She would have thought she would be praying for a positive. But suddenly she wondered if that was really what she wanted, after all. Looking surreptitiously through her lashes at Geoff, she wondered if saying hello to a child would mean saying goodbye to the love of her life.
Not that Geoff would be thrilled to hear himself described that way, of course.
“Why, yes,” she said, attempting a smile of her own. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure.”
She felt her eyes widen. Was he choosing this moment to tell her he’d changed his mind about having a child with her? If so, he had really lousy timing. “Um—”
“Do you want to know why I’m not sure?”
She swallowed. “Yes.” Maybe.
He leaned against the hallway wall, his arms crossed over his chest. And now she thought she could finally read something in his expression. It looked a lot like the nervousnes
s she felt. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about us during the past five days. About what we’ve been trying to do.”
“And?”
“And…I realized that I’ve changed my mind. Only I’m afraid it’s too late now to change the terms of our agreement.”
“You’ve changed your mind,” she repeated flatly. “Well, that’s fine. If the test is positive, we can just go back to the agreement I originally suggested. I’ll raise the baby alone, and you can go back to the life you had before.”
He shook his head impatiently. “That’s the problem. I don’t want to go back to the life I had before.”
He moved suddenly, his hands gripping her forearms in a firm hold that was still somehow gentle. “You know how I told you that I always thought of marriage as a cage? That a wife would be just another responsibility I didn’t want to deal with?”
“I—” She had to clear her throat as a wave of jumbled emotions swept through her. “I remember.”
“During the past few days it has occurred to me that maybe I’ve been looking at it all wrong. Maybe it’s possible for a wife to be a partner. A friend. A lifelong lover. Someone to share my burdens, not add to them. And someone for whom I could do the same.”
Her heart was pounding so hard in her throat that she had trouble speaking. “That’s…one way of looking at it, I guess.”
His voice was suddenly husky. “What if I tell you that I don’t want the test to be positive if it means saying goodbye to what we’ve found together over the past three weeks?”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, reading the sincerity in his eyes. “What if I were to say I feel the same way?”
His fingers tightened on her shoulders just enough to pull her a bit closer to him. “What if I tell you that I want to marry you—whatever the results of that test?”
She placed her hands on his chest, exerting just enough pressure to hold them apart. “That would depend on why you’re asking. Because if it’s only for the child’s sake or out of some overdeveloped sense of Bingham responsibility or if you’ve decided that you should make your grandmother happy and get married—”
“What if I tell you it’s because I love you with all my heart and soul, and I want to make a real family with you?”
After a brief, taut pause, she whispered, “That might make a difference.”
He lifted one hand to cup her flushed cheek. “I’ve been aware for some time that there was something missing in my life. A hole I tried to fill with business successes and occasional minor rebellions—like the motorcycle. And then I saw you at that reception. I know now that leaving you would tear a hole in my life that no amount of work or financial success would fill.”
“Are you sure, Geoff? Because we haven’t really known each other very long. And you were so positive that you didn’t want this.”
“I was an idiot. And a coward. And it doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other. We’ve hardly done anything the usual way so far, have we?”
She couldn’t help but smile at that. “No. I suppose we haven’t.”
“You haven’t answered me, Cecilia. Will you marry me?”
Nerves gripped her again. “We’re so different.”
“Don’t start with the age thing again,” he groaned. “How many times do I have to tell you that doesn’t matter to me?”