“I’m not angry. And there’s nothing to forgive. I’m glad I know. I just want to talk to her before she gets it in her head to run again, to Bellingham or Pullman. I’d never be able to convince her parents or her sister to let me talk to her.” He closed his eyes for a moment and wiped his hand over his face. “She needs to know she doesn’t have to deal with this alone. That it’s okay. We’ll make this work. Together.”
Amanda looked at Marius, her big hazel eyes wide. “Oh, my God, you love her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I spent most of my free time for the past month trying to think of ways to persuade her to marry me.”
“And you’re not freaked about her being pregnant?”
“Surprised, yes. Freaked, no. This may be just what I need to convince her I’m right about us being together. About marrying me. I expected an argument from her.”
Amanda threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Go. Get to Seattle. Tell her what you’ve told me. And have her call me when she stops crying.”
• • •
He finally caught a break or two. No cop was lurking on I-84 as he roared out to the airport at speeds that would have gotten him one hell of a ticket if he’d been caught. It took less time than usual to turn in the rental car and there was a seat available on a plane to Seattle that left a half-hour after he bought the ticket. He even had enough time to get more coffee into his tired body before he boarded the plane.
In flying time, it’s only an hour from Portland to Seattle. Before Marius boarded the plane, he was sure it would seem longer than his flight from Panama to Portland, he was that anxious to get home. But once he was on the way, he wondered if an hour was enough time to prepare for the most important conversation of his life, at least his personal life.
If she wouldn’t listen to him, if she turned him away, he didn’t think he’d ever find with another woman what he’d found with her. He had spent the two years before she’d come into his life assuming he’d eventually return to Miami. Now all he could think about was what kind of life they’d have in Seattle, the two of them.
And their kid. Their kids. Kid. Whatever. He’d come from a big family; he’d always thought that once he found the right woman he’d have a big family, too. But if she wanted this baby to be an only child, he’d happily go along with it. Anything to make her happy. To keep her his.
He took a small box from his jacket pocket. Held it for a moment, then opened it. Inside was a gold ring, the setting a delicate design of swirls and loops with a diamond set in the center and two sapphires flanking it. The design was one he’d traced from memory, based on a piece of her jewelry he’d seen her wear. The sapphires were exactly the color of her eyes.
He’d had it made for her by a goldsmith in Honduras, a family friend. Now, all he had to do was get her to accept it. That was what he’d been struggling with before he got to Portland — coming up with a way to accomplish that. But he had no idea how to get it done. You’d think by now he would stop trying to make plans about anything with this woman. This would have to be purely seat-of-the-pants. He hoped like hell whatever he came up with when he saw her was successful.
“You need to fasten your seatbelt, sir. We’re about to land in Seattle,” the flight attendant said. She looked at the ring in his hand. “That’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Thank you. It’s for a unique woman so it had to be very special.”
“She’s lucky. Are congratulations in order?”
“I certainly hope so.”
The flight attendant winked at him. “I think she’ll say yes. I would.”
• • •
Cynthia had left Portland right after breakfast, if a cup of tea and a piece of toast qualified as breakfast. The smell of coffee had made her slightly nauseated that morning. She blamed the pregnancy but maybe it was something else, like betrayal by a handsome coffee broker. She hoped not. She really liked coffee.
Apparently for this trip on the interstate, there was a bulletin out that she was desperate to be home and all the traffic stayed out of her way. By eleven, she was in her studio, surrounded by familiar sights and sounds — the hiss of the propane torch, the translucent colors of the glass rods, the sight of them bending to her will as she shaped her beads in the flame. She hoped that having to pay close attention to the molten glass and high temperature flame might keep her from thinking about anything else for a while.
It worked. Hours slipped by. She wrapped finished beads in wire, wove silver strands into elaborate designs and soldered metal together for neckpieces and cuff bracelets. On the torch, she warmed up, then melted, glass from long rods onto a coated mandrill, shaping round, oval and square beads.
Once finished, the beads went into her small kilns for a controlled cool-down to prevent them from breaking. Pleased with her new designs, she was intent on beginning to create the beads she wanted to incorporate into the cuff bracelet she’d been working on. She missed the sound of her studio door opening, apparently, because when she heard a very familiar male voice say, “When were you planning to tell me?” she was startled.
Even through the tinted lenses of her protective glasses and the glare of the propane flame, she could see that Marius, who was standing just inside the door of her studio, looked tired and unusually serious. Either that or he was mad as hell at her. Surprised either by his expression or by his being there, her hand jerked and the glass rod she was holding, which hadn’t been warmed up yet, hit the flame and shattered into bits when the cold glass came in contact with the heat.
“Damn it,” she said, standing up quickly enough that the stool she was sitting on fell over, clattering loudly as it did. However, she wasn’t fast enough to get away from the pieces of broken glass that spattered on the front of her shirt, melting into the fabric.
She didn’t see him move but suddenly Marius was in front of her, brushing off her shirt, asking, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, no thanks to you.” She pushed his hand away and took off her glasses. “What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your ‘friend’ or whatever you’re calling her now?” She shook her head and turned off the torch before she was tempted to use it on his carefully pressed shirt and trousers. Even tired and terribly serious, he was beautiful to look at. Damn him.
“Oh, good. A perfect three,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Three times being greeted the same way in the same day.” He picked one more piece of glass off her shirt. “I’ve been polite enough to answer your question, now it’s your turn to answer mine: when were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?” She pretended to inspect her shirt for more glass, trying to avoid looking at him. Trying not to smell his aftershave or think about what it felt like to curl up in his arms or how his mouth tasted when she kissed him or …
“That we’re having a baby.”
She was sure she looked stunned. But she recovered quickly. “
We’re
not having a baby.
I’m
having a baby.”
“Don’t tell me it’s not mine. I know you weren’t with anyone else while I was away.”
“Why, because you’re such a world-class lover that no woman wants any other man after she’s been with you? Is that what Bella tells you?”
“I know you, Cynthia,” he said softly, “It’s not in your nature to hook up with someone while you were sending me texts and emails every day. You’d never do anything like that.”
She picked up the overturned stool and sat on it. “Whatever. It doesn’t make any difference. I’m having this baby by myself. I told you when we were … I told you already. I’ve never had any expectations about what was … about us. No demands. I’m not trying to trap you or entangle you. So you can breathe easy; you’re off the hook.”
“My breathing’s just fine the way it is, thanks. And suppose I don’t want to be off the hook? Suppose I want to be entangled?”
“Who with? Bella? She sure looks like she wants to be entangled with you. I’m surprised she’s still not wound around you like a snake.” She hated herself for sounding so nasty, so jealous.
“Bella has nothing to do with this … with us.”
“There is no ‘us.’ You made me realize that last night.”
“There most certainly is an ‘us.’” He moved directly in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders. “There’s been an ‘us’ since the first time you walked into my house. I knew you belonged there and you did, too.”
“I did not.”
God, could she sound any more childish and unconvincing
. “Even if I … ” She shut down the rest of the sentence. He wasn’t going to distract her. “It doesn’t mean anything now. Not after last night.” It had been a mistake to sit down. She had to look up at him, couldn’t move to get his hands off her shoulders. Not that she really wanted to shake them off. If this was the last time she saw him, she wanted to remember how it felt to have him touch her, what the warmth of his hands on her skin felt like. She had to stop herself from lowering her head to rub her cheek against his hand.
“It means a great deal to me that there’s an ‘us.’ Because last night I realized what a mistake I’d made. I should have … ”
“Not lied to me?”
“Let me finish,
querida.
I realized I should have told you how much I love you before I left. I wanted to. But I didn’t know if you’d believe me. So I decided the way to convince you I loved you was to live up to my word and come back to you. Now I know it was a mistake. Not telling you is what made you run.”
“No, seeing you dating another woman in Portland when you told me you were in San Francisco on business is what made me run.”
He paused for a few breaths. “Have you looked at your phones since you’ve been home?”
“My phones? No, I came right to the studio. What do my phones have to do with anything?”
“You’ll find messages on both your cell and your home phone and a couple of texts telling you I had to go to Portland for a funeral. I asked you to drive my car to Portland so I wouldn’t have to wait to see you until I got to Seattle. But I never got a call back.”
“Oh.” She thought about it for a few seconds. “But if you were there for a funeral, how come … ?”
He ran through the explanation about Bella, her father’s death and the opening at the art museum.
She was sure she looked as skeptical as she felt. “That sounds just a little too pat. What’d you do, practice it all the way here?”
“I imagine it does sound rehearsed. It’s the third time today I’ve had to give that particular explanation.”
“Who else did you practice it on?”
“Liz, who granted me one minute to convince her I deserved to know Amanda’s address. Then Amanda, when I went to her house where I thought I’d find you but only found your angry friend.”
“Your charm must have been working overtime to get both of them to tell you everything. I thought I was going to see
my
friends when I went to Portland. But I guess they were your friends. Otherwise why would Amanda rat me out to the one person she knew I wasn’t going to tell about being pregnant.”
“It wasn’t like that. She misunderstood what I said. She thought I’d already talked to you and you’d told me about our baby.”
He said the words “our baby” so softly, so sweetly. She wanted to believe he cared about it as much as she did. Needed him to want this as much as she did. But she couldn’t bring herself to hope. Not yet.
“If Amanda had done something like that, she’d have called me right away to explain.”
“I asked her not to. I was afraid you’d run again. She said to call her when you stopped crying.”
“Why would I be crying? I’m mad, not sad.”
He touched her face where a tear was making its way down her cheek, wiping it away with the pad of his thumb. “Yes,
mi amor
, I know you’re mad.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your love. I’m not anything to you. You lied … you weren’t … you don’t … ” When tears choked her and she stopped talking, he pulled her up from the stool and wrapped her in his arms.
He kissed the top of her head. “I didn’t lie. And I do love you,
mi amor, mi corazon.
You’re my love, my heart. I’ve spent hours over the past month thinking of ways to convince you to marry me.”
“You don’t have to marry me because I’m pregnant,” she said between shuddery breaths, pulling away from him.
“You’re not listening
.
I was thinking of ways to convince you to marry me before I found out about our baby.”
“Our baby … ” She closed her eyes to keep more tears from forming. “How did … ?”
He drew her back against him and she didn’t resist. She felt his smile against her hair. “I remember the ‘how’ very well,
mi amour.
I thought about it often while I was gone. Every night, in fact.
”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “You know what I meant.”
“It doesn’t make any difference now, does it? I’m not sorry. In truth, it’s probably the only way you’ll say yes to me.”
“Say yes? To what?”
“When my sisters were pregnant, they never had difficulty hearing, but you seem to.” He took her chin in his hand. “Having to suggest marriage more than once to get an answer seems excessive, but you’re worth it. So, I’ll repeat myself. For the past month, I’ve been trying to figure a way to get you to say you’ll marry me. Not because we’re having a baby, but because I love you, because you love me. Because I’ve known since the first day we spent together that you’re the woman I’ve been looking for.”
She saw what she now realized she’d always seen in his eyes — love, respect, determination, maybe a little amusement. “Marry you?”
“Marry me. You’re already mine. You’ve been mine since the first time we made love. But I want to make sure you stay mine for the rest of my life. For the rest of your life, our lives together. If I can’t convince you with my words, maybe this will convince you.” He pulled a small box from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
She looked at it. “What’s this?”
“The present I brought you from my trip. I had it made for you by a goldsmith I know in Honduras.”