inside.
"Morgan Tate, will you marry me?"
CHAPTER THREE
"Before you answer, hear me out," Rob rushed to say. Morgan's eyes had widened and her face lit up, but even so he knew that reality would soon come crashing down into her consciousness. Morgan was sensible. Practical.
She'd say they didn't know each other well enough yet.
She'd be right.
"I don't know how to say everything fast enough for you to hear it all before you make up your mind," he went on. "So, just…sit there, okay?" He pointed to the couch behind her and after a moment she dutifully sat down. She still looked stunned, however. Stunned, and her happy expression was fading fast. He'd better get going with that explanation. "You don't know much about me. What you do know probably isn't flattering." He winced at the thought of what his friends had probably told her about him during her visit to Montana last month. "But…" He sighed in frustration. This was hopeless. How could he explain everything that had happened in the last two days?
"What?" Morgan said when the pause drew out. Her voice was breathless.
"This is stupid. You won't understand." What had he been thinking? That he could fly to Victoria, explain all the thoughts swirling around in his own mind, and she'd somehow get on the same page as him?
She took his hand. "I think I will. I can. Give me a chance."
"Everyone thinks I'm a joke, Morgan. I’m not." He broke off again.
"I know you're not a joke. And I'm probably one of the best listeners you'll ever come across. I've got nowhere to go tonight, and I want to hear what you have to say. Start at the beginning and tell me all of it."
She wasn't pressing him to put the ring on her finger, and she hadn't taken it and thrown it out the window, either. Unlike his brothers or father, Morgan was willing to listen to him, like she had last month when they'd gotten to know each other. He couldn't remember any other woman giving him the kind of attention she did. Usually they wanted the same thing he was after – some beer, some dancing and some sex, not necessarily in that order. Small town girls who were dying to shake off the boredom of small town life, if only for a night.
Morgan was different, so he did as she asked. In the half-light of the hall lamp – the only switch she'd turned on when they entered the apartment – he sat on her floor and told her about his life. About the freewheeling time when he'd been too young for school or work and the whole world seemed alight with beauty and mystery, about his run-ins with his brothers – especially Ned – Holt's strictness, his mother's garden, the playground fights.
He told her how he'd cultivated a reputation as a prankster and tough guy, put aside his interest in the natural world, and buckled down to life on the ranch. How he'd soothed his dissatisfaction with liquor and women, and how none of it was enough anymore.
He even told her about Georgette, going to church, and meeting his mother in the garden.
"Something's got to change," he said. "And I've got an opportunity to jump start my future. I'm afraid to tell you about it, though. The only way I can get it is by using you, and you don't deserve that."
"Tell me."
She sat as still as she had throughout his monologue, but Rob hesitated. He couldn't believe he was saying this out loud. Surely Morgan would hate him afterwards. "My Dad's offered 200 acres to the first of us who brings home a wife. I could do a lot with that land. We could do a lot with it, you and me."
She sat back and Rob knew she was thinking all the thoughts he'd wanted her to avoid. That he was using her to get the land. That he didn't really care about her.
That maybe this was one of his practical jokes.
"It isn't a joke," he said softly. "I want a chance to change. To be the man I know I can be. I wish I could say that I love you, that I want to spend every waking moment of my life with you, and ask you to marry me for real. I
Meredith Fletcher and Vicki Hinze Doranna Durgin