Chapter Twenty-Two
“What?”
It took a second for Marshall to realize her voice was a little funny and she’d gone quite still and tense in his arms. He lifted his head and saw her startled expression and realized he’d been an idiot.
“Shit, sorry…that came out all wrong.” He smiled at her, his fingers toying with a strand of hair that had loosened from the knot at the back of her neck. “I should have said…should have told you that I love you and then said the marriage bit.” He stared into her eyes. “I love you, Augusta North. I want to marry you.”
She stared for a second or two as well. Then she frowned. Then she dropped her gaze and pushed against his chest. “Okay…back up.”
A prickle of caution slid down Marshall’s neck. Jesus. Fuck. He’d screwed it up.
Marshall stepped back a little, easing from her body, and she slid out from between him and the door. Walking around him to the opposite side of the trailer, she shifted her bra cups back into place with one hand and pulled her skirt down with other, her back facing him.
Shit. He went to the sink, dealt with the condom, tucked himself away, and washed his hands again before facing her, her back still firmly turned, her hands on her hips.
“Augusta?”
She swiveled around, all buttoned up again and obviously pissed. He didn’t need a fancy college degree to know that, just those tight lips.
“I’m going to let you in on a secret that I thought you probably would have known by now, but obviously not. You don’t tell a woman that you love her and want to marry her right after you’ve fucked her. I know there’s a huge rush of endorphins going on and most of your blood is in your dick, but you shouldn’t confuse gratitude with something significantly deeper, Marshall.”
Yep—totally screwed it up. Christ, what a dumb-ass. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t in love.
“Okay, yes.” He raised his hands in a placatory manner. “That was ill considered, I’ll give you that. But neither was it from gratitude or an endorphin rush.”
He took a step toward her and she stepped quickly back, pulling him up short. “Look…Gus…I’ve been falling for you ever since I met you. I think from the moment you called me a moron in that court room, I’ve been falling in love with you. I’d hoped…the way you looked at me today…I hoped you were feeling the same way.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about you, Marshall, I—”
“You loving me doesn’t matter?” he interrupted. Marshall was okay with being called out on his careless wording, but he was going to call her out on hers, too.
“I can’t marry you, Marshall,” she said, ignoring his demanded query.
A nerve jumped in the corner of his eye. Okay. Now he was pissed, too. “Why the fuck not?”
“Seriously?” She glared at him. “How can you ask another woman to marry you again without figuring out why you couldn’t go through with any of the other three?”
“I told you why.” Marshall tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “They just petered out.”
“We’ve known each other for a couple of months. What makes you think it won’t just peter out with me?”
“It won’t.” Marshall knew that down to his bones. “This relationship. Us? It’s a thousand percent different than those.”
“But you loved them, too, right?” she insisted.
“Yes. But not like this, Augusta. Not like you.”
“Really?”
Marshall frowned at her face contorting into an incredulous mask. God, was it only five minutes ago it’d been contorted in passion? “You don’t believe me?”
“I think you believe it.” She shook her head. “But I also think if you do want to put a ring on someone’s finger one day, I mean actually do it, it’s probably important to understand the real reasons you couldn’t go through with the three opportunities you had. I don’t want to be experiment number four.”
I have no desire to become your next ex fiancée.
Her words came back to him and it was like a nail gun unloading into Marshall’s brain. He understood his track record with getting married made her nervous and that she been hurt badly by a guy not that long ago, but he wasn’t kidding around here, he wasn’t ticking off some list or trying to prove he wasn’t a total failure in the nuptials department.
She wasn’t some kind of fourth-time lucky charm.
Crossing to her whether she liked it or not, he stepped right into her space and slipped his hands to either side of her face. “You wouldn’t be,” he muttered.
He kissed her deep and slow, and she kissed him back deep and greedy, grabbing at his shirt, holding on tight. When they finally broke away, he pressed his forehead to hers, his breathing thick. “I love you, Gus.”
Her eyes fluttered closed, her hands untwisting from his shirt to slide over top of his, and it gave him hope. She opened her eyes, earnestly searching his. “Did you ever even set a date for any of them?”
Marshall dropped his hands, causing hers to fall away, too. “No.”
“Why not?” she asked gently, shifting back a little, creating some space between them. “I can’t believe all three women didn’t want to set a date?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Marshall couldn’t think at all right now. “The last one was five years ago. I think it just seemed like something we’d get around to and then it just…”
She nodded. “Petered out.”
“Gus.”
He reached for her again, but she stepped away. “I can’t do this, Marshall. When I agree to marry someone, I want it to actually happen, and you’re asking me to take a risk on someone who’s great at being engaged but lousy at actually marrying anyone and can’t articulate why.”
“Love is a risk.”
“Sure. But I’m not much of a gambler. I like to have better odds.”
She turned to leave.
“Gus…” Marshall could feel her slipping away, and he placed a stilling hand on her shoulder. “Please don’t go.”
Turning back, she shook her head, her eyes sad but the line of her mouth grittily determined. “All I’m saying is, I think you need to look a little closer at your past relationships. Figure them out before you try rushing into something else.”
She turned again, and this time he knew she wouldn’t come back. “Don’t forget Thumper,” she said as she reached for the door handle.
Bright light spilled inside on a cloud of dust as she stepped outside, and then it was gone as she pulled the door shut. So was his heart.
“She’s not wrong, you know.”
“Dude, you’re my brother. Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” Marshall stared at Thumper, who was currently investigating his bedroom. He appeared to like his new surroundings.
“Not if you’re being a dick.”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “I’m not being a dick.”
“No. You’re just being obtuse. Look…Dad died when you were eight, Mom died when you were fifteen. You went and worked construction to pay the bills and support both of us. Our grandfather was an evil tyrant who tried to screw our family at every turn… Maybe, just maybe, as a consequence, you crave somewhere to belong but never really trust it’s going to last, so you self-sabotage.”
Marshall blinked. Jesus. Maybe Jeremy should have been a psychologist.
“Or some such crap…I don’t know. The point is, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to indulge in a little self-reflection.”
“You mean see a therapist?”
Everything in Marshall rebelled at the idea. He was not the kind of guy who enjoyed navel gazing. He knew how to operate a crane, for fuck’s sake.
Crane dudes did not do therapy.
“That’s an option. Or maybe just think about it a little instead of pushing it away all the time.”
“You went through the same stuff. How come you aren’t fucked up?”
“Putting aside the fact that you sheltered me from a lot of it, I’ve got to point out you’re talking to a guy who’s never had a serious relationship in his life. Ever. You think that isn’t fucked up?”
Marshall nodded. That was true. But still, therapy was a big step. “I don’t know, bro.”
Jeremy sighed. “Do you love her?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitancy this time. He was all in.
“So…do the work.”
Jeremy hung up in his ear. Do the work. Jesus. Marshall glanced at Thumper. “What do you think?” Thumper didn’t say anything.
He should have gotten a parrot.
…
Ten days later, late on a Friday afternoon, Gus came out of afternoon surgery to find a text from Marshall. She hadn’t heard from him since she’d left that day—she hadn’t expected to. She’d hoped he’d figure it out quickly, because her heart ached and she had no idea how she was going to get past this…but she was fair-minded enough to realize that Marshall’s problems ran deep and that he deserved time to mull.
She slid her thumb across the screen and opened the message, her pulse beating like a drum at her temples. It was an image of the sun setting at Hitchkin. He’d taken it from the jetty. She’d sat there often enough watching the blush of dusk steal across the sky to recognize the location.
It was surprising how much of an impact four little words could make. She wished she was there, too. More than he would ever know. And maybe she would have been if he hadn’t proposed to her that crazy day.
She’d gone to the construction site thinking maybe she’d ask him on a date, suggest that they do a long-distance thing for a bit, see how it went. But then they’d done the wild thing and he’d jumped right into getting hitched, and she’d…panicked.
She’d tried to be measured and calm about it, but inside she’d been freaking out. She loved him, but it was all happening too quickly, and she’d known with absolute clarity that jumping in with him would be a mistake. That he needed to figure some stuff out first.
Quickly, she tapped a neutral reply. She didn’t want to ask him any leading questions or put any pressure on him—he had to sort it without her in his head.
How’s the project going? She hit send.
His reply was lightning quick. It’s not. I stopped it.
Gus frowned. What? Why? He’d been so gung-ho about knocking everything down, about erasing his grandfather from the face of the earth.
Another quick-fire reply appeared.
Gus’s pulse picked up a little. That was good. Really good. Promising. Even though thinking of him all alone on Hitchkin with nothing but her rejection and his thoughts pulled at her heart strings.
She just wanted to go there and love him better.
Three dots appeared then another message.
Gus figured anyone who had anything to do with psychology could have told him that. She suspected it was the one place his past was the most distilled.
Her fingers slid over the keys and hit send.
Asking about his well being could probably be classed as a leading question, but hell, she needed to know.
Gus’s heart went thunk in her chest. Knowing he was sorting his shit out and was optimistic about it made her happy. He obviously needed it. But it also made her yearn.
For him.
To put her arms around him and tell him he would be okay. To make love to him on the jetty and tell him they’d be okay, too, because maybe now they would. Maybe he still didn’t have answers to the things she’d asked him, but at least he was searching for them, making the effort.
Maybe, now that the process had begun, he needed someone to bounce things off, to talk to, to love him on that island.
Her finger hovered over the keyboard before she tapped out a message and sent it hurriedly so she couldn’t change her mind.
His response was almost instantaneous.
She smiled, her hand shaking a little. She had no idea if it was the right thing to do, but she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him one second longer.
The reply was as snappy as his others.
Gus laughed, her heart as big as a football in her chest. At the beginning of this year, Gus hadn’t thought she could ever love again. Now she couldn’t imagine not. Marshall had helped her heal, and now it was her turn to help him heal, too.
…
The next day was cold and gray as the boat sped toward Hitchkin. Back home in Chicago, fall had arrived with the same vengeance as it had, apparently, in Colorado, if the changing color of the trees disappearing behind her on the mainland was any indication. There was a definite nip of winter in the air, and Gus was in jeans and a fleece Henley.
What a difference a couple of months could make. And not just the weather.
It was hard to believe it was only three months ago she’d dueled with evil Elmer in a courtroom and would have been happy to never see him again. Now she was crossing several states and a lake to be by his side.
She pushed back strands of hair being whipped every which way across her face. She’d worn her hair down to keep her neck warm and because she loved it when Marshall called her Goldilocks, but right now she probably looked more like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole.
The shoreline of Hitchkin came into view and butterflies stomped around in her belly. She was stupid nervous as a lone figure standing on the jetty, also in jeans and a Henley, came into view.
Marshall. His hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and her heart flipped in her chest. It was so damn good to see him again. Within five minutes, the boat had pulled in alongside and Marshall was helping her out, his big hand warm around her cold one, her pulse tripping at his touch.
“Hey,” he said with a smile as he unhanded her immediately, an awkwardness between them now. But his eyes ate her up, roving hungrily over her from the Skechers on her feet to the bird’s nest of her hair and everything in between.
Her body sparked to life, his gaze as potent as fingers trailing over her skin.
He shoved his hands in his pockets again. “You look good.”
God…so did he. His jeans hugging quads, his Henley snug in all the right places. His whiskers were scruffy again and her fingers itched to touch. She could smell his aftershave and longed to bury her face in his neck.
But as the boat headed back to the mainland, she knew there were things to say first.
She glanced around. The loss of trees on the island was quite marked, which made the clearing where the cabin dwelt easy to see from the jetty. She’d expected to find a pile of rubble, but it was still standing, a digger parked nearby. “I thought that was the first thing that was going to go?”
“It made more logistical sense to remove the trees first. And then…” His eyes fixed on the cabin. “I don’t know… I can’t seem to bring myself to do it.”
Gus returned her attention to Marshall, a knot of emotion in her chest. He sounded so perplexed by his inability to destroy this thing that was the embodiment of his childhood angst. “You don’t have to, do you?”
He shook his head. “No.” Then, pulling his gaze back to her, he shot her a self-deprecating smile. “Sorry.” He gestured to the end of the jetty. “You want to sit for a bit?” he asked, his voice quiet.
“Yeah.” Gus smiled. “That’d be nice.”
The jetty held a lot of memories for them, but for now, she chose to remember how much she loved just sitting and watching the lake as they settled on the end. It was too cold to let their feet dangle in the water, so they both sat cross-legged, the cool breeze ruffling their hair as they stared out over the vast gray moodiness of the lake.
Off to the south, she could see a squall decorating the horizon, a good match for the emotions flitting through her middle. She waited for him to speak and break his broody silence.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said finally, turning his head to look at her, his gaze warm on the cool of her cheek. “A lot. About my three engagements.”
Gus steeled herself. Okay…they were going to get straight to it, then. She turned her head and looked him directly in the eyes. “Did you come up with any answers?”
“You asked me if any of them had ever set a date, and I’d said I didn’t think so, that I didn’t remember.”
Gus nodded. “Uh huh.”
“Which was true. I didn’t remember because when a relationship ended, I just…moved on. Dwelling on the past is not my thing.”
Yeah… She’d seen that here on Hitchkin. How confronted Marshall had been by memories he’d kept under wraps. But the problem with suppression was the risk of repeating past mistakes.
“But I remember now…remember conversations with my fiancées, many of them heated, about setting dates and how I kept putting them off with one excuse or another. That’s why they ended. Why they petered out. Because they were tired of my lack of enthusiasm about taking the next step, and it was easier for me to cut and run.”
He broke eye contact, gazing over the lake now.
Gus would have been surprised if those conversations hadn’t taken place. “And why do you think you weren’t able to take the next step?” she asked, examining the tense set of his profile.
She felt pretty damn tense herself. The answer to this was important not just to her and to Marshall but to them. To their chances of being a couple.
“Two reasons, I think.”
“Wow. You have been thinking,” she said, trying to lighten things a little.
His lips curved upward and he turned his head in her direction again. “Jeremy suggested that losing both our parents and being rejected by the one person in the world who could have offered us love and peace and security has left me on a quest for belonging that I’m emotionally incapable of trusting anyway.”
A wave of nausea hit Gus at the thought of what Marshall and Jeremy had been through. “That seems about right?” she said, tentatively.
“Yeah.” He looked at the lake. “He always was a smart-ass.”
Gus laughed. So did Marshall. But his words still hung in the air, raw and ugly, and she hated that his trauma had been compounded by someone who should have been his safe haven. She put her hand on his sleeve and he glanced at her.
“It’s not your fault, you know that, right? Your grandfather. It’s not your mother’s fault, either. It’s all on him. You grandfather was an awful human being. He did wrong by your mom and dad and then by you and Jeremy. And you can give away all his money, knock down the cabin, and rip out every tree on this island. Hell, you can turn it into a day care center or a goddamn McDonald’s, but no amount of destruction therapy is going to make him see you, make him love you even if he was alive to do so. He was a bastard. Some things you just have to accept.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Seems like I’m surrounded by smart-asses.”
Gus smiled, and they grinned at each other for long moments. She looped her arm through his and leaned into him a little, his body warm against hers. “What’s the second reason?”
“I didn’t love them.”
Gus tipped to the side a little. It would be tempting to believe him, but he’d done some hard yards. There was no point going easy on him now. “I think you did. You said you did.”
He shrugged. “Eventually, I did. Or something close to it, anyway.” His gaze raked over the distant mainland. “Fondness and friendship and companionship deepened into what I thought was love, and marriage always seemed like the next thing to do. But I wasn’t in a hurry to tie the knot because everything was fine the way it was, right?”
“Right.” Except clearly not.
“Which is why I know you’re different. What we have is different.”
He turned his head, lancing her to the spot with a blaze of sincerity in his gaze. “I’ve known you for three months and I haven’t been able to think about anything but you. And yes I fucked it up by asking you to marry me, but that’s how I know this is real, because I’ve been in three long-term relationships in my life, all resulting in engagements, and I never really wanted to marry any of them. But you—”
Marshall shook his head and slid a hand onto her face, cupping her jaw. It was warm on her cold skin.
“You come along and bam. I’m instantly knocked out.” His thumb brushed her cheekbone. “Trust me, when you think you’ve been in love three times and then someone comes along that you actually do fall in love with, the difference is vast and patently fucking obvious.”
He twisted around so he was facing her, reaching for her hands that were sitting in her lap and intertwining their fingers. Gus’s breath hitched, her blood flowing thick and hot through her veins.
“I am in love with you, Augusta. And yes, I want to marry you as soon as possible, partly so I can prove to you that you’re not some kind of fourth-time lucky go-around for me, but mostly because I don’t want to live another moment of my life without you permanently and irrevocably in it. I want us bound together by law, by contract”—he smiled—“a proper one this time, and I want to have babies with you and make your parents grandparents, which they’ll love, and my brother an uncle, which he’ll pretend to hate but really won’t. I want the world to know that you are mine and I am yours. I want to declare it to everyone.”
Goose bumps speckled Gus’s skin as a lump the size of Colorado stuck in her throat. The man knew how to be convincing. “I…I…” She was too choked up to even speak.
“If you’re searching for the right words, can I suggest ‘I love you too, Marshall,’ as a good choice right now?”
“Oh yes.” Gus leaned forward and kissed him, her cold hands coming up around his neck, pressing into him as much as their seated positions allowed, her pulse tripping. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said, against his mouth. “I love you, Marshall, and I want to marry you and have your babies.”
He kissed her, hoisting her toward him, pulling her across his lap, her legs sliding to either side of his, straddling him as he palmed her ass and dragged her closer, bringing the heat and hardness between his legs in direct contact with the heat and slickness between hers. Gus moaned at the intimacy of their position, the midseam of her jeans riding the midseam of his.
She’d probably have a thousand splinters in the knees of her jeans by the time she stood up, and it’d be worth every single one.
When they finally came up for air, Gus’s head was spinning. But she wasn’t that far gone to ignore the logistics of their relationship. “I don’t even know how this is going to work,” she said, her breathing heavy. “We live in two different states.”
He nuzzled his lips into her hair. “Like I said before, it’s just geography. We’ll work it out. We’ll go back and forth, we’ll fly a lot, we’ll meet halfway a lot. I’ll move or you’ll move… We’ll do whatever we have to, okay?”
Gus nodded. He was right. It wasn’t like they lived on either side of the planet from each other, and they’d figure it out. “But let’s not rush into the wedding, okay?”
“Hell no.” He shook his head. “I’m done with not rushing in. I want to go into Doak right now and get it done. I need you to know this isn’t like the past, that I’m not interested in running the clock down on us.”
God, he was so sweet, this man she loved. “I know. I do.” She smiled at him and dropped a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “But we should spend some time together as a couple first, really get to know each other.”
“Ah.” A teasing glimmer lit the indigo depths of his eyes. “You want to be courted, Augusta?”
She sucked in a breath. Man…the way he said Augusta—like he was stripping her naked—drove her wild. How he could infuse such an old-fashioned name with such wanton eroticism she had no idea.
“Maybe,” she said, a smile tugging on her mouth.
“Fine.” He sighed dramatically. “I’ll court you. But if you haven’t made an honest man of me in a year, I’m kidnapping you and taking you to Vegas.”
Gus grinned down at the man who had turned her world so completely upside down. Who had not only healed her heart but set it ablaze with the kind of oh-yes-him love she’d never known. “I love you, Marshall Dyson.”
“I love you, too, Augusta North.” He kissed her nose and her eyes and her cheeks before pressing his lips to her forehead and saying, “Now, how about we save our asses from any more splinters and take this to the cabin?”
She kissed him quickly, untangling herself and scrambling to her feet. “I’ll race you.”
He pushed to his feet, too. “Doctors advise not to run with an erection.”
Reaching for the hem of her Henley, she pulled it over her head and dropped it at his feet. It was chilly, but the popping of his eyes was both funny and gratifying. Her nipples tightened, the red lacy bra no protection from the cool air.
“Suit yourself, but this doctor is going to start without you.” And she took off down the jetty.
His laughter followed her as did the heat of his gaze as she raced away, but when she paused to take off her bra and toss it on the beach, he stopped laughing and ran. Gus squealed and put on a spurt of speed, but there was no way she could outrun him nor did she want to. She let him catch her because she wanted to be caught. Her days of hiding and running from life’s possibilities were over.
She’d found her oh-yes-him guy and she planned on spending the rest of her life kissing him and loving him and giving him babies.
And lots and lots of bunnies.