Variation on a Theme by Barbara Delinsky

Author:Barbara Delinsky [Delinsky, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

“Say it again,” he commanded in a breathless whisper.

“I love you.” The words had just…popped out. The look on her face was something to behold.

“And you mean it?” Jim asked, studying her brown-eyed incredulity.

“Oh, my.” A slow smile curved her lips. “I guess I do.” Amazed still, she shook her head against the hands that held it. “You have this way of taking me off guard and making the weirdest things come out. Only they’re not all that weird, are they?”

This time he was the one to smile. “No, darlin’. They’re not weird. I think that you’re just such a disciplined person that I have to catch you with your pants down”—he had the good grace to grimace—“to get at the wonderfully spontaneous woman you are.”

She feigned a pout, buying time to assimilate what he’d said, what she’d said. “Then the rest of the time—when my pants are up—I’m boring?”

“The rest of the time you are a beautiful, intelligent, warmly fascinating and caring person…whom I adore just as much but who does…intimidate me just a little.”

“Intimidate? Me?” She thought of how the reverse was true, of how there had been something from the start in her attraction for him that had frightened her. That little inkling of fear was there now, buried in a recess of her mind.

As though to nudge it forth, Jim went on. “Yes, you. Your life is so”—he searched the ceiling for the word—“upper crust. You’re such a lady. A lovely vision in white. Fragile.” He held up a hand when she would have protested, and begged, “Indulge me,” then went on where he’d left off. “Refined. Delicate. Ethereal.” Though his voice was soft and gentle, his eyes were a golden amalgam of intensity. “I sometimes think that you’ll slip right through my fingers. Or that I’ll crush you trying to hold on. Or that some other guy, more cultured and highbrow, will step right in front of me and steal you away.”

“That wouldn’t happen—”

“Then marry me, Rachel.”

His words hung in the air, suspended on threads of desperation. Rachel’s eyes went wide, her heartbeat faltered.

“Will you?” he prodded.

“I don’t…know.”

“How can you not know?”

“I just don’t. Things have happened so fast.”

“But you say you love me.”

“I do love you.” It was the one thing of which, at that moment, she had no doubt whatsoever. This feeling of wanting to absorb and be absorbed, wanting to give and be given to, wanting to share anything and everything with Jim had to be love. But the future…she simply couldn’t conceive of it.

“Then marry me. Marry me now. Today. Or three days from now. Whenever the law will allow.”

“I…I can’t do that….”

“Why not?”

“Because I…there are too many things happening….”

“Like what?”

“Like…my father. And the tour. I’ve still got to finish it.”

“Two weeks. We can be married then.”

“But there’s next year…and the next. And your work.” She grasped at anything within reach. “Weren’t you the one to say that it could never work between us? That you spend most of your time

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