It's Never too Late

Unless he’d confronted Nonnie already, and his grandmother had told him that Addy knew about the sale.

It could appear that she’d chosen to be loyal to Nonnie over Mark....

Feeling like a kid in the principal’s office, but with the need deeply ingrained to have all the facts before speaking, she asked, “What did Ella say, Mark?”

“I...” She was looking at him and he turned back to her. “I have a question to ask you first, if I may.”

The evening air was balmy. She was sweating. “Of course.”

“In your opinion, if you told someone something that you meant at the time, are you beholden to the promise in the future?”

She frowned, but also welcomed the reprieve from her self-castigation. “Is this a rhetorical question?”

“For now.”

It was a testimony to the state of her weakness for this man that she was so eager to accept the conversation at face value. “I think that depends on what you told and to whom. I mean, there’s no way we can be accountable to everything we’ve ever said to everyone we’ve ever known. People change. Situations change. But if, say, you told someone in the past that you’d pay them back a loan, then yes, in my opinion, in the future you are beholden to that promise.”

“I asked Ella to marry me.”

“Tonight?”

“No.”

“You mean the time you already told me about? Before you moved to Shelter Valley?”

“Yes.”

“She turned you down.”

“She wants to take that back.”

“She wants to marry you?” No! She’d given Mark up. She couldn’t just waltz back in and lay claim to him. He was Addy’s now.

Oh, God.

“Yes.” An unequivocal yes.

“Do you want to marry her?”

That was what this was about? Mark was getting back with his ex and felt badly for what he was doing to Addy? This wasn’t about something she’d done?

“No.”

Oh. Well, then... “You can’t possibly think that you’re beholden to a question asked in another place, in another time, Mark.”

Maybe, technically, she shouldn’t be the one discussing this with him. She had a definite conflict of interest.

“She turned you down. That ended the extent of the offer.” In every legal aspect. But Mark was a man of honor, which was why Addy was so drawn to him.

“I told her that I’d be back.”

“Back to Bierly. Did you promise to hold the offer of marriage open? Or say that you wouldn’t see anyone else?”

“No.”

Addy’s shoulders relaxed while her lower body warmed in an entirely good way. “And you’re sure you don’t want to marry her?”

He looked her straight in the eye.