by letting his motives reduce her to tears. She’d done more than enough crying, thank you very much.
“We don’t need to do anything,” she informed him firmly and, turning on her heel, stormed out of the kitchen. She had to get out of here. She had to get out of here now.
She was hunting up her clothes, jerking them on piece by piece when he walked into the living room.
“Carrie, listen.”
“Oh, I am so through listening to you.” She zipped her slacks, spotted a boot beside the sofa and tugged it on before hobbling across the room to retrieve the other.
“I’m not going to be your ultimate sacrifice, Ry,” she announced as she shouldered by him, buttoning her blouse on her way to his front door. “And don’t worry. I won’t tattle on you to big brother. You’re off the hook on that one.”
He caught the door before she could slam it behind her. Caught her arm when she would have walked away.
“Carrie—”
“Okay, look,” she said, rounding on him. “I put you in a bad position last night. I never should have come out here. But hey…you ended up doing me a big favor, okay? So lose the bad-dog face. You performed like a pro. A girl couldn’t ask for more on her first time. Thanks for the great lay, Ry. You were incredible.”
She was battling angry tears when he grabbed her other arm and shook her.
“Stop it. Stop it right now. It wasn’t that way and you know it.”
“Well, what way was it?” she demanded, making herself look him in the eye. “You want to marry me because you love me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Some little part of her—that stupid, childish dreamer—still hoped he’d say yes. Yes, I love you.
But he didn’t. Instead he turned pale, wouldn’t meet her eyes.
And it hurt. It hurt so bad.
“Well.” She squared her shoulders and wrapped what was left of her pride around her. “Guess that look says it all. Goodbye, Ryan. It’s been…swell.”
His hands tightened on her arms.
She felt very tired suddenly. “For God’s sake…would you just let me go with what little dignity I have left?”
He let out a weary breath. “You don’t understand. I didn’t use any protection. There could be a baby,” he said softly.
The words felt like a knife piercing her heart. So that was working on him, too. The old “do the right thing” credo of the incurably macho club. Guilt had prompted his proposal if We need to get married could, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a proposal.
“Yes, there could be a baby,” she agreed, lifting her chin, clinging by a fingernail to her self-respect. “I’d love to have a baby. But I won’t raise a child with a man who doesn’t love me. So either way—you’re out of the loop on this one. Now, let me go. Please.”
He was quiet for a very long time before finally releasing her.
She didn’t wait for him to have another go at her. She got in her car and left.
In her rearview mirror, she saw him standing there, watching her drive away. She didn’t see the bleakness in his eyes or hear the soft curse he leveled at himself. She was too steeped in her own misery to recognize his.
Besides being a good friend, Stephanie Firth had a sympathetic ear. Carrie had evidently looked as if she needed both when she’d shown up for her volunteer shift at the library late the next afternoon, just before the library closed at five.
Stephanie had taken one look at her, hustled her into her office, sat her down in the closest chair and shoved a cup of mocha latte into her hands.
“Okay. What’s up?” Steph asked gently, perching on the corner of her desk.
With no more prompting than Steph’s sympathetic look, Carrie spilled her guts—starting with giving up on her longtime feelings for Ry, to her determination to find a meaningful relationship with Nathan and working right on through everything that had happened since. Including the night she’d spent with Ry. And the disastrous morning after.
“Oh, Lord, he didn’t really say that.” Stephanie moaned. “Did he?”
Carrie let out a breath that ruffled the hair falling over her forehead and met Stephanie’s frown over her recounting of Ry’s We need to get married edict.
“Not only did he say it, he meant to follow through on it. The big jerk. As if I’d ever be comfortable playing the part of a ball and chain hanging around his neck.”
“Oh, sweetie…he would never think of you like that.”
“But I would. I would,” Carrie repeated.
She shook her head and with a gusty sigh, rested her chin on her palm. “What is it with us, Steph? It’s not like we’re asking for that much. Why don’t we have what it takes to attract a good man who will adore us twenty-four-seven and make us feel like sex goddesses to boot?”
They both grinned, because, really, what else was there to do at this point?
“Hey,” Stephanie said, feigning indignation and working to lighten the mood, “there is no we anymore. I’m the lone virgin now since…since—”
“Since Ry deflowered me?” Carrie supplied, then snorted when Steph laughed. “Trust me…it’s probably the word he would use. I think he’s some closet Victorian morals cop or something.”
“Are we talking about the same Ry Evans here?”
“Yeah, I know. Given his reputation with women, it’s a little hard to figure, huh?”
Steph pushed away from the desk to snap a yellow leaf off a lush philodendron flourishing on the windowsill. Beyond the open blinds, the sky was already turning the gunmetal-gray shade that would deepen in a few more minutes to the black of evening. Night came early to West Texas in February.
“Maybe he’s acting this way because it was you…and because you’re special to him,” Steph offered.
“Yeah. I’m special all right,” Carrie said with a tired breath. So special he didn’t have it in him to love her.
“So,” Steph said, lowering her voice and eyeing Carrie with open curiosity from across the room, “was it, um, you know. The…sex. Oh, heck. How was it?”
How was it? Carrie let herself drift back to the night before and felt her bones melt at the memories.
“Incredible,” she admitted as a surge of arousal that even her disappointment and anger couldn’t quell, eddied through her.
Steph sighed dreamily, then jumped when a knock sounded on her office door. “Yes?” she said just as the door swung open—and Nathan Beldon walked in.
“Carrie,”
