“Honest?” Jason’s eyes got big.
Belinda could read the little rascal like a book. He knew he was growing fast. All three of them seemed to get taller every night while they slept. He undoubtedly thought he would keep growing fast and be as tall as Ace in no time.
“Honest. As long as it’s all right with your dad.”
“Is it, Dad? Can we really swear when we’re as tall as you?”
Ace eyed the eager expressions on his sons’ faces and bit back a grin. Hell of a deal. “I don’t see why not.”
“And we can say hell and damn and—”
“When you’re as tall as I am, you can say all those things. But not until then. Deal?”
Clay and Grant looked to Jason.
Jason gave his father a shrewd look. “Does that mean you can’t swear, either, until we’re as tall as you are?”
“Nope. I’m already as tall as I am, so I get to swear.”
Jason’s shoulders slumped.
“Nice try, kid,” Belinda said, smiling. “But in the meantime, how about nobody swears at the dinner table.”
“You realize, of course—”
The boys were in bed. The house was quiet. Belinda stood over the sink, drying the glass coffee carafe. At the sound of Ace’s voice directly behind her, she shrieked and nearly dropped the carafe into the sink.
“Hmm.” He gripped her shoulders from behind and started massaging. “Interesting. You’re all tense.”
“No kidding.” Her heart took a minute to settle back down into her chest. “You scared the daylights out of me.” His hands dug deep and found the knots in her muscles. Blindly she set the carafe aside and slumped over the sink. “Oh, that feels good.”
Ace leaned close until his breath warmed her neck. His lips brushed her earlobe, raising gooseflesh down her spine. “I can think of something else that’ll feel even better.”
“Braggart.”
“It would be a joint effort.”
“Would it, now.”
“Umm-hmm.” He nibbled on her ear. “I make you feel good, you make me feel good, everybody’s happy.”
Her head tilted to the side, giving him better access to her ear, her neck. “Happy?”
“Happy.” He turned her until she faced him, and looked down into her eyes. “You made me happy at supper.”
Her neck was limp. “Pork chops make you happy?”
He smiled. “I mean when you told the boys you wouldn’t say anything about their swearing once they were as tall as I am.”
She eyed him skeptically. “That made you happy?”
“It sounded like you meant to still be around when they grew up.”
A new thread of tension wound its way across Belinda’s shoulders, undoing the benefits of the massage. She hadn’t realized her words might be taken as a promise that she would always be here. Oh, she knew she would always stay close to her nephews, but from the look on Ace’s face, that wasn’t precisely what he meant. A lump of nerves lodged in her throat.
“That made me happy,” he said.
“Ace—”
“I want you to stay,” he told her. “This afternoon, when I thought you’d hired that woman and that you might leave, I knew I couldn’t let you go. You belong here. With me. Always.”
It was the words belong and always that terrified her. Dried out the inside of her mouth.
“I love you, Belinda. If you’re honest, you’ll admit you love me, too.”
“I never said—”
“You did, in a dozen ways. Do you think I don’t know that if you weren’t in love with me you wouldn’t have let me touch you last night?”
“Ace, I—”
“Marry me.”
Oh, God. This was the last thing she had expected from him. Her mind went blank. Just...blank. Then it started scrambling around like a starving mouse m search of the cheese hidden on the other side of the maze. Darting here and there, running into solid walls. Backtracking. More walls.
Marriage. Good God. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so overwhelmed by what was happening between her and Ace she might have realized... But she had been overwhelmed. Was still overwhelmed. She’d thought only as far as not being ready to let him hire a housekeeper. Somewhere in the back of her mind maybe she’d been thinking she would stay through the summer.
But marriage? Marriage was for a lifetime. Or, it was supposed to be. She’d tried it once and had failed. Miserably. Marriage was for accommodating, domestic types. Like Cathy. Like her mother. Born homemakers. Women who didn’t mind having a man to answer to for every little thing.
Belinda needed her independence. The freedom to come and go as she pleased with no one to answer to, no one to worry about but herself. No one pushing and prodding at her deepest pain, her darkest secrets.
“You look,” Ace said tersely, “like I just asked you to slit your wrists.”
“Close enough,” she whispered.
“Come on,” he said, cajoling. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” She shook her head. “I’m...flattered. More than flattered that you asked, but I can’t marry you, Ace.”
“You mean won’t.” He stepped back and dropped his arms to his sides. “Mind telling me why?”
That old, defensive anger that used to come in so handy seemed to have deserted her. She had to struggle to speak at all. “Get real,” she said with a small, harsh laugh. “Think who you’re asking, Ace. This is me, remember? I know you said you get a kick out of arguing with me, but you don’t want a lifetime of that, and I won’t change for you. I don’t know how to change myself.”
“I didn’t ask you to change,” he said earnestly. “I don’t expect you to, wouldn’t want you to. I told you that this morning.”
“I’ve been married, Ace.”
“So have I.”
“Yes, but look at the difference,” she cried. “Your marriage worked. It was wonderful. Mine was a disaster. I don’t want that for us.”
“What do you want for us?” he asked tightly. “A summer fling?”
His words stung. She hadn’t thought about the future at all. Now she was paying for her deliberate evasion.
“Damnation,” he cried. “That is what you want, isn’t it? You wanna shack up for the summer, play a little slap and tickle, then hop in your little red car and zip on back to your real life, so long, sucker.”
“No,’ she cried. ”You make it sound...ugly. That isn’t what I want. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Damn right it doesn’t. We can get married and live as husband and wife.”
“We don’t have to get married to be together,” she said desperately. “Why can’t we just keep on the way we are?”
“That’s good enough for you? Tiptoeing down the hall to each other’s room after the boys are asleep, hoping one of them doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night and come looking for one of us? Letting everyone in three counties speculate on that hot sister-in-law Ace Wilder’s shacking up with? Letting them call you names? Is that how you want it?”
A deep chill settled in Belinda’s bones. Was he hurting her this way on purpose? She folded her arms across her chest in a futile attempt to get warm. “You know it isn’t. You’re exaggerating. Why should anyone but you and me care what we do?”
“Look around you, Slim. This isn’t Denver. But then, maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe it’s too isolated for you out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“That has nothing to do with it. Even at home I spend all my time on the Internet. Give me a modem and there’s no such thing as isolation. I’ve got the whole world.”
“Maybe so, but this is Wyatt County, where everybody knows everybody else’s business, and talks about everything they know.”
“Who cares what they say?” she asked with false bravado.
“I do. You would. It matters, dammit. I don’t want people gossiping about the woman I love. I don’t want my sons exposed to that kind of talk.”
�
��All right.” Her heart breaking, Belinda closed her eyes and turned away. “You can call Donna Harris in the morning and hire her, and I’ll get out of your way and out of your life so you won’t have to listen to any gossip.” She tried to walk away before he could see the tears threatening to blind her.
He grabbed her arm and stopped her. “You’d do that?” he demanded, incredulous. “You’d walk out, just walk away, rather than marry me?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You and I belong together. You can’t deny that.”
She would have, but the simple—or not so simple—touch of his hand on her arm, the way her skin responded to his skin, her body to his, would have made a liar out of her. So she said nothing.
“What? Nothing to say?” He demanded, looking more determined than any man she had ever seen. “I’ll show you just how right we are together.” With more urgency than finesse, he pulled her to his chest and kissed her, hard and hot and deep.
As it had been that afternoon, so it was now. The explosion of wants, of needs and emotions, came instantly. It was hot and it was powerful.
Belinda knew she should push him away. She couldn’t give him what he wanted, couldn’t be what he needed. Couldn’t marry him. Knowing that for Ace it was all or nothing, marriage or nothing, devastated her, for it meant there was nothing for them. Nothing but this insatiable greed for each other that she felt in her bones and tasted on his lips.
Ace tasted fear on her lips. He hated that, but he understood it. She’d been married before and it hadn’t worked out. She’d been disappointed, let down. Trounced on. Now her sister’s husband wanted to marry her. Ace knew that in her mind Belinda still compared herself to Cathy and came up wanting.
Damn her for that. If he could, he would kiss that stubborn lack of self-confidence right out of her. He would love it out of her, gentle it out of her.
But just then there wasn’t a lot of gentle in him. He’d put everything on the line, his hopes and dreams, his future. His heart and soul. And she’d said no.
Maybe he’d hit her with the idea of marriage too soon. They had only just discovered all these new feelings. At least, he had discovered his. Belinda, he feared, was still denying hers.
She could deny them all she wanted, but they were there. She could be as evasive as hell—and she was. But she loved him. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. She couldn’t deny it to herself.
They were in love with each other. It had bappened, fast, but they weren’t strangers. They knew each other. As far as Ace was concerned, when two people felt this way about each other, they got married.
He supposed he could have been a little more romantic with his proposal, rather than popping the big question at the kitchen sink. But neither one of them was much for fancy trappings or flowery declarations. Maybe she would have appreciated them. More likely she would have laughed in his face.
But she wasn’t laughing now, and she was saying no. Yet as he clung to her, desperate to make her see how right they were together, how well they fit, her arms circled his chest and her hands dug into his back as if she never planned to let him go.
He hoped she never let him go, because he didn’t intend to let her get away from him. Not in this lifetime. She was his. The taste of her, dark and hot and addictive, was indelibly etched on his taste buds and in his mind. The feel of her pressed against him the way she was now, and when their bodies were more intimately joined, would forever be embedded in his bones. His skin would always know hers. The lure of her, the need, rushed through his blood with every beat of his heart, and always would.
“I want you,” he whispered harshly against her lips.
Her response was a tiny whimper of need, a tightening of her arms around his ribs.
“Unless you tell me no,” he said, pulling back until he could see her face, “I’m going to carry you upstairs and make love with you.”
Belinda struggled to find the will to tell him no, but the word would not come. She wanted him to carry her upstairs, to kiss away all her objections, her fears.
“Ace, I...”
“Are you saying no?”
Tell him, her mind demanded. Making love would solve nothing. She would still be who she was, a woman who felt as if she were stealing her sister’s husband, a woman who could never measure up to that perfect, beautiful sister.
“Are you?” he asked again quietly.
“Ace, I...I can’t.”
He kissed her again, a slow, drugging kiss that melted her willpower. “Can’t what, Belinda?” he asked against her lips.
“I can’t,” she whispered, giving in to her need and his. “Can’t say no.”
As he swept her up in his arms, Ace’s heart raced in relief. He climbed the stairs and carried her to his room.
Without putting her down, he nudged the door closed with his boot and used his shoulder to flip the wall switch that turned on the bedside lamp.
Belinda’s gaze locked on the acre of navy comforter on the bed. Her heart started slamming against her ribs. “You expect me to make love with you on Cathy’s bed?”
“Slim—”
“I told you not to call me that.” With a twist of her body, she slid out of his arms and stood at the foot of the bed. “What am I doing? I’m not—I don’t want to be—”
From behind her, Ace slid his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. “You don’t want to be what?”
“I don’t want to be Cathy.” She scrunched her shoulders up and stepped away.
Ace closed his eyes and struggled for the right words. “It’s not Cathy’s bed, it’s mine. Cathy never set eyes on anything in this room. Mary made a lot of changes after Cathy died. I expect you’ll want to make a few after we’re married.”
She whirled on him, fists clenched at her sides. “I told you, I’m not going to marry you. You don’t really want me to, and you know it.”
“You’re wrong,” he told her.
The steady look in his eyes nearly crippled her. “You’re just lonely, that’s all. You think we’ll get married and I’ll run your house and raise your children the way Cathy did. That I’ll play the little woman and wait here at the house and rub your shoulders for you when you come home at night, fetch your pipe and slippers. That I’ll be all smiles and kisses, the perfect little earth mother. Well, I won’t.”
“Believe me, I’m not looking for a mother. I don’t own a pipe or slippers. And I’m not looking for another Cathy. I thought we were through with all that.”
“How can we be through with it when you bring me to her bed?”
“I brought you to my bed!” He closed his eyes a moment, then lowered his voice. “The bed I want to share with you for the rest of my life.”
“I can’t marry you. Look at me, Ace,” she cried. “You call me a nickname that you mean as a compliment, and I go nuts, thinking you’re comparing me to Cathy and finding me lacking. You bring me to your room, and I get all upset thinking this is Cathy’s bed, that I’m snatching at Cathy’s husband, Cathy’s children, Cathy’s life.”
“So you feel guilty for wanting what she had. That doesn’t make the wanting wrong. It’s the guilt that’s wrong, not you or me, or us. We’ll work on it. Together.”
“This is crazy. I’m crazy. I know that, you know,” she admitted, pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I know the envy and the guilt and all of that is crazy. But—” She stopped pacing and looked at him, trying to make him understand. “You’re crazy, too, if you think it will all go away because you want it to, and that I’ll jump when you snap your fingers.”
Ace ground his teeth again, swiftly losing even the desire for patience. “I resent that.”
“So do I,” she replied hotly.
“I have never snapped my fingers at you or anyone else. I reserve that for the dog.”
“Well don’t expect my tongue to hang out and my tail to wag if you ever do it to me.”
“You’re impossible.”
>
“That should tell you we don’t belong together.”
“It tells me nothing, except that we sure as hell won’t be bored for the next fifty or sixty years.” He reached for her.
She took a step back, but the bed hit her in the back of her knees. “We’d probably kill each other before the year was out.”
“I’ll risk it.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Come here, Slim,” he asked softly.
“Please,” she begged, fighting her insecurities and losing. “Please don’t call me that.”
Ace closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just how I think of you.” He looked at her solemnly. “I don’t say it to hurt you. I can’t believe you’re that sensitive, that you can misconstrue something like that.”
She hugged herself, unable to meet his gaze.
“All right, let’s just take care of this little problem once and for all. Come here.” This time he didn’t ask. He pulled her gently by the arm and turned until she faced the mirror over his dresser, with him at her back. She started to step away; he wrapped his arms around her and held her against his chest. “Stand still and look, Belinda. Look at yourself and see what I see.”
Belinda closed her eyes and turned her head away from the mirror in misery. Why was he doing this to her? He claimed he loved her, yet he was tearing her apart, forcing her to look at her own inadequacies this way. She felt the humiliating sting of tears in her eyes.
“I see a beautiful woman.” He spoke softly and placed a kiss on her head.
The kiss was so gentle that the stinging in her eyes grew worse.
“She’s got hair the color of midnight, and it’s so soft and thick, it makes a man want to sink his fists in it and hold on. When you’re outside in the sun there are these incredible highlights, like fire. My mouth goes dry just watching you turn your head in the sunshine.”
Belinda couldn’t help it. She opened her eyes. The sight of the two of them in the mirror, with his arms around her, his head above hers, made her throat ache. He couldn’t really see her the way he described. He was just trying to make her feel good. This, she supposed, was his sweet side, and it was almost her undoing.
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