Just Married! by Shirley Jump Cara Colter Page B

her only a short, short while. How was it possible that he was wondering, already, if he could be worthy of that?
    But he had known Bethany for eight months before he had popped the question. Time had not made him any more certain of what he was doing. He had confessed his doubt to his father, who had suggested he test her. Quit playing ball. See how long it lasted then. She had failed that test with flying colors!
    He had known this woman for a week and felt a deeper sense of connection, of certainty.
    Maybe love, of all things, was what most resisted man’s efforts to put it in a box, to tame it with time, to place rules and restrictions around it. Maybe it just happened, even when it was inconvenient, even when it made no sense, especially when you were least expecting it.
    Love. He had not said those words to her. But that is what his mind had whispered to him when he hadstroked her hair. Ethan was shocked that they came to him so easily when he thought of Samantha.
    “Still, it couldn’t have been easy for you.” He slid his hand along the delicate line of her shoulder, let it rest on her upper arm. Such a small gesture. And yet it filled him with a sense of possessiveness, tenderness, warmth.
    “No, being a little girl in a totally male household was not easy. Mitch was newly married when we first arrived on his doorstep, me, Jake and Bryce. His wife couldn’t handle the sudden death of the honeymoon. She left after a month.”
    Ethan remembered Sam’s deeply cynical expression at the wedding and understood it.
    Slowly she told him all of it. The trying to kill her own longing for things feminine because her brothers teased her so much about attempts to dress up, to look pretty, to put on makeup. She was embarrassed instead of overjoyed when she needed her first bra. Her brothers approved of toughness and disapproved of “sissy” things, and since that was her only safe harbor in the world, she became what they wanted her to be.
    “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t be telling you all of this.”
    “Why not? It seems to me maybe you’ve needed someone to tell for a very long time.”
    “I’m not condemning my brothers,” she said hastily.
    “I know that. I could see at the wedding their lovefor you was very genuine. They just didn’t know what you needed. Or not all of what you needed.”
    “Okay, I’ve spilled,” she said, taking refuge in what he was coming to recognize as her sassy defense, what her brother had told him was toughas-nails, and wasn’t. Not even close. “Your turn.”
    And so he told her about growing up in a very wealthy family, and about how they hadn’t approved when he had been drafted out of college to play major league ball.
    “I had the college sweetheart. She was just what my big ego needed. I could do no wrong when I was a college star, and then when I was drafted to the Sox she went into love overdrive. Naturally I was swept off my feet, bought her the biggest diamond you can imagine and asked her to marry me.
    “But you know, something in me thought something wasn’t right. It was as if we were both playing roles instead of being real. Even though I didn’t always get along with my father, especially back then, I went and talked to him. He suggested I tell her I was going to quit baseball and see what happened.
    “She jumped ship as quickly as your sister-in-law, and it left me pretty disillusioned. I didn’t want to lead a life anymore where people liked me because of what I did or what I had. So, I really did quit baseball and I signed off on the family fortune, too, which wasn’t exactly what my dad had been expecting. I set out to make it on my own.
    “I had the baseball money, and I had something to prove. Pretty soon, I was finding my relationship with business so much less fickle than my relationship with people. I turned all my substantial competitive nature on that.
    “And you know what? It was enough for me. Until now.”
    And then he