Chapter Three

      Rosie knew her jaw fell and her mouth opened. But for the life of her, she couldn’t make any words come out. There hadn’t been many times in her twenty-six years when she was speechless. Off the top of her head, she could remember two. The day the pregnancy test told her she was going to be a mother. And the time she had gone to Steve’s apartment unannounced. She’d been eighteen and certain she’d seen a look in his eyes that had convinced her he was attracted to her. He’d answered the door shirtless, followed by a beautiful blonde wearing nothing but said shirt.

      On the one-to-ten shock meter, the proposal from Steve hovered close to twenty. She was completely and utterly stunned. Was he really and truly on the level?

      “Say something,” Steve prompted.

      She took a deep breath and released it. “At the risk of offending the cliché police, all I can think of is—this is so sudden.”

      “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of that going around.”

      “You silver-tongued devil. You could turn a girl’s head with flattery like that.”

      “Quit joking, Ro.”

      “Why? You are.”

      “No, I’m not.”

      “Yes, you are. And it’s a good one.” She pointed at him and laughed with an edge of hysteria to the sound that even she heard. Those dam hormones were acting up again. “I almost believe you.”

      “Believe it.”

      “How can I? This is me. And you’re you.”

      “And your point is?”

      “One of two things. Either you’re trying to cheer me up because you feel bad about what you did.”

      “That’s only half true. I will never feel bad about getting Wayne the Weasel out of your life.”

      She winced at the derogatory nickname.

      “What’s my second choice?” he asked.

      “Payback. This is your ‘gotcha’ moment. This is revenge. This is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. As soon as I run to kick the ball, you’ll pull it away and let me fall on my backside, or in this case, my face, point and say ‘gotcha!’”

      He stood, walked over to the phone and picked it up. “Concierge, please.”

      Puzzled, Rosie walked over to him, standing at his elbow while he waited with the receiver to his ear. “What are you doing?”

      “I’m going to find out about getting a justice of the peace.”

      “Now?”

      Challenging blue eyes, intense and hard as steel, locked with her own. “Right here, right now.”

      Rosie pressed the button to disconnect him. “You’ve made your point.”

      “So why did you stop me?”

      “Like I said before, this is so sudden.” She looked up at him and her stomach got that fluttery feeling she always got with Steve. “I don’t remember responding to your proposal, in the affirmative or any other way.”

      “Okay. Now that I have your attention. Will you marry me?”

      “No.”

      His eyebrows shot up. “That’s it? Just no?”

      “Thank you, no?”

      “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

      She did know. He was being very sweet. He deserved an explanation. Unfortunately she didn’t have one. Partly because this was happening way too fast.

      “I’m not sure what part of no you don’t understand. It’s a one-syllable negative response. Fairly easy to comprehend.”

      He folded his arms across his chest and fixed her with a narrow-eyed stare. “I get it. This is my payback for not saying no to your mother, isn’t it?”

      “That would be childish. I can’t believe you think I’m that immature.”

      “There’s no way to predict how a woman will respond under the best of circumstances. But after a fiasco like today—”

      She sighed. “It’s very sweet of you to offer to do this for me. I appreciate it a lot.”

      “But you don’t believe I’m sincere?”

      She wasn’t sure what she believed. A state of shock wasn’t the best place to make a decision about putting oneself in a state of matrimony. “This is something I have to handle by myself.”

      “It’s about your independence, right?” He looked out the windows for a moment. “You’ve proven that you’re a grown-up. No one questions that. Part of being your own person is knowing when to ask for help, how to know when you can’t do it alone. This is one of those times. You need a husband. I can be one.”

      “True. By definition you can be a husband. But have you really thought this through? Let’s forget for a moment what I want or need. This is completely not fair to you.”

      “Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy. I know my own mind.”

      “Okay, big boy. What are we talking here? Lifetime commitment? Open-ended arrangement? Specific time frame? What?”

      He paced to the sofa and stopped to look out the windows as he rubbed the back of his neck. “How about this?” he said, turning back. “We stay together until the baby is born. Then we figure out where we go from there.”

      “Renegotiate in six months?” She thought about that. It felt so cold and wrong to consider marriage in the same breath as negotiation, which, as far as she was concerned, was a euphemism for splitsville. The Big D. Divorce. Maybe she was too much of a romantic, but she couldn’t