“How?” she asked incredulously. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
“Are you so sure about that?” he asked. “You’ve always said that you believed in love and in marriage, despite the tension you lived with growing up. And yet, despite that tension, your parents did stay together. Now I have the feeling that your mother might be ready to make an official break from your father. She certainly doesn’t seem anxious to get back to Ohio.”
Heather immediately shook her head in denial. “She’s only here because I need her.”
“And that’s it? She’s said nothing about staying on?”
Heather thought about her mother’s quick, off-the-cuff comment a few weeks ago that she liked Chesapeake Shores and might want to stay on indefinitely. Heather hadn’t put much credence in it at the time, but her mother was showing no signs of leaving.
She studied Connor with a narrowed gaze. “Do you know something that I don’t? I didn’t think the two of you had been having talks behind my back.”
“We haven’t been,” he said. Then amended, “Well, just once, but her marriage wasn’t a topic of discussion, I can guarantee you that. I’m just making an observation.”
“And there’s a point to this observation beyond the fact that you’re speculating that my parents might be breaking up their marriage?” she inquired testily.
Connor looked a little uneasy. She could almost see him wrestling with the decision of whether to keep pursuing this. She wanted him to see it through, so she waited impatiently for him to get to the point. She had a hunch she wasn’t going to like it when he did.
“It just occurred to me that if your mom is suddenly thinking about divorcing your dad, it might have thrown you, even though you’ve obviously seen something like this coming for years.”
Heather thought about all the times she’d overheard her parents arguing deep into the night. When her friends’ parents had divorced, she’d always been relieved that it wasn’t hers, but she’d waited with a sense of dread nonetheless for that day to come. And even though it had made no sense to remain married and miserable, she’d been glad that they had. Somehow that had gotten all twisted up with her conviction that marriage was meant to be forever. Though her mother might have stayed married because of deeply held religious beliefs, Heather had never been that rigid. She didn’t approve of divorce as a quick way out, but she understood that sometimes it was the only solution to a truly terrible situation. What if her parents had reached that point?
Even though she found Connor’s comments to be unsettling, she couldn’t ignore what he was suggesting. “You think a divorce is inevitable after all these years,” she said flatly.
“You know them better than I do,” he said, clearly not willing to commit to such a drastic prediction. “I just wonder if you’re not shaken up by that possibility. It must call into question a lot of your beliefs.”
“If my parents were divorcing—and I don’t know that they are—sure, it would rattle me,” she admitted. “What’s your point?”
“That maybe that’s why you’re so determined not to believe that I’ve changed,” he said, holding her gaze as if trying to gauge her reaction.
“Are you crazy?” she said at once. “Is your ego so huge that you can only imagine me refusing your proposal by laying it on the shaky status of my parents’ marriage?”
Connor didn’t back down. “The idea’s not that crazy,” he insisted. “I discussed it with Will and…”
Her temper flared. “You and Will talked about my parents? Their marriage is none of his business. It’s none of yours, either, for that matter.”
“It is if it’s the thing that’s keeping you from marrying me. As for Will, he’s a really good shrink. I value his opinion.”
“Then get him to psychoanalyze you and leave me and my family out of it,” she said. “You’re the one with issues about marriage. I think that’s been pretty well-documented. And nobody turns off beliefs that deep on a dime.”
He stared at her indignantly. “And you think that’s what I did—turned on a dime?”
“Didn’t you?” she challenged. “I had an accident and suddenly you woke up to the joys of marriage? I didn’t buy it when you told me at the hospital, and I still don’t.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a crisis made someone reevaluate his life,” Connor said defensively. “It happens all the time.”
“Not to you,” she countered. “Your beliefs haven’t changed in years. You’re surrounded by people who are happily married, and even after your own parents reconciled, you still held out. Then, in a flash, it all changed? No way!”
“If you can’t buy that I’ve changed, how do you explain what’s happened with you?” he asked reasonably. “Ever since we met, you’ve been a huge proponent of marital bliss. Then I propose, and suddenly you’re not interested.”
“Because I don’t believe it’s what you really want!” she practically shouted at him, her patience at an end.
Connor threw up his hands in exasperation and walked away. She stared after him, stunned to find that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She had no idea why, other than the fact that the man infuriated her, but that was nothing to cry about.
“Heather, are you okay?”
She looked up into Mick’s worried gaze. “I will be,” she said, brushing impatiently at the tears.
“Where’s Connor? I thought I heard his voice out here.”
“Oh, he’s off somewhere making up excuses for why I won’t marry him. He can’t seem to believe I turned him down because I know it’s not what he wants.”
Mick gave her a sympathetic look. “Are you sure that’s what you’re doing, letting him off the hook?”
“Of course. He just had an attack of conscience or something after my accident.”
“I don’t think so,” Mick said. “Connor’s timing might be lousy, but he loves you. There’s not a doubt in my mind about it. Don’t throw that away.”
“I’m not throwing it away,” she said softly, then wondered
