She stills. No more wiggles, no more giggles, no more sing song voice.
“You don’t know me,” she finally says.
Her protest isn’t that she doesn’t knowme.Just the other way around. As if there would be anything I could ever learn about her that would change my heart beating to her name and her name alone.
Abby.
Mine.
“I know enough. I’ll make you a bet. If we get married and then it turns out that we aren’t compatible, we aren’t suited to each other…” I trail off, trying to sound serious about this complete non-issue for me, “then I will fully change to become who you want me to be.”
She bursts out laughing. “That’s not how this works.”
“No,” I growl, my true intentions revealed again. I climb up her body, bracketing my arms on either side of her head. “How this works is, I pin you down and make you listen to me. When I tell you I know enough, that I know I don’t want to leave you behind. That I know I will be thinking of you every second of every minute of every day that we are apart, that is the fucking God’s honest truth. And I have responsibilities back in San Diego that make it very awkward if I go AWOL to hunt your sexy ass down and drag you back with me a month from now. Not that I would last a month. I’d make it to the California-Oregon border and turn around to kidnap you. Do you know how messy it would be for a SEAL to kidnap the daughter of one of the most revered admirals in the history of the U.S. Navy?”
She tangles her fingers in my hair, and as much as we both want her to push me back down between her thighs, I’m making my full case now. I won’t be deterred.
“Give me one real reason I can’t make you my wife.”
“Because I don’t need a husband, or any kind of protection.” She sighs and stretches, her tight, luscious nipples brushing my chest, nearly distracting me from what she says next. “I simply need a baby.”
CHAPTER15
ABIGAIL
It’s too hard to read the look on Justin’s face, so I twist to the side, and he lets me roll over. I’m staring at the rough pine wall, giving him my back, shaking like a leaf.
Who counters a marriage proposal with,no, not that, but maybe a baby?
It’s an idea out of left field, even with a man who just proposed marriage two days after meeting me under the most dubious of circumstances. Too weird for even a sexy, possessive weirdo.
“Are you serious?”
I close my eyes, the grate in his voice tearing me up inside.
“You gonna tell me more about that?”
“No.”
The mattress shifts as he adjusts his position, his big body spooning mine. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not feasible. I shouldn’t have—just forget it.”
“It’s feasible. And I can’t forget you said it.” He gently—too gently—scoops my hair up and slides it over my shoulder.
Then he trails his fingertips down my spine, ever so slowly. Vertebrae by vertebrae, from my neck all the way to my tailbone.
It’s feasible.
“Abby, why do you need a baby?” His voice is like velvet, and my heart careens around in my chest.
“I can’t tell you. It’s selfish.” Except I really do want a little person to love and cherish. Ido.
“Try me. Remember what we talked about last night?”
Grief is selfish. A tear slips out from my clenched shut eyelashes. We’re both orphans, even though Justin is older than me.
But we both lost our mothers as teenagers, and that’s forever life-altering.