Katie rolled her eyes. "Not about me! About the house, the furniture, everything...."
For the first time, Ramon looked at something besides Katie. What he saw dumbfounded him. "How did you manage to buy all this with the money I gave you? I never meant for you to have to stretch it so far. I intended to give you more when you said you were ready to look for furniture."
Her face fell. "Don't you like it?"
"Like it?" he grinned. "I have not even looked at it yet. But how—"
"Stop thinking about the money. I happen to be a terrific bargain hunter," Katie said, linking her hand through his arm, and leading him from room to room.
Ramon's reaction puzzled Katie. She could tell that he liked what she had purchased, and that he was pleased. He was lavish with his praise and his praise was genuine, yet something was bothering him.
She did not have long to wait to discover what it was. The kitchen was the last room on her guided tour. When Ramon had finished inspecting it, he walked over to the counter top where she had put out the wine. Katie watched him, admiring the way his long, capable fingers dealt with the corkscrew, deftly uncorking the bottle. "Well?" she said expectantly. "Now that you've seen the whole house, what do you think?"
"I think it is extremely attractive," he said, pouring wine into both glasses. He handed one to her. "Are you planning to live here?"
The question stunned her into momentary silence, then she said, "Yes."
"For how long?" he asked dispassionately. The wine she had drunk was making her feel foggy.
"Why are you asking me these questions?"
"Because there are two bedrooms in this house," he said, watching her intently. "The second one, as I am sure you know, is meant for children. Yet you went to a great deal of trouble to furnish it with a handsome desk for me, bookcases and one overstuffed chair. Not two chairs. You intended that room to be used by me alone, not by both of us and not by our children. Your apartment was filled with plants, yet there is not one plant in this house. Your bedroom was extremely feminine, yet—"
"Plants?" Katie blinked at him, her emotions veering from alarm to mirth. "I didn't even think of plants! I'll give you plants for a wedding present!" she decided promptly.
"And will you give me children?" he asked, his face impassive.
"Not," Katie quipped, "for a wedding present. Think of the gossip!"
Ramon's gaze swerved from the faint flush on her high cheekbones to the empty wine bottle beside the one he had just opened. "How much of that bottle did you drink?"
"A little more than half," she declared rather proudly. "Gabriella drank the rest."
Ramon felt like shaking her. Instead, he walked over to the wide windows at the corner of the kitchen. Tipping his glass up, he drank deeply, then stared out at the panoramic view. "Why do you want to marry me, Katie?"
Katie saw the tension in his shoulders, the taut-ness in his profile, and desperately tried to keep things light. "Because you're tall dark and handsome!" she teased.
The brief, sidelong smile he sent her was without humor. "Why else do you want to marry me?"
"Oh, the usual reasons people get married these days," she joked. "We like the same movies, we—"
"Stop playing games with me!" he snapped. "I asked you why you want to marry me."
Panic jolted through Katie's entire nervous system; her heart began to race wildly. "I—" She tried to speak and couldn't. She knew Ramon wanted her to say she loved him, and that he wanted to hear her make a final, irrevocable commitment to marry him. Katie could do neither. Afraid not to speak, yet unable to say anything that would satisfy him, Katie could only look at him in mute misery.
In the electrified silence that crackled between them, she could feel Ramon mentally withdrawing from her, and when he finally spoke there was a harsh bitter finality in his words that thoroughly alarmed her. "We will not speak of it again," he said.
In heavy silence they walked back to Gabriella's. Katie tried to cloak herself in the comforting glow of the wine she had consumed, but she was feeling more apprehensive with every step. Instead of coming in for dinner, Ramon stopped at the front door, briefly touched his lips to her forehead, and said "Goodnight."
There was an ominous ring to that, Katie thought. It sound
ed more like goodbye than good-night. "Are—are you coming over to see me before you leave for work in the morning?"
He turned on the step and looked at her, his face utterly unreadable. "I am not going to work tomorrow."
"Then will I see you after I meet with Padre Gregorio? I thought I'd go over to his house first thing in the morning. Then I was going to go up to the cottage to take care of some things that need to be done.''
"I will find you," he said.
"Ramon," she said, afraid to let him leave in this mood, "I don't think you were very enthusiastic about—about the cottage. Didn't you like it?"
"I apologize," he said politely. "You did an excellent job. It suits me perfectly."
Although he'd put no emphasis on the word me, Katie noticed he avoided using the word us. She didn't know what to say to him in this distant, coolly courteous mood. She opened the door. "Well, good night."
Ramon stared at the door she had just closed, while bitterness and pain rose like bile in this throat. He walked aimlessly for hours thinking about the past two days. For two days he had waited for her to say she loved him. He had teased her and laughed with her and made her moan with passion in his arms, but not even in her most heated moment had she responded to his "I love you." She would kiss him or smile at him, placate him like an infatuated little boy, but she would not say it back.
The moon was high in the sky when he returned to his temporary room in Rafael's house. He stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He had asked her for honesty, and she was being honest. She was refusing to claim an emotion that she didn't feel. It was as simple as that.