The Heir's Proposal

She looked at him sideways. “You haven’t been back here much lately?”

“No. Not at all, in fact. I’ve mostly been overseas.”

She thought about that for a minute. If she’d come earlier, he wouldn’t have been here. And that would have been a good thing. Wouldn’t it?

“When did you get discharged from the military?”

“A while back. But I only came home two days ago.” His mouth twisted. “I’ve been gone over ten years and it all still looks so much the same. You’d think the land would show the scars of…” He winced, then shrugged, letting the thought go. “Anyway, I can’t believe how much this place means to me. I can see my history everywhere I look.”

He pointed. “See that broken gate to the rose garden? See how it lists? That happened when I told my high-school sweetheart I wasn’t the marrying kind. She slapped me and then slammed that poor gate so hard, it almost fell off the hinges.”

Torie tried to remember who that would have been but the memory didn’t surface. “At least you recovered,” she murmured.

“Yeah. Sort of.”

This time his grin was open and sweet and her heartbeat quickened just seeing it.

But he wasn’t finished. “See that pile of rocks by the oak tree? That’s where my brother and I buried our old dog Neville.”

“Oh.” Torie gasped. She’d forgotten about Ricky. Two years older than Marc, he’d been a shyer, more remote figure, sort of awkward and a bit of a computer geek. What had ever happened to Ricky?

“We had a funeral service and put that dear old dog in the ground,” Marc said. He shook his head, a half smile lingering on his lips.

“Where is your brother?” she asked, hoping he would tell more.

He didn’t answer for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was gravelly. “Gone. I can’t believe how long it’s been. He died just over ten years ago.”

“Oh no!”

The news went through her like an electric shock. It was horrible to think of Ricky gone. And all this time, she’d never known about it. She felt a trembling deep down that shook her. Ricky had never been anything much to her. Not the way Marc had been. She’d demonized him in her mind because he was part of her enemy—the Huntingtons. But was that fair? He was part of her past, too.

There was too much tragedy in the world. Ricky, Marc’s father, her own father—all gone. Tears shimmered in her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands, as though holding back the dark side of life for all she was worth.

He watched her for a moment, wondering why his brother’s death would seem to touch her like this. That was a part of the fascination he had with her—she was always surprising him. Just when he thought he had her all figured out, she would do or say something that showed him how useless it was to make assumptions.