Married By Mistake

me?”
    How, despite his best intentions, could Adam not reach out and pull her to him, kiss her hard on the mouth?
    It took only a second of body-to-body contact for him to be on full alert and ready for a rerun of the other night. Casey’s arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him with a fervor that left him in no doubt as to her wants. He ran his hands down her back to cup her derriere, pulling her against him, and she whimpered with need.
    Clumsy with desire, he fumbled at the buttons of her shirt, at last managing to push the fabric aside to cup her breasts through the ivory satin of her bra. She arched against him, and he lowered his mouth to the swell of flesh. At the same time, he tugged the bottom of her shirt out of her shorts, slipped his hands inside her waistband. Suddenly, his progress eased considerably, and he realized she’d unsnapped her shorts. He slid them down and she stepped out of them. She began to tug at his belt.
    Dimly, Adam registered that the phone on the desk was ringing.
    He ignored it, concentrating instead on the incredible sensation of Casey’s fingers undoing his trousers, then pushing them down. He kicked off his pants, then backed her toward the couch, not lifting his mouth from the tender hollow he’d discovered where her neck met her shoulder.
    The room was silent, apart from muffled sounds of their need. So when Sam’s voice boomed out from the answering machine, it was as if a bucket of cold Mississippi water landed on them.
    “Adam, it’s Sam. Good news, my friend. I had a call from Judge Skelton’s office. He’s granted your annulment. I’ll send the paperwork out to you, but congratulations, you’re Memphis’s most eligible bachelor once again.”
    Adam would never have believed that not being married to Casey would be a complete passion killer. But it was. He no more wanted to make love to her now than she did to him—and he could see in her eyes that she’d gone right off the idea.
    “We can’t...” Casey choked on the words. She twisted from his embrace—he didn’t try to stop her—and stumbled over to pick up her shorts, dragging them back on. Adam found his pants and dressed in silence, not trusting himself to speak for a moment.
    “So that’s it.” Somehow he managed to sound calm, even casual, as he ran a hand through his hair to smooth it. “We got our annulment.”
    “I heard,” she said shortly.
    Already, there was a distance between them that was more than just the abrupt end to their lovemaking. Frustration and disappointment gnawed at Adam, and suddenly the room wasn’t big enough for both of them. “I’m going for a run,” he said.
    * * *
    A FTER HE ’ D RUN NEARLY three miles, Adam turned around and headed for home. Each thud of his shoes on the sidewalk hammered in the reminder that Casey would leave soon.
    He didn’t want her to go. She added an extra dimension to his life that he would miss. He could make her stay, of course. He sensed that if he wooed her, she could love him. She might even love him already. And marriage was in his long-term plan. So why not?
    Because of the kind of marriage Casey wanted.
    She wanted to be the most important thing in her husband’s life. She’d never put it in those terms, but what else did being adored mean?
    Adam breathed more heavily as he ran uphill. Only half a mile to go. Think faster.
    He cared for Casey. He even loved her, in his own way. Though he wouldn’t risk telling her that, in case she assumed he meant her kind of love. He wanted to be with her, he wanted to make love to her with a fierceness that scared him. He wanted to have children with her.
    Never mind that until Sam mentioned it, he’d never thought about kids. Right now, something inside Adam went mushy at the prospect of a child of his own.
    A son.
    A chance for Adam to be the kind of dad his own father had never been.
    A chance to heal some of the hurt of his youth, to set a new pattern for the Carmichael family. Adam snorted. Healing! He was starting to sound like Casey.
    He rounded the corner onto his street. Home was just a couple of hundred yards away.
    He forced himself to focus on the practicalities. As Sam said, having a child would prove their marriage was genuine. It could be the key to securing their future.
    Adam wasn’t prepared to trade his independence for the emotional ties he’d convinced himself Casey would demand. But maybe he was wrong about her. She’d changed in the past month, as