A Convenient Proposal

'Quinn, I don't understand?'

'You don't understand!' He tried to smile but it was beyond him. 'How do you think I feel? I'd got it all worked out before I met you. No more trusting anyone, no more loving, no more pain.' His voice was raw and as she looked into his face she was appalled. He was revealing the real Quinn behind the mask, and this man had suffered the torments of hell. It was there in the dark eyes, in the white lines around his mouth and the grating quality to his voice.

'Quinn, don't. If it's too painful, then don't,' she said with frantic urgency.

'I sat with him, Candy. For six long hours I sat with him and willed him to live.'

'Oh, Quinn.' She knew he was talking about his son, but she had thought the child had died in the car. That was what Quinn had led her to believe, more by what he hadn't said than what he had said, she told herself silently.

'Laura was dead when the rescue team reached the car, but through some quirk, an air pocket or something, they think Joe had a few extra minutes before the water reached him. But it wasn't enough.' He closed his eyes briefly and then, as she reached for his hands and moved close to him, he opened them and said, 'He looked so small and so beautiful in that hospital cot, in spite of all the tubes and wires. I couldn't believe he wasn't going to sit up and grin at me. He was warm and breathing, his eyelashes flickering now and again and his hair curled over his forehead…'

The tears were washing down his face now and she didn't try to stop them; she merely gathered him into her arms and held him so tightly they shared the same heartbeat They were alone in the room but Candy wouldn't have cared if a hundred, a thousand people were watching. He had held in this pain too long—three years too long.

'Men aren't supposed to cry.' He raised his head, wiping his face with the back of his hand as he took control of himself.

'Hogwash!' Her voice was very firm. 'This western world has a lot to answer for, if you ask me. In almost every other culture it's perfectly acceptable—expected, even.'

'He was my son, flesh of my flesh; I would gladly have died for him, and yet I couldn't save him. I should never have left him alone with her.'

'Quinn, it wasn't your fault.' She gripped his fingers as hard as she could as she tilted his face to hers with her other hand. 'He wasn't alone, he had the nanny, and you had done everything you could. Sometimes, despite everything we do, the worst happens. You've just said what really counts; you would have died for him without a moment's thought.'

He couldn't accept it yet, she could read it in his eyes, but she would make him believe it, Candy told herself fiercely. She had seen him with the animals under his care and he was the most compassionate man she had ever known.

She pressed her lips to his, letting her mouth say what she needed him to hear, and then she was strained to him as he kissed her, long and hard. 'I love you, Mrs Ellington. I don't deserve you, but I love you.'

'Quinn—' she leaned back a little, looking deep into his hard, handsome face '—you don't have to say that.'

>

'I've loved you almost since the moment I met you, but I didn't realise it until Christmas Eve, when I saw you laughing with my mother in the kitchen,' he said softly. 'You were so open and warm with her, so generous. But it scared me to death, the thought of becoming vulnerable again, and so I lied to myself and you.'

'But all that about marrying as friends…'

'I lied.' He looked at her ruefully, one dark eyebrow quirking. 'It was sending me crazy, the thought that some other guy might muscle in, and so I lied to myself and I lied to you. Can you still say you love a man like me? A liar? A coward?'

'Quinn, don't look at me like that. I can't think straight when you look at me like that,' Candy murmured helplessly as her love for him rose up in such an overwhelming flood that she didn't know what to do with herself.

'I love you, Candy, you have to believe me.' The handsome face was deadly serious now. 'When you stood there and told me you loved me…I can't find the words to describe what it did to me. But the letting go, the trusting… I was still trying to fool myself I could have it all, but my way, the safe way. And then you said, when I asked you what had happened, that I had happened. And I knew it was the same for me. You had happened to me, and all the lying and fooling myself in the world wouldn't make any difference.'

'Oh, Quinn.' Her eyes were crystal-bright, her face radiant.

'You're the light of my life, sweetheart. My reason for living. I know now I have never been in love before, not until I met you. Everything before was just a cheap imitation of the real thing, but…'

'What?'

'It scares me to death, this loving thing. When I lost Joe it was like my guts had been ripped out, and now there's you…'

'Quinn, I can't guarantee what the future will hold,' Candy said softly, 'but I can guarantee I'll never stop loving you. Xavier and Essie have the real thing, and as bad as this with Rose Candice is I know they will be there for each other and come through it, whatever happens. We will be like that. I promise you.'

'You do?'

His voice was trying to be light but his eyes, those windows to the soul, were desperate and impassioned, and it was to the unspoken need Candy answered as she said, her voice a soft whisper that throbbed with love, 'With all my heart, my darling. With all my heart.'

EPILOGUE

The operation was a complete success, and by the time Rose Candice's baby sister arrived, three years later, Candy and Quinn had their own child, a little boy.

He couldn't replace Joe, and he wasn't expected to; Carl William was an original, like all babies, and his proud parents loved him for himself.