Carolina Moon

voice. Tears swam into her eyes, burned there. “You can’t—” Fumbling for words, she backed away. “I’m sorry.”
    “You should be, for thinking that.” He didn’t fuss with her tears but narrowed his own eyes. Calculated. “I told you I loved you. Do you think I can just switch that off because you’re a lot of work? I brought you here to show you I finish what I start, that what belongs to me gets everything I’ve got. You belong to me.” He gripped her arms, brought her up to her toes. “I’m getting tired of waiting for you to figure that out. I care for what’s mine, Tory, but I expect something back. I told you I love you. Give me something back.”
    “I’m afraid of what I feel for you. Can you understand?”
    “I might, if you tell me what you feel for me.”
    “Too much.” She shut her eyes. “So much I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I don’t want to need you.”
    “And of course it’s easy for everyone else to need. For me to need you.” He gave her a little shake that had her eyes snapping open. “I love you, Victoria, and it’s given me some very bad moments.” He pressed his lips to her brow. “I wouldn’t change it even if I could.”
    “I want to be calm about it.” She laid her cheek against his chest, smiling a little when he pulled the sunglasses free and tossed them on the ground. “I just want to be normal about it.”
    “Why would you think it’s normal to be calm about love? I don’t feel calm.” He stroked a hand down her hair. “Do you love me, Tory?”
    She tightened her grip, anchoring herself. “Yes. I think—”
    “Just yes.” He tugged her hair until her face lifted. “Let’s leave it at yes,” he murmured, and covered her mouth with his. “Say it a few times so we both get used to it. Do you love me?”
    “Yes.” She let out a shaky breath, wrapped her arms around his neck.
    “Better already. Do you love me, Tory?”
    This time she laughed. “Yes.”
    “Nearly perfect.” He rubbed his lips over hers, felt hers soften. “Will you marry me, Tory?”
    “Yes.” Her eyes fluttered open, she jerked back. “What?”
    “I’ll take the first response.” He swung her off her feet, kept her mouth busy with his until she was breathless and dizzy.
    “No. Put me down. Let me think.”
    “Sorry, I’m afraid you leaped before you looked. Now you have to live with it.”
    “You know very well that was a trick.”
    “A maneuver,” he corrected, as he carried her back toward the car. “And a damn good one, if I do say so myself.”
    “Cade, marriage is nothing to joke about, and it’s something I haven’t begun to think of.”
    “You’ll have to think fast then. If you want a big wedding we can wait till fall, after harvest.” He dropped her into the car. “But if you’d like small and intimate, my preference, next weekend suits me.”
    “Stop it. Just stop. I haven’t agreed to marriage.”
    “Yes, you did.” He hopped in beside her. “You can backtrack, bluster, circle around, but the fact is, I love you. You love me. Marriage is where we’re heading. That’s the kind of people we are, Tory. I want a life with you. I want a family with you.”
    “Family.” The thought of it ran cold in her blood. “Don’t you see that’s why … Oh God, Cade.”
    He took her face in his hands. “Our family, Tory. The one we’ll make together will be ours.”
    “You know nothing’s that simple.”
    “There’s nothing simple about it. Right doesn’t always mean simple.”
    “This isn’t the time, Cade. There’s too much happening around us.”
    “That’s why it’s the perfect time.”
    “We’ll talk rationally about this,” she told him when he drove down the dirt road. “When my head’s not spinning.”
    “Fine, we’ll talk all you want.” When the work road split, he took the left fork. Instantly, Tory shot up in the seat, her stomach pitching.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Beaux Reves. There’s something I need to get.”
    “I’m not going there. I can’t go there.”
    “Of course you can.” He laid a hand on hers. “It’s a house, Tory. Just a house. And it’s mine.”
    Her chest hurt, and her palms went damp. “I’m not ready. And your mother won’t like it. It’s your mother’s home, Cade.”
    “It’s my home,” he corrected coolly. “And it’ll be our home. My mother will have to deal with that.”
    And so, he thought, would Tory.

26
    I t was, Tory thought, the most