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Chapter Seven
Dani bit back the easy answer because she knew that marrying Chase would be a mistake, possibly the biggest mistake of her life.
“This isn’t the eighteen hundreds, you know,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to make an honest woman of me just because of last night.”
His lips thinned as he stepped nearer and touched her shoulders. “I want you to marry me,” he repeated, stroking her cheek. “I don’t have any ulterior motives and this has nothing to do with Caleb, your creek or guilt about last night.” His sky-blue gaze caressed her face. “I’m thirty-four years old and I want you for my wife. Is that so hard to believe?”
“In light of the circumstances—”
“The hell with the circumstances! Marry me, Dani.”
Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest and all of her irrational female emotions were screaming inside her head, Yes, yes, I’ll marry you. “I—I’d like to,” she whispered. “But there’s so much to consider.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, Chase—”
“Such as?”
Her lips compressing, she pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Such as Cody, for one thing.”
“I’ll adopt him.”
“Just like that?”
Chase muttered to himself and then shook his head. “Of course not. It will take time. He doesn’t much trust me yet.”
“I wonder why,” she taunted. “It couldn’t be because you’re Johnson’s partner, or that you keep trespassing on my land or that you always seem to be getting into fights with me, could it?”
Chase pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll work things out with Cody. Now, give me another reason.”
Her hazel eyes narrowed. “Okay. What about the fact that you live in Idaho and my life is here, on this farm?”
“For as long as you own it, you mean.”
“Okay, there’s another point. And a big one. Caleb. And Summer Ridge. The creek. It’s the whole damned mess, the reason you’re here in the first place. You’re Caleb’s partner. You can’t get out of that, not until you convince me to sell my property to him, right?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Essentially.”
“Then I’d say we have some pretty hard bridges to cross before we even talk about marriage.”
He didn’t seem convinced, but rammed his fists into his pockets. His thick brows pulled into an angry scowl. “Okay, Dani, we’ll play it your way for now. But just answer one question.”
“If I can,” she agreed.
“Do you love me?”
The question hung in the air. She swallowed back the thick knot in her throat. “I don’t know,” she whispered, thinking back to the love she’d shared with Blake and how fragile it had been. Her feelings were strong for Chase, very strong, but to label them love? “I—I think it would be very easy to love you . . .”
“But you won’t let yourself,” he said flatly.
“I can’t. Not yet.” She cleared her throat and held up her hand, as if she could make him understand. “If things were different; if Caleb weren’t trying to manipulate me, if you weren’t his partner and if Cody . . . were more secure in his relationship with his father, I think I would fall in love with you very easily.”
“A lot of ifs and none of them can be changed.” He kicked at a bale of hay and then dropped onto it as he reached for a piece of straw and twirled it between his fingers. “You know what I think?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“I think you’re afraid, Dani. Afraid to fall in love, afraid to trust, afraid to feel.” He studied the dry piece of straw before looking up at her. “l think your husband hurt you deeper than you want to admit and so you avoid any relationship with strings attached.”
