Maternal Instinct, page 11
He hadn't meant everything he'd said, had he? The sexiest of the McLean brothers—and that was saying something—hadn't fantasized about her. Not plain, skinny Nell Granstrom, with hair and eyes of colors so in-between, she didn't know how to describe them on her driver's license application. She'd seen women he dated, like Kelly Nordstrom, a petite, elfin blonde who worked in the PA's office, or Roberta Vangel, with size four hips and C cup breasts, who was a cardiac care nurse. Nell wasn't in their class.
She appreciated the thought, though. Hugh wasn't just honorably offering marriage, he was actually trying to persuade her to accept. She wished she could be sure why he was going to such lengths. Did he feel obligated, but had his fingers crossed behind his back in silent prayer that she'd say no? Or did he want to marry the mother of his child? Did he really think they could make a success of it?
Or was he imagining a comfortable, live-in arrangement that left him free to sleep with the next Kelly Nordstrom who caught his eye?
"What?" He was behind the wheel, one hand outstretched to put the key in the ignition, and staring at her strangely.
Flustered, Nell asked, "Did I say something?"
"I thought you asked me about Kelly. Kelly who?"
It just popped out. "Kelly Nordstrom."
His hand dropped and his dark brows drew together. "What in hell does some woman I dated a year ago have to do with anything?"
"I couldn't live with a … a philandering husband." How prissy she sounded! Nell thought, hearing herself as if she floated above the conversation.
He gave a disbelieving grunt. "That's how you see me?"
"You like women. I'm … not an especially gorgeous one." She tried to keep her shrug uncaring. Unfortunately, she'd forgotten the stab of pain moving her shoulder would provoke. Wincing, she didn't add, Not the kind to keep the attention of a man like you.
Hugh shook his head. "If Bill Nelson from The Sentinel wasn't four feet away, I'd kiss you."
"You'd—" Her voice squeaked.
"Yup. You heard me." Her partner started the car, lifted a hand to their curbside audience, and drove out from under the emergency room portico.
They'd gone half a mile before he said quietly, "Think about it. That's all I ask."
Nell studied his profile. "You're really serious."
A nerve in his cheek jumped. "I'm serious."
"I have a teenage daughter."
"I noticed," he said dryly.
"She doesn't exactly need a father, but…"
"She's important and part of the family. I recognize that."
Another few blocks passed.
"What would your brothers say?" Nell asked with reluctance. Even when she'd told herself she despised the youngest, she had secretly admired the older McLean brothers.
He glanced at her. "'When's the wedding?'"
"That's not all they'll say." She stared unhappily ahead. "They'll think I trapped you."
"I didn't have to ask you to marry me."
Quite suddenly, Nell felt resentful, even angry, at the turmoil he'd plunged her into. She turned her head and challenged, "Why did you?"
His fingers tightened with a spasm on the steering wheel. "I told you—"
"I don't believe any of it. Except that you want this baby to know his father," she admitted.
Jaw muscles knotted. "Then that's your problem."
He could sound more unemotional, remote, than any man she'd ever known. She'd always hated fighting the way she had with her mother during those volatile teen years, but now she found herself wanting to jab at him until he told her the truth, however painful. "You're home," he said.
Startled, she looked and saw that he was signaling to turn into her driveway.
"How did you know where I live?" she asked sharply.
"Asked dispatch."
"Oh."
"Fisher called your daughter, by the way." He still spoke in that cool, distant tone. "I didn't."
"Oh," she said again, sounding moronic. But she had wondered. As much as she'd had time to wonder about something that couldn't be helped now.
The car crunched to a stop. Colin's wasn't here, which meant … nothing, Nell thought with a twist of anxiety. He might have brought Kim home already… But she knew better. They were probably parked somewhere. He was comforting Kim. Eventually reassurance would turn to passion, and then… Nell bit her lip hard enough to taste blood.
"I'll help you to bed." Hugh was already out and slamming his door.
Damn it, she felt woozy again, and had to lean heavily on Hugh's arm as they went up the brick walk to the back door. She produced the key, he let them in.
"Kim?" she called, the minute they stepped in, but only silence answered them.
Hugh steered her down the hall. "She's worried about you. She'll be home."
Tears burned her eyes. She was an emotional mess, a state that she detested. She'd put this all behind her, too, when she became a single mother at sixteen. Déjà vu.
"Where's your bedroom?"
No man had asked her that in years. She'd dated, but been too cautious to let any relationship progress past a point. The point of no return, she thought fuzzily. How had this one?
Her bedroom was high-ceilinged and almost spare, the walls white to emphasize the molding she'd worked so hard to strip and refinish. The canopy bed was her one indulgence, bought only last year. Delicate, lacy netting draped from the posts, softening the red-and-white Drunkard's Path quilt that covered the bed.
More irony, she realized. What was she weaving now but the drunkard's path?
Thank heavens they'd reached the bed, because her thoughts felt swathed in that netting. She wasn't far from passing out.
"You should have stayed in the hospital." Boosting her onto the high mattress, Hugh sounded grim again.
"I'm fine." Brave words from a woman collapsing against the heap of pillows. Her forehead was sweat-beaded from the effort of getting this far.
"Uh-huh." He was pulling off her shoes, then her socks, and finally reaching for the button on her pants.
She swatted at his hands. "What are you doing?"
"Undressing you. Don't worry." Despite her interference, he was yanking her pants down. "I've seen it all."
Nell gave an inarticulate howl of protest and grabbed for the quilt.
"For God's sake, hold still!" Hugh's eyes glittered and his mouth was set in a hard line. "I'm not going to rape you."
"Why would you bother?" she asked bitterly.
He snarled and unbuttoned her shirt. Rolling her like a doll, he eased it off and managed to get her under the bedclothes.
"See? Safe and sound."
Exhausted, she panted for breath.
"Are you hungry?"
Nell shook her head.
"I hear a car door." Hugh stood and went to the window. "Your wandering offspring returns. I'll get you something to drink."
He vanished before she could do more than feel a leap of hope.
It hadn't been that long. Kim wouldn't be home yet if she'd had sex with Colin.
She knew the sound of her daughter's footsteps racing down the hall.
"Mom!" Kim paused in the doorway, eyes huge and drenched. "Oh, Mom!"
Even Nell's good arm felt leaden, but she lifted it anyway. Kim flung herself onto her mother's bed and burrowed into her side.
"I was so scared!"
"I was scared, too," Nell admitted, tears overflowing.
Kim lifted her head. "When you got shot?"
Voice taking a few hitches, Nell said, "And when you went running out of the hospital."
"How can you be pregnant?" Sitting up, Kim sounded genuinely bewildered as well as hurt. Moms didn't have sex, much less foul up this badly. But she reversed herself immediately. "No! We can talk about it tomorrow. You look awful, you know," she said candidly. Her voice stiffened at the mere mention of the name of Nell's partner. "Officer McLean said to take good care of you. He poured you a glass of milk, 'cause he said it would help keep the pain pills from giving you a stomachache. I'll go get it."
"He's gone?" Nell asked, starting to sit upright.
"Why would he stay, now that I'm home?" Emotions flitted across her face. "I guess he's your boyfriend or something. But you've never even talked about him that way!"
Wearily, Nell thought of all the explaining she had to do.
"It was … sudden," she said.
"Is he your boyfriend?" Good intentions vaporized, Kim made the question a challenge.
"I think we might get married," Nell said carefully. "Because of the baby."
Her daughter stared. "Married?" she whispered.
"I would have married your father, for you."
"But he didn't care enough." Kim had come to terms with it, as much as anyone could.
"Hugh does."
"Oh." The teenager processed the concept. "Then he'll be living here. Or we'll have to move?"
"I don't know. We haven't gotten that far in talking about it."
"It's—it's weird!" Kim burst out.
Nell closed her eyes. "Tell me about it."
"I'm sorry!" Her daughter's weight hit the bed again, and Kim gave her an impetuous kiss. "I'm sorry! I'll get the milk."
Alone again, Nell sank into a daze. They might get married? She'd said that?
I would have married your father, for you.
How could she do less for this baby?
She laid a light hand on her belly in the first protective acknowledgement of the new life growing there.
Nobody married because of an unwanted pregnancy anymore. But she knew she would, if he really meant it. For the baby, and because…
She almost cut off the thought, then made herself finish it, if only this once, if only privately. Because she was painfully close to being in love with Hugh McLean.
She let out a long, tremulous breath and heard him say huskily, If Bill Nelson from The Sentinel wasn't four feet away, I'd kiss you.
So why hadn't he, once they were alone? If he meant everything he said?
* * *
Chapter 8
« ^ »
"Hey, Mom." Hugh leaned a hip against the island in his mother's kitchen.
"You're early." His ever elegant mother turned from the stove with a smile. Beneath a practical white chef's apron, she wore a paisley silk blouse in rust and deep purple that suited her cap of silver-streaked auburn hair. Her makeup was carefully done, her earrings and bracelet delicate braided gold.
She hadn't had the money when he and his brothers were kids to turn herself out so beautifully, but she'd always had that steel control. Her grief when her husband was gunned down had gone bone deep, but he had no memory of her crying.
"I wanted to talk to you," he admitted. The rest of the family wasn't due to arrive to Sunday dinner for half an hour. He'd decided to spring his news on his mother first, maybe because he was most nervous about her reaction.
Yesterday morning, Nell had accepted his proposal. He had gone by her place to see how she was, only to find her up and dressed, looking like hell, but one flash of her eyes defied him to say so.
"Why aren't you in bed?" he'd asked.
"I'm fine."
"Uh-huh."
Her nostrils flared, but after a reluctant moment she stood back. "Come in. Do you want a cup of coffee?"
"Sure."
He liked her kitchen. The cabinets were painted a warm yellow and the countertops were a terra-cotta-colored tile. Morning sun streamed through the sash window above the kitchen sink onto the brick floor. Too bad her mood wasn't as sunny.
He had to curl his hands into fists in his jeans pockets to keep from offering help as she laboriously poured two mugs and carried them one at a time to the farm table that filled the generous floor space. Nell didn't wear a sling, although Hugh knew they'd given her one, but she did hold her right arm awkwardly against her body.
"Everything okay with Kim?" he asked.
"Oh … temporarily." With a sigh Nell sat. "She's so volatile. The shock of seeing me in the hospital scared her. I'm all she has." Nell wrinkled her nose. "Except for Colin, of course."
"Not the same."
"No. I suppose not." She looked pensive. "Fear briefly overcame her outrage. It will resurface."
"Kids never like it when their parents show their human spots."
She scowled at him. "You're always doing that. Uttering these bits of pithy wisdom. What do you know about children?"
She was right. He had nerve, claiming to be an expert about territory he had only visited. "Only what I've learned from my nieces and nephews. John and Connor both have kids, you know."
"But you're right," she continued. "Me, I didn't just do one of those mildly embarrassing things parents do all the time. No, I bared myself in a big way. I had sex. I'm pregnant. I'm not married."
Hugh kept his gaze on his coffee cup. Steam rose lazily from the dark brew. "Have you thought about it?" he asked, tone neutral.
She was silent for a moment. "Did you mean everything you said?"
What had he said?
Her stare was fierce now. "You intend to make this a real marriage? You don't expect to keep a—a Kelly on the side?"
The coffee sloshed. Hiding his anger, Hugh set down the cup and kept his voice almost conversational. "I think I'm insulted."
"Why?"
"I was raised to believe—"
Real distress in her eyes, she cried, "I don't know what you were raised to believe! I don't know you!"
His anger ran out as if she'd pulled the drain. Hugh reached out and gripped her hand, feeling the strength and fragility that combined seemed to define this unusual woman. "You will," he said quietly. "I may have dated plenty of women, but I've never asked one to marry me. I … respect marriage. Divorce is failure."
She searched his eyes, her own still wide and curiously vulnerable. "Okay," she whispered. "Then I'll marry you. It … makes things right for Kim. And this baby." Her hand covered her belly.
The simple gesture brought deep emotion welling into his throat. His wife to be. His child.
He had never been sure he would find himself here. Hadn't been sure he wanted to. He was still uneasy that they were going about this ass-backward. A childhood ditty played in his memory: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. Was he a fool to think love would come at all? Hell, what if they ended up disliking each other?
He wasn't sure he could speak, with this lump in his throat. He hoped his nod wasn't brusque.
She swallowed coffee, he did the same. After a few minutes they talked about practicalities, as if where they lived and who married them mattered.
Now, in his mother's kitchen, Hugh procrastinated. "Smells good."
"We're having a turkey breast with my rolls and baked beans." Her sourdough rolls were manna from heaven. She held out a pile of napkins. "Why don't you put these on the table since you're here?"
He didn't move. "Mom, I have something I want to tell you, before everyone gets here."
With one part of his attention, he saw her hand slowly drop. Her face paled. "You've made an arrest?"
"An arrest?" He frowned, then realized what she was talking about. "Oh. Uh, no. This is … personal."
"Personal," she repeated dumbly.
He made himself spit it out. "I'm getting married."
The napkins still dangled from one hand. Her other went to her breast. "You're … what?"
Doggedly, he continued, "Her name is Nell Granstrom. She's another cop. My partner right now. We've, uh…" He cleared his throat. "We were careless. She's pregnant."
"I don't understand." He had never heard her sound so shaken. "You've been working such long hours. You were investigating…"
Confused, he said, "Yeah. Yeah, I was. I am."
Her face was suddenly drawn with anger. "Don't you care?"
"Of course I care!" Hugh felt as if he'd wandered into Wonderland and the Queen of Hearts was toying with him. "What the hell does that have to do with Nell?"
"You've been having an affair when you should have been focusing on your father's—" She froze.
He got it. "Not my father's murder. I can't solve that, Mom."
"It was a slip of the tongue." She turned away, concentrating on squaring the napkins she set on the counter. "You know what I mean."
"I'm entitled to a life." Rage choked him just as emotion had that morning at Nell's, but this time it didn't silence him. He uttered a sharp expletive that brought her head up in shock. "John's right. You think our entire purpose in life is to avenge Dad's death. You don't give a flying you-know-what whether we're happy or in love or have children to raise for their own sakes. To you, we're … weapons." He made a harsh sound. "Connor let you down big time, didn't he? Blunted himself. I'm surprised you still speak to him."
Her eyes were dark, her fine-boned face rice-paper white. "I never expected anything of you. You're wrong."
"No." He shook his head slowly, hard. "I'm not wrong. Well, here's news, Mom. Life goes on. I do my job, and I care about it, but I have a life outside it." His jaw ached and he deliberately unclenched it. "I'll send you a wedding invitation." With that, he turned and walked out, ignoring his mother calling his name after him.
The clean getaway was spoiled when he found John just parking behind his car, blocking him in.
"Hey," his brother said with an easy grin as he got out of his family van and stretched. "You just get here?"
Distantly, Hugh realized every muscle in his body was locked tight. "Leaving," he said curtly. "What?"
"Uncle Hugh!" His blond niece, developing a figure now, launched herself at him. "Natalie let me get a perm! Look! Isn't my hair so cool?"
His sister-in-law, who had just lifted their youngest from her car seat, gave him a warning look.
"Yeah," Hugh said, trying to make himself see the froth of curls. "I like it."
"Uncle Hugh!" Evan was right behind his sister, chattering about a computer game and how he'd beaten all his friends, and did Uncle Hugh know what cool web sites you could visit, and—"
"Okay, okay," his father said, laughing. He made eye contact with his wife and nodded faintly toward the condo. She started shooing the kids in. John settled his butt on the hood of Hugh's Explorer. As soon as his family was out of earshot, he asked bluntly, "What's wrong?"
