by Susan Meier
He gripped the steering wheel. Even talking to Madelyn would open the doors to things he wasn’t sure he could handle. She didn’t just want to spend time with him. She wanted him to love her. And all along he’d told her he didn’t think he could love anybody. Talking with Seth, giving him the burden of getting Cooper to accept his share of their profits, hadn’t changed that. A relationship with somebody like Anita could ruin a man for life. How fair would it be to drag Madelyn into a relationship when he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t hurt her?
Still, he found himself driving on her parents’ street, and to his horror he watched her pulling out of the driveway. She turned her little blue car in the opposite direction and didn’t see him, but Ty saw that the back of her car was packed with her possessions.
She was leaving.
He let her get far enough ahead of him that she wouldn’t see he was behind her, and followed her. Twice, he nearly turned off onto a side street to get away from her because he had no clue what he intended to say or do if she realized he was following her and confronted him. But though he kept going slower, staying as far behind as he could, he couldn’t turn away. Eventually she pulled into the convenience store for gas. By the time Ty reached the store, she was standing by the pumps, shoving her credit card into the little slot.
Without allowing himself to think through what he would say or even what he wanted, he swerved his SUV into a parking space in front of the store, jumped out and walked over to her.
“Hey.”
Madelyn pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her face. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be working?”
“I just had a talk with Seth.”
She grimaced. “Oh, yeah? How did it go?”
“He asked me to stop meddling in his life.”
She grimaced again. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, but a funny thing happened as we were talking. Things I thought were okay to do for my brothers I suddenly realized were overbearing.”
Madelyn smiled smugly. “Really?”
“Don’t gloat. Once I admitted Seth was right and that I kind of did take on all the responsibility for everything myself, I told him where Cooper was. I told him that the real deal with our middle brother was that he was broke and we had to figure out a way to get him to accept his share of the profits of Bryant Development. And I gave Seth the job.”
“You gave him the job of fixing the situation with your brother?”
“Yeah, pretty freaky, isn’t it?”
Madelyn laughed. “Yeah!”
Ty nodded at her packed car. “Where are you going?”
“Atlanta.”
“You haven’t changed your mind?”
Though Ty thought she would laugh, she looked away, and he saw a sheen of tears come to her eyes. “No.”
His chest tightened. It was his moment of truth. Though he didn’t think he was ready for everything she wanted, he couldn’t let her leave, either. “Why don’t you take the PR position?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Look, you did a great job with the day-care presentation and the reporter. Let’s just start by officially giving you the position as director of PR—” he caught her gaze “—and see what happens with everything else.”
She shook her head again. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Frustration ricocheted through him. They were back to where they always were. “Please don’t tell me you want me to love you.”
“I want you to love me.” She pulled the hose from her gas tank and replaced it in the pump. “You do, you know.”
He stared at her, completely amazed she had ever had the audacity to call him stubborn.
“But you don’t want to say it because you’re afraid of taking a risk.” She pulled a paper towel from the container beside the windshield washer fluid and began wiping the grime from the gas pump off her palms. “But that means you put me in a situation where I have to risk. I’ve already explained that taking that job when you don’t love me puts me in an awkward position. Because I love you, if I come to work for you, I will look like a pathetic loser pining after a man who can’t love her. The only way this works, the only way I can stay—” she caught his gaze “—is if you love me.”
He swallowed. He got what she was saying. If he didn’t say the words she needed to hear to stay in town, then she risked looking like a fool if he could never say them. At the same time he couldn’t lie.
And he knew the very second she figured that out. The tiny light that had been in her eyes suddenly died. Her lips parted slightly and her tongue darted out to moisten them, as if she were giving herself something physical to do so she wouldn’t completely dissolve with disappointment.
“Well, I guess that settles that,” she said, and turned toward her car door.
Regret tumbled through Ty. Not just that she was leaving, but that she was leaving so hurt. She’d totally changed his life for the better, but in the process he had hurt her.
As she pulled the lever that opened her car door, Ty remembered their time together frame by frame. And every frame included her laughing, her smiling, her teasing. Her pushing him, challenging him, refusing to be bullied by him. She was nothing but emotion. And in a life that had been totally devoid of emotion for at least eight years, she was like water on cracked, dry land. Her laughter had been the first in his life for years. He suddenly didn’t know how he could live without that. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years loomed before him empty and void.
As she prepared to step inside her car, he saw himself quietly grow old. He saw Seth fall in love and start a family. He even saw Sabrina grow up and move away from him. And he saw himself alone and lonely because, without the woman stepping into the car, he lived in a dry, arid desert. And he didn’t want to live in the desert anymore. He wanted her warmth, her laughter, even her confrontations.
And if that wasn’t love, Ty was willing to take the risk that it was.
“I love you.”
He watched Madelyn pause halfway to the seat of her car, then quickly shift to face him, eyes wide with disbelief. But that wasn’t nearly as satisfying to Ty as the sensation that burst in his chest.
He did love her.
“I do love you,” he said, disbelief and hope mingled in his voice. “My, God! I love you!”
Madelyn fell into his arms. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
He looked down at her upturned face. Her full lips had tipped up into a smile. Happy tears had filled her eyes. Her pretty hair glistened in the sun. He knew he wasn’t surprised that he would want this woman in his life. What surprised him was that it was so easy.
He swallowed. “It’s so much easier than I thought it would be.” As a weight lifted from his shoulders, hope and joy filled him. He never wanted to lose this feeling, this woman. “Stay.”
She pulled back and looked at him.
Before she could protest, challenge him or make the suggestion, he said, “Marry me.” For once he wanted a decision about their lives to be his idea, not the end result of her prodding.
Her mouth fell open. “Are you sure?”
“I have never been more sure,” he said, then he kissed her. His mouth met the softness of her lips and he finally realized that the sensation he felt every time he kissed her was rightness, perfection, partnership. This was the woman who was supposed to be in his life. This was the woman he loved. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her eyes, then he brought his mouth to her lips again where he deepened the kiss, letting his tongue explore her mouth while his hands freely roamed along her body. She was his. He finally understood that.
A car pulled up to the pump beside them. Ty continued to kiss Madelyn. Like a starving man at a banquet, he couldn’t get enough.
A car door slammed. “Hey, buddy, get a room.”
Ty pulled away and faced the guy. Jim Ronan from Bryant Development’s Estimating Department. “Hey, Ronan. Wanna have a job on Monday?”
“Mr. Bryan
t!”
“It’s Ty. And just pump your gas.” He faced Madelyn again. “So, do you want to go to your parents’ house and tell them you’re staying…” He lowered his voice. “Or my house. We’ll send the new nanny and Sabrina on a mission, and make love.”
She rose to her tiptoes and kissed him. “Your house. There’ll be plenty of time to settle things with my family.”
“Family,” Ty said, suddenly realizing something else. “You do understand that Seth trying to get Cooper to take his share of the profits may end up bringing Cooper back into our lives.”
“Actually, I think that’s what you guys need to have happen.”
He looked at her, and realized that she was right. It wasn’t enough to get Cooper to take the money. They had to get their brother back in their lives. “You’re right.” He pulled her to him again. “We’re gonna have a lot of fun.”
“You missed a lot of fun.” She kissed him again. “And I’m just the person to make it up to you.”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5471-1
BABY BEFORE BUSINESS
Copyright © 2005 by Linda Susan Meier
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*Texas Family Ties
†Brewster Baby Boom
**Daycare Dads
††Bryant Baby Bonanza