He had a sudden vision of him and Carrie, forty years from now, surrounded by their own grown-up children…
Children?
He had long stopped wanting children. He’d raised a teenager he loved as if she were his own and had been so certain, so damned adamant he didn’t want to go through it again…
‘I can’t do it,’ he said suddenly.
‘Do what?’
‘Introduce you to my family as my fiancée when we don’t mean it. I cannot marry you knowing it isn’t true. I cannot make false vows.’ And as he said the words aloud, he knew them to be true, and a weight he hadn’t felt on his shoulders lifted.
Somewhere, somehow, he had fallen for his poisonous viper of a journalist.
He could laugh at his old notions about her.
There was nothing poisonous about Carrie. Prise off the shell she carried herself in and there was a kind, loving, independent, fiercely protective woman. When Carrie loved someone, it was with everything she had. She loved with her whole heart.
And he loved her with the whole of his.
‘Oh.’ She had gone very still beside him.
He tugged the hand he was holding to his mouth and pressed his lips to the knuckles. ‘Marry me for real.’
‘What?’
‘I am serious. Marry me. For real. Not for six months.’
‘No.’
‘Carrie…’
‘The answer is no.’ She pulled her hand from his and shifted away so her back was to the door, staring at him warily as if he were a dangerous dog that could bite. ‘I agreed to six months. You can’t change the terms now.’
‘I am not changing the terms. I am telling you I cannot go through with the terms we agreed on. It would not feel right.’
‘Why not? Is it because I was a virgin so you feel honour-bound to keep me for ever?’ She spoke slowly, not taking her eyes from his face.
‘It has nothing to do with you being a virgin. I admit, I like knowing I’m the only man you have been with…’
She gave the briefest of smiles, one that did not reach her wary, watchful eyes. ‘Your sexist undertones are coming out.’
‘I am being honest with you and I say this with all honesty too—you could have slept with a hundred men and I would still be asking you to marry me for real.’
In the few, intense weeks they had been together they had seen the worst in each other and the best. She had slipped so effortlessly into his life it was as if she had always been there.
‘Okay.’ She dragged the last syllable out then nodded her head. ‘Well, I am telling you, with all honesty, that I will not commit to anything longer than six months.’
‘Why not?’ he challenged.
‘You have to ask? The whole reason I am here is to put right the awful wrong I did to you but that shouldn’t mean I have to give up my whole life…’
‘Do you not feel anything for me other than a debt you need to pay?’ he asked, forcing his voice to stay even, not wanting to jump to conclusions. They had done that enough already…
But if they hadn’t jumped to their prior conclusions about each other they wouldn’t be sitting there now…
And he wouldn’t be feeling as if he’d started swimming only to find the water had turned into treacle. The shell he had so carefully prised open was reforming around her. He could virtually see the seams knitting themselves together.
‘Are you telling me I have imagined everything that has happened between us?’
‘No, I’m not saying any of those things.’ There was an air of desperation in her voice. ‘You can’t just throw something like this at me and expect me to fall in line with it.’
‘I don’t want you to fall in line.’ He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘How long do you want to have?’
‘Six months.’
‘I mean how long do you want to think about it?’ he asked through gritted teeth.
‘I don’t need to think about it.’ She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly. ‘We marry for six months and then we divorce and I move back into my London house and you live the life you’ve been dreaming of.’
‘I don’t want that life any more. Being with you…it has…not changed me but made me see I want someone to share it all with.’
‘Oh, so you want a constant companion while you live the high life and I’m here and available and you’ve got to marry me anyway so I’ll do? How am I supposed to do that around work? Or am I expected to give up my job?’
‘Did I say any of that?’ he demanded, the anger clawing in his guts finally finding a vent.
He wouldn’t say he’d expected her to agree to his proposal on a whim but he’d thought—in as much as he’d thought about it, which he hadn’t really considering he’d only just accepted his own feelings for her—she would at least be receptive to the idea.