CARLIE STARED DOWN at the bustling street below. Cars, trucks and cabs jammed the intersection. Pedestrians, heads bent against the sleet, umbrellas vying for space, scurried along the sidewalk and spilled between parked vehicles. The noise of the city never quit. Horns blared, people yelled, engines thrummed, twenty stories below.
New York. So far removed from Gold Creek.
“Okay, that’s it!” Constance said as she hung up the phone. A tiny woman with a big voice, she snapped the file on her desk shut with manicured hands and swiveled her chair to face Carlie. “The photographer is happy with the shots—well, as happy as Dino ever is—and it looks like the Cosmos campaign is rolling.”
“Good,” Carlie said, forcing some enthusiasm into her voice.
“So—can I start shopping you around again?”
Carlie had anticipated the question. Constance had been after her for years to resume her career. “I don’t think so.”
“For God’s sake, why not? You’re through with your soul-searching in Alaska, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“About time.” Constance leaned back in her desk chair until the leather creaked. “So you’re going back to that little town in California.”
“I have to. Even if it’s just to tie up a few loose ends….” she said, thinking of her father. Thinking of the studio in Coleville. Thinking of Ben.
“There’s a man out there, isn’t there?” Constance shook her head from side to side and didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s always a man.”
“I just think it’s time to stop wandering all over the planet.”
“Sure you do, honey, sure you do.”
The intercom buzzed and Constance picked up the phone. After a one-sided conversation, she set the receiver in the cradle and cast Carlie an I-told-you-so look. “That man who doesn’t exist?” she said picking up the conversation as if they’d never been interrupted. “He’s outside in the reception area, making a big scene, scaring poor Nina half out of her mind.”
Ben? Ben was here? In New York City?
“You’d better go on out there because as angry as he is, he’s still interesting. Nina mentioned something about signing him up as a male model.”
“I wouldn’t suggest it,” Carlie said, grabbing her purse and throwing her coat over her arm. She hurried out the door and had started down the short corridor to the reception area, when she saw Ben, arguing with the petite strawberry-blond receptionist as he turned the corner.
Her heart caught at the sight of him.
Ben hesitated when he saw her, then continued down the hallway and took hold of her arm. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Wait a minute—”
“Now, Carlie.”
She stopped dead in her tracks. “You can’t push me around, Ben. Haven’t you learned that yet? I don’t know why you’re here or what you want, but you can’t come barging into my place of business, or my house for that matter, and start ordering me around like I’m some damned private in the army!”
By this time Nina and two leggy models sitting in the reception area were staring at them. The models had dropped their magazines and Nina was ignoring the phone that jangled incessantly.
Even Constance was watching from her office doorway.
“I just thought we could use some privacy.”
“Why?”
His gaze slid to the other women in the room, then landed with full force on Carlie’s face. “Because, damn it, I was going to ask you to marry me.”
The women behind her gasped and even the phone stopped ringing for a few heart-stopping seconds. “What?”
“You heard me. Now, let’s go.”
“You…you want to get married?”
“Yeah. Right now, if we can.”
“Oh, Ben, we can’t—”
“Carlie, I’m sorry. For everything. I was wrong.”
“But—”
“And I want to marry you.”
By this time the phone had started up again but all eyes were still trained on her. She felt embarrassment wash up her neck. “But just last week—”
“I was a fool.” He stared straight into her eyes. “A lot has happened since last week and the upshot is that I know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life without you.”
“Are you out of your mind? I don’t think—”
“Don’t think,” he whispered, grabbing her suddenly, his lips crashing down on hers, his arms surrounding her. He smelled of brandy and rain and musk and he held her as if he’d never let go. His kiss was filled with the same bone-melting passion that always existed between them, and when he finally let her go, she could barely breathe.
“Go on. Get out of here,” Constance said from somewhere down the hall. “This man means business. And the rest of you, back to work.”
Carlie hardly remembered the elevator ride down to the lobby of the office building. Somehow, with Ben’s hand clamped on her elbow, he guided her outside and they braved the icy sleet and wind. Two blocks and around a corner, he held open the door to a crowded bar. They found a small table near the back and Ben ordered Irish coffees for them both.
“Okay,” Carlie said, her heart still pumping, her ears still ringing with his proposal. “Start over. Why’d you come here?”
“For you.”
“The last I heard you never wanted to see me again.”
“I sorted some things out.”
“Maybe you should sort them out for me,” she said, trying to stay calm. She couldn’t marry Ben. His temper was too mercurial, his mood swings too violent. True, she loved him, but that didn’t mean she could live with him. Or did it?
“I was upset the last time I saw you,” Ben admitted. “Tracy had told me about the baby—”
“Tracy?” Carlie whispered, aghast.
The waiter brought their drinks and disappeared.
“Seems she saw you at the Coleville Women’s Clinic once and figured out about the baby.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Look, Ben, I know I should have told you but there never seemed to be the right time.”
“It’s all right.” He grabbed her hand and held it between his. “I, um, have done a lot of soul-searching the last week. I talked to Nadine and we found all Kevin’s old letters up in a trunk she’d stored in the attic. I read them again, made a little more sense out of the past and realized that Kevin did kill himself over a woman, but the woman wasn’t you. It was Tracy.”
“You know this?”
“I had it out with her,” he admitted, his face creasing into a frown. “She admitted that when she found out she was pregnant, he’d wanted her to get an abortion. She’d refused and pressured him to marry her. Also, he was having trouble at the mill, more trouble than we knew about. He was probably going to be fired or laid off. All that, along with the fact that he wasn’t completely over you and I was seeing you, pushed him over the edge. He did kill himself, Carlie, but it wasn’t our fault.”
“But what about Randy?” she asked, her throat closing.
“Randy will always be a part of my life. I told Tracy the same thing. If the kid needs me, I’ll be there. Even when he doesn’t think he needs me, I’ll be in his face. The one thing that Tracy was right about was that the kid needs a father figure.” He sipped his coffee. “And I’m going to be it.”
Her heart swelled in her chest.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t want kids—our kids. I do. Three of them.”
“Three?”
“Well, four. That way two won’t gang up on one.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” she whispered.
“Nope. Just a couple of ideas. I think we should figure it out together.”
“You’re serious about us getting married?” she said, still unbelieving.
With a half smile, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a tiny box.
“What—?”
He handed her the box and she opened it. A single clear diamond winked up at her. “I’d like to say that I bought this eleven years ago and kept it all the time, ’cause I’d planned to go out and buy you a ring the night Kevin… Well, anyway, I didn’t get around to it.”
Her hands were shaking so he slipped the ring out of the velvet liner and slid it over her finger. “Will you marry me?” he asked and her throat was so full, she could barely answer.
“Of course I’ll marry you, Ben. I’ve been waiting to hear you ask me for as long as I can remember….”