Gift of Fire

awake. Her lashes fluttered and then rose lazily, revealing the beautiful depths of her aquamarine eyes.
    “What is it?” she asked, yawning. She stretched languidly, her breasts gently undulating. “Something wrong?”
    “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just decided we’re going to get married,” he announced. “As soon as we get back to Sequence Springs.”
    Verity, caught in midyawn, stared at him for a good thirty seconds. Then her mouth closed with a snap. “
Married.
Why?”
    Her dumbfounded expression wasn’t quite what he had expected. Jonas narrowed his eyes.
“
Why?
”
    She nodded. “Why?”
    “For all the obvious reasons,” he exploded. “We’re living together, and you’re pregnant. How many more reasons do you need to get married?”
    Verity sat up and reached for her robe. “It just now occurred to you that maybe we ought to get married?” she asked politely as she secured the robe.
    “I was lying here thinking about the baby and the future, and how you grew up without a permanent home. I realized you’d probably be a lot more happy about the baby if you had a sense of security. So I’m going to marry you.” Jonas realized he was sounding a bit pompous, perhaps even a touch patriarchal. He couldn’t help it. He had expected her to leap at the idea of marriage. The fact that she wasn’t absolutely thrilled left him floundering.
    “Well, that’s very nice of you to offer to marry me, Jonas, but I really don’t think it’s necessary, thank you very much.”
    Jonas’s mind went blank for a moment. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. When his brain kicked into gear again a few seconds later, it was all he could do to keep from yelling so loud that every guest on the floor would hear.
    “What the hell do you mean, you-don’t-think-it’s-necessary-thank-you-very-much?” he ground out between clenched teeth. “We have to get married.”
    She drew her knees up under the sheet and wrapped her arms around them tightly. Her hair was in wild disarray, and the expression on her face was more set and stubborn than Jonas had ever seen it.
    “I don’t see that anything has changed much, Jonas. If we didn’t have to get married last week, we don’t have to get married this week.”
    “You’re pregnant!”
    “So?”
    His mind raced, searching for the correct approach. “You want this kid to be born a bastard?”
    “There are no bastards in the state of California. By law every child is legitimate. Your name can go on the birth certificate.”
    “Thank you very much. Jesus.” He quickly abandoned that tactic and tried another. “I thought you’d want marriage. I thought you’d be happier married, more secure. I thought you’d appreciate the sense of stability. Verity, this is ridiculous. You know you’d be happier married now that you’re going to have a baby.”
    “I don’t want to be married simply because I’m pregnant.”
    Jonas’s mouth fell open as he dimly began to perceive the source of the trouble. “Oh, Christ,” he said. “Don’t tell me...”
    “If you had really wanted to marry me you could have asked me anytime during the past few months. You never said a word.”
    “Now, Verity…”
    “I wonder when Caitlin is going to call.” Verity glanced at the phone, then at her watch. “It’s only ten. She’s a night person. She’s probably still going through those old files.”
    “Verity, shut up and listen to me, dammit. You’ve got this all wrong,” Jonas said harshly. “The only reason I didn’t ask you to marry me before now was because…because…”
For Christ
’
s sake, think, you fool.
But how could he explain that he had just never thought about the matter until now? Everything had been so comfortable. He had been content. “There was no need. No rush, I mean. Everything was going along fine, we were getting to know each other. Establishing a relationship. Yeah, that’s what we were doing—establishing a relationship.”
    “A relationship, Jonas?”
    Jonas wished he’d read some of those pop psychology books about male-female relationships that were always being churned out. Trouble was, women were the only ones who read that sort of thing. Therefore, only women knew the right words and euphemisms; only women had a good command of the vocabulary needed to talk oneself out of a mess like this. A man was left stranded and helpless.
    “I would have gotten around to marrying you eventually. The baby just speeds things up a little,