Page 169 of Confessions

“And I want to marry you.”

By this time the phone had started up again but all eyes were still trained on her. She felt embarrassment wash up her neck. “But just last week—”

“I was a fool.” He stared straight into her eyes. “A lot has happened since last week and the upshot is that I know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life without you.”

“Are you out of your mind? I don’t think—”

“Don’t think,” he whispered, grabbing her suddenly, his lips crashing down on hers, his arms surrounding her. He smelled of brandy and rain and musk and he held her as if he’d never let go. His kiss was filled with the same bone-melting passion that always existed between them, and when he finally let her go, she could barely breathe.

“Go on. Get out of here,” Constance said from somewhere down the hall. “This man means business. And the rest of you, back to work.”

Carlie hardly remembered the elevator ride down to the lobby of the office building. Somehow, with Ben’s hand clamped on her elbow, he guided her outside and they braved the icy sleet and wind. Two blocks and around a corner, he held open the door to a crowded bar. They found a small table near the back and Ben ordered Irish coffees for them both.

“Okay,” Carlie said, her heart still pumping, her ears still ringing with his proposal. “Start over. Why’d you come here?”

“For you.”

“The last I heard you never wanted to see me again.”

“I sorted some things out.”

“Maybe you should sort them out for me,” she said, trying to stay calm. She couldn’t marry Ben. His temper was too mercurial, his mood swings too violent. True, she loved him, but that didn’t mean she could live with him. Or did it?

“I was upset the last time I saw you,” Ben admitted. “Tracy had told me about the baby—”

“Tracy?” Carlie whispered, aghast.

The waiter brought their drinks and disappeared.

“Seems she saw you at the Coleville Women’s Clinic once and figured o

ut about the baby.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Look, Ben, I know I should have told you but there never seemed to be the right time.”

“It’s all right.” He grabbed her hand and held it between his. “I, um, have done a lot of soul-searching the last week. I talked to Nadine and we found all Kevin’s old letters up in a trunk she’d stored in the attic. I read them again, made a little more sense out of the past and realized that Kevin did kill himself over a woman, but the woman wasn’t you. It was Tracy.”

“You know this?”

“I had it out with her,” he admitted, his face creasing into a frown. “She admitted that when she found out she was pregnant, he’d wanted her to get an abortion. She’d refused and pressured him to marry her. Also, he was having trouble at the mill, more trouble than we knew about. He was probably going to be fired or laid off. All that, along with the fact that he wasn’t completely over you and I was seeing you, pushed him over the edge. He did kill himself, Carlie, but it wasn’t our fault.”

“But what about Randy?” she asked, her throat closing.

“Randy will always be a part of my life. I told Tracy the same thing. If the kid needs me, I’ll be there. Even when he doesn’t think he needs me, I’ll be in his face. The one thing that Tracy was right about was that the kid needs a father figure.” He sipped his coffee. “And I’m going to be it.”

Her heart swelled in her chest.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t want kids—our kids. I do. Three of them.”

“Three?”

“Well, four. That way two won’t gang up on one.”

“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” she whispered.

“Nope. Just a couple of ideas. I think we should figure it out together.”

“You’re serious about us getting married?” she said, still unbelieving.