He wasn’t sure if her clarification was a relief or not. He wasn’t an expert on the subject of crinolines, but it seemed like an innocuous subject. Anything else that had drawn her out of hiding before the ceremony probably wasn’t.
“Then talk.”
She took a deep breath, wringing her hands around the stem of her bouquet. “Okay. I will talk. I’m going to. In just a second.”
He shook his head. “Danielle Kelly, you stormed into my house with a baby and pretty much refused to leave until I agreed to give you what you wanted—don’t act like you’re afraid of me now.”
“That was different. I wasn’t afraid of losing you then.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes liquid. “I’m afraid right now.”
“You?” He couldn’t imagine this brave, wonderfully strong woman being afraid of anything.
“I’ve never had anything that I wanted to keep. Or I guess, I never did before Riley. Once I had him, the thought of losing him was one of the things that scared me. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything like it. And now...it’s the same with you. Do you know what you have in common with Riley?”
“The occasional tantrum?” His chest was tight. He knew that was the wrong thing to say, knew it was wrong to make light of the situation when she was so obviously serious and trembling.
“Fair enough,” she said. Then she took a deep breath. “I love you. That’s what you have in common with Riley. That’s why I’m afraid of losing you. Because you matter. Because you more than matter. You’re...everything.”
Her words were like a sucker punch straight to the gut. “Danielle...”
He was such an ass. Of course she thought she was in love with him. He was her first lover, the first man to ever give her an orgasm. He had offered her a place to live and he was promising a certain amount of financial security, the kind she’d never had before.
Of course such a vulnerable, lonely woman would confuse those feelings of gratitude with love.
She frowned. “Don’t use that tone with me. I know you’re about to act like you’re the older and wiser of the two of us. You’re about to explain why I don’t understand what I’m talking about. Remember when you told me about your penis?”
He looked over his shoulder, then back at Danielle. “Okay, I’m not usually a prude, but we are in a church.”
She let out an exasperated sound. “Sorry. But the thing is, remember when you told me that because you had been indiscriminate you knew the difference between common, garden-variety sex—”
“Danielle, Pastor John is around here somewhere.”
She straightened her arms at her sides, the flowers in her hand trembling with her unsuppressed irritation. “Who cares? This is our life. Anyway, what little I’ve read in the Bible was pretty honest about people. Everything I’m talking about—it’s all part of being a person. I’m not embarrassed about any of it.” She tilted her chin up, looking defiant. “My point is, I don’t need you telling me what you think I feel. I have spent so much time alone, so much time without love, that I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it might feel like. About what it might mean.”
He lowered his voice and took a step toward her. “Danielle, feeling cared for isn’t the same as love. Pleasure isn’t the same as love.”
“I know that!” Her words echoed in the empty sanctuary. “Trust me. If I thought being taken care of was the same thing as love, I probably would have repeated my mother’s pattern for my entire life. But I didn’t. I waited. I waited until I found a man who was worth being an idiot over. Here I am in a wedding dress yelling at the man I’m supposed to marry in an hour, wanting him to understand that I love him. You can’t be much more of an idiot than that, Joshua.”
“It’s okay if you love me,” he said, even though it made his stomach feel tight. Even though it wasn’t okay at all. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do with that.”
She stamped her foot, the sound ricocheting around them. “Love me back, dammit.”
He felt like someone had grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed it hard. “Danielle, I can’t do that. I can’t. And honestly, it’s better if you don’t feel that way about me. I think we can have a partnership. I’m good with those. I’m good with making agreements, shaking hands, holding up my end of the deal. But feelings, all that stuff in between... I would tell you to call Shannon and ask her about that, but I don’t think she has a phone right now, because I’m pretty sure she’s homeless.”
“You can’t take the blame for that. You can’t take the blame for her mistakes. I mean, I guess you can, you’ve been doing a great job of it for the past five years. And I get that. You lost a child. And then you lost your fiancée, the woman you loved. And you’re holding on to that pain to try to insulate yourself from more.”
He shook his head. “That’s not it. It would be damned irresponsible of me not to pay attention to what I did to her. To what being with me can do to a woman.” He cleared his throat. “She needed something that I couldn’t give. I did love her—you’re right. But it wasn’t enough.”
“You’re wrong about that too,” she said. “You loved her enough. But sometimes, Joshua, you can love somebody and love somebody, but unless they do something with that love it goes fallow. You can sow the seeds all you want, but if they don’t water them, if they don’t nurture them, you can’t fix it for them.”
“I didn’t do enough,” he said, tightening his jaw, hardening his heart.
“Maybe you were difficult.
