Private Pleasures

you happy.'

'And I want to make you happy. I just don't think we need marriage for that.' His voice rose in frustration. 'Why complicate things?'

'Because I don't want to have children out of wedlock.' The words tumbled out of her mouth faster than she could rescind them. But they were the truth, and it was an issue that needed to be discussed.

He blanched. 'I never said anything about children.'

She crossed her arms over her chest. 'Except that you don't want them.'

His mouth thinned into a grim line. 'At least I'm honest about it. Kids need a father who can be there for them emotionally, who can raise them with a gentle but firm touch. I can't do that, Mariah. I don't know how to do that. All I know is the anger and cruelty I learned at my father's knee. I refuse to subject a child to that kind of ugliness.'

He turned around and focused his attention somewhere out the window. Very quietly, very defeatedly, he said, 'They'd be better off without me as a father.'

A crushing pressure filled her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe. 'You are so very wrong,' she whispered. 'They'd be very fortunate to have you as a dad.'

He whirled around and scowled. 'How the hell would you know?'

'From what you've told me about Aaron Nichols, I know firsthand you're a better man than your father ever was.'

His laugh was self-depreciating. 'I could be worse. Much worse.'

She shook her head, refusing to be baited. 'I wouldn't consider marrying a man who wasn't gentle and kind and loving. You have those qualities, Grey. And those qualities are what I love the most about my father.'

She watched him struggle with some internal battle-wanting to believe her but allowing that vulnerable little boy in him to cling to the past and all the troubling memories of his childhood: the verbal abuse from his father and his mother's neglect.

Until Grey resolved those fears and insecurities, she knew they had no chance at a future.

He scrubbed his hand along his jaw, misery clouding his features. 'So, what this all boils down to is you want all or nothing.'

'Yeah, I guess I do. I'm afraid being someone's mistress isn't my style.' She drew a deep shuddering breath, and although her heart felt torn and ragged, a strange calm swept over her. 'I want to be your wife, Grey, and I want to be the mother of your children, not just the woman you happen to be living with and sleeping with. If you love me the way you say you do, then marriage would be the next logical step in our relationship. Anything else we can work on together, as husband and wife.'

He uttered a strangled sound, and his hands fisted at his sides. 'Dammit, Mariah… I can't.'

She couldn't stop the tears that stung the back of her eyes and spilled forward. 'And I can't keep loving you and being with you day after day, not without a promise for a future together.'

His own eyes misted, and his throat worked spasmodically. He took a step toward her, then stopped. 'Mariah, please don't do this to us.'

'I have no choice.' Bridging the distance between them, she brushed her lips across his, wanting to forever remember the taste of him. His body shuddered in response, but he showed greater restraint than she and kept his hands to himself.

'I love you, Grey,' she said softly, touching his cheek, his jaw, imprinting everything about him into her mind before letting her hand fall away. 'I probably always will. Even if you don't realize it, you would have made a wonderful husband and a great father. One of these days you're going to realize exactly what you threw away, but by then it'll be too late. You'll be alone and lonely, wishing you had a wife to keep you company and grandchildren to spoil. Maybe, if you're lucky, one day you'll take a chance and find happiness with another woman.'

'I don't want any other woman.'

She smiled sadly. 'And I don't want any other man, but I want a husband as well as a lover. Someone I know will be there for me when I'm old and gray and a little slow getting around. I want to come home to the same man for fifty years and still feel that surge of excitement I do every time I look at you. I want children to enrich my and my husband's life, and when they're grown, I want a man who will still be my best friend, my lover, my life.' A tear trickled down her cheek, but she didn't bother wiping it away. 'I wanted that with you, Grey.'

His anguish was real, so real she had to fight the urge to tell him to forget everything she'd just said, that she'd take him on any terms he demanded.

A thread of common sense kept her grounded to reality.

She swallowed the huge knot of sorrow lodged in her throat. She knew what she had to do, though she might have just as well carved her heart out of her chest while she was at it. 'It's over, Grey, for good this time,' she said in a choked voice, hating the words that would forever sever him from her life.

'Mariah, you can't mean this.'

His despair ripped at her soul. 'I do,' she whispered, and turned to finish packing the bags. 'The honeymoon is over, Grey, it's time to take me home.'

Chapter Ten

Mariah blinked her eyes open and groaned. She wanted to die. From heartbreak. And from the miserable bout of flu that had lingered for the past week. The two combined was enough to give new meaning to the word anguish.

She glanced at the clock on her nightstand, unable to believe she'd slept until noon. She was so tired lately that no amount of sleep seemed to make her feel refreshed. With effort, she got out of bed, put on her old, favorite chenille robe and shuffled into the kitchen.

It was Sunday, but Jade wasn't home. Mariah was grateful for small favors. For the past five weeks since her second breakup with Grey, her sister had been doing her best to snap her out of her gloom, that is after Jade's initial 'I told you so.' But Mariah couldn't seem to summon up enough energy, or enthusiasm, to give in to her sister's prodding to 'get on with her life.'

Opening the freezer, she reached for a bowl of frozen grapes, then stopped when her stomach rebelled at the thought of any kind of food, even her favorite snack. Tears welled in her eyes and caught in her throat.

Damn. Now she was crying over frozen grapes. She'd been so emotional lately, the slightest, silliest things seemed to set her off and make her bawl like a baby. Jade was becoming impatient trying to gauge her mood shifts, not that she could blame her sister. She couldn't even anticipate her emotional state from one moment to the next.

Closing the freezer, she made her way to the kitchen table, sank into a chair and rested her cheek on the cool, wooden surface. She closed her eyes and attempted to relax and get a grip on reality.

The first two weeks back from the cabin she'd spent refusing Grey's calls at the office, listening to his pleas on her answering machine at home and making Jade turn him away at their door.

Then it all stopped. And the silence hurt worse than hearing the torment in his voice when he'd left his final 'I love you' on her answering machine. She'd listened to it a zillion times since.

Mariah gulped back more tears. She missed him so much, and not for the first time wished they could go back to the cabin and the gentle, tender moments they'd shared, the fun, the laughter and the fierce loving that would haunt her forever. That one week had been romantic and idyllic. She'd hoped, and dreamed, and let herself believe that her love could change Grey. But in the end, her love, their love, hadn't been powerful enough to allow Grey to let go of his disturbing past and chance a future with her.

Sighing, she let her mind drift and the tension ease from her body. She grew lethargic. She was tired, so tired…

A hand settled on her shoulder and shook gently. 'Hey, Riah, you okay?'

Mariah woke with a start and lifted her head from the table to find her sister standing beside her with a concerned expression on her face. 'I'm fine,' she said, her voice hoarse. Pushing her disheveled hair from her face, she glanced at the kitchen clock, which told her she'd been sleeping for nearly an hour. 'I guess I just kinda drifted