Married By Mistake

against him.
    He managed to keep his hands on Casey one way or another pretty much the whole afternoon.
    “You’re overdoing it,” she said in a near whisper at one stage, when they were on the back veranda having predinner drinks. Casey had been sitting on the swing, cuddling the baby, her legs stretched out along the cushion. Adam sat on the end, and when she started to put her feet on the ground, he held on to them and played “This little piggy” with her toes—not saying the words, of course, but she knew what he was doing.
    Did he know what he was doing? Other than having the time of his life? Of course he did. Play acting, that was all. Just enough to convince his in-laws he adored Casey.
    Ugh. He was even thinking the word now. It’s only a word. Just because I’m thinking it doesn’t mean it’s for real.
    Still, Adam cooled it for a while, just stuck to the endearments and kept his hands off her. Which left him feeling as if his hands weren’t doing what they’d been made for.
    They had dinner late, after Rosie had been put to bed upstairs. During the meal, Karen revealed that she and her husband had now initiated divorce proceedings, so she was back in Parkvale for good. Adam learned that Ed had been doing poorly since Casey left. Both were feeling sorry for themselves, he surmised uncharitably.
    At last Karen raised the hot topic of the week. “What about the article in last week’s paper? It said you sleep in separate bedrooms.”
    “The woman was only with us a few days,” Casey said. “Adam and I had an argument, so I slept in the guest room a couple of nights. It just happened to be while she was here.”
    “It was my paranoid jealousy,” Adam said helpfully. Casey choked on her water. “Are you all right, darling?”
    “Why were you jealous?” Karen asked.
    “I found Casey flirting with the gardener,” he improvised, and earned a hard kick under the table. “I mean, I thought she was flirting,” he amended. “She wasn’t, of course, and she moved out of our room until I saw sense.”
    Before he could get himself into more trouble, Adam raised his glass in a toast. “To the Greene family,” he said, “who raised me the best wife a guy could have.”
    The others lifted their glasses, but when Adam sought Casey’s eyes to share this moment of triumph, they were clouded with tears. Soon after dinner, she excused herself, saying she was tired and would go to bed. Had he done something wrong?
    Adam was torn between wanting to go with her and the need to be courteous to their guests, to make amends for his earlier rudeness to Karen. He decided Casey would appreciate it more if he stayed with her family.
    It was another hour before he made his own way upstairs.
    The light was off, and he couldn’t hear a sound. Could Casey have fallen asleep? When he knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink with her beside him? Damn, she was annoying. In the darkness, he stepped carefully in the direction of the bathroom.
    Casey closed her eyes when Adam switched on the light in the bathroom. She lay motionless until he’d closed the door. She’d never been good at hiding her feelings. What if Adam had already guessed the awful realization that had hit her this evening, after she’d endured a whole day of his caresses, his loving attention?
    The realization that, for better or for worse, she was in love with her husband.
    The knowledge weighed on her, holding her there.
    Today’s tantalizing glimpse of what it might be like to be truly married to Adam, if he loved her, had illuminated the truth she’d been denying for days. This was the meaning of the pleasure that curled in the pit of her stomach when he smiled at her. This was the cause of the physical ache his slightest touch induced. This was why, with him, she felt fully alive, one hundred percent herself.
    All week, his assertion that tonight they would make love had caused excitement to thrum through her veins, heightening every sensation, invoking an unbearable tension, even as she’d told him it wasn’t going to happen—and meant it. But now she knew she didn’t have it in her to deny him.
    Casey fidgeted under the crisp cotton sheets.
Just knowing that his body normally occupied the space where she now lay was enough to set her on edge. She should have dressed, or rather undressed,
for the occasion. Would Adam want her looking
like this?
    Would he want her if she told him she loved him?
    The bathroom door opened, and Adam’s deep