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Chapter Nineteen

Blake's eyes narrowed in disbelief. "Say that again."

"I can't marry you."

There was a pause. "Would you mind telling me why? It isn't because you don't love me, I know that."

It was an arrogant declaration, but at least it was honest. "You're so confident that I love you?" Josephine questioned quietly.

He wondered if she was blind to the way that she looked at him sometimes when she thought she wasn't being observed. Like the sun had suddenly come out. "But you do, don't you?"

What point was there in denying it anymore?

"Yes. Very much."

"So why won't you marry me?"

Josephine let out a long, low sigh. "Because it would be too easy."

"Marriage is supposed to be easy," he said gently. "Not difficult."

"Yes, but don't you see, Blake—I've already had one failed marriage. I don't want to rush into another—like a woman crossing a stream and leaping from one emotional rock to the next. This has all been like a roller coaster—"

"What has?"

"The closure with Luke. The relief. The closeness with you—but what if it's all an illusion? What if six months down the line we find it's all played out?"

He shook his head. "It won't be."

"But how can you know that?" she demanded, her voice rising, knowing that she was heaping pain on herself by not giving in to what she wanted more than anything in the world, but knowing, deep down, that she needed the courage to see it through. "You thought that you wanted to marry Kim—you were with her for years, and yet in the end you acknowledged that it wasn't right."

"Because I feel differently about you than the way I felt about Kim," he said simply. "With Kim I just felt that I was playing a part—a part I wanted to play, it's true. But none of it felt real, the way it does with you. You're everything I thought I didn't want—you're stubborn and fiery. You make me want to make love to you in the most unsuitable of places."

She blushed, remembering them working late last night, and the protracted pleasure of the ride in the lift.

"You make me respond," he continued passionately. "And I don't just mean sexually, I mean emotionally, too. You engage me at a level I didn't think I had in me. I broke every rule in the book the night I took you home from that party. Don't you understand, Josephine, that we belong together—in a way that Kim and I never did."

"Oh, darling," she whispered.

"I must have been mad not to have admitted it to myself sooner. I risked losing you—hell, I did lose you! I'm just thanking God that your marriage failed and that I had the chance to try again."

It was hard to reconcile Blake—her passionate but contained Blake—coming out with such unequivocal declarations of need and love. She wanted to get on the mobile phone and to demand that Luke give her the quickest divorce in history so that she could become Mrs. Josephine Devlin at the first opportunity.

But she owed it to him to apply the brakes just a little.

Hell, she owed it to herself.

She reached for his hand and kissed the tip of each finger in turn, and she thought that she could read a certain sense of victory in the ice-blue eyes. But his words surprised her even more than his wry smile.

"You aren't going to give in on this, are you, sweetheart?"

"How can you tell?"

"I just can." Like he seemed to be able to tell most things about her, and his knowledge of her grew day by day. He sighed, knowing that she was right and respecting her for it, even as it irritated him that she would not bend to his will.

But wasn't that one of the reasons why he loved her?