She leaned against him once more. It would be easier to tell him if she didn’t have to look him in the eye.
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the morning you walked into the restaurant. You made me feel like a real person, not just someone who took orders and served food.”
A slight increase in the pressure of his arms encouraged her to go on.
“I know I came here with unfounded expectations. I knew that from the first. I told myself to do my job and keep my feelings to myself. But I couldn’t. It’s impossible for anybody to be around your brothers and feel nothing. It’s like living in the center of a whirlwind. But it was a whirlwind that never went out of control, because you stood at the center.
“You kept a loose rein on Monty. You kept watch over Zac. You never forgot Jeff suffered more than you. You even understood Hen and Tyler. And you never forgot that even though he was absent, Madison was still part of the family. You put aside your own career for your family. Not by even the slightest word or action did you lead anyone to think you might resent it. You are kindness and thoughtfulness personified, and you don’t even know it.”
She looked up at him, expecting a frown. The look of tenderness, of wanting, nearly caused her tongue to lie still in her mouth.
In that look, she found the courage to tell him the one thing she’d sworn he’d never know.
“You always protected me. Even when I made you mad, you were fair. You leavened your orders with humor and caring. You were quite simply the most wonderful man I’d ever met. And I fell in love with you.”
George reacted as if he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod.
“You fell in love with me?”
Rose would have broken away if she could, but George held her in an iron embrace. How could he be so sensitive to his brothers and be so unaware of her feelings toward him? If she needed any proof he didn’t love her, she had it now.
“Is that so hard to imagine? You’re handsome, kind, and wonderfully reassuring to be around.”
George put his hand under her chin and raised her head until their eyes met. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She felt herself relax. She never could stay angry at him, not even when he deserved it.
“Why should I? I have lain in that miserable loft for weeks dreaming of being held in your arms, of being kissed, of being told you loved me. And all you could say was you didn’t see how it would cause any harm since you liked me a lot.”
George wasn’t listening. He was kissing her face, planting dozens of kisses on her eyelids, nose, and mouth.
“You said you thought we could enjoy each other without making any sort of commitment. You couldn’t have been more cruel if you’d tried.”
Somehow Rose’s arms found their way around George’s neck.
“You are too much like my father. Even though you seemed to be everything I was looking for, I tried not to fall in love with you.”
George’s kisses became more insistent, and her sentences started coming in fragments.
“Only I made one…mistake. This wonderful man had no room in his…heart to love anyone but his…family. He had closed the door…sealed himself off from the rest of the world. This…wonderful man was afraid of a…little thing like…falling in love.”
George paused. “What if this man could fall in love without wanting to get married or have a family? What if he wanted more than anything else to make a woman know how much he loved her?”
Rose felt some of the fire go out of her limbs. Her fingers unclasped and her arms slowly slid from around George’s neck. She put her hands on his chest and pushed until she could look straight into his eyes.
“That man would be confusing love with desire. Desire has all the heat of love with none of its warmth. It has a need to consume without any need to build. It considers the moment everything and the future an unpleasant afterthought. Desire flames high and burns out quickly. Love strives to build a nourishing warmth which will last through the years.”
“You don’t believe that that man could love you?”
“He could, but he won’t let himself.”
“Then you won’t stay?”
“I can’t.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I thought southern Georgia was a Godless country, but this place sure has it beat.”
They had traveled for hours—along narrow paths deep in the brush, across several clearings, through dozens of shallow creeks—without seeing a house or any other sign of human habitation. George drove the wagon. Rose sat next to him. Salty rode alongside. All morning he had entertained them with a steady stream of genial chatter.