“I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice.
The words lay there between them. He wasn’t apologizing for last night—she couldn’t imagine that—but for Justin. She doubted he’d ever apologized to anyone before in his life, but there was a simple grace to the offering that told her it was sincere.
“I know you meant to protect him,” she said, and wondered why she was making his argument for him.
“I didn’t know what you planned to do. It never occurred to me.”
“You could have asked.”
Except he wasn’t a man who easily trusted, who opened himself up and let people get close to him. How could he have predicted how she would react? His own mother had virtually abandoned him, dragging him back into her life whenever it was convenient to her. What he knew of mothers came from his own experience, and though intellectually he knew, had seen, that most mothers truly loved their children, he’d had no personal connection with that kind of love.
Until she’d handed those legal papers over to the Winborns, she hadn’t been certain herself that she could actually go through with it, and her soul had wept. If she hadn’t been certain, how could she expect him to have intuitively known that she would never harm Justin in any way?
But she was still unable to let it go. She said, “One night while we were in bed you could have asked me. ‘Milla, what will you do if you find Justin? How can you take him away from the only family he’s ever known?’ Then you’d have known what I felt, what I’d already realized.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “It never occurred to me,” he repeated. “I—when you turned over those papers, I felt like I’d been shot. I wanted to get down on my knees and kiss your feet, but I figured you’d probably kick me.”
“No ‘probably’ to it. I would have.”
He nodded and turned back to once more watch the ocean. “I didn’t love you.” His tone was low and almost absent, as if he were musing over the words. “Or I don’t think I did. Not at first. But when you kicked me out, I felt”—he paused, and frowned as he considered his own feelings—“cut in half.”
“I know,” she said, remembering her own sense of loss.
“Looking back, I know when it happened. When I tilted over.” He rocked his hand, demonstrating the slight degree between loving and not loving. “In Idaho. I dragged you out of the river and you rolled over on your back and started laughing. Right then.”
And he’d done something about it right then, too. Until then the attraction had been building between them—she’d been half-crazy with wanting him—but neither of them had acted on it. Until that moment, with the sun beating down on them and the relief of being alive sweeping through them, when he’d looked at her and said—
She chuckled. “Some declaration of love that was. Offering your left nut.”
“That wasn’t a declaration of love; that was a declaration of intent. This is a declaration of love.” He had his head tilted in that quizzical way she loved, and for a man who found communication difficult, he wasn’t doing badly at all.
Silence fell between them as they both digested what had been said. She felt him waiting to hear her say that she forgave him, that she loved him, too, but though she was certain of the one she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to do the other. The hurt and anger were still there, but no longer on boil. The most she’d be able to do, she thought, was put it behind her and say, okay, we go on from this point. If one wanted to argue the quality of forgiveness, perhaps that was forgiveness, just the willingness to go on. But this was Diaz, not your average blue-collar Joe, or even your white-collar Joe. With Diaz, where did they go on to?
She couldn’t see a future with him, but neither could she see one without him.
“You might as well say it,” he murmured, still looking out at the ocean. He hadn’t looked at her once since telling her he loved her. “I know you do.”
“Love you? Yes.” She sighed and sipped her coffee. It had gone cold and she grimaced, setting the cup aside. “I do love you.”
“Enough to marry me and have my kids?”
Her breath left her and she felt herself tilt sideways before she caught her balance. “What?” she asked, her voice reedy with shock.
“Marriage. Will you marry me?”
“How could that possibly work out between us?”
“I love you. You love me. It’s a natural progression.”
She raked her hand through her hair, more upset than she’d thought possible at a marriage proposal from him. It was unexpected, and tantalizingly sweet, but the enormity of the problems facing them if they got married was almost too much to comprehend. And part of her was terrified. He’d mentioned not just marriage, but children, too. How could she?
“Getting married wouldn’t be smart,” she said.
He turned and watched her with those dark, grave eyes, studying her, waiting for her to continue.
“Between us, we have enough emotional baggage to fill an airliner. I probably need to be in therapy.” She gave a cracked laugh. “And you’re an assassin. What kind of job security is that? I don’t even know what I want to do, if I should keep on with Finders or go into teaching the way I’d always planned. Part of me wants to quit, but how can I? I’m good at what I do. I’m just so tired and—”
“Afraid,” he said.
“Of the future? You bet.”