That hurt Rose deeply.
There was no appeal from that. It wasn’t a matter of reason, something she could argue against. It just was. She knew that if her being his wife broke up his family, it would always stand between them.
Still she wanted him to come to bed. She’d be content to just hold him as she had done that night in Austin. She didn’t think she’d ever been so happy as when they’d lain side by side, their arms around each other, her husband wrapped in sleep.
And in her love.
Why had she sent him away? He needed her. He desired her. She could have used that to help bind him to her.
But she didn’t want to hold his affections through the bed any more than she wanted to do it through her cooking. She wanted him to love her, not her accomplishments. It didn’t matter that George seemed to think of her accomplishments as part of her. She knew there was a difference.
She had been foolish to think her only problem was to convince him he wanted children. That might prove easier than convincing him she was more important to him than his family. Or at least as important. And she now knew she wouldn’t be happy until she had achieved exactly that.
Chapter Sixteen
Closing the door on Rose was like a physical pain. He could almost feel the skewering of the enormous pressure of his physical need which had been building in him since his marriage. It took a few moments to restore his equilibrium.
He was almost annoyed by the enormity of his physical response to Rose. He had so many questions that needed answering, but his mind could only focus on the one question about which there was no doubt: his desire for Rose.
It was torture to be around her and not be able to touch her, to kiss her, to claim her as he had in his dreams time and time again.
But he couldn’t. If he didn’t mean to be a proper husband to her, he should leave her untouched. Only George didn’t know if he could.
But rather than tease his mind and body with what he couldn’t have, George tried to turn his mind to his family. They had trapped him between two forces. Jeff’s anger he had expected. The importance of keeping the family together had surprised him.
He hadn’t known how much he cared until Jeff stormed out the door. Rose was right about that. He would do anything for his brothers. He would have come home without Jeff’s encouragement. He might have waited longer, he might even have enlisted at some army outpost first, but he would have come home. They were his responsibility. He wouldn’t run from it any longer.
He guessed he’d gotten that much from his mother.
He wanted to get to know his brothers. He needed time to begin to understand them, to help them know each other better, to help them want to become a tightly knit family, to seek out and nourish the hidden parts of them their parents’ legacy had left arid, infertile.
He worried about Tyler. Nobody seemed able to reach the boy. It was up to George to find a way to break through Tyler’s isolation and draw him back into the comradeship of the family.
Now his marriage had given him another person to try to understand, to weave into this network of threadbare souls.
George asked himself if his changed attitude toward his family had anything to do with his marrying Rose. Maybe he hadn’t been just reacting to Peaches’s slander. If he hadn’t been aware of how he felt about his family, why couldn’t he have misunderstood his feelings for Rose?
He wasn’t talking about liking her, or finding her attractive, or even wanting to make love to her. He was talking about wanting to marry her because he couldn’t imagine his life without her. What would he do if it came to a choice between keeping the family together or sending her away?
That question scared him to death.
Up until this minute he’d have been sure he would sacrifice Rose. Yet now when the possibility was staring him in the face, he didn’t know what he would do.
His feelings went much deeper than he had suspected.
Stupid of him. He’d been so busy trying not to think about wanting to touch Rose, kiss her, make love to her, he had lost sight of all the little steps which led up to love. Pleasure in her company, the excitement of seeing her first thing in the morning, of her comforting presence at the end of the day; to wonder if she was happy, what she was like before they met, if she had ever loved anyone else.
He didn’t know if what he felt was fascination, lust, or a deep-felt longing that would never go away.
But he knew he couldn’t think about her without feeling that delicious contentment. There was something about her that he needed. And it had nothing to do with the physical needs of his body. He was surprised to find he resented not being able to make love to her tonight, that he was tempted to say to hell with her cycle. Yet, that wasn’t what made the difference.