He caught her hand in his, chest tightening. Now, a little voice inside him urged. Do it now. Before you lose your nerve.
“Then let’s make it permanent,” he urged gruffly, unable to be diplomatic when so much was at stake with her answer. “Marry me, Angelique.”
She gasped, her hand going limp with shock, “Marry—?”
His fingers tightened convulsively around hers. She couldn’t have looked more stunned if he’d reached across the table and slapped her, he thought grimly. “We belong together. Not just for an affair or an office romance. For always. I need you in my life. I care a great deal for you. Say you’ll marry me.”
Her throat worked with her swallow. Her voice was hoarse. “Rhys, I wasn’t expecting this. You’ll have to give me more time.”
“How long?” he asked evenly, his eyes never leaving hers.
She shifted restlessly in her chair, though he refused to release her hand. “I don’t know! I can’t give you a time and a date.”
“I want an answer, Angelique. And I’m not long on patience.”
She gave a wry grimace. “Believe me, I’m aware of that.”
He brought her hand to his cheek, his voice husky in reaction to that fleeting moment of intimate humor. “Marry me.”
Her eyes squeezed closed for a moment, then opened to expose tears in their violet depths. “Rhys, please. It means a lot to me that you’ve—”
He glared at her, irritation surging through him. “Don’t you dare give me the song and dance about being flattered that I asked and this is such an honor,” he warned.
She sighed, annoyance showing briefly in her face. “Let me finish. And, dammit, it is an honor, whether you want to hear it or not. You think I don’t know what a marriage proposal means to you? How could you expect me to treat it so lightly that I could answer without even giving it any thought?”
“I guess I was kind of hoping you’d already given it some thought,” he admitted somewhat sheepishly. Had he been an idiot to assume that marriage had crossed her mind simply because it had his own? Had she never even considered making their relationship permanent? If not, he thought, mouth tightening stubbornly, then it was time she did.
Her cheeks darkened. “I suppose the thought has… occurred to me a time or two,” she confessed softly.
His voice gentled as he relaxed in momentary relief. So she was as involved as he. “And was it distasteful to you?” he asked, trying not to sound as vulnerable as he felt with the question.
“No. Not distasteful. But… frightening.”
He frowned. “I frighten you?”
“The thought of taking a step that drastic frightens me,” she corrected him. With a sharp tug, she pulled her hand from his and laced it with her other, tightly enough that the knuckles went white. “Try to understand, Rhys.”
“I will—if you’ll tell me what frightens you.”
She seemed to make an effort to organize her thoughts. “Last year my entire world turned upside down. I lost everything I had, my grandmother, my respect for my father, nearly all my possessions. It left me lost and scared and wondering who I was and what I was worth as a person. So I came here, and I built a new life for myself. I took a job for which I had no training and I managed to do well in it.”
“Damned well.”
She smiled weakly at his interjection, then continued. “Then you and I started seeing each other and I...I fell in love with you. But,” she added hastily, when he leaned forward eagerly and started to speak, “I’m not at all sure that I’m ready to change the way things are now. I’m happy now, content. I’m afraid to risk losing everything again by acting unwisely, without taking the time to make sure what we—both of us, Rhys—understand exactly what we’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing. You’re the one who’s scared.” He swept his hand in a half circle around him. “You’ve made yourself a safe little hideaway here. Oh, you come out occasionally, until things get a little too uncomfortable, until it looks as though you’ll have to start taking a few risks again. And then you rush back here to hide with your cat and your things. I haven’t asked you to give up anything, Angelique. You can keep this house, you can keep everything in it. Your job won’t be affected, I won’t ask you to stop seeing the friends you’ve made in the past few months. I’ll even accept the cat as part of the package.”
He leaned forward, urgency making him tense and somewhat rough. “You say you love me, but you’re afraid to trust me, to trust what we’ve found together. Until you do, we don’t have a prayer of making this thing work.”
“I need some time, Rhys,” she almost pleaded. “Please don’t give me ultimatums.”
He snorted. “Ultimatums?” he repeated, unable to keep a hint of bitterness from his voice. “You mean like marry me or it’s over?”
She nodded apprehensively.
Rhys shook his head. “No. Even if I thought it would work, I wouldn’t use that one. It would be a bluff, anyway. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let you go now that I’ve found you. Even if I have to keep storming this fortress of yours until you finally admit that you don’t stand a chance against me.”
Her smile was tentative, tremulous. “I think I’m already aware of that.”