“I wouldn’t,” she found the nerve to say, edging into the stall and standing just behind him, although something about the tense set of those impressive shoulders warned her against touching him.
He gave a rough tug to the strap fastening his valise. “Ye more than anyone.”
She wanted to argue, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. “It’s Christmas Eve. You can’t leave.”
“Aye, I damn well can,” he said through his teeth, still without looking at her.
“But you’ll be on your own at Christmas.”
“I need to get used to being alone.”
She winced. “Why?”
His shoulders, broad and straight, heaved with a great sigh that expressed endless irritation. “Why in hell do ye think?”
She twisted her fingers together and blinked back more tears. It had been a cursed watery kind of day. Summoning every scrap of courage, she raised her chin and told herself she could do this. What Hamish had told her suggested that Brody’s feelings might be involved at a deeper level than mere male vanity. She prayed her brother was right, or she was about to make an awful fool of herself.
“Please don’t go, Brody.”
“God almighty,” he muttered savagely and whipped around to glare at her. “Don’t ye understand yet, Elspeth? I want you. I want ye more than a dying man wants his next breath. Because I cannae have you, it hurts. I’m nae fit company right now.”
She gasped, appalled at the corrosive unhappiness in his eyes. Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, she made herself meet that blazing gaze without flinching.
As she studied him and read his seething anguish, astonishment as well as remorse stabbed her. How on earth had ordinary little Elspeth Douglas inspired this storm of passion in rakish, sophisticated Brody Girvan?
“You can,” she said, her voice so low she hardly heard the words herself.
He jerked up to his full, imposing height and scowled down at her. “What are ye up to, Elspeth?”
She struggled for a little more conviction. “I said you can have me.”
A silence bristling with anger and confusion and, yes, longing crashed down between them like an avalanche. Brody’s bay gelding whickered and shifted, picking up the tension thrumming between the two humans who shared the narrow stall with him.
Brody sighed again, although this time with regret rather than anger. The belligerence drained from his face, and that tall, strong body sagged as he ran his hand through his black curls, leaving them even untidier than they’d been when she came in. He looked like he’d spent the day tearing at his hair.
“Elspeth, sweetheart, there’s no need to be afraid. You don’t have to give yourself to a man ye dinnae want, just to make sure you’ve got a roof over your head. Marina and Fergus will let you stay, and I’m sure your mother will forgive ye.” He sounded kind and reasonable and, to her chagrin, distant. “I suspect she’s halfway there already. After all, we only kissed. You’re as pure as ever you were.”
His determination to mistake her meaning made her want to stamp her foot. Although she supposed given the emphatic way she’d refused him—twice—she couldn’t really blame him for missing the point. “Why on earth are you so obtuse, Brody?”
Confusion made him grimace. “
Obtuse?”
“Yes, obtuse.” At least she’d stopped squeaking, although quarreling with the man she loved didn’t strike her as a great improvement. “I’m trying to tell you that I’ll marry you.”
There, she’d said it. As plain as day. She waited for him to seize her and kiss her the way he had last night.
Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed her down that haughty nose as if she were a clumsy housemaid who’d spilled dirty water over his best boots. “There’s no need to panic about your future. I said your mother will come round.”
“I’m not panicking,” she retorted, clenching her fists at her sides. “I thought you’d be glad that I’ve accepted your proposal.”
“Only if you want to marry me.”
She gave a growl of frustration. “What about all that stuff you just said? That you want me and you can’t live without me?”
“What about it?”
“I’m here to tell you that you’ve got me.”