Humbling awareness of the razor-sharp intellect that matched her own. But above all, awareness of the man who had loved her that night with a passion and tenderness that would haunt her as long as she walked the earth.
He pulled his hand back. “We must marry.”
The words, spoken low and fast, blew away the fog of sensation that had engulfed her.
“What?” She barely recognized her own voice. It sounded strangled, distant. With a tremendous effort of will she looked up at his face.
His eyes blazed with black fire. He looked directly at her, his features set in an expression of determination.
“You will be my wife.”
She fumbled with her shorts and T-shirt, covering the exposed flesh of her belly. She felt altogether naked and exposed in the face of his authoritarian command.
But she shook her head.
Elan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.
“I can’t marry you.” Her voice was clear, quiet but resolute.
“Why not?” The words flew from his mouth in a growl.
“Because…”
Because you don’t love me.
She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Certainly in her mental anguish she’d imagined the possibility of a proposal. It was, after all, the honorable thing to do. And Elan was an honorable man.
She was “in trouble” and he was the man who’d gotten her that way. Even in the twenty-first century it was still common politeness that he should offer to give the child a name. It was the same reason her father had proposed to her mother, decades ago, when her oldest sister had come unexpectedly into existence.
Elan regarded her with total astonishment. His brow lowered farther as he raised his hands to his hips. “You refuse me?”
Sara swallowed hard. Her hands flew to her belly and clutched each other, fingers trembling. “Yes,” she whispered. “I can raise my child alone.”
The confusion that darkened his face tore at her heart. For an instant she itched to step toward him, throw her arms around him and shout “Yes, I’ll marry you, I’ll be your wife and bear all your children and we’ll live happily ever after!”
And the thought brought a fresh flush of color to her cheeks. A twinge of embarrassment that she could harbor such childish fantasies. That she could dream even momentarily of a happy future with a man who’d made it crystal clear that ardent women were the bane of his existence.
No doubt her mother had nurtured those same foolish fantasies when she’d chosen marriage over single motherhood—a miserable marriage that had drained her strength and kept her constantly pregnant or tending to a baby, despite her increasingly poor health. That had kept her chained to a cruel man who cheated on her and to a succession of low-paying part-time jobs that would never give her the means to escape.
Sara didn’t intend to make that same mistake.
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