My Secret Wife. Cathy Thacker Gillen

And whether Maggie realized it or not, her actions were putting her in a place where she was very much at risk of being hurt or taken advantage of. Now, later, it didn’t really matter. All he knew was that he was determined not to see that happen.

      Maggie lifted her brow. “It doesn’t?”

      “No, it doesn’t,” Gabe said firmly, as the solution to her problem quickly became evident to him. “Because I’ll marry you and give you the baby you want via artificial insemination.” In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he knew it was the right path to take.

      Maggie blinked at him in surprise. “Why would you do that?” she demanded hoarsely, as all the color drained from her face.

      “Because Daisy’s right.” Afraid she was going to bolt if he didn’t hang on to her, Gabe took both her hands in his. Wanting her to know how serious he was, he looked deep into her eyes. “If you are going to do this, you should go about it the right and proper way. And I want to help you.” More than he had ever wanted to help anyone in his life!

      “But we don’t love each other,” Maggie protested, twin spots of delicate pink color staining her cheeks.

      Gabe shrugged off her worries. “That doesn’t really matter, given the way you’re going to get pregnant,” he said, finding the idea of her having artificial insemination was not nearly as repugnant to him if it was with his sperm. “What will matter,” Gabe emphasized bluntly now that he had her full attention, “is that we will be officially married when you are getting pregnant and having the baby.”

      Maggie took a half step back but then gripped his hands all the tighter. “And then what?” she demanded in a soft, wary voice that sent shivers across his skin.

      “When the time is right, later,” Gabe soothed, knowing it was the only practical solution as well as what Maggie wanted to hear, “we’ll divorce.”

      Maggie looked even more amazed. “And you think it’s a workable plan?”

      Gabe nodded confidently. “The most workable one so far.” He leaned toward her urgently, not stopping until he was close enough to inhale the intoxicating hyacinth fragrance of her skin. “Think about it, Maggie. This way our baby will know who both his or her parents are. I only have one stipulation.”

      “And that is—?” The hesitation in her eyes was back.

      “That I be allowed to be the baby’s father while he or she is growing up and that the baby be brought up as a Deveraux as well as a Callaway,” Gabe said firmly, knowing he was right about this. “Because every baby deserves both a father and a mother and if possible a loving extended family.”

      Maggie swallowed. “Well, I can’t give my baby that on my own, so…all right,” she conceded eventually. “I’ll do this your way.”

      Silence fell between them once again. Maggie furrowed her brow.

      “What?” Gabe prodded.

      Maggie frowned, stepped back, let go of his hands. “I can’t help but think that your family is not likely to approve of this plan of ours,” she said worriedly. “Nor are those close to me.”

      Wishing he could just forget the clinical approach and make love to her, and impregnate her with his seed that way, Gabe shrugged off her concerns. He knew they could work out whatever problems came up. The important thing was that Maggie not go off half-cocked and have some stranger’s baby, and then spend the rest of her life—and her baby’s, too—regretting it. “They don’t even have to know the details,” Gabe argued resolutely. “We’ll tell them that you’re pregnant later, after we’ve already been secretly married for a few months. That way,” he reasoned, “we’ll likely get a lot less grief, since people are less inclined to weigh in about a fait accompli.”

      “All right,” Maggie said tremulously. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed in deeply and then released an enormous sigh of relief. “I agree.” She shot him a stern, warning glance. “But with my ovulation window ready to hit by the end of the week, we don’t have much time.”

      Chapter Three

      “You may kiss the bride,” the Sunset Beach justice of the peace said, as soon as Gabe and Maggie had finished their vows.

      Gabe turned to Maggie. She was wearing a simple white cotton dress that left her shoulders bare and ended just above her knees, and made her look both surprisingly fragile and very beautiful. At the insistence of the couple presiding over their wedding vows, she had tucked a white rose into her wavy honey-blond hair in lieu of a veil or hat. The overall affect was simple and understated—she made a very lovely bride.

      They had decided to get married out on the beach, next to the ocean, rather than inside, in the intimate little chapel, but Gabe wasn’t sure this was much better. He still felt as if they were married as he leaned forward, looked into her light-green eyes, and delivered a light, gentle kiss to her cheek, even though he knew that in spirit they definitely were not. That this was just a formality done for propriety and their child’s sake.

      Maggie smiled, stepped back and, looking as eager to end the event as he, thanked the young couple for fitting them in on such short notice. Still clutching the bouquet of silk flowers that had come with the Basic Wedding Package she headed with Gabe to the car.

      “Want to have dinner on the way home?” Gabe asked, as they trudged through the sandy dunes and blowing sea grass that separated the ocean from the wedding chapel parking lot.

      Maggie’s forehead creased as she glanced at her watch. “Maybe we just could hit a drive-through on the way and grab some sandwiches,” she suggested instead, “since we have a two-hour drive ahead of us back to Charleston.”

      “Okay,” Gabe did his best to curtail his disappointment as he held her door and watched her settle gracefully into the passenger seat of his sports car.

      He supposed that was what he got for having agreed to get married in North Carolina, instead of the state in which they lived. But given the fact that South Carolina had a twenty-four-hour waiting period—and North Carolina had none—and they didn’t want anyone besides themselves to know about their hasty wedding just yet, there had really been no alternative. To get married before her monthly ovulation window opened, and/or one of them changed their mind, they’d had to drive north to the quaint little coastal community, apply for a wedding license before the county records office closed for the day and then find a chapel to fit them in before they drove back.

      Now, the deed done, the plain gold wedding bands on their fingers, they were officially man and wife.

      MARRIED, Maggie thought, as she took off the plain gold band and dropped it into the zipper compartment in her purse. She was married to Gabe Deveraux.

      In name only, of course.

      But still, she thought as she rubbed the place on her finger where the wedding band had been, she was no longer the free woman she had been just a few hours ago.

      Nor was she really his wife.

      They were just…friends.

      Casual friends, she reminded herself fiercely, who were going to have a baby together as soon as they could get her pregnant the newfangled way. All that would involve would be plastic cups and syringes and hospital gowns and feet in stirrups.

      There would be no champagne, no roses, no romantic dinners for two. So why, she wondered, as Gabe turned his car into a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through lane, were her palms all sweaty and her heart in an uproar? It wasn’t as if the vows they had just said meant anything. Noticing she had taken her ring off, Gabe removed his wedding band, too, and shoved it in the pocket of his starched white dress shirt.

      Abruptly looking as if he felt as uncomfortable and ill at ease as she did sitting side by side in his small sports car, Gabe held the wheel with one hand and loosened his navy and khaki tie and undid the top button on his shirt with his other. He braked as they reached the microphone,