"I don't need courting." Her voice hitched and she stopped to try to
steady it. "Not that I don't love things like flowers and candlelight
dinners, but all I really need is for you to be there. I want to be your
wife."
Afraid he would shatter if he looked into those hurt and baffled eyes
another instant, he turned away. His hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
"We have to come about."
"What?" She jerked back, staring at his set face, at the muscle that
worked in his jaw. Her heart was still pounding, but no longer in
anticipation. Now it was with dread. "You have nothing to say to me
except that we have to come about?"
"No, I've things to say to you, Grace." His voice was as controlled as
his heart was wild. "We have to go back so I can."
She wanted to shout at him to say them now, right now. But she nodded.
"All right, Ethan. Come about."
the sun was gone when they docked. Crickets and peepers sent up their
nightly chorus, filling the air with shrill, too-bright music. Overhead
a few stars blinked through the haze and a three-quarter moon shimmered.
The air had cooled quickly, but she knew that wasn't the reason she was
cold. So cold.
He secured the lines himself, silently. Just as he'd sailed home,
silently. He stepped back into the boat, sat across from her. The moon
was still low, just riding the tops of the trees, but the early stars
sprinkled down enough light for her to see his face.
There was no joy in it.
"I can't marry you, Grace." He spoke the words carefully, knowing they
would hurt. "I'm sorry. I can't give you what you want."
She gripped her hands together tightly. She didn't know whether they
wanted to ball into fists and pound or hang limp and shaking like an old
woman's. "Then you lied when you said you loved me?"
It might be kinder to tell her so, he thought, then shook his head. No,
it would only be cowardly. She deserved the truth. All of the truth. "I
didn't lie. I do love you."
There were degrees of love. She wasn't fool enough to think differently.
"But not the way you need to love a woman you'd marry."
"I couldn't love any woman more than I love you. But I'm--"
She held up a hand. Something had just occurred to her. If it was his
reason for turning her away, she didn't think she could ever forgive
him. "Is it because of Aubrey? Because I had a child with another man?"
He moved fast so rarely, it took her by surprise when he snatched her
hand out of the air and squeezed it hard enough to rub bone against
bone. "I love her, Grace. I'd be proud for her to think of me as her
father. You have to know that."
"I don't have to know anything. You say you love me, and you love her,
but you won't have us. You're hurting me, Ethan."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He released her hand as if it had burned his
palm. "I know I'm hurting you. I knew I would. I had no business letting
things come to this."
"But you did," she said evenly. "You had to know I'd feel this way, that
I'd expect you would feel the same."