Daddy Christmas Read online

  Gretchen lifted her shoulders in an eloquent shrug. Her eyes darkened and she said softly, “Don’t you?”

  * * *

  NO, Matt didn’t want to sign a prenup. He didn’t want to go into this marriage planning for it to fail. But he also knew in his heart that it was unrealistic of him to think he and Gretchen had even a slim chance of pulling this marriage off for a year, never mind making it work for all eternity.

  The facts were clear. He had trapped Gretchen into marrying him because of the baby—their baby—and she had gone along with him, getting the marriage and the license only because she wanted to give their baby the best possible start in life under the circumstances. Still, he couldn’t help but wish she were marrying him for more romantic reasons. He couldn’t help but wish that she loved him, the way she might have been able to love him had the two of them met at some earlier, less-complicated time in their lives.

  “Matt, I...I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you or handled this badly. It’s just...I don’t know what the protocol is in a situation like this.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll be fine. We’ll both be fine.” He simply had to remind himself to keep his guard up, his heart closed against the possibility of getting too close to her; to not think that miracles might happen, that she might fall in love with him as time passed and decide to stay.

  “The attorney said we could take this to their office and sign it in front of witnesses, or simply sign all three copies in front of a notary public for it to be legal. I noticed there’s a bank not far from here—”

  “Right. About a mile down the road,” Matt said, already locking up his desk.

  “You’re sure this is okay? I mean, if you want another document or...or some other c-clause—” Gretchen stammered nervously.

  Matt didn’t want any clauses at all between them. But that wasn’t about to happen. She was only marrying him because of the child—because they’d been foolish and reckless enough to have a one-night stand.

  “This’ll be fine,” Matt said gruffly. “I just need to put on some clean clothes and then we’ll go.”

  * * *

  “ALL DONE,” the notary public said as she finished affixing her seal. She handed the copies back to Gretchen.

  As Gretchen and Matt left the bank, Matt grinned and shook his head.

  “What’s so amusing?” Gretchen asked.

  Matt’s lips crooked up ruefully. “I was just thinking that signing a prenup agreement is kind of like getting married with both feet out the door.”

  Gretchen leaned against her car, which was parked directly next to his Jeep. She folded her arms in front of her and turned to look at him. His eyes were brooding and intent. There was a new distance to his expression, as signing the papers had created even more constraint between them. “Is that what it feels like to you?”

  He skimmed her face, lingering on her lips, before returning his gaze to her eyes. “What will you call it when those papers we just signed settle our divorce?” he asked, too lightly for comfort.

  Gretchen drew a bolstering breath. “We can’t pretend it’s not coming.”

  “No,” he replied shortly. “I guess we can’t.”

  Gretchen straightened. Sassy, if you were trying to drive us farther apart, you succeeded. “Well, anyway, here’s your copy,” Gretchen said, handing it over.

  Matt shoved both his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Why don’t you keep it?”

  “You should have one.”

  But he didn’t want one. “I trust you,” he said diffidently.

  She got out her keys and worked to keep the conversation casual. Lifting her eyes to his, she handed him the document, which he reluctantly accepted. “I guess I’ll see you at the wedding then?”

  He nodded, his expression contemplative, and continued to regard her in taut silence. “First thing tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “I THINK it’s great you’re going to marry Dad,” Angela Hale told Gretchen the moment she walked into the Stewarts’ guest room.

  Gretchen finished laying out her clothes and turned to Matt’s eldest child, Angela. At twenty-three, she was petite and pretty, fashionably dressed and perpetually in motion. Her jet black hair was cut in a bob that made the most of her patrician features and silver blue eyes.

  Gretchen gripped the belt of her pale pink robe, shocked by the warm acceptance flowing from Matt’s daughter. “You don’t mind?” She had not just expected all-out opposition from Matt’s children on her wedding day, she had braced herself for it.

  “No, not at all. I think it’s great we’ll be in college together.” Mindful of Gretchen’s wedding dress, which was laid out on the bed, Angela sat down and smoothed the skirt of her flowing pale blue dress. “I’m at UT, too, but then Dad probably told you that,” she said.

  Finished applying her makeup, Gretchen recapped her lipstick and slipped it back in her cosmetics bag. “Yes. He told me you’re about to graduate soon.”

  “Well, that was the plan,” Angela confided optimistically, “but it’s not now. I just changed my major again and—”

  “You just did what?” Matt thundered from the open doorway. He was dressed casually and had a garment bag over his shoulder.

  Angela whirled toward Matt and put a gently admonishing fingertip to her lips. “Keep your voice down, Dad, or you’ll upset the Stewarts.”

  Matt shut the bedroom door firmly behind him. “Forget that. I want to know what’s going on.” He released an exasperated breath. “Angela, I thought we had agreed you would finish your business degree and leave UT–Austin as soon as the spring semester is over.”

  Angela stood, her expression going from conciliatory to defiant in an instant. “No, Dad, we didn’t agree on anything. You told me at Christmas that this was what I should do. You didn’t listen to me when I tried to tell you that I made a mistake, that I should have a degree in psychology, instead.”

  Matt made a strangled sound of dismay. “How many more years is that going to take?” he demanded impatiently.

  “About two and a half, my adviser said.”

  Matt looked like he was going to explode. Which, considering the fact his daughter had already been a full-time 4.0 student for six years and had yet to earn any undergraduate degree whatsoever, was not such an unexpected reaction, Gretchen thought. Sooner or later, Angela was going to have to make the transition from dependent student to responsible income-earning adult.

  “You know, I think I hear Marissa calling me,” Angela said, inching toward the door. “In fact, I’m sure I do.” She slipped out before Matt could say anything else.

  Gretchen laid a calming hand on Matt’s shoulder. Like her, he was not yet dressed for the ceremony, though he had showered and shaved. Keeping her voice low in commiseration, she edged closer, inhaling the tantalizing scent of his after-shave. “It’s not so bad. Psychology is a good field.”

  Matt shook his head, his expression unerringly grim, disappointed. “She won’t stick with it more than a year, if that. She’ll change her major again. I should just face it. That child is never going to graduate from college.”

  “Matt, what are you doing in here?” Marissa Stewart scolded from the doorway, hands on her hips. “You are not supposed to see Gretchen before the ceremony. It’s bad luck.” Marissa shooed him out. “Let Gretchen finish getting ready in peace.”

  When Matt had gone, Marissa turned back to Gretchen. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before the judge arrives and we start. You going to be able to make it?”

  If I don’t run out the back door in terror first, Gretchen thought wryly. “Sure.”

  As soon as Marissa left, Gretchen slipped out of her robe and into the demure, lacy white tea dress with the handkerchief hem. Aware her hands were shaking, she turned sideways and checked her reflection in the mirror. Good. She wasn’t showing. Yet, anyway. But then, she was only one month along. How was she going to get through eight more months of this? She sat down at the vanity. Realizing she had forgot
ten her hairbrush, she got back up. Marissa would probably have one she could borrow.

  Gretchen started down the hall—then stopped again as she heard Matt’s daughters talking in the bathroom.

  “Stop being such an idealistic fool, Angela,” Sassy said. “This marriage, if you can even call it that, is not going to last.”

  “How can you be sure?” Angela replied in a low, challenging tone.

  “Because it’s all happened too quickly,” Sassy replied. “It isn’t like Dad to be so impetuous.”

  You’re right there, Gretchen thought.

  “So how do you explain his marriage?” Angela scoffed anxiously, from just around the corner. “Don’t tell me you think Gretchen is blackmailing him or something?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sassy retorted hotly. “Dad would never allow anyone to jerk him around in that way. It’s probably just a midlife crisis or something that’s causing him to act this way.”

  A midlife crisis, Gretchen thought sickly, as some of the girls’ anxiety was transmitted to her. How aptly put....

  “And when that passes,” Sassy continued irately, “he’ll go back to normal and get out of this foolhardy marriage. Until then, we just have to humor him and pretend to accept her.”

  You’re wrong, Matt. This is not going to be easy. Gretchen thought. Nor is it going to be simple. Why hadn’t they talked more about his children? Just because none of them lived at home any longer did not mean they would not be affected.

  “But you don’t accept her, not really?” Angela asked Sassy.

  “No, I don’t. And I never will, either,” Sassy said firmly.

  Figuring she’d heard enough, Gretchen went back to the bedroom. A look in the mirror confirmed what she already knew. She was as white as a sheet. And with good reason. Matt’s daughters were right. She and Matt were behaving crazily. And they had been since the first moment they’d met. It wasn’t like him to have a one-night stand. Or her, either, Gretchen thought as the music floated up from downstairs, signaling the beginning of the wedding ceremony.

  The song played through, ended, then began again. Gretchen knew she had missed her cue to sweep out of the bedroom and down the stairs, but she was so distressed she couldn’t will herself to move. What if she was making a mistake—the worst mistake of her life?

  Finally, a knock sounded at the door.

  She went to answer it, expecting Marissa, and once again found herself staring up into Matt’s face. Unlike her, he was ready—no, impatient—to get married and get on with their lives. But then, perhaps he didn’t know what she did about his children’s concern. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to know.

  His eyes roved her pale face and trembling lips. “Gretchen?” he said.

  The concern he felt for her was evident, as he reached out to catch her in his arms and pull her close.

  “Oh, Matt,” she murmured on a weary breath, even as she struggled against the welcome warmth of him. What happiness was possible if it was at someone else’s expense? She had not been brought up like this.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything,” Gretchen whispered, as tears flooded her eyes. She shook her head in abject misery, laid her hands across his chest and stepped back.

  “Matt, I can’t go through with this.”

  Chapter Five

  “What are you talking about?” Matt demanded.

  His silver eyes gleamed as he closed resolutely in on her. Downstairs, the pianist switched to Brahms.

  Gretchen took a deep hitching breath and moved away just as determinedly. “I can’t marry you. I can’t make a temporary mistake into a permanent or even a semipermanent one.”

  Her confession made him grin and edge closer yet. “Is that what we’re doing?” he drawled.

  “Darn it all, Matt, this isn’t funny!” Gretchen reprimanded as the inches between them dwindled one by one. Suddenly she found it very hard to catch her breath.

  “Actually, it is,” he countered, eyeing her simple ivory tea-length wedding dress approvingly. Gently he touched the spray of flowers she’d pinned in her hair in lieu of a veil, let his fingertips glide to her lips and caressed them, too. “Who ever would have figured you’d have the prewedding jitters?” he teased.

  Her lips tingling, Gretchen inhaled jerkily and stepped back a pace. She had to make him see reason. “Matt, it’s more than that.”

  He thrust his hands in his pockets and lounged against the dresser as if they had all the time in the world, looking elegantly handsome and relaxed in a dove gray suit, pale gray shirt and tie, after-shave clinging to his jaw.

  Lifting a dissenting brow, he countered resolutely, “Is it? You’re not signing your life away or trapping us into anything.”

  “But your children—”

  Matt crossed wordlessly to her side, sat down on the bed and, with unnerving tenderness, pulled her onto his lap. “My kids never approve or like or agree to anything I do anyway. They’re at that age where they think I don’t have any sense at all. They’ll get over it, or so I’m told.”

  Gretchen splayed her hands across his hard chest. “But in this case, Matt, they may have a point. We are acting hastily.”

  He covered her hand with his, holding it over the slow, steady beat of his heart. “That’s because we’re in a situation where time counts.” He twined his fingers intimately with hers. “Unless...” He hesitated, studying her flushed, upturned face. “You want to wait until the last possible second to marry, to further minimize our risk? ‘Cause if you do,” he continued with impeccable logic, “we could keep our license and blood tests current, put the justice of the peace downstairs on standby alert and then exchange vows and rings on our way into the delivery room.”

  “Hilarious,” Gretchen decreed.

  He tilted his head to the side. “It probably would be,” he agreed.

  His mock solemnness hitched her pulse up another notch.

  Gretchen flushed. Fighting him on this was like fighting a brick wall. There was no way she could win. “Matt—” she protested softly. Only to have him reply in kind.

  “Listen to me, Gretchen.”

  Matt turned her squarely in his lap and cupped her face with his hands. Warmth flowed through her in undulating waves, and she longed to bury herself in the haven of his arms and stay there forever.

  “I don’t give a hoot what anyone else thinks or says about us. We know we are doing the right thing, the only thing.”

  He took her hand in his, squeezed it in an almost familial way. “I know you’re panicked by the commitment angle of it,” he said.

  With that soothing insight, he let her know in an instant that he, too, wanted to minimize their risk.

  “But you needn’t be,” he soothed. “Our marriage is a temporary solution to a mutual problem. And that’s all it is.”

  He was so sure of himself, of what they were doing. Gretchen only wished she felt the same. Oh, she knew it sounded uncomplicated. But things that looked easy or simple did not always turn out to be so.

  Yet he was correct about one thing. When it came to doing right by their baby, what choice did they have? None, she knew. Slowly she extricated herself from his caressing hold and stood on legs that trembled.

  Matt rose and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I said I wouldn’t hold you to the union much past the birth of our child, and I won’t,” he reassured softly. “All you have to do is trust me, and everything will turn out great. You’ll see.”

  All you have to do is trust me.

  Gretchen looked into Matt’s eyes and knew that, crazy as it was, it was still within the realm of possibility: she could trust him not to hurt her or their unborn child.

  Downstairs, the Brahms ended and the Pachelbel “Canon in D Major” began once again. Matt squared his shoulders. “I think that’s our cue,” he said, taking her hand.

  * * *

  “MARRIAGE IS a serious business,” the judge, a well-dressed woman in her early fifties, began.
r />   Don’t I know it, Gretchen thought wryly, beginning to flush self-consciously.

  “And to that end, Matt and Gretchen have written their own wedding vows,” the judge continued.

  On that Gretchen had insisted, and after getting over his initial resistance to the idea, Matt had agreed.

  “Gretchen, do you promise to be generous and giving, steadfast in your loyalty, devoted to making your union with Matt work?” the judge asked.

  Gretchen nodded, the nosegay in her left hand growing damp with perspiration. At least she wasn’t promising more than she could reasonably deliver. “I do...”

  “Matt, do you promise to be generous and giving, steadfast in your loyalty, devoted to making your union with Gretchen work?”

  Looking even more sober than Gretchen felt, Matt took her right hand in his. His palm was warm and dry. Ignoring the skeptical, slightly horrified looks of his children, he gazed deep into Gretchen’s eyes and said firmly, “I do,” again behaving as if he didn’t have a doubt in the world.

  “Matt, Gretchen, you may exchange rings....”

  Gretchen’s hands trembled slightly as he slid the ring on her finger, and even more as she slid the wedding band on his.

  The judge smiled. Matt squeezed Gretchen’s hand.

  “According to the power vested in me by the state of Texas, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Matt, you may kiss the bride. And Gretchen—” the judge grinned “—feel free to return the kiss.”

  Matt needed no further encouragement. He took her in his arms and there, in the circle of family and friends, he kissed her thoroughly, kissed her until her senses swam and her knees nearly buckled. And when he was finished, Gretchen felt, to her ever-growing dismay, even more like a real bride.

  Heaven forbid, what had she done?

  “What happened to all that ‘to have and to hold’ stuff?” Luke asked casually, after the cake had been cut and the buffet supper drew to a close.

  In a sport coat and tie, his cropped jet black hair tousled, blue-gray eyes intent, he looked like a younger version of his handsome father.