She’d never dreamed about boys. Nor, as an adult, about men.
A mate was family, though. Right? She tilted her head to look at Ken, considering. Could he be her family?
But it wasn’t any use asking, was it? There was no getting away. He was her family.
The thought sat oddly in her chest. On the one hand, it felt perfectly right, perfectly wonderful. But on the other hand—
“I never thought I’d have a mate, either,” Ken said softly. “When I was a kid, I daydreamed about it, but only ever in this…lost, abstract way. And when I grew up, I thought that it seemed like too much for me. That I couldn’t make that kind of commitment, maintain that close of a relationship.”
Lynn managed a little chuckle. “That doesn’t bode well.”
His arm tightened around her. “In my twenties, it wouldn’t have. Even in my thirties. I didn’t think I could be that for another person. But I learned, in the Corps, how to commit, and how to be close. I just came out of it thinking that it was too much. That I couldn’t ever do it again—not for an institution, not for a person.”
“And now?” she whispered, caught in a swell of apprehension. That he’d say he couldn’t? Or that he’d say he could?
“Now I know I can,” he said back. “I just never wanted to before. Before now.”
Lynn wriggled out from under his arm, started casting around for her clothes. Underwear, bra. Pants. Shirt. “But how can we do it?” she asked, searching desperately for practicalities. She needed something concrete. She couldn’t swim around in this sea of emotions for much longer, before drowning. She wanted dry land. “You have this job—you won’t be here for much longer—and I could never leave Glacier—”
“I would never ask you to,” Ken said immediately. “I promise. I’ll never ask you to leave your home.”
That was some kind of commitment, from a man who’d as much as admitted that he’d never really had a home, himself.
“But maybe I can stay here,” he was continuing. “I don’t think I mentioned to you how much of a coup it was for me to get this job. It was my connection to Cal that even got us the permits to work in Glacier, and my bosses were incredibly grateful. They were talking about how many years of work we could do up here. Our data on these northern forests is incredibly sparse. I’m pretty sure I could get them to agree to post me semi-permanently here in and around Glacier—especially if I say I’m getting married to someone who lives here, the company’s pretty good about respecting relationships like that—”
Married. God. Lynn pulled her boots on and breathed. She wasn’t just going to stand up and run away from all this talk of commitment. She could stay here and have a rational conversation about it.
Couldn’t she?
She felt like some sort of bizarre male stereotype. Wasn’t this how men were supposed to be? Comfortable having fantastic sex with someone, but the second the word marriage was on the table, they were off like a shot.
Whereas right now, Ken was calmly discussing the idea of getting married, of bending his whole career around this newly-discovered relationship. And meanwhile, Lynn was the one practically hyperventilating about it.
“Ken,” she said, interrupting a stream of reassurances about how his job would be perfectly okay with him running off to live in Nowheresville, Montana for the rest of his life with a woman he’d known for less than a week. “Ken.”
He stopped. “What?”
“I need to take a little while to think about this,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to change the rest of my life today. I never expected this. I need to take a step back. Be alone. Think about what this is going to mean for the future.” She remembered suddenly, “I have to meet a client in half an hour anyway.” She was lucky she hadn’t had back-to-back appointments starting at six AM today.
His face did a—a thing. Lynn instantly felt like the worst person in the world, because it was clear that he hadn’t been ready to hear that. Even more than just his expression, she knew he was hurt, deep in her bones.
How long had it been since she’d had the power to hurt another person so easily, like this? Had she ever?
But before she could say anything, try to explain, or take it back, his face smoothed out completely, composing itself into the friendly, easygoing expression she’d seen before. “Sure,” he said. “I understand. No problem.”
It was awful to see. Lynn knew she’d hurt him. She’d watched it happen. And then he took that hurt and buried it under a smile, as though it didn’t matter, and no one needed to see it.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll stay here for a while. I can—I can call my next client and cancel—”
“Whoa, whoa,” he said instantly. “I said it isn’t a problem.”
It was Lynn’s turn to be gentle, to be understanding, she realized. As kind as he’d been to her about revealing her body, she had to be just as kind to him about revealing his emotions.
“Ken,” she said quietly. “You lied.”
His eyes widened. “Wow,” he said after a long moment of silence. “That’s going to be tough to get used to.”
“Not lying?” Lynn wasn’t sure how she felt about that.