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“It feels too fast,” she said.
“You can live here as long as you want without me,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”
“It’s too much.”
He sighed and worked not to roll his eyes. Thankfully, he didn’t. “Gerty, baby doll, listen. I have money. A lot of money. If we end up together, you’re going to have to deal with that.” He stepped closer and looked right into those blue eyes that had burned him in the past. She shrank away from him slightly, and he wasn’t glad he could do that, but satisfaction sang through him that he could get a point across if he had to.
“So I guess I just need to know…do you not see us together anymore?”
21
Gerty looked at Mike, really looked. Her eyes blitzed back and forth on his, trying to get a read on him. She didn’t know what to say, but she knew precisely what she didn’t want to do: hurt him.
Or lie to him.
Or lose him.
“I see us together,” she blurted out, her voice too loud for this quiet farm. “I just…I like living sixty steps from you and coming over in the morning to help you with your dishes and make coffee and we talk and relax and—” She cut off because she’d run out of air.
Mike started to chuckle, which only made her mood darken. “Stop it,” she grumbled, turning away from him.
“I won’t.” He put his arm around her and drew her back into his chest. His mouth came dangerously close to her ear. “I sure like you, Gerty. I’m seein’ us together too.”
“I can’t get married right away,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to marry me right away,” he said. “I’m asking you to walk around this farm with me, and if you hate it, I’ll sell it. I thought it would be perfect for you—and eventually for us—but if you really don’t want it, I’ll get rid of it.”
She turned into him and buried her face in his chest. “You can’t get rid of it.”
He wrapped her up in his arms, and Gerty wound hers around him too. She clung to him like he was the only anchor she had in a stormy, thrashing sea.
“Why can’t I get rid of it?”
“Because I already know it’s perfect,” she said.
“These fences need to be redone.”
“Yeah, but the bones of the pasture are good.” She stepped back, glad she hadn’t cried. She still felt like she might, her chest constricting in that strange way it did when her emotions surged. She looked at him but had to look away as his powerful, adoring gaze was too heavy to hold. “I don’t deserve a farm like this.”
“Yes, you do,” he whispered.
“I don’t deserve a man like you.”
“Also false.” He gently brought her face back to his. “Gerty, you’ve been lettin’ the darkness in. You’ve been listening to his voice, haven’t you?”
“I’m trying not to,” she said, her voice catching. Tears filled her eyes, and blast it, they came so fast, she couldn’t blink them back. “I’m—” She cut herself off again, because she hated the pinched, nasally quality of her voice.
Thankfully and mercifully, Mike drew her back into his chest and held her while she cried. She wasn’t even sure what she was weeping about. Losing James? Believing the things he’d said about her? This amazing birthday present from her clearly fantastic boyfriend?
All of the above?
Mike didn’t ask her, and that only spoke to how well he knew her. It hit her then that some of the tears wetting his shirt were due to how well he knew her. He’d known she’d been ruminating on the cruel things James had said to her; he knew she’d broken her promise not to listen to them.
She drew in a deep, steadying breath and exhaled it out slowly as she stepped back. He gently wiped her face and leaned down and kissed each cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you cry on your birthday.”
“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s just…everything.”
“Baby doll,” he said. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen.”
