Created In Fire (Art of Love Series) (10 page)

“There’s my girl,” Michael told her, putting a hand to her back. “Wait.”

He reached down and flushed the toilet once. Then he did it a second time as Carrie looked at him confused.

“Cover story,” he told her, liking when her eyes crinkled in humor again. “You can hear the toilet flushing all over the house. I don’t want them upset again thinking you lied about being sick.”

“Lying is the least of my sins as far as they’re concerned,” Carrie said, running a hand through her hair.

“Now, Carlene, you need to think more positively,” Michael said with mock dignity, pulling her out of the bathroom and across the bedroom.

“I think I’m positively going to kill you if you keep calling me Carlene,” Carrie told him viciously, not really minding when he laughed loudly at her threat. But at least when Michael said her hated name, there was some kindness in the tone of his voice. It wasn’t so awful to hear it from his lips.

Michael stopped at the door and swooped down to kiss her again. “Are you going to go back to hating me tomorrow?” he asked.

“Probably—I’m a hormonal pregnant woman. Plus, I’ll have to go face your old girlfriends again at work,” Carrie told him.

“Then I need to make your good mood today count,” Michael said, spinning her and putting her up against the wall by the door. “Remember that this is how much I want you.”

Carrie had time for one breath before Michael pressed into her so hard that it took no imagination at all to relive the last time he’d been buried inside her. She wanted him so badly in that moment that begging him to take her seemed the right thing to do.

“Michael,” she called, feeling him grinding into her and deathly afraid she was going scream in climax in a minute or two if he didn’t stop.

“Try not to resent this desire between us. That’s all I ask,” he pleaded as he kissed her until they both were ready to rip each other’s clothes off. “I really, really want to do this naked later.”

When Michael eased away from her, his mouth looked as bruised and swollen as hers felt. Carrie was trembling with lust but managed to nod her head. It was going to be really difficult to talk to her parents knowing Michael Larson had a raging hard-on for her.

Then it was going to be impossible not to be with him tonight.

“Let’s go,” Carrie said finally, making her final decisions about several things as Michael pulled her toward the door. “I’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here. I can’t take the stress of hating anyone anyway. It just makes me sick.”

Chapter 7

“I’d help you with the pizza trash, but the smell is bothering me,” Carrie said regretfully, leaning against the kitchen sink and sipping yet another glass of ice water.

“I got it,” Michael said easily. “I’ll get the boxes out of the house as soon as I can.”

She watched him in silence as he made short work of collecting all the trash. He disappeared into his garage out a side door, then came trotting back less than a minute later.

“All done,” he said.

Carrie nodded. “Thank you.”

“So that wasn’t too bad was it?” Michael asked.

“No, the medicine really helps. I think it’s just the smells that bother me a little,” Carrie told him.

Michael laughed. “I feel like you and I are speaking different languages sometimes. I was talking about your parents.”

“Oh,” Carrie said, taking a deep breath and sighing hard. “No. It was like making polite conversation with strangers. It was uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t use the term bad.”

“It was pretty nice of Mom and Jessica to keep the conversation going and on safe topics, don’t you think?” Michael asked.

Carrie nodded. Ellen and Jessica had been great. The more she saw them; the more she liked those two women. If she hadn’t seen them fighting Friday, she would have sworn they were friends after today.

“So we’ve done the family thing. We have the rings. You signed the prenuptial agreement. I think we’re up to planning the wedding and setting a date,” Michael said, retrieving a beer from the refrigerator. “I have some ideas when you’re ready to talk about them.”

Carrie swallowed hard. “We could just go get it done somewhere quickly.”

“No,” Michael said firmly. “Your father has agreed to walk you down the aisle, so it needs to be a church. It can either be their church, or we’ll find another one. Let the man come through for you, Carrie. Hold him accountable to it.”

“I don’t feel good enough about my parents to get married in their church,” Carrie said, not really wanting a church ceremony at all. However, her parents would be more likely to accept Michael and the baby with a church involved. Not that any of them would be in the baby’s life much, but she didn’t want them talking badly about Michael after the baby came. He didn’t deserve that. She would at the very least deflect their anger to her.

“I’m not particular. If you have a church, we can use yours,” she said finally.

“I don’t really,” Michael said. “I go occasionally, but not regularly. I see myself as spiritual, but I have never been a person to follow a traditional route in much of anything.”

“I stopped going to church when I stopped going home. Now I go to both only when I have to, but I do miss it sometimes,” she said quietly, looking out the kitchen window as she turned and starting loading the dishwasher.

“I can see how it fits a certain need for structure and ritual for people. I also think churches have a very unique physical energy in them. I really like older ones with stained glass windows, giant pipe organs, and loud choirs,” Michael said.

“Really? Were you raised Baptist?” Carrie asked, thinking of one of the largest churches in Lexington where women wore beautiful dresses and hats, and men dressed in three piece suits. Their music was wonderful. Their smiles on Sunday were uplifting.

“No. Mom and Dad were Lutheran,” Michael said. “Do you have a preference or abhorrence for any denomination?”

Carrie snorted. “No. I don’t think it matters what a congregation has on the door. My immediate family is old fashioned Pentecostal. They still believe in women wearing long skirts, no makeup, and not cutting their hair. None of my siblings adhere to the appearance thing either, but they rebel discreetly for my parent’s sake. Anyone can see what a dismal failure I am about all that.”

Michael grinned thinking of Carrie’s typically short hairstyles and her very nice fitting short skirts. Her look suited her well. It suited him well too.

“You need to change your outlook, Carlene. It makes things more palatable. Tell me something wonderful about your family and their spiritual life.”

“
Carlene
isn’t talking to you about anything. Carrie might if you call her by the name she likes,” she told him, making Michael laugh again. It had been quite the weekend. “So think of something I like, huh? My mother and father used to have thankful contests. They were fun.”

“
Thankful contests?
What’s that?” Michael asked, going to the table and pulling up a chair so he could finish his beer and listen in earnest.

“They mostly did them at the dinner table. My father would say my mother’s name loudly and then adamantly state something he was thankful for—could be anything. Then my mother would match him by adamantly stating something she was thankful for in reply. They ended up yelling things at each other from each end of the table before it was done. It sounded almost like fighting. The four of us would be laughing so hard we couldn’t eat while it was going on—even Kevin,” Carrie said, giving Michael a look that said believe-it-or-not. “Of course, Darla and Alison were really young then. I was maybe in middle school when they stopped.”

“My rituals were all about major religious holiday. That one sounds pretty good,” Michael said. “Maybe we could try it sometime.”

“Sure.
Michael—I am so thankful my family is out of your house
,” Carrie said loudly, laughing at his broad smile as he tried to drink his beer around it.

“Carrie, I’m so thankful you’re not sick right now,” Michael said, smiling and laughing.

“Michael, I’m so thankful I was able to eat pizza for the first time in weeks,” Carrie told him, loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher and closing the door.

“Carrie, I’m so thankful that that you did the dishes,” he said, knowing it was weak when she gave him a pitying look for his lack of imagination.

“Michael, I’m so thankful you didn’t hit my brother back today when he deserved it,” Carrie told him. “He’s a jerk, but I think he’s finally starting to grow up.”

“Carrie, I’m so glad that I was able to talk your father into walking you down the aisle,” he said proudly, figuring if Carrie could talk about today he could as well.

“Michael—,” Carrie paused, looking directly at Michael, who was now staring at the ceiling.

“I thought walking me down the aisle was my father’s idea,” Carrie said, frowning at him.

Michael winced as he realized Carrie had caught his mistake. “Well, it was Ethan’s idea to apologize and make things right. I’m just the one who told him what form it needed to take.”

Carrie believed Michael had good intentions in making such a demand, but it still made her mad to know that her parents’ remorse had not been genuine. It had taken her all her life to teach herself not to care what they thought about her decisions. Now she had Michael intervening trying to change what she’d never been able to on her own merits.

She stood there gripping the sink, dish towel in hand, feeling too much like her mother who had also aligned herself with a very controlling man. Carrie doubted Michael was far from that. It was just packaged differently.

Her anger had her wondering if a jury would convict her of killing the father of her child, but then that would leave her putting it up for adoption. No matter how mad Michael made her, she was rapidly coming to believe he was going to be a good parent. Truthfully, the more she was around Michael’s family, the more Carrie was glad they would be the ones involved in her child’s life.

“It’s not worth fighting about. I knew it was too good to be true,” she said instead of venting her fury as she laid the dish towel over a sink strainer full of clean dishes. “Ethan Addison would never change his mind about a person that quickly. He’s also never approved of anything much I’ve done, so I don’t know why I bought his regretful act.”

Michael sighed and pushed the rest of his beer away. Father and daughter had very little ground on which to build a relationship. Carrie didn’t feel loved by her father at all, even though Michael had a sense Ethan cared deeply for her.

“Your father loves you, Carrie. He’s just really bad at showing it. When he’s there at your side when we marry, maybe you’ll see that he cares.”

And maybe Ethan will see how right I am for you, he thought.

Carrie nodded. “Sure. Whatever. I appreciate you negotiating for me, Michael, but there wasn’t any need. Don’t do it again.”

Michael sighed, stood, and walked to her.

“Carrie, I’m thankful you’re with me and marrying me under whatever circumstances you allow,” he said sincerely, resuming their game, but not as loudly.

Carrie dipped her head and thought for a minute. Focus on the good, she told herself, but she found she couldn’t.

“Michael, I’m thankful you’ve agreed to give me my freedom when the baby is born,” she told him. “I’ve had all I can take of being controlled in my life.”

Michael sighed loudly then, frustrated as usual by her limited view of his actions.

“That wasn’t what I was doing. Your father asked to apologize to me, and I said you were the one he owed it to,” he said quietly, putting his hands on her shoulders and sliding them down her arms. “I’m sorry if I overstepped.”

“Do you know what it’s like to grow up never pleasing anyone?” she asked him.

Michael shook his head. “No. I guess I don’t. Both my parents think I’m a pretty good person.”

“Well my parents think I’ve done nothing right,” Carrie said. “My entire life has been a series of attempts at seeking approval and never finding it completely. Not from my family, the men I dated, or either of the husbands I married. The only things I have done right are be good at my work and make sure Darla and Alison got far away from the rest of us.”

“Carrie,” Michael said firmly, his heart hurting for her disappointment, her total lack of belief that she was loved. “If I could go back, do it over, and connect genuinely with you in college—I would in a heartbeat, because then you might not feel this way.”

“Michael, you were who you were in college. It was that guy I wanted and slept with,” she told him, relieved to be sharing her true thoughts. “You haven’t been pining away for me living a celibate life lost in your art. That isn’t in your nature. So what if it bothers me? We are who we are.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t wish that I could undo dating your co-workers and the other hurtful things I did. I was in emotional turmoil when you married the second guy who wasn’t me. I just fell back to what I had done in college. I swear I don’t even remember other women, other than as some temporary reprieve from needing and not having you. They blur together because I didn’t connect with any of them. The only woman—the only connection I think about is the one I have with you.”