Maid for Love (31 page)

"Of course it is. Whatever you want."

"Will you always be such an accommodating husband?"

"Maybe not
always
, but it'll always matter to me that you're happy."

She bent to put Thomas down on the carpet and linked her arms around Mac's neck. "I feel like I'm dreaming," she said, drawing him into a kiss. "I missed you so much."

"Me, too. I thought I'd go crazy without you." Mac wanted to lose himself in the kiss, but he held back. "Hold that thought for a second, will you?"

Moaning in protest, Maddie released him.

"So, um, there's something I have to tell you, and you might get mad at me for not telling you sooner, but I had a really good reason—"

"What've you done now?"

Mac withdrew the envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her.

"What's this?"

"Open it."

Giving him that wary look she did so well, she withdrew the papers from the envelope and scanned them.

He was about to explain when she gasped, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

"Before you freak out, will you listen to me?"

She couldn't seem to speak, so she nodded.

"A couple of days after we ran into him on the ferry, he found me in the diner when I was there with Thomas. He said he'd asked around and knew we weren't married and that we hadn't been together long. He'd figured out that Thomas was probably his."

"Oh God," she whispered. The stricken look on her face broke his heart and confirmed he'd done the right thing by not telling her when it happened. "Oh my God!"

Mac rested his hands on her shoulders. "All he cared about was that we'd come after him for money."

"I've never wanted his money!"

"And I told him that, but he wanted assurances. I said we'd sign something releasing him from financial obligation if he'd sign away his rights to Thomas so I can adopt him."

She wrenched free of Mac's hold and began to pace the big, empty room.

From the floor, Thomas watched them with that big-eyed solemn expression of his.

"This happened weeks ago! When were you going to tell me?"

"As soon as I had the signed papers from him, which Roseanne delivered to me with my mail. I was going to bring them to you tonight."

"Why didn't you tell me the day it happened? We're right back to you keeping things from me!"

Mac forced himself to stay calm. "If I'd told you that he knew about Thomas, you wouldn't have been able to breathe or sleep or eat for the two weeks it took him to get these papers to me."

"Is this how it's going to be?" She threw up her hands. "You're going to take care of everything and leave me out of it?"

"Stuff like this? Absolutely."

"That's not how I want to live, Mac. That's not the kind of marriage I want."

"This is
me
, Maddie. It's
who I am
. I see something that'll make you sick with worry, and I make it go away. I love you too much to watch you suffer like that, and you would've suffered over this." He went to her, slid an arm around her waist and brought her in close to him. "You would've suffered."

She expelled a deep, shuddering breath as all the fight went out of her. "Yes. I would have."

"Now you don't have to. He signed his way right out of our lives." Mac pressed his lips to her forehead. "Are you mad?"

"No," she said softly. "I'm sad."

"Because of what I did?"

She shook her head. "Because his father cares so little about him that he'd sign him away without ever even knowing him."

Mac stepped back from her, picked up Thomas from the floor and hugged them both. "His father cares so much about him that there's nothing he wouldn't do for him. His father will love him and care for him and give him his name and protect him every day of his life."

Maddie looked up at him with her heart in those caramel eyes.

He brushed a gentle kiss over her lips. "His father will love him and his mother forever." He kissed her again. "Now about those conditions you mentioned…"

"Will Thomas's father try very hard to not keep things from his mother?"

"He'll do his best, as long as he's allowed to occasionally surprise her."

She raised that eyebrow of hers. "And these will be
good
surprises?"

"The very best surprises he can think of."

"In that case, my friend, you've got yourself a family."

"I guess it's official, then."

"Our engagement?"

"That, too." Mac leaned in to kiss her once more. "Knocking you off your bike was the best thing I ever did."

She smiled. "I couldn't agree more."

Turn the page for a preview of "Fool for Love," Joe and Janey's story, out June 1, 2011.

Fool for Love

The McCarthys of Gansett Island: Book 2

By: Marie Force

Chapter 1

The phone call Joe Cantrell had waited half his life to receive came in around nine on an otherwise average Tuesday evening. He'd put in a twelve-hour day on the ferries, done four round-trips to the island, and had just sat down to eat when his cell phone rang. Since he'd been in a foul mood all day, tortured by images of Janey in Boston with her fiancé, he'd almost ignored the call. Thank God he grabbed it on the last ring before voicemail picked up.

"Joe."

One word set his heart to racing. He'd know that voice anywhere. "Janey? Why are you calling me when you're visiting David?" He kept his tone light, but just saying the guy's name made Joe sick. He couldn't stand the way David went weeks, sometimes months, without so much as a visit to his fiancée. Sometimes Joe wished he didn't have front-row access to who came and went from the island. Some things he was better off not knowing.

He'd seen her earlier in the day, skipping onto the ferry on her way to surprise her doctor-in-training for their anniversary. Thirteen years together. Lucky thirteen, she'd joked. Joe had found nothing funny about it.

"I need…"

Was she
crying
? "Janey, honey. What do you need?"

"You."

Joe almost swallowed his tongue. How long had he fantasized about hearing those very words from her? Forever, or so it seemed. "What's wrong?"

"My car broke down on 95, just south of Foxboro."

Why was she south of Boston when she'd gone to visit David for a few days? "Where's David?"

"I'm calling
you
, Joe. Can you come?" More sniffling. "What was I thinking? It's too far—"

He was already leaving a cloud of dust behind his red pickup as he peeled out of the driveway. "Don't be ridiculous. I'll be there in less than an hour." Under normal circumstances, it would take much longer to reach her, but these were anything but normal circumstances. Something had happened. Something bad. If the bad thing was between her and David, then all of Joe's dreams had finally come true. But hers had been crushed. He had to remember that. No matter what this night might bring, he couldn't forget that she'd been with David for almost as long as Joe had harbored a secret, burning love for his best friend's little sister.

On the way, he tried to keep her talking and his heart from leaping out of his chest. "You want to tell me about it?"

"No."

"You aren't hurt or anything, are you?"

"Not physically."

Oh, man.
What the hell happened?
Joe was dying to know, but he didn't ask again. He drove as fast as he dared and was stymied half an hour later by traffic in Providence.

"Are you still there?" she asked in a small voice. Janey McCarthy,
his
Janey, didn't have a small voice.

"I'm here, honey. I'm coming. Hang in there."

More sniffling.

Jesus H. Christ. Why the hell wasn't anything
moving
? Even knowing it wouldn't do an ounce of good, Joe laid on the horn. That earned him a raised middle finger from the guy in front of him. As his desperation to get to her inched into the red zone, he wished he could call Mac and get his take on things, but until he knew more about what had happened, he didn't think Janey would appreciate him cueing in her older brother that something was wrong.

As if she had read his mind, Janey said, "Don't tell Mac."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Traffic inched along, and Joe was certain his blood pressure had to be approaching stroke level.

Twenty minutes later, he flew across the border into Massachusetts. "Here I come."

"Good."

When he finally reached her location, Joe wanted to die when he saw her sitting in the front seat of her old blue Honda Civic, hunched over the wheel. Janey didn't hunch. She barreled through life with exuberance and optimism that brightened every room she entered.

He had to drive past her to the next exit, where he endured two of the longest red lights of his life before he was able to merge onto the southbound ramp. By the time he came to a stop behind Janey's car, his hands were sweaty, his heart was racing and he realized he had absolutely no idea what to say to her. Women in crisis were hardly his forte. He took a deep breath and got out of the truck.

She didn't seem to know he was there until he opened the door and squatted down.

Turning to him, her ravaged face was like a knife to his heart.

Tears pooled in her pale blue eyes. "Joe."

"What happened, honey?"

"He was… He…"

Joe reached up to caress her soft blonde hair. "Take a deep breath."

She gulped in air as a sob hiccupped through her. "He was with someone else. In
our
bed. In the bed I helped him buy. The bed he was going to bring with him when he moved home to the island to marry me."

"Okay, honey," Joe said through gritted teeth, not wanting to hear another word. If she kept talking, he wouldn't be able to contain the white-hot rage that possessed him, and he'd become an expert at hiding his every emotion from her. "You don't have to talk about it now."

"It's all I can see. She was on top of him, and he had his eyes closed. He didn't see me. I couldn't move. I just stood there watching—"

"Stop." Joe simply couldn't bear the raw pain he heard in her voice. He wanted her for himself. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath. But not like this. Never like this. "Let's get you out of here." Joe slid his arms under her and scooped her out of the seat.

She clung to his neck, and in that one instant with her soft and pliant in his arms, everything was right in his world.

"I can't leave my car here."

"I'll deal with it. Don't worry."

"I'm sorry. You probably had better things to do tonight."

"No, I didn't." Surrounded by the scent of jasmine, the scent of Janey, Joe wished he could hold her and never let her go. But he deposited her into the front seat of his truck and went back for the bag she'd packed to spend a few days with David. Joe wanted to hunt down that son of a bitch and teach him a lesson he'd never forget. But he figured Mac would take care of that when he heard about what David had done to his sister. Right now, Joe's top priority was Janey.

Before he joined her in his truck, Joe called for a tow truck to get her car. The operator asked for a contact number, and Joe rattled off his. He ended the call and rested his hand on the door handle, taking a moment to summon the courage he needed to get her through this—to get them both through it.

"I didn't even ask if you were busy," Janey said, swiping at the dampness on her cheeks.

"I wasn't. I'm glad you called me."

"I didn't know who else to call."

He reached over and rested his hand on top of hers. Even though it was summer and damn near eighty degrees, her hand was cold and trembling. "You can always call me. Anytime you need me. That's what friends are for." Her normally robust complexion was pale and wan, her eyes and nose red from crying, and looking at her in that condition, Joe discovered it was possible to feel someone else's pain almost as acutely as they were feeling it themselves.

She ran her free hand over her face. "I must look horrible. I didn't know it was possible to cry so much."

Tucking a strand of her thick ash-blonde hair behind her ear, he resisted the urge to draw her into his arms. "You're as beautiful as always. He's a fool, Janey. Anyone who would disrespect you that way doesn't deserve you."

"Thirteen years," she said, shaking her head. "I've spent thirteen years of my life waiting for something that's never going to happen now." She gasped. "Oh, God, the wedding. I have to cancel everything." A shudder rippled through her petite frame, and he wondered for a second if she was going to be sick.

"You don't have to think about any of that today. Right now, let's just focus on getting you home."

A panicked look crossed her expressive face. "I can't go back to the island. Everyone will know. I can't—"