Casey couldn’t fool herself any longer. She’d wanted to pretend that somehow, Jackson would one day come to love her. But the simple truth was, he didn’t. Wouldn’t. And it wasn’t as if he were incapable of love. He loved Mia, that was obvious to anyone with eyes. So it was only Casey he couldn’t love. And the addition of one more child wasn’t going to change that.
“Casey.”
She stopped, turned and looked at him from across the room.
“Don’t you want the baby?”
“Ofcourse I want this baby,” she said, cupping both hands over her abdomen as if she could prevent the tiny life nestled inside from hearing any of this conversation.
“This is a gift, Jackson. One I’ll always treasure. It just…” she sighed and shook her head “…makes everything that much more complicated than before.”
“No.” He walked to her side, stopped directly in front of her and looked down at her. His eyes were shining, his smile was wide and when he spoke, Casey could hardly believe what he was saying. “This just makes things simpler,” he said.
“I don’t see how.”
He ran his hands up and down her arms until finally sliding them up to cup her face between his palms. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve got the solution to this, Casey. Marry me.”
Eleven
“What?”
He’d surprised her, Jackson thought. Good. Better to keep her a little off balance. Better to force her to go with her instincts than to give her time to consider all options. Of course, when she finallydid consider them, she’d see he was right. This was the absolute best decision for all of them.
“Marry me,” he repeated, astonished at how easy the words fell from his mouth. Hell, he’d had an arrangement to marry Marian and he hadn’t been able to talk himself into making the actual, formal proposal. But saying the words to Casey was different.
Right.
“You’re crazy,” she said, shaking her head and moving back, out of his touch, away from him.
So maybe keeping her off balance wasn’t the best option, he told himself, thinking fast. Maybe he should lay it all out for her. Clearly she was too muddled in her head right now, due to finding out about the coming baby.
Another baby.
Joy filled him. And pride. And a sense of expectation he never would have believed possible. He’d missed so much with Mia, Jackson couldn’t wait to experience everything with this baby. He wanted to be there for all of them. He had to make Casey see that doing things his way made sense.
“It’s perfect, don’t you see?” He grinned and threw both hands high before letting them slap down against his thighs again. “We both love Mia. Now we’ve got a new baby coming. There’s plenty of room in this house as you well know and you and I get along great.”
She shook her head, staring at him as if he were speaking Greek. So he talked faster.
“You and I, Casey, we’ve got something good going. We can build a family here, with neither one of us being a weekend parent.” He took a step closer and felt hope notch a little higher inside him when she didn’t step back.
“You’ve got all the new work for the King family and we’ll add on to your office here at the house. Do it up however you want it. We can do this, Casey. We’ve got chemistry together, you have to admit that. We work well together, we both love our daughter, what could be better?”
She lifted one hand to her mouth, shook her head and looked at him as if he were out of his mind entirely. Why the hell wasn’t this making sense to her? It was all perfectly logical. Reasonable.
“Love could be better, Jackson,” she finally said on a tired sigh. “You were going to marry Marian—”
“Don’t start on that again—”
“But you didn’t think of marrying me until you found out I was pregnant. You don’t want a wife, Jackson. Not really. You want company in bed and you want to be a father.”
He frowned at her. This was not going the way he’d expected it to. “Even if you were right,” he countered, “how does that make me any different than you? You said yourself you wanted to be a mother, that’s why you didn’t wait for a perfect relationship. You went to the sperm bank and got the child you wanted. Well, Ihave the child I want, right here. And now you tell me I’m going to have another one. So why wouldn’t I want to be their father?”
“You’re right,” she said, but he didn’t feel any better. “I wanted to be a mother. But the difference between us is, I didn’t marry someone I didn’t love to do it. Jackson, don’t you see? The fact that you love Mia—that you will love this baby—isn’t enough to base a marriage between us on.”
“Why the hell not?” It sounded great to him. A readymade family. Two people who liked each other, enjoyed each other.
“Look, you were all set for a marriage merger—”
“Will you leave her out of this? I told you, Marian doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“Neither do I,” she countered quickly. “This is just another convenient move for you. Before, you were going to use your marriage to expand your airline. With me, you’ll expand your family. It’s just another merger.”
“With a hell of a lot better chance for survival,” he told her.
“No, no it wouldn’t work.”
“Give me one good reason why not.” He stared at her, completely lost as to her reaction. He’d been so sure she’d see that this was the right thing to do. So positive that he’d made the right move. That a marriage between them would solve all of their problems.
“Because I love you, Jackson.” She gave him a sad smile. “I didn’t mean to, and believe me when I say I wish I didn’t, it would make things much easier.”
He wasn’t an idiot. He’d known that she had feelings for him. He hadn’t really thought about her being in love with him, but since she was, why couldn’t she see that it made evenmore sense for her to marry him?
“Now I’m really confused,” he admitted with an under-the-breath curse. “If you love me, you should behappy with this solution.”
“Happy to marry a man who loves my kid, but not me?” She shook her head. “Happy to live a lie? Happy to deny myself the hope of being loved in return? No, Jackson. Your idea doesn’t sound like a bargain to me.”