“No, I don’t love you.”
She knew it. He just wanted her to stay so he could keep Danny. Well she wanted him to have Danny, but she couldn’t stay, not even if it meant Lucius would get custody. She could shoot Lucius and escape to Paris or the Far East with her father.
“I don’t love you,” he said again. “I adore you. And even if you don’t adore me, don’t go with Kyle. He can’t love you as much as Danny and I love you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She knew she was upset, but her brain usually worked better than this.
“I know I can’t offer you any of the things Kyle can. I’m not rich, I don’t know any billionaires, and I can’t give you an apartment in Paris, but I’m offering everything I’ve got.”
She was understanding less and less.
“Your parents sent him, didn’t they? They told him about our marriage. They told him you’d be free in a few days. That’s why he came. That’s why you went off with him.”
“Where…how did you know that?” Her mind felt paralyzed.
“Josie told me.”
She began to understand. Apparently jealousy had finally shattered the lock on his heart.
“Kyle doesn’t love me nearly as much as he loves himself. And money. I’ve been trying to get him to join Sheila and me in a partnership. He finally agreed if I could talk you into giving us exclusive rights to your furniture. He also agreed to put up the money for expansion. We’ll open a showroom in Virginia.”
“Then you don’t want to marry him?”
Pure jealousy. Now he’d probably start looking for a way to retract every word. “I never wanted to marry Kyle. He’s twice as selfish as you and three times as ambitious as I am. Now you’d better go see about Danny’s dinner. I’ve got to finish my packing.”
He looked stunned. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying. I love you. I want you to stay.”
“What I heard, Gabe, was jealousy. You don’t want me for yourself, but you’ll be damned if anybody is going to steal me from you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“How can I believe that? I poured out my heart to you, and you said nothing. Yet the first time you think another man wants me, you fall all over yourself with declarations of love. That’s not my idea of love. That’s plain old territorial imperative.”
“That’s not the way it is. I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“That I’m crazy about you. That if you leave, I’ll have to go after you and bring you back.”
She reined in her galloping hope. “You don’t have to worry about Danny. He’s adjusting very quickly. He’ll probably forget me in a few months. Within a year he won’t remember me at all.”
“I don’t want you for Danny,” Gabe said. “I want you for myself.”
“No, you don’t.” She prayed he would contradict her. “I’ve been talking about going back to New York for weeks, hoping every time you’d say something, anything, to let me know you wanted me to stay, but you never said a word. Not a single word.”
“I was afraid.”
“Gabe Purvis, you’re not afraid of anybody or anything. Given half a chance, you’d thumb your nose at the world. You probably already have.”
“I don’t give a damn about the rest of the world, but I’m scared to death of being in love with you.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I just am.”
A man in love ought to know his mind better than that, or a woman would be a fool to marry him. She reached for her dresses. “When you figure it out, give me a call.”
He gripped her hand once more, wouldn’t let her remove the dresses from the closet.
“I’ve never wanted anything in my whole life so much as I want you. I’ve told myself all the reasons I can’t have you, why it won’t work, but I can’t give up. I’m in love with you. I want to marry you.”
She couldn’t contain hope any longer. “We’re already married.”
“I mean really married. I want you to stay here, forever.”
He had stuck to his story for five minutes. Maybe he did love her. Maybe he did want her to stay, but on what terms. “As you said, we’re different. We want different things.”
“That’s not important anymore.”
When a man said his life’s work wasn’t important, he was either lying or having a mental breakdown. Either case didn’t make for good husband material. But she was willing to be convinced. “Why isn’t it important?”
“Because I love you!” he nearly shouted. “I’ll go anywhere you want me to as long as you will let me love you for the rest of my life.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. Gabe Purvis was the last man in the world to knuckle under to anybody, but she liked hearing it. Maybe he had finally learned to let emotion get the better of his common sense. A good sign.
“What about my career?”
“We’ll work out something.”
“I’ll have to travel to New York from time to time.”
“I’ll need to go to show my furniture, to talk to buyers about orders.”
Suddenly she didn’t feel the slightest bit interested in being obstreperous. Everything she wanted was almost in reach. She could feel herself letting go inside. She had to make sure it was genuine before her heart burst with happiness.
“Do you love me, Gabe? I mean really, honestly love me. The woman inside, not all the things on the outside.”
“It was all those things that scared me to death.” He took the hands she’d clenched together and held them tightly in his own. “How could I help but love the woman inside. She’s honest, courageous and trustworthy. She’s also been underappreciated most of her life. I intend to spend the rest of my life telling you how wonderful I think you are. I know you think jealousy caused me to say this, but it was seeing you at the fair. You were surrounded by people I didn’t know. I felt like you were moving farther and farther away from me every minute. That’s when I knew no matter what it cost, I couldn’t let you leave.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?”
“I was afraid to break out of the rut I’ve been in for fifteen years. I was afraid to trust my heart to anyone’s keeping. But I wanted to. When I saw you pulling away from me, I knew I had to do something, anything, to keep you from leaving me.”
Dana had trouble talking around the lump in her throat. “All you had to do was ask. Was that so hard?”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Now stop giving me the third degree and say you’ll marry me.”
“We’re already married,” Dana managed to say before her throat closed.
“I know, but we’ll have to think of something to make it feel real this time.”
“My love is very real. There’s nothing childish about it this time. I love you physically, how you make me feel when we make love. But I also love what you stand for as a man, your commitment to Sam and Billy and the community. I love what we’ve made together, you, me and Danny. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure that out, but it’s what I’ve been looking for all my life. It’s why I kept coming back to my grandmother’s all those summers when my mother wanted to send me to camp. It’s why Mattie and I were such good friends. I suppose it’s why I never really forgot you.”
They didn’t talk for several minutes. “What are you doing to do about those dresses?” Gabe asked when he finally stopped kissing her.
“I don’t know.” They looked hopelessly crumpled. “Maybe I’ll keep them to remind me how close we came to losing everything.”
Gabe held her a little closer. “You never had a chance of getting away. I’d have hitchhiked all the way to New York if necessary.”
Dana hooted. “You’d never have survived the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“With a couple of rifles over my shoulder and several hunting knives hanging from my belt, I don’t think anybody would have bothered me. When a
mountain man goes hunting his woman, he’s downright serious.”
Dana smiled happily. She was a very fortunate woman. She had it all, and she meant to hold it very close. It had been a long time in coming. She intended to treasure every moment.
For at least the next fifty years.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4887-8
MARRIED BY HIGH NOON
Copyright © 1999 by Harold Lowry
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