Because I’ve got the most outrageous idea I’m ever likely to have. Want to hear it?”
“Sure,” she said, eager for a distraction from her embarrassment.
“Let’s get married,” he said.
MASON COULD HARDLY believe what he’d proposed. Or rather, that he’d proposed.
The last thing he’d had in mind when he asked Gina to dinner was marriage. Not because he wouldn’t want her. A man would be incredibly lucky to walk an angel like her down the aisle.
He simply wasn’t cut out for marriage. He belonged in the saddle or behind the wheel of a pickup. When he got into one of his black moods, he needed the open range to vent.
Three years ago, he’d fallen in love with Francine Lee, a pretty blond accountant who’d been visiting her brother, the veterinarian in Horseshoe Bend. They’d dated intensely, and she’d prolonged her stay for several weeks.
One night at the ranch, they’d cooked dinner together after giving Bonita the evening off. Mason had planned to pop the question, until Rance hurried in to tell him that a cowhand had ridden one of their horses without permission and treated it so badly the horse had suffered permanent damage.
The man had created problems before, although never anything so serious. He’d been tolerated because he was a friend of their late father’s.
At the news, something had snapped inside Mason. With Francine and Rance watching, he’d hauled the drunken cowboy out of the barn where he was cowering and punched him so hard the man flew across the yard. Mason didn’t remember much else, except that he’d fired the man amid a string of profanities.
Francine had been shocked. “You lost control of yourself!” she’d said. “How do I know you won’t do that again? Maybe next time, I’ll be the one you take it out on!”
She’d refused to listen to his protests, and demanded that he drive her to her brother’s, which he did. The next day, she’d returned to Houston, and hadn’t answered his letter of apology.
Mason knew that emotions could still run away with him under certain circumstances. There was a wildness to him that was part of his nature. He could usually keep it under control, but not always.
Over the years, he’d met rough-and-tumble women who could stand up to him, but none of them had come close to winning his heart. He had to accept the plain fact that he wasn’t suited for marriage to the kind of gracious, tenderhearted woman who appealed to him.
When Rance wed his high school sweetheart, Amy, and she became pregnant with twins, it had seemed like the answer to Mason’s prayers. The future of the ranch would be assured. He didn’t need to marry, as long as he had his brother’s family.
Yet here he was proposing to Gina Kennedy, a woman who was even more delicate than Francine. Was he out of his mind? He was doing it for the twins, though, not for himself.
“It makes perfect sense,” Mason said to the stunned nurse sitting across from him. “If I hired you to take care of the girls, even assuming you were available, it wouldn’t be enough to persuade a judge in my favor. But as my wife, you’d be unbeatable!”
She blinked a couple of times. “Mason, what are you talking about?”
“Didn’t I make myself clear?” he said. “I’m asking you to marry me.”
She swallowed hard before continuing. “So you can trump your sister and keep the twins?”
“And you can keep them, too,” he pointed out.
“That’s what you said you wanted.”
Those blue eyes regarded him levelly. “I’m going to do us both a favor, Mason. I’m going to assume you’ve suffered temporary insanity. Do you think you might wake up if I count to three and snap my fingers?”
At least she wasn’t stomping out of the restaurant. “Surely you can see the logic of it,” he persisted.
“People don’t marry just to get custody of children,” she said.
“People used to marry for all sorts of practical reasons,” he argued. “As I recall, the divorce rate back then wasn’t nearly as high as it is today.”
“That’s because people died young,” she said, then turned pale. “I didn’t mean…I guess that was kind of insensitive, under the circumstances.”
“No offense taken.” His sorrow over Rance and Amy’s premature deaths didn’t mean he couldn’t see her point. “I’ll tell you what, Gina. How about a compromise?”
“How does one compromise about getting married?” she asked.
Now that he’d had a few minutes to think about it, Mason could see that a marriage for the children’s sake, while it might suit him, wasn’t going to be enough for Gina. Sooner or later, she would weary of the grueling ranch life. Or worse, she’d become disgusted with his temper and walk out.
To make Gina unhappy and watch her lose respect for him would be agony. There was no need to put them both through such an experience.
“Let’s at least do what we can for the girls,” he said. “We could marry long enough for me to adopt them, then quietly divorce.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she said.
He ought to stop, but Mason couldn’t. If he did, he knew with sickening certainty that he would lose his nieces.
Without them he couldn’t face going back to the ranch. There would be no future, nothing to hope for. He needed a reason to go on living.
“Do this for Lily and Daisy, and for me,” he said. “Please. They could use your care for the first few months, anyway. You know that would be the safest thing for them.”
“I suppose so,” she conceded.
“I know it would be a sacrifice,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much it would mean—”
A thickness in his throat cut off the words. For a man who hated to display emotions, Mason had revealed more than he intended.
“I—I wish I could, Mason….”
He could hear the “no” in her tone. She might change her mind, though. “Don’t give me an answer yet. Of course, in the divorce settlement, I’ll compensate you for lost income and arrange for regular visitation with the girls. Please, at least give it some thought.”
“It won’t make…” She stopped. “I would enjoy taking care of the girls, but…”
He didn’t want to discuss this any further tonight. He might easily say too much. About how he ached to touch the spun-gold of her hair, for instance, and to tip her chin upward and explore her mouth with his own.
That would scare her off for certain. “Sleep on it, all right?” he said.
She nodded in reluctant agreement.
WHY HADN’T
