“I was too scared. It was easier to stay with what I knew rather than venture into the unknown. Especially with Mikey. If I had been alone, well … I don’t know.”
“You love it here. You’ve succeeded in your own right,” he told her.
“I do love it. And I’ll probably never leave,” she agreed.
He folded an arm over her shoulder and pulled her against him, making walking awkward, but she didn’t protest. “Once we’re married, I could even move my base of operations here. Never say never, Em. Maybe we could spend several months of the year here, and the rest at Rosebriar.”
But he was talking to himself, because Emma had stopped three steps back.
“What did you say?” she asked, her voice cracking in disbelief.
What had he said? Several months here … move his operations after they … oh, Lord, he’d said the m word out loud.
“You said ‘after we’re married.’”
“Yes. I guess I did.”
She started walking again—in the opposite direction.
Ben ran after her. “Emma. Wait. I know it’s kind of a shock, but …”
Aw, hell. He’d said it, he meant it, and he had to tell her eventually. He grabbed her arm and turned her around to face him. “Emma. I want to marry you.”
“Well, I don’t want to marry you. I don’t ever want to get married.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t ever intend to fall in love.”
“Why the hell not?”
She pulled herself free and started walking again. “Because every person I’ve ever loved has left, one way or another. Even Mikey will be leaving.”
Ben caught her sleeve again, and spun her around, and held her firmly by both arms. “I won’t leave you, Em.”
“You already did.”
“What do you mean? When?”
“Oh, Ben. I had such a crush on you sixteen years ago. I didn’t even care that you were seeing Kelly. I was sure you would come to your senses eventually and notice me.” She looked down at his chest. “I was so sure you would come back, and that I would be grown up enough for you by then.” She looked up at him and the anguish he saw stole his breath. “It wasn’t until Kelly left that I realized you were never coming back. So I simply stopped loving you.”
He was frozen in shock. Then he crushed her to his chest so fiercely, it was a wonder she didn’t break.
“It’s me. I’m the one Mike was talking about. You’re in love with me!”
He hugged her again, laughing at himself. “It’s me!”
He was the one Emma had gathered her hope chest for.
But he was also the man who had broken her heart so badly she had abandoned her dream. Ben wanted to howl at the moon. He had been competing with himself all this time—and now he had to compete with her demons.
“I was fifteen that summer, Ben. It was puppy love, and I’ve outgrown it,” she said into his chest.
He held her away. She was a gorgeous mess, her hair a tangle of knots and her eyes shining with tears.
She was beautiful.
This could work. It fit his plan even better. If Emma loved him she would be contented as his wife. They could have a good marriage; she would be happy, Michael would be ecstatic, and Ben could get his life back on track.
“Marry me, Emma. Marry me right now, and I promise to never, ever leave you again.”
“You’re not listening to me. I don’t love you anymore.”
Dammit, he might as well be talking to the trees. He turned them back toward Medicine Creek Camps and started walking again.
“If you loved me once, you can love me again. And, Emma?”
“What?” she asked, staring straight ahead.
He waited until she looked at him.
“I have more patience than you do.”
They walked in silence for nearly two miles before the first headlights appeared on the road behind them. Emma pulled Ben into the ditch, then well into the woods.
“Hey,” he protested. “We could get a ride.”
“It’s Galen.”
“You can’t possibly know that. He’s still half a mile away.”
“His truck has a whistle. Hear it?”
Ben didn’t reply, and Emma looked over to see him rubbing his face with his hands. “I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.”
She patted his arm. “Try thinking of this as an adventure.”
“All I wanted was a simple, old-fashioned date tonight.”
Emma stifled a somewhat hysterical giggle as Galen’s truck drove past, her senses reeling. Ben wanted to marry her! He was either nuts or he thought he had to marry her for Mikey’s sake.
Which left her smack in the middle of two stubborn men and her own conflicting emotions. She could never marry Ben. She was barely surviving his courtship, if that was what he’d been doing all week. Her brain was screaming one thing, her body another, and her heart was trying very hard to stay neutral.
Her body might have won most of the battles, but the voice in her head was making itself known just as loudly. It was her heart, though, that was most in danger of surrendering. His declaration tonight that he would never leave her had been a powerful blow.
“Come on,” she said. “There’ll be other cars soon.”
“I suppose I’m going to have to buy a new set of tires as well now,” he grumbled, stumbling after her through the bushes. “Galen probably slit them on his way by.”
He fell into step beside her as Emma set a brisk pace for home. At the rate they were going, it would be sunrise before they arrived. And she had to pick up a group of hunters at the seaplane base in Bangor at eight in the morning.
They were cutting it close.
“Everything just bounces off you, doesn’t it?” he asked, his long strides easily matching hers. “No matter what gets thrown at you, you just deal with it and move on.”
“I have other options?”
He was silent so long, Emma figured the subject had been dropped.
Then he said, “Like this night from hell.
