Not Quite Married by Christine Rimmer

right?”
    “Earl always knows where to get the best lunch. Or dinner, for that matter. Denver. Boulder. Colorado Springs. Aspen. And Justice Creek. Wherever Earl drives me, he always knows where to eat.”
    She couldn’t resist teasing him. “David’s is terrific. But my café is the best.”
    “I told him not to go there. You eat there all the time. Variety never hurts.”
    He was right. “It’s delicious,” she said. “Thank you.”
    He nodded. They ate in silence for a minute or two as she tried to decide how to approach the subject he kept evading.
    Finally, she just asked him, “Are you ever planning to go back to Denver?”
    Deli paper crackled as he set down the remains of his sandwich. “I have something to confess.”
    “Great. But you haven’t answered my question. And I’ve asked it more than once today.”
    “I went upstairs. I looked around. The baby’s room is beautiful.”
    “I’m glad you approve. But when are you leav—?”
    He put up a hand. “Hear me out?”
    She picked up her soup and slurped down a big spoonful. “Talk.”
    “I want to move in here, with you.”
    She barely kept herself from choking on a noodle. “ What ? Whoa, Dalton. Not a good idea.”
    He chided, “You said you’d listen.” And then he waited. So she made a big show of pressing her lips together and widening her eyes to let him know she was listening. “I can take the spare bedroom, and set up a rudimentary office in that room with the folding desk and the storage bins. I would go back and forth to the Denver office one or two times a week. And there’s a branch here in town I might make use of if I want a bigger space or need my assistant with me. I’ll look into that, see if that’s workable. And I’ll be cutting back my hours anyway, for now. Even the president is entitled to a little family leave at crucial times. So I’ll work a shortened, flexible workweek. And then I’ll be here to help out, to take care of you until the baby’s born.”
    “Wow,” Clara said weakly. She had no idea what to say. It made her feel a lot better about the future, about what kind of father he would be to their child, that he would offer to turn his life upside down to take care of her until their daughter came.
    But then...no. Just, no.
    She had to remember that she really hardly knew this man—and that he’d rejected her without even thinking twice last August. She couldn’t afford to become too dependent on him, couldn’t afford to let herself start trusting him in intimate ways.
    He spoke again. “Your due date’s three weeks away.”
    “I’m very well aware of when my due date is.”
    Patiently, he continued. “I haven’t been here, to help you, up till now, and I regret that. If you think back on it honestly, I think you’ll see that I had no chance to help you, until now.”
    “Because you turned me down, on the island.” She tried to keep her voice even and reasonable. It was only a fact, not the end of the world. But still, she couldn’t completely keep the hurt from showing.
    “I was wrong.”
    “Too late now.”
    “That’s not fair, Clara.”
    Carefully, she set her half-full container of soup back on the coffee table. “All I wanted then, with you, was a chance. To get together in our real lives, to see how it might go, to take it one day at a time. I made that very clear to you. But you wouldn’t even consider it, you didn’t even take a few minutes to think it over. And that really hurt me. It hurt me bad. I...I’d never felt about anyone the way I felt about you. I had this ridiculous idea that I’d finally found the guy for me. I really thought we had something special.”
    “We did,” he put in gruffly. “And I didn’t want to ruin it.”
    She scoffed. She couldn’t help it. “You didn’t want to ruin it—so you crapped all over it?”
    He was silent. His face had that carved-from-stone look it got now and then. But then, finally, he started to talk, to actually