“You said I wasn’t ready for a permanent commitment, that I was afraid to sign a long-term lease—and maybe for a little while I wondered if you were right. Mostly I wondered if you weren’t just using that for an excuse because you weren’t interested in the long run with me.”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to keep your options open,” she pointed out, her voice not quite steady.
“Yes, I did say that. I was looking for something, and for a time, I figured I needed to go somewhere else to find it. I guess I thought that because I hadn’t been able to leave Little Rock, that must mean what I was searching for lay out there somewhere. But the truth is, I’ve been free to leave for months. My residency was almost finished, my mother and sisters were well and I didn’t have a lease. Yet I stopped sending out applications to other hospitals about a year ago. Just about the time I met you. I was just too dense to make the connection until now.”
She remembered him telling her how clearly he remembered that first meeting. That he had been attracted to her then and had wanted ever since to get to know her better. She’d been shocked then by that admission—she was even more stunned by what he was telling her now. He loved her?
“But you said you didn’t even want to sign a lease,” she said weakly. She knew she was repeating herself, but she couldn’t seem to think clearly.
With an impatient shake of his head, he reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder. “You keep looking for hidden meanings in my lack of interest in real estate. I don’t care whether I live in a house or an apartment or a condo or a tent, for that matter. I just hope there’s a chance that someday you’ll live there with me. I love you, Jacqui.”
Her mind whirled with all the arguments she’d given herself. “I don’t want to be another anchor around your neck. I don’t want to be the reason you look back someday with regrets about the things you never got to do.”
“I can still do anything I want. I can travel on vacations—with you, I hope. Maybe you’ll enjoy traveling again when you know you have a permanent home to return to when the trip is over.”
That was exactly the way she’d felt about traveling lately. Knowing she wouldn’t have to keep pulling up roots and trying to settle somewhere new made it somewhat more tempting to see different places just for pleasure.
Before she could respond, Mitch added, “I don’t see my family as anchors, Jacqui. I love them very much, and I treasure the time we’re able to spend together. I don’t blame any of them for the circumstances that kept me here in the past—it was always ultimately my choice to remain close to them when I thought they needed me. Just as it is my choice to stay close to Mom now while she recuperates rather than traipse around Peru with some people I like but who don’t mean anything to me in comparison to my family. Or to you.”
She drew a deep breath. “I’ve been trying so hard not to fall for you.”
That smile of his was impossible to resist. “How’s that been working for you?”
She placed a hand on his cheek. “Not so well.”
Catching her hand, he placed a kiss in her palm. “You? The incomparably efficient Jacqui Handy? You never fail at anything.”
“Of course I do,” she said with a low sigh.
He stopped smiling. “If you’re talking about the wreck, that wasn’t your failure.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “Which doesn’t mean I won’t always feel some measure
of guilt about it.”
He kissed her hand again, then lowered it to his lap, his fingers laced with hers. “Any time you want to talk about it, I’m here, okay? And any time you need a distraction, I’m here for that, too. Let’s just say I’m here for the duration. Whatever you need from me.”
Tears threatened, but she blinked them back. “I’m not used to that.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to get used to it,” he promised. “The rest of our lives, if you’ll have me that long.”
This conversation was scaring the heck out of her, she thought candidly—but he certainly knew the right things to say to tempt her to take risks.
“There are other problems between us,” she said—as much to herself as to him.
He sighed with exaggerated patience. “You don’t want to be Cinderella. The doctor and the housekeeper thing. I can tell you right now, that’s bogus. No one, least of all me, cares to judge what you choose to do with your time. You want to keep running my sister’s household and trying to keep my teenage niece in line, I say go for it. You’re good at it. But if there are other things you want to pursue, I’ll back you in that, too. I know you can do whatever you set your mind to, Jacqui.”
She looked down at their interlaced hands. “There are still things you don’t know about me.”
“I look forward to learning them all.”
“I never finished high school,” she blurted in a rush. “I dropped out when my parents moved the last time. I got an equivalency degree a few years later, but I don’t have the education your family values so much.”
“Nobody cares about the framed papers hanging on your wall,” he said with a shrug. “If you want to take college classes in something that interests you, do it. I can’t imagine you having any difficulty with any subject. If more school doesn’t interest you, don’t do it. Believe it or not, I don’t choose my friends by the degrees they hold. For that matter, I’ve played soccer every Sunday for years with a few people I consider friends, and I couldn’t tell you for certain if they went to college or dropped out of school in junior high.”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
He smiled crookedly. “Not really. I’m still waiting for you to tell me how you feel about me.”