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“How can you not see you’re doing the same thing now?”
“In what way?”
“Acting like marrying you is my only option! I can do this on my own, Max. I don’t need you.”
A muscle jerked at his temple, drawing her gaze, fascinating her, robbing her of breath. “This we have already discussed. Our daughter deserves us to stop thinking in such binary terms. There is no longer a
‘you’ nor a ‘me’. We are to be parents.”
She’d had months to adapt to that idea but hearing it from his lips filled her with a bubbling feeling of excitement. His heavy sigh reached right inside of her. “I’m not treating you like a child,” He spread his arms wide and stepped closer, ignoring her reflexive flinch. “I’m respecting your maturity and judgement, believing you can see that our daughter deserves for us to try again.”
Tears threatened to form a film in her eyes. She blinked and angled her face away, focussing on a piece of stunning sculpture across the room. “I know that.” Her concession filled the room with a pounding sense of anticipation, like the marching of a drum she couldn’t stop. “But you’re saying this like it’s easy and it’s not. Marrying you is the last thing I want.” She turned to face him, hoping the sincerity of her words showed in her eyes.
“It was something you once wanted very badly.”
“Ancient history.” She straightened, moving away from him once more. “And you’re all kinds of chauvinistic to remind me of that now.”
“Chauvinistic?” he lifted a thick, dark brow, his eyes lightly mocking.
She jerked her head in agreement. “I was a stupid kid. I know better now. I remember what our marriage was like and the idea of walking back into that…”
She shuddered involuntarily.
“This would be different.”
“How can I believe that?”
He came to stand behind her, his hands brushing her shoulders lightly. “Because we’ve already become so much more to one another.”
Her skin lifted in goose bumps where he touched, her pulse rushing through her. “Sex doesn’t change anything.”
“Liar.” His laugh sent tingles down her spine.
She spun around, but wished she hadn’t the second her soft curves collided with his muscular firmness. “Is that the ‘angle’ you want me to see? That we’ll have sex?”
“That seemed to be a problem with our first marriage for you.”
“Don’t make light of it,” she snapped, but the words were husky, filled with desire.
“I’m not. I am simply pointing out that this is a problem we can correct.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Then make me understand.” His words were warm, wrapping around her, so that it was difficult to think straight. “I’m asking you to marry me, and telling you I will change. Tell me what you need.”
She couldn’t speak. Her mind was careening into overdrive.
“I want to make this work. I want our child to be a part of a family.”
Her heart turned over in her breast.
But emotional scar tissue was thick there, a pain that had developed over the year of their marriage and had never been possible to shift.
“You want that too?”
She closed her eyes, nodding, but it was an admission that cost her dearly.
“But marrying you…” she shook her head a little, with disbelief. “I just need…”
