The Baby Proposal

“You’re way off base, Ms. Bauer.” He hadn’t called her by her last name since the first day she’d interviewed with him.

Heat rose in her cheeks. “You think I don’t know that?” Talk about twisting the knife till blood gushed.

“I’ve never proposed marriage to a woman before, and thought this the ideal place.”

Marriage—

The cup slipped from her hands, spilling some of the coffee on her blouse.

“S-sorry I’m so clumsy,” she stammered as she dabbed at the stain with a napkin. “I must have misunderstood what you just said.”

“You mean about my asking you to be my wife?” His hand covered hers, stilling it.

“You’re joking of course—”

“I never joke.”

She knew that.

His was a serious nature, even brooding. The man worked harder than anyone she knew, and expected the same from the people around him. She doubted he had a frivolous bone in that tall, powerful body she found undeniably appealing.

Sometimes she glimpsed a mystifying streak of melancholy that tore at her heartstrings. After their conversation last night, she thought she understood part of the reason for it.

“You don’t marry someone when you’re not in love,” Andrea whispered, struggling to find her voice.

“We like each other.” He inserted the irrefutable fact in the same way he made a polarizing comment at a board meeting, inevitably silencing everyone. “All you have to do is remember last night to know it’s true.”

Last night…

She hadn’t been able to think about anything else. It had haunted her dreams and made her so restless she’d wanted to steal to his room and beg him to make love to her.

“Who’s to say ‘like’ isn’t preferable to love that can twist and torture the soul.” Gabe’s rhetorical question was proof his parents’ divorce had crippled him emotionally, just as she’d thought.

“Admit we have an excellent working relationship, Andrea. We know each other better than anyone else. I don’t recall us ever having a serious disagreement. There’s no doubt we’re sexually compatible.” The thumb caressing her palm was sending little darts of awareness through her system.

“You’re crazy!” As if she’d just been stung, she pulled her hand away. Beyond pain, she said, “I’ve worked with you long enough to know Gabe Corbin never does anything without it being part of a grand design.”

He sat back. “That’s true.”

She eyed him frankly. “What’s the real reason you’ve picked on me to enter into a loveless marriage?”

After subjecting her to an intimate appraisal he said, “I’m not about to allow you to throw away your chance to give birth to your own child if I can help it. We’ll make it our top priority.”

They were back to a discussion of her female problem. “You want to give me a baby—” she mocked.

“Barring unforeseen circumstances, yes, I’d like to give you a child. I want us to marry so that you can have our baby.”

She sprang to her feet and put her fists on the edge of the table. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me you want to do this for me out of the kindness of your heart! What’s in it for you?” By now her curvaceous five-foot-five body was leaning toward him.

Lines darkened his features making him look all of his thirty-six years. “A way to atone for my sins,” he answered in a gravelly voice.

It never failed that when Andrea asked him a pointed question, he always came back with an unexpected answer that confounded her. This one reached a spot deep in her soul and she quietly sat down. “What sins?”

“When I left St. Pierre for college, Jeanne-Marie, one of the girls from the island, came to my apartment in New York.”

Andrea knew there had to be a Jeanne-Marie-whatever-her-last name-was somewhere in his past.

“She claimed she hadn’t wanted me to leave home and was hoping I would marry her.”

If anyone understood what it was like to love Gabe, Andrea did. The heartbroken girl would have been in agony to watch him walk out of her life.

“That was a ludicrous announcement on her part since Jeanne-Marie and I had no past together. She knew there could never be a future.

“The truth is, we slept together one time. I’m not proud of the fact that I had a one-night stand, but I did and marriage was the last thing on my mind where she or any woman was concerned.

“I told her to go back to St. Pierre. Later on I received a call from my father that she was going to marry my brother Yves.”

The picture was getting clearer. When Jeanne-Marie couldn’t have Gabe, she chose the next best thing.

“It pained me to realize I’d been with a woman my brother loved enough to marry. He deserved to know the truth about Jeanne-Marie and me before things went any further, so I made plans to fly back to the island to talk to him. But my father told me something that changed my life.”

Andrea had a premonition where this was leading. Her eyes closed tightly and she sat back down in her chair.

“He said she’d just suffered a miscarriage. Though everyone thought it was Yves’s baby, he knew differently, meaning I was the father. My father suggested that for Yves’s happiness, it might be wise if I never came back.”

“Gabe—” Gut wrenching pain tore through her. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never been home since?”

Emotion darkened his eyes until she couldn’t see any silver. “I flew in the day my grandmother was buried, but waited till night to visit her grave. Grand-père was there alone. We talked until first light, then I left the island.”

She shook her head, aghast to think of his being estranged from his family all these years. “Why didn’t Jeanne-Marie tell you she was pregnant when she came to see you?” her voice trembled.

“The night we were together I took precautions which let her know I didn’t want there to be any consequences. She was probably afraid to tell me she’d gotten pregnant.”

“But it was your baby!” Andrea said emotionally. “You had a right to know.”

He folded his powerful arms. “I agree. However at eighteen who’s thinking clearly?”

“You were, otherwise you wouldn’t have left home to follow your dreams.”

“I got out of there because I couldn’t stand to see the pain in my father’s eyes after he and mother divorced.”

Andrea believed him, but whether he realized it at the time or not, she knew other forces had been at work prompting him to fulfill his destiny.

“I’m so sorry, Gabe.” She wished there were a better word besides sorry to convey her feelings. “I— I still don’t understand how marrying me would help you atone for your sins.”

He sucked in his breath, “You haven’t lived with my guilt. Jeanne-Marie needed me and I rejected her.”

“You wouldn’t have, if she’d been truthful with you!”