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“Love is something unseen. Something that exists whether you acknowledge it or not. Whether you welcome it or not.” She sounded pretty sure of herself.
“You know this, how?”
“There’s no proof, Mark. Unless you look at people, at their actions, their choices. Love is evident in them.”
“I meant, personally. You live alone. By your own admission, you’ve never been in a serious relationship. So how do you know?” Her own parents certainly had not been a good example of love.
“I loved Gran. My mother loved my father. And I know that love is the power that holds people together after the newness wears off. It’s the need to be together no matter what comes your way. It’s growing and changing together through life’s challenges. Love is what lets a man look at his wife naked after twenty years of marriage and still find her beautiful. It’s what lets an old woman look at her wrinkled and hunched husband and still want only him right by her side.”
She lived alone. Always had. “How do you know?” She sounded like a dreamer. And he saw no evidence in her life to prove any different.
“I just do.”
“So you think that if I don’t feel this love for Ella I shouldn’t marry her even though I gave her my word I wouldn’t desert her?”
“I think that if you don’t love her, it’s not fair to her or to yourself to marry her. Now is the time to acknowledge that the relationship doesn’t offer you what you need—not after you’re married.”
“How do you know it wouldn’t offer me what I need?” He’d been with Ella a lot longer than he’d known Addy. Ella knew Mark Heber. And until he’d kidded himself that he could suddenly have a brand-new life, until he’d let Nonnie convince him that they could be something they weren’t, he’d been completely content to marry Ella.
Addy joined him on the grass, placing herself directly in front of him until their noses were almost touching. “I know because of what just happened over there,” she said. He couldn’t look back at the patio. “If Ella had what it will take to keep you faithful to her for the rest of your lives, then you wouldn’t have been able to respond to me like that.”
“If I don’t remain faithful, that is my fault, not the fault of the woman I’m with. It’s a product of my own character. Something lacking within me. And I can assure you, when I marry, I will be faithful.”
“I don’t doubt that, and to an extent it’s a reflection of who you are. But don’t you see, Mark? If you marry Ella knowing that you don’t want to—and you’ve already admitted you don’t want to—then, in essence, you’re lying to her. If it’s any marriage at all, at some point she’s going to sense that she doesn’t do it for you.”
I won’t be good enough for you anymore. Ella’s words from that night at the lake came back to him. He’d denied her claim at the time. And he’d been certain he knew what he was talking about.
He hadn’t met Addy yet.
“I don’t know a woman who’d be happy knowing her husband didn’t want to marry her, knowing that she didn’t have his whole heart. She’d spend her whole life feeling like she wasn’t good enough.”
“You don’t understand.” But he wanted the out she was handing him. So badly he almost threw thirty years of right living to the side and took it.
“It’s not fair to Ella, either, marrying her when you don’t want to. You’re robbing her of any chance of finding a man who’d adore her enough to still find her beautiful after twenty years of marriage.”
Do you love me? Ella had asked right before breaking up with him. He’d said yes because he loved her as much as he’d ever loved anyone besides Nonnie.
He’d loved Ella as much as he thought it possible to love anyone.
Maybe he still did. His mind had the thought and his entire being revolted against it. He wasn’t in love with Ella. At the moment, he wasn’t even all that fond of her.
The way he felt about Ella was nothing compared to the way he felt about Addy.
The thought made him despicable.
And it wasn’t fair to Ella at all. Addy was right about one thing. He couldn’t marry Ella under false pretenses.
He had to tell her that he didn’t want to marry her.
Addy stepped closer, lifting her face to his. And Mark looked deeply into the eyes of the woman who’d stolen a part of him without his even knowing what she was about.
“Ella’s pregnant.”
* * *
ADDY WOKE UP in a bad mood the next morning. She didn’t want to be in Shelter Valley. She didn’t want to know if Will Parsons was guilty of discrimination or nepotism. And she most certainly did not want Mark Heber to marry Ella from Bierly.
Thirty seconds after she opened her eyes she was on her feet. She was going to stay in Shelter Valley until her job there was done. She was going to do everything she could to either protect Will Parsons from wrongful accusation or prepare him for any defense he might need—though if he was guilty, she would be turning over her research to another attorney of his choosing.
