A muscle pulsed in Duncan’s jaw. “What are you saying, Nell? No symbolism, no bullshit. Could I have it in plain English, just this once?”

Nell wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “I think we understand each other perfectly,” she said quietly.

He circled the couch and sat down next to her. This was probably futile, given her unapproachable mood, but he had to get it off his chest. “You’re cold,” he said, grabbing the afghan off the couch. He wrapped it around her. “I don’t want to talk about the game right now. We need to talk about us. I’ve been thinking.”

“Me, too,” Nell said quietly.

“I’ve decided that the best thing would be for us to get married.”

Dead silence greeted that statement. Her eyes were huge and startled. “What?” she squeaked.

Duncan cracked his knuckles uneasily. “I was thinking about the situation after you went to sleep. And I decided that—”

“You decided?” Her voice was deceptively calm.

Duncan paused, sensing a pitfall. “Well, uh, of course your agreement is crucial to the plan,” he said cautiously.

“So I should hope,” Nell murmured.

“After I explain my reasoning to you, you’ll see that it would be the best thing for both of us.”

“Oh, really.”

Nell’s voice sounded strange, almost strangled.

“Yes. Let me explain.” He presented his analysis, during which Nell was ominously silent. The chill in his gut was a lump of ice by the time he concluded his well-balanced, watertight, foolproof argument.

Nell tugged the afghan around herself and looked into his eyes. “Do you love me, Duncan?”

He closed his eyes, sighing. Aw, fuck. She had to say it. She just had to insist. “Goddamn it, Nell,” he snapped, “that’s not the point.”

Nell shook her head. “I think it is the point,” she replied. “In fact, I think it’s the only point.”

“Marriage is about partnership. Trust. The long haul. Not a bunch of stupid platitudes that don’t mean a goddamn thing! If I had you on staff full-time, we could—”

“Duncan, I’ve studied for years for my advanced degree. I want to teach literature,” Nell said quietly. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Duncan threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re being deliberately difficult. Tell me what you’d make as a professor. I’ll top it.”

“If I wanted money, I would’ve gone to business school.”

“We’re straying from the issue,” he ground out. “We’re good together. If you would let go of your lofty romantic ideas—”

“Marriage is not a merger. Love is not a stupid platitude. If I was as detached and cool as you are, it might work. But I’m not.” Her voice faltered for a moment. “I’m in love with you,” she finished, softly.

Love. Jesus, all he wanted was to be honest with her, to be fair. Not to lie or manipulate her with falsehoods. And this was what he got. His chest felt like it was in a trash compactor. Getting squished, smaller and smaller, into something as cold and hard as a diamond.

Nell rewrapped the afghan around herself. “And the worst part of this is that I think you love me, too, but you can’t or won’t see it.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel. I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking about real things, concrete things. Commitment, fidelity, protection, everything I have. And children, too, if you want them. I thought that if you cared for me at all, you’d be pleased.”

It took her a while to respond to that. “I don’t ‘care for you,’ Duncan,” she said, her voice small. “I love you. Greedy Nell. Always asking for more. And besides, feelings are real. Mine certainly are. What would it cost you to admit that you love me? Is it just a control thing? You have to have the upper hand? You can’t give in to a strong feeling?”

“They’re not necessary,” he retorted. “None of this drama is necessary.”

“This is about your father, right? You hated him for calling what he did love. You have to be his opposite. No matter what.”

That deep-froze him. “Don’t talk about my father,” he said.

The tone in his voice made her lean back, her eyes big.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t marry you. Not on these terms.”

“I figured that out by myself, by context and inference,” he said. “I’m not as intellectually stunted and backward as you seem to think.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Nell snapped, dashing away tears. “It’s one thing to wait around for a lover to admit to loving you. It’s entirely another to wait around for a husband to do it.”

Duncan stared at her. “You would have waited a long time,” he said. “I’ve offered you more than I’ve ever dreamed of offering anyone. If it’s not enough, then there’s nothing more to be said.”

Nell straightened up, stiff and dignified. “I understand.”

A phone began to ring somewhere. He recognized the muffled ringtone of the cell he’d given to Nell. It was in her purse, which she’d left on the floor next to the couch. She made no move to get it.

He leaned over, fished it out, and checked the display. “Upstate area code,” he said, handing it to her. “Maybe one of your sisters.”

She stared down at the ringing phone in her hand, a perplexed frown between her brows, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

That was his cue to get the hell out of the room. He walked back out onto the terrace, and pulled the sliding door firmly shut behind him. Letting her take her goddamn phone call in privacy.

Since her affairs were no longer any of his fucking business.

Chapter

10

It took a ridiculously long time to find the right effing button to push, since Nell could barely see, her eyes were so blurred with tears.

She finally got it, and held the phone to her ear. “Yes?”

“Nell? Finally! It’s Nancy. Sorry I’m calling so early, but I couldn’t stand to wait. I hope I’m not interrupting anything, you know, delicious?”

“No,” Nell forced out, after a pained little pause. “You’re not.”

Nancy was silent for a moment. “Um…is everything okay?”

“Fine.” Nell forced false brightness into her tone. “So what’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with Elsie.”

Elsie was Lucia’s sweet, kind, nosy next-door neighbor since decades before any of the sisters had come to live there. Nell was surprised to hear her name spoken. “But I thought Elsie went down to the Jersey Shore to live with her daughter after the burglaries!”

“She did. She just spent a full half hour telling me the horrors of sharing a bathroom with her teenage granddaughters. Alison brought her home last night. Elsie had the key Lucia had given her years ago, so this morning she decided to go over and check the place out for us.”

Nell sucked in a breath. “Yikes. Did you ask her to do that?”

“Hell no! I told her not to do it again. Could be dangerous. But you know how she is. Anyhow, she found a letter under the mail slot, from Elisabetta Barbieri, in Castiglione Sant’Angelo. Elsie opened it—”

“Good God,” Nell muttered.

“I know, but I wasn’t inclined to criticize, and besides, it didn’t matter because it’s in Italian, and Elsie’s Polish. So she called me.”

“I’ll go up there right away and get it,” Nell said.

Nancy made a suspicious sound. “With Duncan, right?”

Nell squirmed, pressing against the ache in her middle. “We’ll see,” she hedged.

“You be careful,” Nancy scolded. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied. She closed the call, trying to sound cheerful, and stared through the glass doors at him, leaning over the railing.

He’d asked her to marry him. She’d said no. She was nuts.