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“My head tells me to run,” she admits.
“You’re a smart woman.”
She waves between us. “We’re too different. There’s no common ground. Your life is completely foreign to me. This shouldn’t work. But it did,” she says in a slow voice. “And it does. Which is why I’m still here. I have no idea how this can work or even if it’s going to, but there’s more to you than meets the eye, and I’d kind of like to find out more. But I need to know what you think.”
We’re dancing around each other like boxers in a ring. It’s a first for us; afraid of the other’s response to be honest and open.
If we keep this up, it’s not going to get us anywhere but frustrated and apart.
“What do you want to do, Mase?” Fiona asks in a voice that’s clear and concise and in total opposite to her sleep-ravished hair. “You. Not your sisters. Not your grandfather. What do you want to do about me? Because if you don’t want this—” She waves her arm between us again. “I’ll go away. I won’t say a word and there won’t be a reason to pay me off—”
“I don’t want that,” I say in a rush. “I don’t want you to go away.”
“This won’t be easy,” she warns.
“You sound like you’ve had experience.”
“I’ve been with men who refused to put me first.”
Her words are a kick to my crotch. “Is that what you think of me?” I croak.
“I think your family is very important, as it should be. But, as your wife, I expect to be up there, too. However this started; regardless of whether you love me. We made a commitment—”
“I love you,” I blurt. “I totally, completely, love you.”
Fiona’s lips part as she stares at me. Breathes in and out. The only sound is a random drip from the sink.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
Maybe I should have said it earlier.
“You can’t mean that,” she says finally. Her voice catches in the middle.
“Why not?” I reach for her hand and she lets me take it. The flower ring is there, gleaming prettily in the light. “Can you say you haven’t fallen for me? There must have been a reason I got you to marry me.”
Fiona exhales, sounding like a sob. “You love me?” Tears pool in her pale blue eyes and she blinks furiously. She didn’t take off her makeup last night and it circles her eyes in smudges and smears.
It doesn’t make her any less adorable. “That’s what I’m saying. And I’m saying it out loud for anyone listening outside these walls.I love you.”
I kind of like saying that. “I love you, Fiona Stark-Stirling.”
“But we just met,” she argues, swiping at her cheek.
I shrug, fighting against the urge to stop this conversation by kissing her. Because even though I might have fallen in love with Fiona, that doesn’t mean she feels the same way. It sounds like she’s ready to fulfill our commitment as husband and wife, but I don’t even know what that means. “You’re the smart one. I’m not going to try to explain it. All I know is when you told me you’d marry me—the second time, after you thought it through or whatever—that was it for me. I was gone.” I grin sheepishly. “Head over heels for you, darlin’.”
Fiona chokes on a sob. And then she laughs, all the while a few tears drip from her eyes.
“I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing that you’re laughing,” I tell her, which makes her cry slash laugh even more. “Fee. Talk to me.”
“I love you, too,” she whispers. “At least I think that’s what this is. I didn’t know how you felt, so I—”
I give in to the urge and stop her with a kiss. And then another. And then, once again, I pick her up and carry her back to the bed, throwing her onto the sheets still rumpled from when she crawled out of them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fiona
Mylaughterkeepsbubblingup from relief and plain happiness and Mase has to keep kissing me to shut me up.
