He wasn’t ready to lose her. But as much as he loved being here with her, he wasn’t sure he wanted her in Phoenix, too. Wasn’t sure he could trust himself to risk the life he’d built there.
He was forty-six years old. Reaching goals he’d spent his entire life seeking. Forty-six, not twenty-six. He didn’t have a lifetime stretching ahead to make something of himself.
Those years were streaming behind him. A path to where he was now. To what he might have to give up.
But that’s not going to be enough, is it? Her words finally reached him.
“What does that mean? It’s not enough?”
“We can be in love all we want, but love can’t change the facts. When we’re here, alone, you don’t have to worry about other men looking at me. About me talking with other men. And I don’t have to worry about how I appear to the people who matter in your life. Love isn’t going to make you look any less like those fifty-year-old guys who drive convertibles with the tops down in forty-degree weather when you’re with me. You’d lose credibility.”
Duane didn’t want to hear her.
“No one said it’s going to be easy,” he told her, “or that there wouldn’t be problems.”
He waited for her to help him out—mostly because he had no idea what to do here. She sat watching him, apparently waiting for more.
He wanted—needed—to give her more. But his mind seemed to be frozen. He’d come to propose. He had unresolved issues with proposing.
He cared about her a great deal.
“I know us being together won’t be easy.” He had to say something. They were both waiting on him. “But I can’t walk away from you, Soph. That’s it for me. My bottom line. I can’t walk away.”
Seconds passed. And then some more. God, he wished she’d say something. Anything. Give him some clue to what she was thinking behind that half frown and those tear-glazed eyes. But he made himself wait.
Made himself give her time.
Maybe the struggle wasn’t worth it to her. She was young. Had her whole life ahead of her. Didn’t need to settle for all the problems being with him brought her. Didn’t—
“I…guess I’m not ready to walk away, either,” she said.
Duane tried to tamp down the relief flooding through him. She was letting him off the hook. Again. But he had to be smart here. Responsible. Make sound decisions. “You don’t seem too happy about that.”
Sophie’s shrug said so much. He only wished he could decipher what.
They were at a standstill. Staring at each other. Waiting for something to happen.
Duane dropped to one knee.
“Sophie Curtis, will you marry me?” The words came out exactly as he’d said them every other time he’d asked.
But he’d never had a ring in his pocket.
“Duane, get up.” Sophie tugged on his hand. “You don’t have to do this.”
But their world was quickly crumbling. He had to do something.
“You’re twenty-eight, Soph. You’re going to be wanting kids. And if I don’t start having them soon, I’m going to be too old to play with them. Or even make it to their graduation.”
“You’re forty-six,” she said. “You’ve got a good forty years left in you. At least. I hardly think we have to worry about wheeling your chair to any graduation.”
She was splitting hairs. And so was he.
But he couldn’t stop the wheels from turning.
“Besides,” she continued, while he tried to catch up with the situation, “I’m not ready to have kids yet. Not until I’m at the point where I can consult on shows, but not have to be on-site and produce them. For now, I travel way too much.”
“So stop. Matt’s the production manager at Montford, but there are other universities in the state. Or what about the Orpheum? Or Symphony Hall? Or Gammage? What about Herberger or the Celebrity Theater? Or even Cricket Pavilion? Instead of working for everyone, you could work full-time for one theater. Run your own show at home.”
“It sounds as though you’ve considered my possibilities.” The little smile tilting her lips snagged his heart.
“Of course I have.” Duane leaned forward, grabbing both of her hands, that smile driving him in spite of his need to put on the brake. “I mean this, Sophie. I think we should get married.” He paused. “If you want your future to be with me.”
She was young and beautiful. What in the hell was he doing, thinking she’d want to tie herself to him permanently?
He’d lost his mind.
“Of course I want my future with you,” she said, though she didn’t sound any more sure than he felt. “You wouldn’t have a key to my home, or have ever been invited back after that night we met, if I didn’t want you in my life. Before you, I hadn’t dated in almost five years, Duane. That was my choice. Not because I didn’t want to marry and have a family, but because I wasn’t going to screw up again. I knew that when I met the man I wanted for keeps, I’d know it.”
His heart pounding, Duane still felt something settle within him. Something good.
Until he started thinking again. “And did you know it? When we first met?”
“No.”
He tried not to let the disappointment crush him.
“I knew it the morning after, when I woke up with you and didn’t hate myself for being in bed with you. Being with you felt so right.”
No wonder he hadn’t wanted to get out of bed that morning. And why something about her had been calling him back ever since.
“Then it’s time to get married.”
“If it were time to get married, you wouldn’t be having such a hard time getting through this.”
Oh, he loved this woman. Loved how well she knew him.
And was scared as hell by it, too.
“I’m having a hard time because I know how important it is that we do this. I know how much is resting on it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’ve agreed to run for state office. You’re right. People are going to be watching me. Judging me. Looking for smut. I don’t care so much for myself, but I care for you. If we don’t get married, we’d have to quit seeing each other, because it’s unlikely we’d be blessed with a miracle and be able to keep our liaison secret. You’d be found out and called my whore.”
“Your midlife crisis.”
“Right.”
“Which would hurt your chances of getting elected.”
“Yes.” And that bothered him.
“But maybe we aren’t ready for scrutiny yet.” Sophie paused, frowning. “Or maybe there’s more that needs to happen in our individual lives before we can settle into being a generational couple.”
Could she mean she had more seeds to sow?
A vision he’d been blocking for the past couple of hours haunted Duane, sending shards of dread through him all over again.
A simple brown bag on her front porch.
“If I promise to understand that this time you mean your proposal, and that you’re serious about us getting married soon, can we postpone this conversation for a day or two? Let me have some time to settle in and think?”
Relief