“No. You’re afraid to be happy.”
She stared at him, frozen by the accuracy with which he’d seen behind the smoke screen of solid reasoning.
“Have you really convinced yourself that you don’t deserve anything because you let Justin be taken from you?” he asked, relentlessly pinning her down. “You think you can’t have a husband, another baby, because—what?—you were a bad mother and didn’t hold on to him tight enough?”
Her throat worked as she tried to swallow. She felt as if her lungs had seized, her heart stopped. No one had ever said it was her fault; she’d fought for her baby, had fought nearly to the death. Only a knife in her back had stopped her. And yet, for over ten years, she’d struggled with the bone-deep knowledge that she’d failed to protect her child. “I . . . I shouldn’t have had him at the market,” she said, her voice stifled. “He was just six weeks old. He was too young—”
“You couldn’t have left him by himself. What else were you going to do?”
Her lips trembled. God, how that question had gone around and around in her mind! What else could she have done? There had to be something else, something she hadn’t thought of, hadn’t seen, because she’d let those men take Justin from her.
“Haven’t you bought enough redemption for yourself, with all the other lost kids you’ve found? What will it take for you to forgive yourself?”
Her baby home, safe and sound, and that was never going to be.
Diaz left his post by the door and squatted down in front of her, folding her hands in his. A cold, wet wind tangled her hair, lifted the curls. “Is that why you gave him up? To make yourself pay?”
“No. I gave him up because it was the right thing to do.” She saw him shiver, and realized he’d been outside all this time without even a jacket. Impulsively she opened up the blanket and invited him inside its warmth. He was fast to accept, but when they settled back down, she was somehow sprawled half across his lap, with the blanket tucked over and around them and her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. Their combined body heat quickly chased away the chill.
“It’s okay to live,” he said softly, stroking her face, tracing the lines of it with one finger. “It’s okay to be happy again.”
Just the idea made her feel as if she were balancing on the edge of a cliff, with a stiff wind trying to push her over. “It’s too soon.”
Even admitting that she might one day allow herself to be happy, to get on with life, was like lifting one foot and letting it dangle over the cliff.
“It’s been ten years. You’ve found your son, and you’ve done what was right by him. How is it ‘too soon’?”
“It just is.” Once again, she sought refuge in logic. “By being happy, you mean getting married to you.”
“I can make you happy.”
And she could make him happy, she thought, feeling dizzy at the prospect. He was a complicated, difficult man; if she turned him down, given his solitary nature, he would in all likelihood never marry. She was his one shot at a family, at a halfway normal life.
As if any life with James Diaz could ever be normal.
“How can we get married? What do we know about each other? I don’t even know how old you are.”
“Thirty-three.”
She paused, taken aback and immediately sidetracked from the other salient points she’d been about to make. He seemed older, even though there was no gray in his hair and his face was unlined. “That’s my age. When’s your birthday?”
“August seventh.”
“Oh, my God, I’m older than you! My birthday is April twenty-seventh.”
She was so dismayed that the corners of his mouth kicked up. “I’ve always wanted to sleep with an older woman.”
She thumped him on the chest, which earned her a kiss that was deeper than she’d expected, and longer. When he released her she buried her cold nose against his throat, inhaling the warm scent of him. She wanted to say yes. She loved him, more than she’d thought she would ever love a man again. As difficult as he was, in so many ways they perfectly complemented each other. With her he talked, he joked, he even laughed. Something about her opened him up; something about him pulled her away from the rigid path she’d set for herself.
But she was right about the problems they’d face, and she knew it. Getting married would only compound those problems. “What would you do for a job? If we got married, you couldn’t keep chasing all over Mexico looking for the bad guys, maybe getting killed—” She stopped, because she couldn’t continue with that thread.
“I don’t know what else I could do, but I’ll find something.”
There weren’t many job openings for retired bounty hunters/assassins. She couldn’t see him in any kind of office setting, or doing anything that required him to work with the public. Just what kind of job could he do?
She was thinking about the future, she realized. Things were moving too fast, and she still didn’t have her feet under her, emotionally speaking. “I can’t say yes,” she said. “Not yet. There are too many problems we have to work through.”
He kissed her again, closing his eyes as he hugged her to him. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll ask again next year,” he said, standing up with her in his arms and maneuvering to open the door.
Ten minutes later, as he moved between her opened legs and settled into place, she realized that this was December. Next year was in three weeks.