“Nope.” Garrett shook his head. “You’re not Just Jenny.” His eyes were warm, and there was laughter lurking somewhere behind them. “If you can get my brother to put on a birthday party for a bunch of kids he doesn’t know-”

“That’s enough, Garrett,” Michael said roughly. “There was hardly a choice. Jenny was right. The kids were getting restless down by the river.”

“Yeah, and you’d have noticed without Jenny.”

“Anyone would.” Jenny took a deep breath, searching for courage. “You must be-”

“Garrett. Michael’s big brother.”

“Of course.” She gave him a shy smile. “You still look like your picture. Same red hair. Same big-brother look.”

“What’s a big-brother look?” he demanded, and Jenny’s smile widened.

“I guess sort of proud and worried, both at the same time.”

Garrett let his breath out. Whoa. “I think I just stopped worrying,” he told her, and reached forward to give her a hug of welcome, bulging stripes and all. “I think I stopped worrying right this minute. Welcome to the family, Jenny Lord.”

“Jenny Lord?” She cast a doubtful look at Michael. “Oh, yeah. I guess I am.”

“I guess you are,” Garrett told her. “And I’m wondering whether my little brother knows just what he’s let himself in for.”

BY THE END of the afternoon, he was beginning to find out.

They went to the wedding. Camille and Jake had decided they wanted a low-key affair-“just those we love in a place we love”-and there wasn’t a chance of Michael getting out of it.

“Jake’ll personally come and get you if you don’t show up, little brother,” Garrett told him. “And so will Camille. You’re part of their family, and Jenny’s your wife.”

Michael had cringed inside. He did not want to go. He had helped Jake defend Camille from her ex-husband, Vince, but the events of those few short months ago were still nightmare fresh. The shoot-out at Garrett’s cabin. The dreadful moment when he’d thought Garrett was dead. He should have prevented it, he thought savagely. He should have realized how desperate Camille’s ex-husband would be.

He hadn’t-and Garrett had been shot. The love that Camille and Jake shared had blossomed from that near tragedy, and the family had moved on, but for Michael it had been one more reason for self-imposed isolation.

And now, sitting beside Jenny, who looked lovely in the white dress Lana had borrowed for her, he felt so constrained he wanted to bolt for freedom.

The wedding ceremony started. Camille, exquisite in her beautifully embroidered gown of soft raw silk, gazed into Jake’s face with love and total trust, and she gave him the answers he so longed for with sureness and with pride.

“I, Camille, take you, Jake, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”

Michael looked away. He glanced at Jenny and found her expression as strained as he felt. She’d done this twice before, he thought. She’d married-and now Peter was dead. She’d made those vows again. To him. What had these new vows meant for her?

Had Peter looked at her the way Jake was looking at Camille?

Something stirred inside him that could almost have been envy. He glanced at Jenny’s hands, which she clasped and unclasped in her lap. His ring encircled her finger, but she wore Peter’s rings on her right hand.

He had an almost irresistible urge to still those restless fingers with his own, but such an action would signal a commitment, he thought fiercely, and that’s exactly what he didn’t want.

Commitment meant pain. She would walk away, as his birth mother had, as Barbara had.

So he kept his hand to himself. But afterward, as the Maitland and Lord families and their friends milled in the afternoon sunshine, reveling in the happiness of the bride and groom and checking out Jenny with stunned amazement, he finally took her hand.

Not to comfort. To escape.

“Let’s get away,” he told her. “I’ve had enough of this.”

Wordlessly she agreed-she’d said nothing for most of the afternoon-and they left as soon as decently possible.

Once in the car, with Jenny sitting white-faced and silent beside him, all he felt was an overwhelming claustrophobia.

Why? he demanded of himself as he drove. The afternoon couldn’t have gone better. Jenny had been welcomed and embraced into the family. Garrett had even hinted she might help in the search for their birth mother. Michael had nixed that one pretty fast.

Then Shelby and Lana had started grilling Jenny mercilessly about her past. What they learned they must have liked, because by the time they left, his sisters were starting to talk about turning Michael’s spare room into a nursery and who was the best baby-sitter around.

To her credit, Jenny had mostly listened. She hadn’t agreed to Garrett’s request for help but had deferred to Michael, and she’d seemed content to have Shelby and Lana make plans around her.

However, quiet or not, she hadn’t refuted anything. She hadn’t come right out and said, “We’re not turning Michael’s spare room into a nursery because that’s where I sleep. Michael and I don’t sleep together! We’re not a proper husband and wife.”

It would have been hard to say it in the face of their enthusiasm, he acknowledged, but maybe she could have tried. It was important.

And what would she have done if she’d been faced with the Maitland clan’s attention? The two of them made their escape while most of the Maitlands were still with the photographer, so Jenny had been spared Megan’s welcome, Ellie’s shock and Abby’s concern.

That was to come. Now that they’d heard the news, their curiosity would be aroused.

Even Garrett seemed to assume things had changed, Michael thought as he drove his wife toward town. Sunday nights Michael usually spent at the ranch, and he and Garrett played pool on their dad’s old pool table. After the wedding celebrations that’s ordinarily what would have happened. But Garrett hadn’t even raised the possibility. He’d helped Jenny into the Corvette and waved a hand in farewell, as if he wouldn’t be seeing his brother for a while.

“See you around, Mike.” Then he’d looked sideways at Jenny. “I’m sorry you need to go, but I understand you must be tired, Jenny. You take care of the lady, now, Mike. She’s quite something.”

She was, Michael thought bitterly, glancing sideways at Jenny.

But she wasn’t really his wife!

“I’m sorry, Michael.” She sounded tired, and when he checked her out again, he saw that her face had sagged. “It wasn’t meant…”

“What wasn’t meant?”

“Everything,” she whispered. “I mean, when I saw those little girls this morning, I felt so sorry for their grandma that I just offered without thinking. You’d think I’d have learned not to be so darned impetuous by now. And then, when it ended up with me having to go to the wedding with you and all your family being so welcoming… You’ve hated it, and I don’t blame you.”

“I didn’t hate it.”

“You did. I can see that you did.” She sighed. “You mightn’t know it, but you get a sort of look-the same one you get when some sales rep comes in with a security system that bores you to snores, yet you still have to listen. That’s what you looked like today.”

“What, all of today?” He was shocked. Surely not.

“No,” she said. “Not all. Most of the time you tried not to. You were truly wonderful with the children this morning. It was mostly this afternoon, and maybe…maybe it’s only because I know you well.” Her voice faded to a whisper. “Anyway, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you’re stuck with driving me home. Don’t you and Garrett normally spend time together on Sunday night?”

“How do you know that?”

“You’ve told me,” she said. “Lots of times. When I’ve asked you about your weekends.”

Had he? Michael frowned. He couldn’t remember telling her about his weekends.

But maybe he had. In the past few months, Jenny had become part of the furniture around his office. He could very well have talked to her, he decided. He’d never had to watch his tongue when she was around. He’d learned fast that anything he told her went no further, and he’d relaxed in her presence.

But he wasn’t relaxed now. He was edgy. Chafed by the ties he’d never expected.

But she was untying them. “There’s no need to stay home tonight on my account,” she told him. “Just drop me off and go on back out to the ranch. Say I need to sleep. It’s a family celebration. You should be there.”

“Garrett won’t expect me.”

Jenny took a deep breath. “Then maybe Garrett should. He knows this is just a formality.”

“Our marriage?”

“Yes. Our marriage.”

“I hope he does,” Michael said, and he couldn’t keep the note of bitterness from his voice. “It’s obvious my sisters don’t.”

She hesitated, thinking. “I wasn’t sure what you’d told them,” she said after a pause. “I didn’t like to…”

“To dispel the romance?”

“Michael, I wouldn’t presume…” She hesitated and cast a nervous look at him. “I don’t want this, you know.”

“Don’t want this marriage?” The strain of the afternoon was still with him. “You’re not making that very clear.”

There was another silence, longer this time. She fingered the rings on her right hand-the rings she’d moved the day she wed Michael.

“I don’t… Michael, Peter’s only been dead for seven months. There’s no way…” She took a ragged breath. “If you think I’m…”

Damn, now he had to feel guilty as well as trapped. “I don’t think anything,” he said wearily. “I don’t think a darned thing. It’s what my sisters think.”

“Which is?”

“That I’m finally domesticated. Trapped.”

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the minute he let the words leave his mouth, but it was too late to retract them. They hung in the silence between them like a threat.

“Then that’s just stupid.” Her voice rose a notch, anger filtering through it. Her anger matched his. “I didn’t trap you into marriage, Michael Lord. That would have been unfair. You offered. You came into this with your eyes wide open. I was amazingly, incredulously grateful for your offer, but if I’d thought for a moment that you believed I’d engineered this…”