have to know eventually,” Gretchen said. She wasn’t looking forward to making the revelation, either. She could just see them all counting on their fingers, wondering—correctly, as it happened—if that was the one and only reason Matt had married her. And in that respect, she felt guilty. Oh, she knew intellectually that it took two to tango, and they certainly had tangoed the night before Christmas. And she knew that the responsibility for this baby was certainly mutual. But she still couldn’t help feeling as though she’d held a shotgun to Matt’s head because she had conceived. Even though he didn’t seem to blame her; rather, took equal parts of guilt and contrition upon himself. She wondered if that feeling of having been forced together would ever dissipate for either of them, or if they would be stuck with it for life.

  “So, when do you want to tell your kids about the baby?” she asked, sipping her milk.

  Matt shrugged. “When the time is right,” he replied.

  “And that will be?” Gretchen prodded.

  “When you start to show, I guess.” His glance slid appreciatively over her slender form. “Judging from the looks of things, that’ll be a while yet.”

  Maybe not as long as you think, Gretchen thought, aware the waistband of the skirt she had changed into now felt as tight as her jeans had earlier and was cutting into her uncomfortably.

  Mistaking her physical discomfort for restlessness, Matt frowned and abruptly signaled their waiter for the check. “I forgot. It’s a school night. I’m sure you want to get home. You’ve probably got studying to do.”

  * * *

  MATT WASN’T SURE what had caused the change in Gretchen’s mood. He knew only that she grew more moody and restless with every second that passed as they drove over the winding, rolling hills that led to his home in Westlake. He was still wondering what he had said or done to alienate her, when she broke the silence. “How much farther?” she asked tersely, running a hand through her hair.

  “Before we get home?”

  Gretchen shook her head and continued looking away from him, staring in mute fascination out the passenger window. “Before we exit Loop 360,” she stated in the same clipped, highly irritated voice.

  Matt knew that she was impatient, that she had a lot to do, but he wished she would quit acting as if she wanted to leap from the Jeep at any second. “It’s not much farther. Another mile or so.”

  “Want to stop and look at the scenery?”

  “Now?” Matt knew pregnant women were cantankerous and prone to mood swings that defied understanding, but this was ridiculous.

  “Why not?”

  He grimaced at the determinedly cavalier edge in her voice. “For starters, we’re in the middle of nowhere, on a divided four-lane highway, going approximately sixty miles an hour. Add to that, it’s dark, cold and raining.” What other deterrents did they need?

  “We could look at the city lights.”

  “I’ve got an even more spectacular view from my—our—house.” He wasn’t opposed to enjoying the raw beauty of the February evening, but he wanted to do it in comfort.

  “But we’re not there yet,” she persisted anxiously.

  “We will be soon,” Matt shot back. She sure was in a weird mood. Why? Was she worried about what was going to happen when they got back to the house? Worried he’d expect something in the bedroom? Surely she knew him better than that, he thought, incensed.

  “I was hoping otherwise, but that’ll never do,” Gretchen muttered.

  She sat forward abruptly and grabbed blindly at his leg, her slender fingers curling with surprising fierceness around his upper thigh.

  “Stop the car,” she demanded harshly.

  “What?” Matt quickly slanted her a stunned glance. He knew she could be stubborn, inclined to want her own way regardless, but—

  “Now, Matt. Oh, no...no...”

  She put her hand to her mouth and suddenly Matt knew.

  He hit the brakes with as much care as the wet roads demanded. No sooner had he brought the car to a safe stop on the wide, paved berm than she was unsnapping her seat belt, shoving open the door and vaulting from the truck onto the side of the road. By the time Matt had cut the motor and vaulted around to join her, she was already sick.

  He went back to the interior of the truck and got a box of tissue from the back seat.

  “So much for supper,” she said shakily, leaning against the front fender.

  “Does this happen often?” Matt asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as one car after another whizzed by, splattering them with spray.

  She leaned against him weakly and suddenly she was crying. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I’m serious, Gretchen.”

  “So am I,” she quipped miserably as she dabbed at her mouth with a folded square of tissue.

  He brushed away her tears with another square of tissue. “Does it always hit you in the evening?”

  “No.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder with a weary acceptance that tore at Matt’s heart.

  “My morning sickness likes to surprise me,” she confided. “Whenever I least need or want it—like tonight—it hits, and it hits with a vengeance.”

  Matt stroked her hair and continued to hold her close. “What did Marissa tell you to do for it?”

  “Eat saltines.”

  He was desperate to make her feel better. “Do you have any with you?” he asked gently.

  She wiped the remaining moisture from her eyes. “If I eat anything right now, I’ll throw it right back up.”

  “Well, let’s at least get you back in the Jeep,” Matt stepped away from her.

  She stayed put. “I’m not sure I’m finished getting sick.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Her lips curved ruefully. She blew her nose, crumpled up the tissue and stuck it in the pocket of her coat. “You won’t say that if I decorate your truck the way I just decorated the side of the road over there.”

  Matt tucked a finger beneath her chin. “T
rust me. I’ve taken care of sick kids and a sick wife, even sick workers. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  “Even so—”

  “In the truck.” He guided her back inside, circled carefully around to join her.

  She leaned her head against the back of the seat. Her voice was watery again. “I’m so sorry, Matt.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

  She closed her eyes, all the more embarrassed. “Right. The perfect end to a perfect evening.”

  “The evening isn’t over yet.” Matt could tell she was already starting to feel somewhat okay. He waited a few more minutes. “Feeling better?” he asked after a while, wishing they were already home so he could take care of her properly and tuck her into bed, maybe make her a cup of hot tea or bring her a glass of ginger ale....

  Gretchen drew a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Well enough to risk some motion?”

  “Yes.” Keeping her eyes closed, Gretchen settled deeper into her seat. “Just...drive...slowly.”

  * * *

  “I THOUGHT you were going to go to bed,” Matt said an hour later, when he found her in the kitchen.

  Gretchen looked up from the textbook and a folder of notes spread out in front of her, shrugged and put down her pen. “I took a shower and put my pajamas on, instead.”

  He surveyed her tenderly. “Stomach feeling all right?”

  Gretchen nodded and took a sip of ginger ale. “Like it never happened.” She shrugged, admitting happily, “That’s the up side of morning sickness. Once you’re sick, you’re usually okay.”

  He hunkered down beside her, not touching her. “You know, if you’d just told me you were going to be sick, I would have stopped long before I did.”

  Instead, Gretchen thought, chagrined, she’d tried her best to hide it. She hadn’t wanted him to see her that way, for fear it would be the ultimate, perhaps final, turnoff. “I was hoping I could brazen my way through the drive home, then throw up sans audience,” she confessed wryly. “Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out that way.” Although Matt had been great about helping her, gentle and patient, nurturing in the extreme.