Then after a moment, Connor closed the distance between them, pulling her into his chest. “I’m sorry I had to break my promise to you. But I meant what I said about taking care of you. I won’t stand by while someone hurts you.”
“I could have handled it.” She’d been doing it her whole life.
“Why should you?”
“Gail deserved to have her wedding day.” And more than that, because he’d agreed to let her!
“Yes, but so did you.” Connor caught her face in his hands, tipping it back so she was looking up at him. “Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.”
Everything he said sounded so right. Tempted her to trust. To leap. But the void she was looking out over was simply too great to ignore.
Searching his eyes, she asked the question that was the crux of her fears and reluctance. “What if you change your mind?”
“That’s the point, Megan. I won’t.
“Commitment—” he rubbed the bridge of his nose as he let out a thoughtful sigh “—it’s very important to me. I’m not looking to fill some temporary position, Megan. I want a wife who will stand by me for the duration.” Only, then something in his expression shifted. His eyes went distant for a beat before snapping back to hers. Sharper. More intense. “Maybe if you had more time...”
“You mean date?” she asked, knowing she wouldn’t go along with it. No more waiting around to see whether something panned out. No more false hopes and years of indecision—
“No,” he said with a hard shake of his head, confirming they were in agreement on the no dating. Connor leaned into her space, putting his face before hers so the sincerity in his eyes was front and center. “Understand this, Megan. You’re my wife and I want to keep it that way. But I realize everything hasn’t fallen into place for you the way it did last night and I’m asking for a big leap. Still, I’m confident, with a little time, it will. So I propose a trial period. Give me three months. If you don’t think we suit, I give you a divorce and you return to the life you had planned. In the meantime, we start as we mean to go on. You live with me...as my wife.”
Her throat felt dry, her heart pounding too fast.
It was crazy. What he was suggesting... “You’d introduce me to your friends and business associates? What if I wasn’t happy and wanted to leave?”
“You go. Megan, I’m asking you to give our marriage a shot, not to lock yourself in some prison you can’t get out of. Granted, I don’t believe you’d leave without giving us a chance. Not once you’d made a commitment—one you remember making, that is. Besides, you’re not going to want to leave.”
He made it sound so simple. She’d been so tempted, time and again throughout the day—but the doubts. They simply weighed too much.
“I’ve finally found a way to be happy, Connor. I know you think because love isn’t a factor that this arrangement you’re suggesting comes without risk, but it doesn’t. Not for me. I can’t put my faith in someone else again. And that’s what you’re asking me to do. It—it hurts too much to be let down. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t think the reward would be worth the risk?”
“I don’t know. And maybe that in itself should tell us both something,” she whispered.
“Yeah, it does. It tells me instead of waiting, hoping you’d remember or come around, expecting you to see the big picture when I hadn’t given you all of the pieces, I should have done this.”
And before she could blink, he’d pulled her into a kiss.
Megan was flush to his body. Her hands trapped between them, where they’d come up in a stunted defense that stopped before it really began—stopped at the strange familiarity of this intimacy she couldn’t quite remember—stopped at the foreign heat inexplicably swirling like a whirlpool through her center, pulling deeper, concentrating with every back-and-forth pass of his mouth over hers.