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A short breath shot into her lungs and caught. “I know.” Of course she knew. Wasn’t that what had been driving her quietly insane for the last month? Wasn’t that why she was wearing a path in his linoleum? Wasn’t that why she felt like crying, for goodness’ sake?
Another long minute passed in silence. Finally Thomas said, “Then you know what the answer to all this is.”
She held her breath again and absently wondered if all of this breath holding would hurt a baby currently no bigger than a peanut.
“I would be honored if you would consent to marry me, Kate.”
That pent-up breath exploded from her in a rush. Even though she had half suspected he would do exactly this, she was still almost shocked to hear the words out loud.
Marriage.
She should be happy, damn it.
Over the past three years, she’d secretly clung to the hope that one day, he would propose to her. Of course, she had also hoped that a little thing like love would prompt his proposal. Instead, it was duty and responsibility guiding the oh-so-honorable man in front of her.
No orange blossoms, candlelight and soft music for them, she mused. Nope. Marine green and Duty.
Lord, how romantic.
She lifted one hand and rubbed at a spot between her eyes, hoping to ease the throbbing headache centered there.
It didn’t help.
Kate knew he was right. Their getting married was the only possible solution. But her heart cringed at the notion of a dutiful marriage.
How strange. She’d managed to avoid marriage and motherhood all of her adult life. Now suddenly she was jumping feet first into both.
“Kate?” Tom asked, watching as her expressive face displayed each of her emotions in turn. “This is the best way. The only way.”
She nodded stiffly, but he could see she wasn’t convinced.
“Kate, this can work,” he said, walking across the room to her side. Hands on her shoulders, he held her gently but firmly, ignoring the sudden, white-hot jolt of desire that shot through him like a mortar blast. If she accepted his proposal, there would be plenty of time to indulge in the passion they shared. “We like each other. We get along well.”
“Like,” she repeated numbly and crossed her arms in front of her before letting her gaze slide from his.
He cupped her face in his palm and turned her back to look at him. “This will work,” he repeated, warming to his theme. Sure, he’d never intended to get married again. One failure in that department had been more than enough for Tom Candello. And here was another chance to show the world what lousy fathers the Candello men made. Like his own dad before him, Tom had failed at fatherhood. And the thought of another failure wasn’t a pretty one. But this was a special circumstance. Kate was pregnant. With his baby. Their child. He couldn’t let her down.
She needed him.
And for now, that was enough.
On that thought, he suggested, “Think about this as if it’s a Corps assignment, Kate.”
“What?”
“We’re fellow officers. We like each other. We understand each other’s work.”
She smiled sadly. “Not much to base a marriage on, Thomas.”
“More than some people have,” he said, and smoothed her hair back behind her ear.
“And less than others.”
He knew what she was talking about. Love. Well, love wasn’t something he was interested in. Desire at least was honest. And he did desire her. Plus he genuinely liked her. Wasn’t that better than some indefinable emotion that broke as many hearts as it healed?
Stroking her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, he said quietly, “Love’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Kate. I believe we can have a better-than-average marriage just by keeping love out of it. We’ll still manage to raise our child in a happy enough environment.”
Kate stared up at him for a long, thoughtful moment. The knot in her throat seemed to grow to colossal proportions, threatening to choke off her air entirely. His words keep repeating themselves over and over in her mind, like a tape stuck on Playback. “Keep love out of it. Happy enough environment. Better than average marriage.”
Not at all what she’d secretly yearned for the moment she’d first laid eyes on Colonel Thomas Candello. But fantasies and dreams had to give way to the realities of life...didn’t they?
And the cold, harsh reality was...she was pregnant. She was a Marine. And without the Corps she would have nothing to offer either herself or her child.
Because she really did have no choice at all here, she finally said, “All right, Thomas. I will marry you.”
He let out a pent-up breath and pulled her to him. As he wrapped his arms around her, Kate let herself lean against him, drawing on the strength he was offering her. Hoping they were doing the right thing.
For the baby and for them.
All she knew for sure was that the man she loved was marrying her—not because he couldn’t live without her—but because of a baby neither of them had counted on.
Two
“Now that that’s settled,” he whispered against the top of her head, “how about dinner tonight? We can talk about the specifics.”
Kate pulled back from him, despite the reluctance to leave the circle of his arms. Staring up into those dark brown eyes, she repeated, “Specifics.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Wedding date. Place. Time. Guests.”
“Oh, my,” she muttered, and shook her head. “Suddenly this is getting so involved. So complicated.”
“Would you prefer a whirlwind trip to Vegas?”
“Do I detect a hint of surliness in your tone?” she countered.
He frowned, walked to his desk and leaned one hip against the edge. “Not surly. Confused.”
“Join the club,” she muttered. For pity’s sake, she’d hardly gotten used to the idea of being pregnant. Not to mention his spur-of-the-moment proposal. Now she was supposed to pull out a pad of paper and eagerly make out a guest list?
Come on. Even Wonder Woman would have needed a few days.
He folded his arms across his chest, cocked his head to one side and looked at her as though she was a particularly intriguing germ on a glass slide under a microscope. “I don’t get it.”
“What?” Stupid question.
“This about-face,” he said. “A minute ago, we agreed that a marriage was the only answer. You did say yes, didn’t you?”
She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Of course I said yes...”
“Then what’s the problem?” he asked.
“How much time do you have?”
He smiled, God help her, and that lone dimple in his right cheek made its first appearance. Damn it. Why was she such a sucker for that dimple?
“All the time you need, Kate. Talk.”
Talk. Easy enough for him to say. Hands locked tight behind her back, she paced again, feeling the need to burn off the excess energy that had her stomach roiling and her mind spinning. Back and forth, up and down, she looked at his office, the plain beige paint, the picture of the president, the dried-up splotches of the last rain on the windows and the halfdead ficus tree in the corner.
Talk. Where should she start? With ridiculous dreams or the painful reality?
She’d been hoping for so much more when she had put in a request for a transfer to Camp Pendleton.
For three years, Kate had loved Thomas Candello. And for those same three years, she’d kept quiet about it. She knew all too well his thoughts on marriage and love and happily-ever-after. He’d made no secret of the fact that his first marriage had been a disaster from the word go and that he had no intention of ever committing that particular mistake again.
So, wary of scaring him off, she’d patiently swallowed the three little words every time they threatened to roll off her tongue. She’d pretended to be as satisfied with their once-a-year tryst as he was. And she’d hoped that one day he would look into her eyes and see the love shining there and want to claim it.
So much for “hope springs eternal.”
“Kate?” he prompted from his place by the desk. “What’s going on?”
“Too much,” she said and came to a stop by his office door. Turning around, she braced her back against it and looked at him from across the room. Unfortunately, distance didn’t help. The liquid warmth in his eyes, that blasted dimple, his mouth, even several feet of empty space couldn’t dilute their power. “Thomas,” she said at last, “we can’t just up and get married.”
“Why not?” He pushed off the desk and started for her.
She held up one hand, stopping him in his tracks. If he expected her to think, then he needed to give her some breathing room.
“We’re both single adults. Unattached.”
“Exactly.”
He laughed shortly and shook his head. “Sorry, you lost me.”
She sighed heavily. “In the month I’ve been here, we’ve hardly spoken more than once or twice.”
“So?”
“So, don’t you think people will be just a little bit curious if we announce our imminent wedding?”
“And if we don’t get married, in a couple of months,” he snapped a look at her still flat abdomen, “they’ll be curious about a whole lot more than that.”
“I know.” She buried the flash of nerves that leaped into life in the pit of her stomach. “But still, we can’t go from supposed strangers to newlyweds overnight.”
He thought about it for a minute or two, then shrugged again. “Does it really matter? Is it anyone’s business?”
“Yes,” she said. “And no.”
“Huh?”
“Yes, it does matter and no, it’s not their business. But that won’t stop the gossip and you know it.”
“Military bases run on gossip. There’s no way to avoid it.”
“Maybe not, but we could slow it down a little.”
He smiled. “What have you got in mind?”
“Dating?” she suggested.
This time he laughed. “Kate, we’re a little beyond the dating stage, don’t you think?”
“Okay, sure.” She nodded and started pacing again, the sound of her heels against the linoleum tapping out a rhythm for her thoughts. “I suppose we could tell people that we’ve been seeing each other for three years.”
“A lot of each other,” he added.
“Yes, well, they don’t need to know that, now do they?”
“Kate,” Tom said, and crossed the room to her before she could stop him. “You’re making this more difficult—more complicated than it has to be.”
“I don’t see how.”
“We’ll date,” he said, and smiled down at her when she winced. “And after a whirlwind courtship, we’ll have a nice, quiet wedding a few weeks from now.”
“People will still talk.”
“It won’t matter. We’ll be married. The talk will die down.”
“Until I start showing.”
“You can’t prevent people from counting.”
“I suppose,” she said, and wished he would hold her again.
Tom reached for her, holding her tightly to him. He’d never seen Kate like this. Distracted. Worried—no, scared.
He pulled in a deep breath, enjoying the familiar, floral scent of her shampoo even as his mind told him she had a right to be scared, and if he had half a brain, he would be, too.
He’d done this before. He’d been married and made a damn mess of it. He’d had a child, too, and blown that, as well.
Oh, yeah, he was just the guy Kate needed—an already-proven failure as a husband and father.
His stomach turned over, and a fist tightened inside it.
There were two ways this could go, he told himself. One, it could all blow up in his face, hurting him, Kate and the poor unsuspecting baby stuck with him as a father—or, it could be his chance to make up for doing everything so badly the first time around.
Heaven or hell.
The lady or the tiger.
