Looking stunned by his tirade, Ann simply stared at him. “You love her,” she whispered wonderingly, touching a finger to his cheek. Her voice shook.
He hunkered down beside her and clasped her hands. “Of course I love her. What did you think?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought you’d just gotten used to her, to all of us.”
“Annie, I love every crazy, troublesome, charming, infuriating person in this house and that includes you,” he said fervently, cupping her chin in his hand. “If I had my way, we’d be married by tomorrow morning and we’d adopt every one of those kids and maybe even add a couple more of our own.”
“But you…you’ve always been so…” She threw up her hands. “You know, so single.”
He grinned. “So alone. That’s what I’ve been, Annie. I’ve been on my own emotionally for so many years that I didn’t know what it could be like to have other people in my life, to share good times and bad times, to have someone waiting for me at the end of the day. I was scared to death to enjoy it, because I was so afraid that by morning it could all be gone. I’ve finally accepted the fact that real love doesn’t go away. It doesn’t vanish in a puff of smoke. Sometimes you might have to work a little to hang on to it and it’s not always magic and rainbows, but it’s the best thing we’re ever likely to have going for us. The tough times make the magic even more special and the rainbows even brighter.”
Ann’s smile trembled tentatively on her lips before finally turning bright. She curved her hand over his and held it against her cheek. Tears slid down, pooling against their clasped fingers. “You can be downright eloquent when you try, Hank Riley.”
He drew her palm to his lips and kissed it. “As long as I seem to be getting through to you at last, did I mention again that I want to marry you?”
“You mentioned it, but once again you didn’t ask.”
“Then let me correct that at once. Will you marry me, Annie?” He gestured around the kitchen. “The kids went to all this trouble to set the scene. We wouldn’t want to waste it.”
Ann’s heart began to beat so wildly she thought it would be impossible for her chest to contain it. For the first time she actually believed in Hank’s love. She’d actually seen the devastation in his eyes when she’d told him about Melissa. It had been every bit as shattering as her own. He wasn’t like the man who’d walked out of her life just because she was having a baby. Hank wasn’t afraid of problems. He wanted to face them with her. An unbelievable sense of joy and relief welled up inside her. He was offering her everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d dreamed of and never dared to expect: love, companionship, strength and family.
Marrying Hank would be a way out. Together they might be able to fight the state’s decision about Melissa and adopt her themselves. She wouldn’t have to give up her baby. The thought of losing Melissa had affected her more deeply than anything that had happened in the past. Though letting go of other foster children had never been easy, she’d always been able to get beyond the sharp tug of emotion to accept the decisions as being best for the child. But she’d never had Hank in her life before. She’d never felt that she, too, could offer a complete family. She had begun thinking of their relationship as permanent long before this moment and the prospect of losing Melissa had shaken the fantasy. Marrying Hank would allow her to keep it alive.
But was that the only reason she was considering his proposal? If Hank had proposed tonight under any other circumstances, would she have said yes? She couldn’t be sure. Only a few days earlier she’d turned him down without hesitation. She almost laughed at the trap in which she’d caught herself. She finally knew without any lingering doubts that Hank was in love with her, was content with what they had found together. She even knew with blinding clarity that she was truly, deeply in love with him. But her motives in marrying him? They would be less than pure.
“I can’t, Hank,” she whispered finally. “I can’t marry you. Not now.”
She saw the astonishment register in his eyes, then the flash of hurt. “Why the hell not?”
If she hadn’t been so miserable, she might have laughed at his purely masculine indignation. “Because it wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair to whom? I love you. There’s no doubt about that, right?”
She nodded, believing at last that it was true.
“And you love me? Or am I being too arrogant in assuming that?”
“No. I do,” she admitted openly for the first time.
“And it could solve the problem with Melissa?”
“It might.”
“Then could you explain for the benefit of my apparently simple brain why we can’t get married.”
“What if the only reason we’re doing it is because of Melissa?”
“Didn’t you hear a word I just said? We’re in love, Annie. We’ve admitted it. No more hiding from it. People who are in love get married. They have families. They live happily ever after. It’s the thing to do.”
She sighed. “I know. It’s the timing.”
“That is the craziest, most ridiculous, dumbest bit of reasoning I have ever heard in my life,” he said, dropping her hands and pacing around the kitchen, bumping into things and knocking them aside until it looked as though a war had been waged in the middle of the room.
“Hank, sit down,” she said, deciding she’d better calm him down before he started breaking things.
“I don’t want to sit. I want to break things,” he said, voicing her fears. As if to demonstrate, he picked up a glass and hurled it across the room.
