by Gina Wilkins
Her arms were locked tightly across her chest, her green eyes sparking with anger. “I’ve recently discovered that you’ve been working in the middle of the nights and coming in early in the mornings to catch up on all the work you’ve been neglecting so you could indulge me.”
“Who told you that?” He was really going to have to talk to Hazel about discussing his business outside the office, he decided.
“That’s none of your concern. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Beginning right now, you’re free to go back to your former schedule. You can work all you like, and when you aren’t working you’ll have a little extra time to rest since you won’t have to worry about entertaining me.”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say,” he muttered, pushing a hand through his hair and rising slowly to his feet.
She took a step backward. “I think I’m making myself quite clear,” she snapped. “It’s over, Dan. You and I are finished. I’m breaking up with you.”
With that lofty pronouncement, she spun on one heel and stamped toward the door.
Dan caught her just as her hand touched the door-knob. Pulling her away, he locked the door and stood in front of it, blocking her exit with his body. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this condescending and incredibly insulting game you’ve been playing with me!”
He winced. For such a small woman, she could certainly make a lot of noise when she gave it an effort. “Damn it, Lindsey, I haven’t been playing any games with you. You know me better than that.”
She made a sound that came perilously close to an indelicate snort. “I used to know you. I don’t anymore. And apparently you don’t know me at all.”
Deep inside him, panic began to stir. As many times as he’d seen Lindsey in a temper—and that was more times than he could begin to count—he’d never seen her eyes look so hard. “You’re mad because I’ve been spending so much time at the office after I leave you?” he asked tentatively. “Do you want us to spend more nights together?”
He got a clue that it had been the wrong thing to ask when she gave a low, almost feral growl and reached out to tug at his arm. “Move out of my way,” she ordered. “Let me out of here.”
Pressing his back against the door, he shook his head. “I’m not letting you walk out like this. Not until I understand exactly what I’ve done wrong. Damn it, I’ve done everything I can to make you happy. Tell me what else you want me to do.”
Giving up on the physical impossibility of moving him, she settled for making a fist and punching his shoulder. “I don’t need you to make me happy. I’m perfectly capable of doing that for myself. I have a great job, a nice home, a lot of friends. I wanted you to be my partner in life, not my caretaker. But you couldn’t give me enough credit for that.”
Her eyes glittered with tears now, and he sensed she was making a massive effort to hold them back. Feeling like the jerk she’d called him, he offered lamely, “I’m sorry. I thought—”
“I know what you thought,” she cut in after drawing a deep breath to steady herself. “You thought I was like Melanie. Needy and selfish and clingy and jealous…”
“No!”
“Yes,” she insisted. “You were afraid you’d ruin another relationship by being yourself, so you changed. But I never asked you to change. I never wanted you to. I tried to change myself for you at one time, and I realized then it would never work. I needed you to want me just the way I am. And that’s all I ever wanted of you.”
Her use of the past tense was ripping his heart out. There had to be a way to fix this, he assured himself somewhat desperately. He couldn’t bear it if it ended like this.
“You won’t even fight with me anymore,” she added a bit plaintively.
Releasing the tight rein he’d been keeping on his emotions, he caught her forearms in his hands and jerked her toward him, bending so that his face was very close to hers. “You want a fight? Then try again to leave this office. I love you, Lindsey Gray, and I’m not going to let you walk away from me after all you’ve put me through to get to this point.”
“All I’ve put you through? I—”
“Be quiet.”
She blinked at the sharpness of his voice—a tone she hadn’t heard since they’d become lovers.
“I do not—I repeat, I do not—think you are anything like Melanie. Maybe I’ve gone a little overboard trying to make this relationship work, but that’s only because you mean more to me than anyone or anything in my entire life—and that includes my job. I wanted everything to be perfect between us—but maybe I was trying to make it a little too perfect. You said you’ve never wanted me to change, and I understand that, because I wouldn’t change one thing about you. Not your temper or your stubbornness, or your impulsiveness or your occasional unreasonableness.”
Ignoring her affronted gasp, he reiterated, “I wouldn’t change a thing. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “Just the way you are—the way you’ve always been. I’ve always loved you.”
“I think the problem is that we’ve been trying to divide ourselves between too many places. If we lived in the same place, slept in the same bed every night, then we wouldn’t feel the need to try to cram so much into the hours we spend together.”
“You want us to live together?”
“I want us to get married,” he answered firmly. “I’ve just been waiting for the right time to ask you.”
She gave him a suspicious look that might have been amusing under different circumstances. “If I say yes, will you stop acting so weird? Will you treat me like an equal again, and not like a fragile, overly sensitive child?”
“I’ll treat you like my wife,” he answered simply, feeling his lungs beginning to work correctly again. “My partner.”
For the first time since she’d awakened him, she smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
“Wait a minute,” he said when she would have moved closer to him. “You’ve got to make a promise, yourself.”
“To love, honor and cherish until death do us part?”
“Well, yes—but also to let me know when I’m acting ‘weird.’ If you’d just said something days ago, we could have avoided several days of misunderstanding.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “You’re right,” she said, as if the notion had never occurred to her. “I guess I was acting weird, too. I didn’t want to risk messing everything up, either.”
“You see?” Satisfied, he tugged her into his arms. “Let’s get weird together,” he suggested, then smothered her giggle with his mouth.
It probably wasn’t the most romantic proposal in history, he thought, as Lindsey wrapped herself around him and returned the embrace with the passion he loved about her. She didn’t want flowery phrases and romantic gestures from him. She just wanted him, exactly the way he was.
That was the easiest gift of all to offer her.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4396-5
BACHELOR COP FINALLY CAUGHT?
Copyright © 2001 by Gina Wilkins
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*From Bud to Blossom
†Family Found: Sons & Daughters
**Hot Off the Press
§Family Found
‡The Family Way
