“Yeah. Well . . . Caro,” he began. “Guess this is as good a time as any for us to talk. I have to say something to you. Before I lose my nerve.”
Her belly clenched. “Go ahead.” Here it comes, she thought miserably. It’s not you, it’s me. I’ll always be a loner. What happened between us was just one of those things. Which would he pick? And did it matter? Male rationales were more alike than not.
“I saw the look on your face, after my fight with Mark,” he said. “It looked like you were scared of me.”
Apprehension gripped her. “I was in shock. That was all.”
“You had reason to be,” he said. “Because this shit is scary.”
“Noah . . .” She cut herself off. Didn’t want to relive any of it.
“Just listen.” He lifted his head, and stared into her eyes. “You know, you could have your life back. Your old life. As Caro Bishop.”
“I suppose I could, thanks to you. So? What’s your point?”
Noah sighed. “This isn’t easy to say. I did a lot of chest beating the other night. How you’re mine, mine, mine. But now that we’re here, I can’t ask you to stay. It was different before. My mods protected you from Mark before. But that’s all over. And everything that I am just puts you in more danger. Again.”
She lifted her chin. “Are you done yet?”
“You’d never have a normal life with me,” he persisted. “There will always be life-or-death secrets to keep. You have a chance to walk away. Have a real life.”
“I tried that, Noah. Somehow I never got the hang of it. Maybe I’m not cut out for normal, whatever that means.”
“Caro.” He sighed raggedly. “I love you. But I can’t keep you safe. No matter how much I want to. Walk away. Send one of the guys back for me. Go to the car. I won’t try to stop you.”
She stroked his cheek. “No,” she said simply.
“Why not?” His eyes blazed with fiercely controlled emotion.
“Because it’s too late,” she said. “You’ve changed me. I can’t go back to being who I was before you came along. Maybe we are too different . . . but I’ve never wanted anything the way I want you.”
“You sure about that?”
She thumped the solid tree they sat on. “Yes.”
“What if you change your mind?”
She shook her head. “About you? Never.”
He grinned. His big, wide grin that didn’t fade away. “OK, then. We’re on.”
She was too rattled and exhausted to decode that. “What the hell are you talking about now?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I wanted to do this before all hell broke loose. Just in case we didn’t make it. But here we are.”
“Do what?”
“We belong together, Caro.”
She couldn’t quite believe he’d said the words. “And that means . . .”
“I have to improvise. Can’t kneel right now, though. Sorry.” Noah peeled off a strip of birch bark and took her hand, curling the speckled white shred of papery bark around her finger. “Caro,” he said. “My goddess. My warrior woman. Mistress of my bedchamber. Keeper of my heart and soul. Please, marry me. Eventually, or as soon as we get back to Seattle. I don’t care. Just so long as you say yes.”
She gulped. Dumbstruck.
His beautiful amber eyes searched hers.
The smile started in the depths of her being and radiated out from there.
“Yes.” The single word held so much she couldn’t say. “I love you.”
“And I love you, Caro,” he whispered. “I love you.”
*
He held her for the longest time. It still seemed too short.
They kissed with desperate tenderness. Talked too, rushing the words, then falling silent. Then kissed again. He was too injured to make love, though it pained him most of all to admit it.
Only when fat raindrops began pattering down in earnest did they come to their senses and start moving.
They headed ever deeper into the lush, tangled woods hand in hand, slipping and sliding on wet leaves and mud and pine needles as the rain beat down on them.
Laughing and crying. Heading home.
THE END