Chapter 39


    “Yes, I can. Trust me, Piper. It is not even a possibility.” Of all the things he’d been considering over her


    week-long silence, that was not one of them.


    “Do you think there is even a tiny chance that someday you might fall in love with me?” She buried her


    face against his chest and waited for his answer.


    He wanted to lie; it would make things so much easier, but he could not. “If I was capable of falling in


    love, I already would have.”


    “You really believe that?”


    “Absolutely.”


    Her head tilted back so he could see her re. “Everyone is capable of love.”


    “That is debatable.”


    “Yes, I guess it is.” She grimaced. “There are certainly people that make a great case for that point of


    view anyway. I never considered you one of them, however.”


    He could not help that. He shrugged. “What else scares you?”


    “Oh, the usual, what will happen to my business, what if I lose the baby, what if I’m a terrible mother,


    am I going to turn into a whale, can I learn Greek?” Her litany of worries came out in a voice garbled by


    suppressed tears he did not know what to do about.


    “You are going to marry me.” Why else would she need to learn Greek?


    “How can I do anything else? I’ve looked at this situation from every side until I’m sick with it. If I don’t


    marry you, we’ll have to share custody and I’m not naive enough to think you are going to settle for


    being a weekend dad. You’ll fight for at least equal custody, if not majority custody.”


    He was shocked. She realized that. “I…”


    “Don’t try to deny it.”


    “I wasn’t going to.”


    Her lips trembled, but she blinked away the incipient moisture in her troubled blue eyes. “Good. We


    can’t build a marriage on lies.”


    “I agree.”


    “The custody issue wasn’t even the most distressing.”


    “It was not?” What could have worried her more?


    “No. It was the certainty that if I didn’t marry you, one day you would marry someone else and build a


    whole family with them.”


    “The thought of me married to someone else bothers you?” he asked, just to rify. She had left him


    without any sort of contact for almost a week after all.


    “Of course it does. I love you.”


    Something inside his chest stuttered. “You love me?”


    “Yes.”


    “Like a friend.” He attempted to qualify.


    She wrapped her arms around his neck and shook her head, those terrifying tears of hers spilling over


    now. “No, not like a friend.”


    “You won’t convince anyone you love me like a brother.” Maybe there was some special kind of love


    women left for the father of their children.


    She shook her head again, a mysterious smile flirting with the edge of her lips, despite the sadness in


    her eyes. “Like the only man in my universe, like the other half of my heart, like the part of my soul


    that’s been missing my whole life but I didn’t know it.”


    He would have staggered if they hadn’t been holding each other so tightly. “Is that how you loved Art?”


    He did not know why he asked except for as some form of penance, because one thing he never


    wanted to hear was that she had loved her ex like that.


    “My feelings for Art weren’t even a shadow of what is in my heart for you.”


    Could he believe that? And if he did, what difference did it make? His mother had loved him, too, but


    she’d walked away when a choice had to be made. “And yet, you did not call.”


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    “Loving you doesn’t make me perfect, or even perfectly unselfish. In fact, it makes me terribly self-


    focused because it makes me so vulnerable to being hurt by you. I want to marry you so I know you


    won’t—can’t—leave me.” The tears were in her voice now. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life


    and I wanted to be pregnant so bad, it was an ache in my gut that wouldn’t let me sleep at all the night


    before the doctor’s office called. I spent the darkest hours of that night in a perfect agony of guilt and


    unable to change my desires one jot even because of it. Did you hear all those I’s and me’s?”


    “You wanted to carry my child?” he asked, ignoring selfgeting guilt.


    “Yes, more than anything. Which probably makes you wonder if I lost my patch on purpose, but I swear


    to you that I didn’t.”


    “Of course not, but why did you want to?”


    “Have you been listening to me at all? I knew a baby would tie you to me. Not because I’m not capable


    of being a single mother, but because you would not want me to be. I’m really ashamed of feeling that


    way, but I can’t change it. I never would have done it on purpose, but I won’t pretend I don’t feel wildly


    fortunate, either. Which probably should make you reconsider whether or not you should marry me.”