“Is sex all you want?” she asked, tension invading her as she waited for his answer.
“Hell, no!” he said explosively. “Honey, tell me what you need. I can do something about it if you’ll tell me, but don’t leave me in the dark like this. What can I do to convince you of how I feel about you?”
She drew back in the hospital bed, giving him an incredulous look. “Convince me? Dane, you’ve never told me to begin with! I don’t have any idea how you feel!”
It was his turn to stare incredulously. “What the hell do you mean, you don’t have any idea how I feel?”
She rolled her eyes beseechingly toward the heavens. “Lord help me, the man’s as thick as a tree. How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me? I’ve told you time and again that I can’t read you! Say it in plain English, Dane. Do you love me? That’s what I need to know.”
“Of course I love you!” he roared, his temper flashing.
“Then say so!”
“I love you, damn it!” He surged to his feet and stood over her bed, hands on hips. “What about you? Are we in this together, or am I soloing?”
She thought of punching him, but decided not to put that much strain on her stitches. She contented herself with saying, “No, you aren’t soloing.”
“Then say it!”
“I love you, damn it!” She said it just as belligerently as he had.
His chest heaved with the force of his breathing as they faced each other down in silence. Finally the tension eased out of his coiled muscles. “That’s settled, then.” He sat down again.
“What’s settled?” she challenged.
“That I love you and you love me.”
“So what do we do? Call a truce?”
He shook his head and picked up her hand again. “What we do is get married.” He pressed a kiss to her fingertips.
“We aren’t going to wait six months, either, like some people I know. It’ll probably be this weekend. No longer than a week.”
Marlie’s breath caught, and a luminous smile broke over her face like sunrise. “I’m sure we can manage it by this weekend,” she said.
He wanted to fold her in his arms, but he was too afraid of hurting her. He looked at her, and was amazed at how calm she was. She had been stalked by a killer, had emptied a pistol into him, and she seemed so … peaceful. Not even getting engaged had shaken that serenity.
He began shaking, as he had several times that night. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, for the fifteenth time, his expression telling her where his thoughts had gone. “God, baby, I messed up bad. I never intended for you to be in danger. I don’t know how he found you.”
Her blue eyes were even more bottomless than usual.
“Maybe it was meant. Maybe it was my fault that he found me. I should have gone to a safe house. Maybe, at the end, he could sense me the way I could sense him. Maybe I was the only one who had a chance against him, because I could tell where he was, what he was doing. There are too many maybes; we’ll never know for certain. But I’m okay, Dane, in every way.”
“I love you. When I thought he had you—” His voice cracked. Suddenly he couldn’t stand it. With exquisite care he gathered her up in his arms and lifted her from the bed, then sat down and cradled her on his lap, his face buried in her hair.
“I know. I love you too.” She didn’t protest that the action jarred her shoulder, or that he was holding her too tightly for comfort. She needed that contact, the security and warmth of his embrace. She nestled against him.
“Dane?”
“Hmmm?”
“There is one thing.”
He raised his head. “What?”
“Are you certain you want to marry me?”
“Damn right I am. What brought this on?”
“I know how uncomfortable it makes you that I am what I am. And I can’t marry you without telling you everything. I’ve pretty much recovered all my abilities. In fact, I’m better at it than I was before, because now I can control it.”
He didn’t hesitate. The only way to have Marlie was to take her as she was, psychic abilities and all. “But you can’t read me at all, right?”
“Nope. You’re the most thickheaded man I’ve ever seen. It’s such a relief.”
He grinned, and brushed a kiss across her temple. “It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. I’m going to marry you, no matter what.”
“But I can check up on you,” she admitted. “If you have a bad day, you won’t be able to hide it from me, the way cops usually do with their wives. There won’t be any tucking it away in a corner of your mind, because I’ll already know what happened.”
“I can live with that.” Easily, he realized. At this point he could probably live with her even if she were a card-carrying swami and rode a magic carpet. “If you can handle being a cop’s wife, I can be a psychic’s husband. What the hell; how rough can it be?”
Epilogue
DANE ROLLED OUT OF BED, LOOKED AT MARLIE, TURNED green, and dashed for the bathroom. She propped herself up on her elbow, considering the situation with mild disbelief. “I’m the one who’s pregnant,” she called. “Why are you having morning sickness?”
He came out of the bathroom several minutes later, still rather pale. “One of us has to,” he said. He groaned and collapsed on the bed. “I don’t think I can make it in to work today.”
She nudged him with her foot. “Sure you can. Just eat some dry toast and you’ll feel better. You know Trammell will tease you if you don’t show up.”