Mourning Becomes Cassandra (50 page)

“I have wanted to be married,” he broke in suddenly. Before I could do more than blink at him in surprise, he had my bare arms in a hard grip. “I have wanted to be married, Cass.”

“What—what are you talking about?” I stammered.

His blue eyes were blazing at me, and though I felt answering heat in my cheeks, I couldn’t think what on earth to say. My incredulous look angered him for some reason, and he gave me a little shake. “God, what an opinion you have of me! I’ve wanted to say something to you a million times these last few months, but you would never give me an opening. If I ever tried to let you know that I cared about you, you would shut me down, change the subject. Well, you’re going to listen to me now. No way am I letting you walk out of my life—you can adopt one baby or ten babies, I don’t care, as long as you’ll stay.”

Then Phyl and Perry and even James had guessed right? Daniel was laboring under the delusion that he was interested in me?

He must be out of his mind to be talking like this. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he seemed to read my expression because his grasp on my arms tightened almost painfully, and he jerked me against his chest, crushing my lips to his. Frozen with shock, it took me an instant to respond. I put up my hands to push him away but instead found them clutching his shirt. Waves of warmth began to wash over me, starting somewhere in my center and radiating outward, until I found I was kissing him back. With enthusiasm. He tasted wonderful. Crazily, I had the urge to laugh—no wonder women loved him!

Daniel heard or felt the gurgle in my throat, and he pulled back abruptly to look at me. Blushing again, I realized we were both panting a little and my arms were around his neck. His voice came low. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You could love me, Cass, if you let yourself.”

Gently I untangled myself, and pushing away from his chest I tried to speak lightly. “Of course I could, Daniel. You could have pretty much any woman on earth—”

He brushed this off and stepped closer to me to close the gap. “Don’t. I tell you—I tell you I love you. Do you think you could love me?”

Backing away again, I felt the deck railing behind me. He had me cornered, so clearly I would have to go on the offensive. “Daniel, be serious. I think you just can’t stand to have any woman around who isn’t dying of love for you, although you weren’t very nice to Phyl about it. For the longest time you couldn’t manage to talk to me without flirting, and it used to make me so angry. And here I’d thought you’d gotten better.”

“You think I’m flirting with you?” he growled. “You think I could have stayed single this long if I flirted with women by telling them I loved them and asking them to marry me?” When I merely raised a skeptical eyebrow, he said slowly, “It’s true that I was flirting with you in the very beginning. I didn’t mean to—Joanie told me what you’d gone through—but you always seemed so self-contained, so unrattled by me. It was a challenge, at first, irresistible. I liked trying to make you blush, or getting your goat because your eyes would fire up, and you would rap out some comeback. It was unforgivable, I know. I could tell from your expression that you couldn’t understand why I acted the way I did and that you resented it, but you were like that damned Snow Goddess you voiced: frozen asleep, suspended, waiting for the challenger to bring you back to life.” He shook his head grimly. “It wasn’t until that idiot James came around that I realized what had happened, that I was in love with you—and not just starting to fall for you—I was pretty far gone already. It had been so gradual I couldn’t even figure out the starting point.”

Just like Troy and the yearbook, then, I thought, fighting that urge to laugh. Or James, for that matter. Apparently all it took to turn me into a
femme fatale
was to have me underfoot, unnoticed, for a given amount of time. Daniel seemed sincere in his way, but my imagination wasn’t up to the task of picturing marriage with him. Not that it would take too much imagination—any marriage to Daniel would at least be guaranteed to be brief.

“Daniel,” I said more steadily, “do you know what I think?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“I think you’ve never had a woman friend before, and we’ve become friends. There’s always some…sexual…tension at first, until it gets resolved. I think that’s what’s happening here.”

“Friendship,” he repeated flatly. “That would explain why it’s so hard to be around you without wanting to touch you. And why I had fantasies about breaking James’ legs whenever I saw him. And why I’ve wondered a thousand times what would happen if I just stuffed you in the trunk of the car, drove to Las Vegas, and refused to let you out until you agreed to marry me.”

Okay, so he wasn’t buying the friendship theory.

“Daniel,” I tried again. “I’m…flattered…that you feel this way, but if you first liked me because I seemed—I don’t know—inaccessible, don’t you think once you had me you’d get over it pretty quickly?”

His eyes got their customary wicked gleam. “Good point. I don’t think so, but we’d better make sure.” Taking my face in his hands, he made to kiss me again, so I shoved him away, starting to feel angry. I couldn’t tell, though, if I was angry with him for his sheer nerve or with myself for half-wanting to give in.

“It seemed pretty effective in helping you get over every other woman you’ve been involved with,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t feel this way about any other woman I’ve been involved with,” he said curtly. “And I haven’t been involved with any other woman from the moment I realized I wanted you, or didn’t you notice?”

“I did notice,” I answered in a small voice. “And I wondered why. But don’t you think you might have felt this way about Missy or Michelle or Fiona or Kelly or whoever else, if any one of them had put up the least little bit of fight?”

“You misunderstand me. I said it began with you seeming like a challenge, but I’m afraid it’s gone way beyond that now.” He dropped his voice again, without coming any closer, and I felt my heart speed up. “You don’t know how aggravating it was to discover I loved you just when James the Good came on the scene. To see how much you had in common and how little you actually shared with me. To have to hear him compliment you and see how differently you took it, when he said things that you probably would have hit me for. And thinking that you let him kiss you—that he was going to be the one who woke you from your sleep. But worst of all was knowing that you admired him, respected him—you always made it clear that you didn’t feel that way about me. I made up my mind that I was going to earn your respect. Maybe if you could respect me, you could love me.”

I thought back over the last few months, things suddenly coming into focus: our Scrabble games; the New Year’s party; his willingness to advocate for Mike; his friendship with Perry; my urge to tell him about Nadina’s pregnancy; his listening ear and offers of help. He was now a trusted friend, one whose judgment and help I sought.

Hesitantly, I laid a hand on his arm. “Daniel, I do respect you now. You’ve been so kind and thoughtful and such a friend to me. And for all James’ goodness, he couldn’t bring himself to stick it out with me after I decided to adopt Nadina’s baby. But here you are willing to let me still live here. I can’t tell you how much that means to me…”

His face flushed with pleasure, and a heartfelt smile spread across it that I had never seen before, only to fade moments later when I trailed off. “But what, Cass? You respect me now, and you care about me, but you can’t marry me?”

“In my defense, most girls do get asked on a first date before they get proposed to,” I protested.

He was not to be sidetracked. “Don’t change the subject. The only point of going on dates would be to figure out if we wanted to get married. I’ve lived with you for nine months, and I think we know each other better by now than most people. Why can’t you marry me?”

Sheesh. This must be why Joanie said Daniel always got what he wanted. He was unstoppable.

“Is it because of James?” he pressed. “You’re not over him yet?”

“Partly,” I replied. Though I wasn’t positive that ten more minutes of kissing Daniel wouldn’t drive James entirely from my mind.

Reluctantly I said, “Daniel, when you first met me, I was in kind of a bad place in my faith. I was mad at God and not sure what to do with my life or even if I shouldn’t throw God out with the trash. And now it couldn’t be more different. I have friends and family and purpose—He didn’t abandon me after all. I even thought for a while there that maybe I could do marriage again, and now I’m certainly doing a child again. It may be all out of order, but I know for certain that if I do marry again, it’ll have to be to someone who sees life from the same perspective.”

Unbelievably, Daniel was grinning by the end of my speech. “Let me get this straight: I love you, and you have some positive feelings for me; you respect me; and I’m not only willing to shelter you after you adopt this crack baby but also marry you. Despite all this, are you trying to tell me, Cass, that you won’t marry me because I’m not religious like you?”

He had never been slow on the uptake. I nodded. “Um, in so many words, I guess that’s what I’m trying to say diplomatically. Why are you grinning like the Cheshire Cat?”

Not just grinning, but actually laughing softly now. “Because I’m not the same godless dog I was when you met me. Close, but not quite. Lately I’ve been thinking there might be some method to your madness, yours and Joanie’s. I wasn’t going to say anything until I made up my mind for sure, but in such a desperate situation I obviously have to reveal the ace up my sleeve.”

Of all the crazy, not-to-be-believed things that Daniel had said to me in this conversation, this was the hands-down winner. “Are you making fun of me?” I gasped. “You’re an atheist!”

“
Was
an atheist,” he corrected, enjoying my astonishment. “Now I think I’d be classified as a fence-sitter. Maybe even a fence-sitter losing his balance in your direction. You’re not the only one who has seen God at work in your life this year.”

“Do you mean you think you’ve seen Him at work in my life or in yours?” I demanded.

“Either. Both. And. Do you remember that one time you and I were talking books early on, and you said something about love being sacrificial—that you think of the other before yourself?”

“It was about
David Copperfield
,” I murmured.

“Yes, and then Joanie said almost the same thing, when she was wrangling with Michelle over that ‘transcendent’ stained glass Michelle was designing, or whatever the hell it was. I figured I love you and Joanie best in the world, and if this was what you two thought love was, I wanted to know more about it. I wanted to know more about this God who made you think about love that way. Besides, I suspected that, even if James weren’t in the picture, no atheist was going to win you over. I’ve never been an active, proselytizing atheist like Mom; I was more of your lazy, I-don’t-need-Him-so-He-must-not-exist atheist. So I started going to the Men’s Bible study. It was mostly me and a bunch of old guys, but they were great. They let me ask questions and argue with them.”

“Is that where you started taking off to, early Saturday mornings?” I asked wonderingly. “We never guessed.”

“That’s it. I went with mixed motives—I wanted you and your respect, and I figured this would help—but I heard things that weren’t good news at first. They were studying the Gospel of John,” he laughed shortly. “In fact, the theme was, ‘Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends—”

“John 15:13,” I said, more to myself, but Daniel heard me.

“That’s my girl. So apparently, if I loved you, I wasn’t going to try to seduce you and break up your perfectly good relationship, as if I could have. If I loved you, I was going to want what was best for you, even if that didn’t involve me, even if it meant letting you marry James. I fought that for a long time. What was the point of getting religion, unless it meant I could have you as a reward? It’s not like I didn’t have to admit to myself that James was a good guy, good husband material, from your perspective.”

“You talk about religion like it’s another way to pick up girls,” I said accusingly. “Haven’t you done any thinking about who God is, or what your relationship might be to Him?”

“Wouldn’t you say God meets us where we’re at?” he countered. “And where I’m at is wanting to become the kind of man you could love. Learning some humility, some patience. Realizing everything isn’t in my control. It’s been rough, Cass. Give me a little more time. If I hadn’t been thinking about who God is and my relationship to Him, I would’ve gone with the Las Vegas kidnapping plan months ago. I did just want to tell you how I felt, in case you wanted to wait and see how I turned out. And I wished you would ask me to do something hard for you, so I could show you that I can love the way you understand love.”

“And now you are doing something hard for me, by offering to let me and the baby live here,” I broke in. “It’s not…contingent…on me marrying you, is it?”

“What do you take me for?” He grinned. “Don’t answer that yet. I’ve got to tell you that when James did end up dumping you, I was sorry you were hurt but pretty damned thrilled at the same time. I think in the time it took you to run up to your room I was coming up with my game plan.”

“No game plans,” I insisted. “Joanie says you always get what you want, and you’re such a pushy guy I believe it. If you say I can live here, it’s got to be with no strings attached.”

“I’ve already said so.”

“Well, all this love and marriage talk is premature,” I said. “You’re still figuring out who you are and what you want. And you don’t know what’s going to hit the Palace in a few months when that baby comes. ”

“You think I’ll change my mind.”

“Don’t be stubborn, Daniel. Don’t
not
change your mind just to prove a point,” I urged. “I’m going to hold you harmless for all you’ve said this morning and ask you not to talk about it again for now. If you still want to bring it up again, six months or so from now, that’s your choice, but if you’ve changed your mind I won’t hold it against you.”