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

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      “In other words, he wouldn’t like me if I didn’t have a wealthy background?” Viv asked pointedly.

      “I said you were pretty, too,” she replied. “I know you feel bad, Viv, but you’re being unreasonable. We’ve been friends for a long time. I don’t know you lately, you’re so different.”

      Viv shifted against her pillows. “He talks about you, too, even when you aren’t here.”

      “It isn’t what you think,” Natalie said, exasperated. “He’s never said or done a thing out of line.”

      “He’s very good-looking,” Viv persisted.

      “So are you,” Natalie said. “But right now you’re sick and you don’t need to upset yourself like this. Mack asked me to take care of you, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

      Viv studied her through fever-bright eyes. “Did you know that Glenna was going with him to Dallas?” she asked with undeniable venom.

      Natalie forced herself not to react. “Why?” she asked carelessly.

      “Beats me. I suppose she had something to do there, too. Anyway, I don’t think he’ll come back tonight. Do you?”

      Natalie glared at her. “You really are a horror,” she said through her teeth.

      Viv flushed. “Yes, I guess I am,” she agreed after a minute. “Mack said he wouldn’t wish the boys and me on a wife. He said it wouldn’t be fair to expect anyone to have to take us on, as well as him. I know Glenna wouldn’t. She hates me.”

      “Your brother loves all three of you very much,” Natalie said, disquieted by what Viv had said.

      “Well, he’s not my father. Bob and Charles are in their last two years of high school and then Bob wants to go into the Army. Charles wants to study law at Harvard. That will get them out of the way, and if I marry Whit, which I want to do, Mack will have the house to himself.” Her voice was terse and cool. She didn’t quite meet Natalie’s eyes. “Would you marry him, if he asked you?”

      “That won’t happen,” Natalie said quietly.

      “Are you sure of that?”

      “Yes,” came the soft reply. “I’m sure. Mack’s self-sufficient and he doesn’t want to be tied down. He’s said often enough that marriage wasn’t for him. Probably he and Glenna will go on together for years,” she added, aching inside but not letting it show, “since they both like being uncommitted.”

      “Maybe you’re right.” Viv studied her friend curiously. “But he’s very protective of you.”

      Natalie averted her eyes. “Why shouldn’t he be? I’m like a second sister to him.”

      Vivian frowned. She didn’t say anything. After a few seconds, she started coughing violently. Natalie handed her some tissues and helped her sit up with a pillow held to her chest to keep the pain at bay.

      “Does that help?” Natalie asked gently when the spasm passed.

      “Yes. Where did you learn that?” she asked.

      “At the orphanage. One of the matrons had pneumonia frequently. She taught me.”

      Viv dropped her eyes. Occasionally in her jealousy, she forgot how deprived Natalie’s life had been until the Killains had come along. She knew how Nat felt about Mack, and she didn’t understand her sudden need to hurt a woman who’d been nothing but kind to her ever since their friendship began. She was fiercely jealous that Whit seemed to prefer Natalie, which didn’t help her burgeoning resentment toward her best friend. She was confused and envious and so miserable that she could hardly stand herself. She didn’t know what she was going to do if Whit made a serious pass at Natalie. She was sure that she’d do something desperate, and that it would be the end of her long friendship with the other woman.

      The hours dragged after that tense exchange. Natalie kept out of Vivian’s bedroom as much as she could, busying herself with tidying up around the living room. Whit paused to flirt with her from time to time, but she managed to keep him away by reminding him of Viv’s condition. He was getting on her nerves, and Viv was getting more unbearable by the minute.

      When eight o’clock rolled around, it was all Natalie could do to keep from running for her life. Whit was still around, and for the past fifteen minutes, he’d been coming on to Natalie. She was on the verge of assault when Mack walked in unexpectedly.

      He gave Natalie and Whit a speaking glance. They were standing close together and Whit was leaning over her. It looked as if he’d just broken up something, and his eye flashed angrily.

      “Why don’t you make another pot of coffee, Whit?” she asked quickly.

      “As soon as I get back,” he promised. “I need to run to the convenience store and get some cigarettes. I’m dying for a smoke.”

      “Okay,” Natalie said.

      Mack didn’t say a word. With bridled fury, he watched the other man go. But when he shook off his raincoat, he smiled at Natalie as she took it and hung it on the rack for him.

      “Did it rain all the way home?” she asked.

      “Just about. How’s Viv?”

      “She’s doing fine.”

      “Good.” He caught her hand, pulled her into the study with him and closed the door. “You can sit with me while I get these papers sorted. Then we’ll go up and see Viv.”

      “Whit won’t know where we are when he comes back.”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “It’s my house.”

      “Point taken.” She sat in the chair across from his big desk and watched him sort through a briefcase before he sat down with several stacks of papers and began putting them into files.

      As she watched his hands, she thought back to the night Carl had been killed in the wreck…

      It was a stormy night, with lightning flashes illuminating everything inside and outside the house where Natalie was living with her aunt, old Mrs. Barnes. It was her seventeenth birthday, and she was spending it alone, in tears, mourning the death of the only boy she’d ever loved. His death that night in a wreck, driving home from an out-of-town weekend fishing and camping trip with a cousin was announced on the late news. The cousin lived. Carl had died instantly, because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The official cause of the one-car accident was driving too fast for conditions in a blinding rain. The car had veered off the highway at a high speed and crashed down a hill. One of her friends from school had called, almost distraught with grief, to tell Natalie before she had to find out from the news.

      Carl Barkley had been the star quarterback of their high school football team. Natalie had been his date, and the envy of the girls in the senior class, for the Christmas dance. She was to be his date for the senior prom, as well. Handsome, blond, blue-eyed Carl, who was president of the Key Club, vice president of the student council, an honor student with a facility for physics that had gained him a place at MIT after graduation. Carl, dead at eighteen. Natalie couldn’t СКАЧАТЬ