“Really?”
“Sure. It doesn’t bother me.”
She laughed softly, looking at him. Why was he being so nice and understanding?
Because he doesn’t want to lose his chance at having his baby. Well, yes. That was true. Still, she liked that he didn’t just come in shouting like some men she’d known.
“But it’s not just the wedding is it?” he said.
Her smile faded. “No, not really. It’s this whole strange situation we’ve gotten ourselves into. I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing.”
He nodded. “Is it your first husband? Do you feel as though you’re betraying him in some way?” This was a scenario he knew only too well, so it was the first thing that came to mind.
“What?” She looked surprised at the suggestion. Betray Ralph? Hardly. “Oh, no. Not at all.”
He was glad it wasn’t that. Still, maybe there were deeper emotions here than she even realized herself. When you came right down to it, he didn’t know much about the man she’d married before. And what he did know was baffling, to say the least.
“Why don’t you tell me about him?”
“Ralph?” She wrinkled her nose. “Now?”
“Sure. We’ve got to do it sometime. Why don’t we get it out of the way now? Tell me why you married Ralph.”
She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. Taking a breath deep into her lungs, she held it for a moment, let it out and looked up at Grant, smiling.
“Okay.”
She settled back into the couch. “I told you that I spent many of my teenage years in a group home. You had to leave when you turned eighteen. Ready or not, out you went.”
He nodded, his blue eyes dark in the shadows.
“Tina is a year younger than I am and she stayed on. But I had to go. I had to find a place for myself in the world. They gave us classes and counseling and all that, but you get such outlandish expectations when you’re young. I thought I could do anything.”
She smiled, remembering. “I was going to get a fabulous job and start college and find a boyfriend. It was all going to be wonderful. And when reality slapped me in the face and I couldn’t get a job that would pay enough to let me rent a decent place and still have money left over for food, I felt very lost and cheated for a time. I really struggled.”
It had been harder than she could express to him, harder than she would want to express to anyone. But it had helped make her into who she was today, she had to admit.
“And then, I saw an ad in the paper for an older woman who needed a paid companion. The job didn’t pay much but it came with room and board and would give me time to start taking college classes.”
She paused, smiling as she remembered. “Marge Stevens was…is…a wonderful person. She became a second mother to me in many ways. Without her, I don’t know what would have happened to me.
“Ralph was her son. He was in his thirties at the time. A lot older than I was. A pleasant, good-looking man. He traveled a lot, but came home at least once a month to visit with his mother. She adored him. He seemed to adore me. He helped me and taught me a lot. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I’d agreed to marry him.”
“Just like that?”
She nodded, suppressing a smile. Yes, Grant, just like that. Just the way I’m jumping into marrying you, too. See what an idiot I am? I just keep doing it.
Sighing, she went on aloud. “They’d both been so good to me and they both wanted me to do it so badly. I sort of felt like I owed them. If it hadn’t been for Marge, I would never have been able to get through as much college as I did. She helped me a lot. And at the same time, Ralph seemed very ardent and I thought maybe this was love, for me, too.”
“Naive,” he muttered.
She leaned forward earnestly. “Listen, try to understand. Ralph was pretty much the first man who’d been good to me. My experience with men over the first decades of my life hadn’t been real positive. First there were my mother’s boyfriends who came and went and treated her horribly when they weren’t trying to hit on her little girl behind her back.”
She paused for a moment, swallowing hard. She’d never hinted at that before to anyone but Tina, and now here she’d casually told Grant. She looked at his eyes, but she didn’t see condemnation. Squaring her shoulders, she went on.
“Then there were the administrators of the group home. One man in particular enjoyed making sure we understood how worthless we were and how much we owed to him and his staff for all we got. And finally, the few guys I dated in college all turned out to be jerks. So when Ralph treated me as an equal, as someone worth talking to, I was just so happy to find a man like that, it helped to win me over.”
His eyes flashed and she wasn’t sure if it was with anger or something else.
“And you regretted it?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Oh, yes. I definitely regretted it. Not that Ralph ever did anything horrible to me. Not physically. But once we were married, that sweet, considerate man turned into a control freak suspicious of everything I did and everyone I talked to. He couldn’t let me go to the grocery store alone. He was sure I was seeing someone behind his back. It was crazy.”
“Hmm. What did he do for a living?”
“He was a sort of freelance photojournalist. Every now and then he actually sold a picture. But mostly, he lived off his mother’s tiny nest egg and her social security.”
“Great guy.”
She bit her lip. Funny, but she had an impulse to defend Ralph. He wasn’t much, but he’d been hers for a time. Still, she resisted it.
“He drank too much, of course, and finally he got drunk and fell in the street and hit his head just wrong. He was dead in three days.”
She reached into her pocket for a band and pulled her hair into a ponytail, tying it back. “It was sad, especially for Marge. But we never had a real marriage.”
He nodded, glad they had done this. He thought he’d found out what he needed to know-that she didn’t have any deep emotional ties to the man. They could pretty much close that chapter of her life.
But that left what he knew was unspoken between them-the real concern. How was this going to work with him still attached to Jan? Was he going to be able to give Callie what she needed when he was still held hostage to the past?
And what about Callie-could she ever give up on finding real love herself? Was it all worth it? Seemingly she’d made that decision and decided it was worth it. Was she regretting it? He didn’t really think so. Worried, maybe, but not regretting it. He hoped she would feel free to tell him what she was thinking.
“Let’s promise one thing to each other right now,” he said. “We’ll always be honest with each other. We can’t deal with a problem if we don’t know what it is.”
She nodded. She agreed. Sure, she would try to be honest. Later.
He wanted to fix things, make everything okay. But if she started being honest right now, she would have to tell him, “Grant, I’m scared to marry you because I’m so afraid I’m going to fall in love with you, and I know your heart is unavailable.” How was he going to fix that?
She couldn’t be that honest because she was in too deep. And she couldn’t pull away now.
“Don’t worry,” she said aloud to him instead. “I’m going to marry you tomorrow. There are just a few emotional hurdles I have to leap over first. I’ll get there.”
He nodded, looking troubled. “Get some sleep. I’ll pick you up early tomorrow and we’ll head out to the ranch.”
“Okay.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then turned away. “Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” she echoed, feeling a bit abandoned.
He reached the door and paused, then looked back at her. She was standing under the light in the entryway.
