His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage

She wandered down the corridor. Back in the room, Mack leaned forward to study Natalie’s sleeping face. “Poor little scrap,” he murmured softly, touching her cheek with a touch light enough not to disturb her. “How did I ever think I could manage without you?”

At some level, she was aware that he was speaking to her. But she was fighting the pain and the drugs, and her mind was foggy. She felt his touch, first on her cheek and then lightly brushing her mouth. He was whispering in her ear, words that sounded like the softest kind of endearments. At that point, she was sure she was dreaming. Mack never used endearments…

It was late that night before she returned to something approaching consciousness. She looked around the room with surprised amusement. Vivian was asleep in the chair by the radiator. Mack was sprawled, snoring faintly, in the chair beside her bed, with her hand still gripped in his. Beside him, on the floor, Bob and Charles were asleep sharing a blanket on the cold linoleum. She could only imagine the nursing staff’s frustration trying to work around them. And wasn’t there some rule about the number of visitors and how long they could stay? Then she remembered the uproar Mack had caused on his arrival, and she imagined he’d broken every rule they had already.

“Mack?” she whispered. Her voice barely carried. She tried again. “Mack?”

He stirred sleepily, and his eye opened at once. He sat up, increasing his firm hold on her hand. “What is it, sweetheart?”

The endearment was disconcerting. He stood and came closer, bending over her with evident concern. “Tell me,” he asked softly. “What do you want?”

She searched his face with hungry eyes. It had been weeks since she’d seen him. There was something different…

“You’ve lost weight,” she whispered.

His gaze fell to her hand in his. “So have you.”

She wanted to tell him that she’d been only half alive without him, that it was the lack of him in her life that had aged her. But she couldn’t say that. She’d been hurt and someone had called him. Probably her serious condition had caused Vivian to finally tell him the truth. He’d come out of guilt. Perhaps they all had.

She pulled her hand out of his and laid it across her chest. “I don’t need anything,” she said, averting her face. “Thank you,” she added politely.

The effect of that cool, polite reply hit him hard. She was conscious again, and she’d be remembering their last meeting and what he’d said to her. He put his hands deep in his pockets and studied her for a long minute before he went to the chair and sat down. The breath he let out was audible.

She was still groggy enough that she went back to sleep at once. Mack didn’t. He sat brooding, watching her, until the first rays of dawn filtered through the venetian blinds. Around him, the boys and Vivian began to stir.

Vivian got up and looked out the door, noticing the bustle of early-morning duty shifts. “Why don’t you three go get us a nice hotel suite and have a bath. I’ll stay here with Natalie while they get her bathed and fed. By the time you come back, she’ll be ready for visitors.”

Mack was reluctant. Vivian pulled him out of the chair.

“You’re absolutely dead on your feet, and you look fifty,” she said. “You’re not going to be any good to anybody until you get some rest. Have you slept at all?”

He grimaced. “She woke up in the night,” he said, as if that explained it all. His face was drawn with worry and guilt. “She remembered what I said to her. It was in her eyes.”

“She’ll remember what I said, too,” Vivian replied. “We’ll get through it. She’s not a person who holds grudges. It will be all right.”

He hesitated. “She isn’t going to want to go home with us,” he realized. His face began to tauten. “But she will, if I have to put her in a sack! If she wakes up before I come back, you tell her that!”

The loud tones woke Natalie. She winced as she moved, and her chest hurt, but her eyes lifted to Mack’s hard face, and they began to sparkle. She struggled to sit up. “I’m not going…anywhere with you, Mack Killain,” she told him in as strong a tone as she could manage in her depleted condition. “I wouldn’t walk to the…elevator with you!”

“Calm down,” Vivian said firmly, easing her down on the pillows. “When you’ve gotten your strength back, I’ll get you a frying pan and you can lay about him with it. In fact, I’ll even bend over and give you a shot at me. But for now,” she added softly, “you have to get well. You can only stay in the hospital until you’re back on your feet. But full recuperation takes longer—and you can’t stay by yourself.”

Bob and Charles were awake and crowding around the bed with their siblings.

“Right,” Charles said firmly, looking so much like his older brother that it was uncanny. “We’ll all take care of you.”

“I’ll hook up my game system and teach you how to play arcade games,” Bob offered.

“I’ll teach you chess,” Charles seconded.

“I’ll teach you how to be a real pain in the neck,” Vivian added, tongue in cheek. “I think I wrote the book on it.”

Natalie wavered as her eyes went to Mack. His gaze was steady on her face, quiet, and he looked almost vulnerable. Maybe it was a trick of the light.

“You could teach her how to jump to conclusions,” Vivian murmured dryly.

“I learned that from you,” he shot right back. He turned to Natalie. “I’m not coaxing. You’re coming back with us, one way or the other, and that’s the end of it.”

Natalie’s eyes started flashing. “You listen here, Mack Killain!”

“No, you listen,” he interrupted firmly. “I’m going to talk to the surgeon and find out what sort of care you need. I’ll hire a private nurse and get a hospital bed moved in. Whatever it takes.”

Natalie’s small fist hit the bedcovers in frustration. That hurt her chest, and she grimaced.

“Temper, temper,” Mack said mockingly. “That won’t get you anywhere.”

“I am not a parcel to be picked up and carried off,” she raged. “I don’t belong to you!”

He lifted one eyebrow. “In one way or another,” he said very quietly, “you’ve belonged to me since you were seventeen.” He turned to Vivian. “I’ll take the boys to a hotel and come back in a couple of hours. I’ll phone you as soon as we’re settled and you can get in touch with us if you need to.”

“Okay,” Vivian said with a smile. “Don’t worry,” she added when he hesitated at the door. “I’ll take good care of her.”

He still hesitated, but after a minute he shot a last, worried look at a furious Natalie and followed the boys into the hall.

“I won’t go!” Natalie choked out.

Vivian went close to the bed and gently smoothed Natalie’s hair from her forehead. “Yes, you will,” she said gently. “Mack and I have a lot to make up to you. I was so jealous of you that I couldn’t stand it. I thought I’d die if I couldn’t have Whit.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “You know, he even lied to me that he’d been making out with you. You were both downstairs for almost an hour and I didn’t have a clue that Mack had come home in the meantime,” she added ruefully, watching Natalie blush as she recalled what she and Mack had been doing during that time. “Whit said he’d found you more receptive than I’d ever been. It was a major misunderstanding all around, and the lie I told Mack, that I’d seen you and Whit together, didn’t do anything to help matters.” Her worried blue eyes met Natalie’s green ones. “Can you forgive me, do you think?”

Natalie let out the anger in a slow breath. “Of course,” she said. “We’ve been friends far too long for me to hold a grudge.”

Vivian bent and kissed her cheek. “I haven’t been much of a friend up until this point,” she said. “But I’m going to do a better job from now on. And the first matter of business is to get you a sponge bath and some breakfast.”

“Mack believed you,” Natalie said.

Vivian paused on her way to the door. She came back and put a gentle hand over Natalie’s where it lay on her stomach over the covers. “The night I told Mack that lie, he went into the office and locked the door and drank half a bottle of Scotch whiskey. I had to get the foreman and a locksmith to open it for me. When I finally got in, he’d passed out.”

Her eyes were troubled. “He never loses control like that. That was when I knew how much I’d hurt him. And after your graduation, when Bob and Charles lit into us about not being there, he went off by himself and wouldn’t even talk to us for days. I know what we did hurt you, Natalie,” she concluded. “But it hurt us just as badly. I’m sorry. Mack was right about Whit all along. He’s going around with another rich girl, but one who likes to gamble herself, and he’s got all the money he wants for the time being. I was an idiot.”