HE COULDN’T SLEEP. At some point Claire drifted off; her head grew heavy against his shoulder and her breathing grew deep and steady. He envied her ability to slip into unconsciousness. He wished his brain would stop humming enough so he could rest.
It wasn’t churning the way it had been earlier, when he’d taken his three-lap hike around the inn. Instead, it was still and bright, as if someone were beaming a high-intensity flashlight through his skull.
He didn’t want this. He was one of Boston’s top five bachelors, for God’s sake. The new-car smell hadn’t even faded from his Benz-mobile yet.
Now his new car was a mess.
And so was his life.
Sighing, he held Claire closer. Her legs felt sleek against his. He’d been thinking about her legs from the first time he’d met her—her legs, her hair, the whole damned package. And what was inside the package, too—the intelligence, the serenity, the sincerity. The sense of humor. The sympathy that would make a person risk a speeding ticket in order to reach a friend in need, even if that “friend” turned out to be a lying bastard. The passion for old buildings, old neighborhoods, old communities.
The passion she’d just shared with him. Comely…oh man, she was comely.
He held her closer. Her hair snagged in his day-old beard. Her breath whispered against his chest. It felt warm, right.
He didn’t want this. It wasn’t the plan. He was a freaking superstar bachelor, for crying out loud! What was that bull the innkeeper had said? Something about Cupid’s arrow? The hell with Cupid. The only thing he’d been struck with was an air bag.
Claire had been thrust into his life and now his self-image, his future, his whole life—everything was on the line. What was he going to do?
MARK SEEMED distracted to Claire when they arose the next morning. Shadows underlined his eyes and his beard gave him a scruffy, dangerous look. He didn’t talk as he gathered his clothes—the jeans on the floor by his side of the bed, the sweater on the floor by hers, the T-shirt and shorts tangled in the bedsheets. Claire had left her own clothes laid neatly over the back of the easy chair. She scooped them up and shut herself inside the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to deal with his silence.
What they’d done last night was a mistake. Mark obviously knew that as well as she did. She could put his mind at ease by telling him she recognized that their lovemaking had been an anomaly, a onetime occurrence. No promises had been made, no strings attached, no future acknowledged. Surely that would cheer him up.
But she didn’t want to cheer him up. She wasn’t in a particularly cheery mood herself.
For all she knew, his gloomy disposition reflected his concern about his car and had nothing to do with her or last night’s intimacy. Ahead of them lay a long trip home in a tow truck, after which she would return to her routine while he wasted days haggling with insurance companies, getting estimates, filing reports and contemplating whether to sue Ray. His car would ultimately be repaired, but it would never be new again. No wonder he was sulking.
They picked at the jumbo blueberry muffins Betty set before them in the dining room downstairs, sipped the coffee she poured for them and declined the orange juice. Officer Beldon showed up at nine and drove them to the auto shop where Mark’s car had spent the night. In the hazy morning light, it looked wretched, the windshield a ghastly lace of cracks and the hood dented and scratched. Mark winced at the sight.
“Sure, I can fit you both in the cab,” the tow-truck driver said once he and Mark had completed some paperwork. Mark gallantly took the center of the seat, as if to protect Claire from the driver. The man seemed pretty harmless, though, a skinny fellow in his thirties with a few acne scars pocking his cheeks, a wedding band on his left hand and a NASCAR cap perched on his head. The truck’s cab smelled of gasoline and the seat’s upholstery was as stiff as a wooden bench. “Mind if I turn on the radio?” he asked amiably once they were on Route 2, dragging the crippled Mercedes behind them. “Sometimes, when the weather patterns are right, I can pick up WBKX all the way out here. That’s your station, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” Mark grunted.
Claire gazed out the window. None of the scenery they passed looked familiar to her, even though she and Mark had driven this road less than twenty-four hours ago. Then, she’d been a different person: confident that they could become friends, amused that his parents seemed as hung up on their fictional engagement as her mother had been, absorbed by the rustic scenery and exhilarated by the top-down drive in the powerful sports car. Never had she imagined that the day would end as it had, and that she would be feeling so bereft today, so alone.
“That weekend show your station does isn’t so good,” the driver noted, punching buttons on the radio console and picking up only static. “Weekdays, that deejay Rex? He’s great, when the station’s coming in. Rex in the Morning. If it’s just the right amount cloudy, we get pretty good reception in the shop.”
“You think he’s great?” Mark muttered.
“He’s hilarious. Some of his jokes have me laughing so hard I’ve got to stop working for a minute to catch my breath.”
“Some of his jokes are awful,” Mark snapped.
“You think so?”
“Look—I’m sorry.” Mark gave the radio’s knob a sharp twist to turn off the static. “I need to talk to Claire for a minute, and I can’t do it with that crackling noise.”
“Suit yourself,” the driver said with a shrug.
Claire braced herself for whatever Mark had to say. She hoped it wouldn’t have anything to do with last night.
“About last night,” he began.
While she doubted she’d ever see this tow-truck driver again, she didn’t care to discuss her sex life in front of him. Public discussions of her private life were what had caused this entire disastrous situation, even though Rex had invented that private life just to needle her and his boss. “No, Mark. Please,” she said, cutting him off.
“Claire.” Mark pried one of her hands free of her purse, which she was clutching as if it were a life preserver, and folded his hands around her fingers.
She drew in a breath and turned from the vista of trees and hills and ponds blurring past the window to glance at him. No man deserved to look so good with mussed hair and an overnight shadow of beard, she thought. No man deserved to turn her life inside-out the way Mark had, and then run off to be a bachelor.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
Wonderful. Should she contact Boston’s Best and inform them that their esteemed bachelor had a brain?
“I’ve been thinking,” he elaborated, “about where I am in my life, where I thought I was. Where I ought to be. There is always a choice, you know? Not a single answer. But a choice.”
This was a bit too philosophical for her. Maybe she should have drunk a second cup of coffee, but even extra caffeine wouldn’t have put her in the right frame of mind for a discussion on the concept of choice.
“Actually, that’s wrong,” he refuted himself. It occurred to her that he hadn’t really worked out what he was trying to say. He was fumbling, struggling to put into words concepts that were far from clear in his mind. “I thought I had a choice. I guess I do, but it’s not really a choice, because the choice is between clinging to a stupid idea or grabbing hold of something that will make me happy and fulfilled.” He paused. “Does any of this make sense?”
“No,” she said.
The tow-truck driver glanced toward them. “Doesn’t make sense to me, either.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Mark said. “This is between me and Claire.”
The driver shrugged and raised his eyebrows. Mark shifted on the seat to face Claire. “What I’m saying is, marry me.”
“What?” She definitely should have had a second cup of coffee. Maybe a third and a fourth. She might have fantasized about such a moment last night while lying in the warm shelter of Mark’s body, but this was the morning, the sun was burning through the windshield and the tow truck was carrying her back to reality.
“Marry me,” he repeated. “That’s the choice that will make me happy and fulfilled. The bachelor thing won’t. It just won’t.”
“I thought she was your fiancée,” the driver interjected. “Betty told my wife—”
“Stay out of this, would you?” Mark said, silencing him, then turned back to Claire. “You heard him. You’re my fiancée.” He smiled hesitantly. “We’ve already gotten to that point. We may as well go the rest of the distance. What do you say?”
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe he meant every word, however incoherent most of those words were. But he’d been in an accident last night. Maybe he’d struck his head on something at the moment of impact and had suffered a brain injury. Or he could be experiencing post-traumatic stress. “I say you’re crazy,” she answered.
“No, I’m not. Really. Everyone who knows me thinks I’m sane.”
Her heart started pounding, the way it had pounded last night when he’d kissed her, when he’d told her he loved her hair, when he’d done everything he’d done to her. “What about being one of Boston’s top-ranked bachelors?”
“The hell with that. I thought that was what I wanted. But then we got engaged and I just don’t want to be a bachelor anymore. I want to want it, but I don’t. I can’t make myself want what I don’t want.”
Anyone who heard some of his convoluted statements would definitely doubt his sanity. But she was able to decipher his meaning. “Mark.” She drew in another breath, this one tremulous. His hands felt so warm and strong around hers. His voice sounded so positive. “We didn’t get engaged. We never were engaged. It was just a silly joke Rex played on us.”
“I know. I’ll deal with Rex,” Mark promised. “But he’s not important right now. What’s important is that…” He sighed. “I love you.”
“You hardly know me.”
“I know everything I need to know.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed her fingertips with a kiss. “What I know is that the thought of going home and being a bachelor depresses me. I don’t want that. I want you—everything you are, everything you’ll ever be. I want to fall asleep every night with your hair touching me. I want to canoodle with you. Marry me, Mary Claire O’Connor.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She no longer noticed the gasoline smell, the uncomfortable seat, the reflection of the truck’s yellow flashing lights in the side mirror. She loved Mark. She wanted so badly to say yes. “You’d be giving up so much,” she pointed out.
“What? My title as a prime bachelor? Ask me if I care.”
“You’re really serious?”
“He’s serious,” the driver chimed in. “You’re already engaged to him, so you may as well marry him.”
“Thank you,” Mark said, sounding genuinely grateful for the driver’s comment this time. He gazed at Claire. “You heard him. You may as well marry me.”
“I may as well,” Claire said, then laughed through her tears.
Mark arched his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She rested her head on his shoulder. Behind them trailed his battered sports car. Ahead of them lay a future filled with everything Claire could possibly desire. And next to her sat Mark, her fiancé, her wonderful April Fool’s Day gift.