“What is it?” What was hers was his. If he wanted it. Nothing she had was doing her any good alone.
“Your heart.”
Was he kidding? “You’ve already got that. And here I thought they said you were a genius.”
Pulling over to the side of the road, Mark kept his hands on the wheel as he looked at her.
“I don’t just want you to love me, Addy, I want all of you. I want you to trust me enough to take a leap.”
“Can I keep my fountain?”
“Of course.”
“And your trust? Do I have that?” Without it, they didn’t have a chance.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I just have to get used to the lawyer thing,” he said, his expression completely serious. “But I’m working on it.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to marry me.”
She wanted that, too. Without a doubt, which surprised the heck out of her. “Soon.”
He was on a four-year nonrefundable scholarship. He was asking her to live with him in Shelter Valley. And if she was going to give him her trust, this was the leap she had to make.
“Okay. On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You let me take the money I made on this last job—and it was a lot—and use it as a down payment on a nice house with everything handicap-accessible, including the bathrooms. All Nonnie wants is her independence and I want her to have it.”
She was asking him to trust her. To accept that no matter where he was born, or how early he quit school, or what job he did, or how much education he had, he had nothing to prove to her. To accept that she loved him for who he was inside, not for what he could or could not provide.
Because as far as she was concerned, he already provided it all.
He provided everything that mattered most.
He hadn’t answered her. Both hands were clenching the steering wheel so tightly she could see the whites of his knuckles.
“Mark?”
When he turned his head, she saw the struggle in those expressive blue eyes and her heart skipped a beat. But she couldn’t take back her condition. They were who they were. Both of them. Either they were okay with that, or they weren’t.
“I’m a genius.”
She was going to lose him. He could help her get past her own fears and misperceptions, but he couldn’t get past his own.
“I know,” she said.
“I’d have to be an idiot to pass up the lifetime of heaven you’re offering me.”
Dared she hope?
“Nonnie didn’t raise an idiot.”