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Hurting the one woman he wanted to protect. She looked fragile sitting here in the garden. But he knew she wasn't fragile. Larissa was a survivor. She rolled with the punches and kept plodding along with life.
She cleared her throat. "I'm sorry I ran out like that. I…"
Suddenly everything was clear and he knew, despite the anger and need for vengeance still pulsing through him, that marriage to Larissa wasn't just a right choice; it was a necessity.
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I know you don't want to marry me."
"The thing is, I'm not sure I don't."
"What are you saying?"
"I wasn't prepared to have everyone know you thought so little of my fathering skills."
"Oh, Jake, I didn't."
"Of course, you did."
"Didn't you hear anything I said to you earlier?"
"About what?"
"My family. I never thought about you as a father, Jake. I thought about you as a man trapped by circumstance. And I was right, wasn't I?"
He cursed under his breath and stood, then paced away from her. He was a man trapped, but not so much by circumstance as by his past. By all the lousy decisions he'd made to get to this point. All the time when he'd put feeling good and having fun in front of responsibility.
It was time to get his act together in his personal life and he knew it.
He turned back to Larissa, who watched him with wide, wet eyes. He knew he'd hurt her. Somehow he hadn't expected her pain to cut him. But it did.
He strode back to her and took her hands in his. He sank down in front of her on one knee and looked up into those pretty blue eyes. Those eyes that usually showed her wit and intelligence, but tonight were guarded and vulnerable.
"Larissa Nielsen, will you marry me?"
Larissa wasn't sure what to say. Marrying Jake, well honestly, it was what she'd been secretly dreaming of since she'd first met him in college. But she'd also dreamed they'd have a huge wedding in Savannah so the old gossips wouldn't be able to talk. She'd wear an elaborate white gown similar to Princess Di's and she'd be the most beautiful woman on that day. It was a fantasy she'd devoted too much time thinking about. Despite Jake being down on bended knee, Larissa knew that responsibility was motivating Jake and not love or eternal devotion. And she knew that he was a good man. He'd already proved he could be a good father. And sometimes in life you had to take what was offered and kiss goodbye the secret dreams you'd harbored.
"Are you going to keep me hanging forever?" he asked, his voice low and husky. When she looked into those devastating dark brown eyes of his, she wondered if she'd ever be able to deny him anything.
She shook her head. He was doing his duty—darn it. She had to remember Jake was still angry with her for keeping Peter a secret for three years. Jake wasn't in love with her, and no matter what else happened, she had to protect her emotions from him. Because she knew from watching her mother's bitter experience that falling in love with an illusion was never a good thing.
"You don't have to do this," she said at last, forcing herself to look away from him. She looked instead out at the well-tended gardens. She and her mom had had a window box at the small duplex they'd lived in most of her life. One small box that they'd filled with annuals every year. And though Crofthaven wasn't Jake's childhood home, she knew this kind of garden—the kind that took a small army to maintain—was what he was used to.
Their lives were worlds apart and she wondered in her heart if they could ever make anything work between them. Even his original idea of them living together now seemed doomed. But marriage—marriage was sacred to her because she knew that when it wasn't right, too many people got hurt. Innocent little people that had no right being hurt by choices that adults made.
"Do what?" he asked, shifting closer to her on the ground. His arms circled her hips and tugged her closer to him. He didn't leave any space between them. She remembered what it was like to be in his arms and wanted to be there again. She'd never thought of herself as sex crazed until she met Jake. He made all her senses go on hyperalert.
He was so close and she remembered their earlier embraces. She still ached for him in this most basic way. She needed something from him that she wasn't sure she should take, because it would make her even more vulnerable.
"The down-on-one-knee proposal thing."
"It's for me as much as for you."
"Yeah, right. I heard you in the library, Jake. You don't want to marry me."
"Dammit, Rissa, you piss me off," he said, pinching her butt.
She swatted his hand away. "I know I do. So why are you asking me to marry you."
He wriggled his eyebrows at her. "You also turn me on."
