Wedding at King’s Convenience by Maureen Child

awake feelings that had been lying fallow for weeks now. Like a limb waking from a deep sleep, there were pinpricks of awareness tingling across every inch of her skin.
    “Damn it, Maura, open the door!”
    She might have if he hadn’t ordered her to. As it was, the anger she’d been carrying around for months suddenly swamped her and she pushed away from the door. “Go away, Jefferson!”
    “Not gonna happen!” he shouted back. “Now, do we have this conversation loud enough for everyone to listen in or do we talk in private?”
    Private.
    That got her moving. She wasn’t interested in having half of Hollywood listening in on her private business. Maura flung the door open and stepped back as Jefferson marched inside, followed by King, who promptly shook the rainwater off his coat and onto everything else.
    “For heaven’s sake,” she muttered as the dog sprinted off the long hallway toward the kitchen and his bed.
    Wiping water off her face, she stared up into Jefferson’s eyes and almost took a step back from the glittering wrath shining there. Then she remembered just which of them had the right to be angry.
    “You’ve nothing to be snippy about,” she told him before he could speak.
    “Snippy?” He pushed both hands through his wet hair, shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it onto the umbrella stand beside the door. His white dress shirt was soaked as well, clinging to the muscled contours of his chest and abdomen in a way that made Maura’s mouth water, though she wouldn’t have admitted it even with a knife to her throat.
    “I’m way more than snippy,” he told her. “What the hell do you mean you’re pregnant?”
    She forced herself to calmly close the front door before she turned to answer him. “Just how many things could I mean, do you think, Jefferson?” Oh, she’d imagined this scene too many times to count and the reactions she’d given him in her mind had been wide and varied. But in none of them had he looked as though someone had hit him over the head with a stick.
    He was stunned, pure and simple, which told her flat out that no one had given him the countless messages she’d left over the last couple of months. Why did the man employ so many people if none of them could be trusted to pass on a message?
    Her temper built steadily as she met his shocked gaze. “It’s easy enough to understand. I’m pregnant. With child. Carrying. Bun in the oven.” She tipped her head to one side. “Shall I draw you a picture?”
    A tension-filled second or two ticked past, the only sounds in the house that of the rain battering at the windows and the wind whistling beneath the eaves. Finally, he spoke and his voice was tight with controlled emotion.
    “If you think you’re being funny, you’re mistaken. And if you’re really pregnant why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
    “Really pregnant?” She repeated the words, spitting them back at him. “Instead of only a bit pregnant, is that it?”
    “That’s not what I meant. Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “Hah! You’ve quite the nerve asking me that question, I’ll say.” She closed the space between them with two quick steps and poked her index finger against the center of his chest. “With me calling and calling that bloody studio of yours, leaving messages both long and short with that crowd of people standing between you and the public?”
    “You called?”
    “Repeatedly and I’ll tell you now, the Pope would be easier to ring up.”
    “I never got any message from you,” he said, pulling his tie off and opening the collar of his shirt.
    Was that true? She wondered if she’d been wrong all this time. For weeks now, she’d been harboring a snarling fury toward him. She’d thought he’d been getting all of her messages and simply ignoring them. Choosing to distance himself from a woman he no longer wanted and a child he had no interest in. She’d thought him the lowest sort of man and she’d been hurt and furious