The Bride Said, 'I Did?'. Cathy Gillen Thacker

folded in front of him, Beau leaned against the corner of the examining table. “Make that two of us,” he muttered, for a moment looking as taken aback as she felt.

      Silence fell as she pulled on her bra beneath her gown.

      “Well, it could be worse,” he said eventually as she turned her back, removed her gown and slipped on her blouse.

      “How?” Dani demanded, distressed. Turning back to him, she found her sandals. She hated that he was now trying to make the best of this! She wanted him to be as upset—as simultaneously ecstatic and upset about her unexpected pregnancy—as she was. But now that his shock had faded, Beau Chamberlain was looking downright happy about it all! As if it was yet another example of life always working out for the best, instead of the unmitigated disaster it could very well turn out to be.

      Beau grinned and shrugged. “You could be pregnant and unmarried.”

      Straightening, Dani glared at him. She did not appreciate his quip and she let him know it with a look. “That’s not funny.” She pushed the words through tightly clenched teeth.

      He sighed, then grimaced. “Okay.” He shoved a hand through his hair again. “Obviously this has caught us both off guard and we have a lot to figure out.”

      “You’re not kidding there.” Dani grabbed a brush from her purse and, stepping over to the mirror, ran it through her hair. Tucking the curving ends behind her ears, she looked steadily at Beau, who was standing just left and behind her, in the mirror. “Like when, where and how we are going to get an annulment without anyone—other than my sisters, thanks to your blurting it out the way you did—ever finding out we were married.”

      Instead of agreeing with her, as Dani had hoped and expected he would, Beau Chamberlain merely shook his head. He gave her a look stony with resolve. “I meant what I said, Dani. No annulment. And no divorce. I don’t know exactly how or why we entered into this marriage, but I’m not about to let us look any more foolish than we already do,” he warned flatly. “The two of us are staying married.”

      Dani whirled to face him. A pulse pounding in her throat, she tipped her head up to his. “But we don’t love each other!” And as far as Dani was concerned, love was the only reason to get—or stay—married.

      Beau clamped his hands on her arms, his expression no less confident. “Then maybe we’ll grow to love each other,” he suggested with customary optimism. His glance narrowing, he continued to hold her gently but firmly, “Meanwhile, you’re having our baby. And our baby is not going to be born illegitimate.”

      Beau waited for Dani’s reaction. It wasn’t long in coming.

      “This is ridiculous,” she stormed, pulling herself free of him yet again. She stomped away, her slender hips swaying provocatively beneath her tailored linen slacks. “We don’t even like each other!”

      Content to go ahead and have it out with her right there in the Laramie Community Hospital family clinic, if that was what she wanted, Beau braced himself for a battle. After all, he’d known getting things worked out between them wouldn’t be easy. That was why he’d taken the time to make sure he’d figured out all of the angles before he showed up on her doorstep.

      Now that he was here, he found it was worth the wait. Well worth it. For she had never looked more beautiful to him, nor feistier, than she did at that moment. Soft silky hair, the color of copper gleaming in the Texas sun, framed her delicate oval face. But it was more than the soft swell of her breasts, the slender indentation of her waist, curvaceous hips and long sexy legs that put his hormones into overdrive whenever he was around her. It was the sassy tilt of her chin, the intelligence and wit that sparkled in her eyes. Without even trying, Dani challenged him in a way no other woman ever had or ever would.

      Physically they were a match. Emotionally…well, emotionally was another matter. From the first moment they’d met at that party, Dani’d had her dander up. Probably because her previous romance with another actor had ended badly. But that was no reason for her to mistrust him. Especially now that a damn miracle had occurred and they were having a baby that, like it or not, would bind them together for life.

      “We could like each other, given half a chance,” Beau said finally. That was, if Dani would put her usual cynicism aside and let them get to know each other the way he had wanted to from the very start. But to his dismay, once again Dani wasn’t about to let that happen.

      “That’s not very likely,” Dani shot back, her amber eyes darkening defensively, “given that we have completely different views on just about everything that matters.”

      That was true, Beau thought resting one hip against the edge of the examining table. But once again, it wasn’t something insurmountable. “Nevertheless, we need to stay married.”

      “Until the baby is born,” Dani wearily guessed.

      Beau shook his head. “Until we figure out what happened to make us go off and do such a foolish thing as get married.”

      Dani stared at Beau. “I already told you,” she repeated impatiently. “I can’t remember anything.”

      Beau lifted a skeptical brow, figuring if he had some fuzzy memories, she surely had some, too. “Not even why we ended up in Mexico?”

      “Well, of course I remember that!” Dani retorted, incensed.

      WEARY OF THE PUBLIC SNIPING that had been going on almost from the moment they’d met, the two of them had decided to try to work things out. Dani had wanted to stay in Laramie to talk. But in desperate need of some real rest and recreation after completing work on Bravo Canyon, Beau had insisted they take his private jet and go to his villa in Mexico. Dani had agreed for three reasons. One, she had known that getting Beau to understand her view of what movies should be and not his was going to be a long slow process. Two, she had seen how genuinely tired he was after the long arduous shoot in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas. And three, because she had wanted to try to end the fighting with Beau out from under the watchful eyes of her sisters and John and Lilah McCabe, who were likely to see any personal conversations between Beau and Dani as reason for romantic speculation or matchmaking. And, Dani was reluctant to admit, they wouldn’t have been far off.

      The truth was, she had been secretly attracted to Beau Chamberlain from the very first. So attracted, in fact, that she’d had to use every ounce of attitude she possessed to keep him at arm’s length. At first he had been amused. But as time wore on, he’d become increasingly irritated by her standoffish behavior. To the point he had begun sniping back, annoying her and getting under her skin every chance he got in much the same way the boys had used to tease her at recess. Dani—and everyone else in Hollywood, it seemed—had sensed that a mutual attraction was behind Beau’s verbal sparring and increasingly public attention to her. To stop it, all she had to do was let her defenses down, talk to him with the same openness and vulnerability she showed her other friends.

      But that hadn’t been an option for Dani two years ago, not in the film industry. She had mixed business and pleasure once before, and been stung when she gave the movie that her boyfriend, Chris Avery, was in one star and then been dubbed the Lady with the Poison Pen. It was a moniker everyone in Hollywood, including Beau, had repeated at one time or another either in anger or in jest. Dani had no intention of letting that happen again. So she had kept her attraction to Beau to herself. And she hadn’t let any of what went on between them color her reviews of Beau’s movies. She had made sure she was just as tough on him as she was with everyone else.

      And she had known, even if the impossible happened and they did manage to become friends when they went off to Mexico together, that would continue. Dani did not do favors for people she knew in the business; her professional reputation was much too important to her.

      Which made what had eventually happened—the two of them ending up married and in bed together—even more puzzling. Not just for her, but for him.

      “And what else do you remember?” Beau prodded.

      Dani spread her palms helplessly