Sophie's Secret

He’d won his party’s nomination for the senate seat.

Now she understood the celebration. And, most likely, the distance in his eyes, as well.

Her place in his life and his bid for office did not coincide. And the dichotomy was a symbol of all the other struggles their differences created. The ticking of their clock was growing louder.

So, tonight, this celebration was for Duane.

Tomorrow she was going straight to Phyllis.

The counselor, not the friend.

Chapter Five

THERE WERE SO MANY THINGS Duane had to say. And none of them were getting out beyond the inane, superficial conversation he and Sophie had fallen into—largely, he suspected, caused by him.

He reached for his napkin, and his knuckles scraped against that thin piece of metal resting against his thigh, and he took another sip of champagne.

The box was in the car because he’d wanted to surprise her, wasn’t it?

And not so that he could change his mind without her being any the wiser?

“My friend, the one I saw in Chicago, has a show in Phoenix later this spring at the Orpheum. I want you to meet her.”

Sophie’s sweet green eyes met his, an unusual pleading in their depths that had absolutely nothing to do with her friend, and Duane’s appetite receded.

“I’d like that,” he said. “Very much.” Sophie was an incredible woman. He wanted to know everything about her. Wanted to know everyone she knew, to have a chance to care about everyone she cared about. Yet his life had nothing in common with hers.

Her hand, so slim and delicate considering the ropes she wielded, the heavy travelers she pulled open and closed, the scrims and cycs she lowered, rested on the table next to her plate. Duane laid his palm over it.

“I…We need to talk,” he started, then issued a silent curse when he heard the ominous way that had come out—as though he had bad news. “I mean—”

“It’s okay.” Her smile was more sad than anything. She shifted her hand and reversed their positions. “I’ll make this easy for you.”

She knew? How could she have guessed? He hadn’t known himself, for sure, until today, when he’d actually picked up the ring. And he still wasn’t sure. How could she possibly make this easy?

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m going to get this right,” he said, focusing on what he knew. On the man he knew himself to be. Once he committed to doing something, he was in one hundred percent.

Get down, man. On your knee. You know the drill.

“I love you.” That seemed to say everything he was trying to get out.

Which didn’t explain the moisture in Sophie’s eyes. She wasn’t a crier.

“And I love you,” she said. “But that’s not going to be enough, is it?” Her whispered words were lost on him at first, caught up as he was in the haze of panic the moment wrought.

He wasn’t ready to lose her. But as much as he loved being here with her, he wasn’t sure he wanted her in Phoenix, too. Wasn’t sure he could trust himself to risk the life he’d built there.

He was forty-six years old. Reaching goals he’d spent his entire life seeking. Forty-six, not twenty-six. He didn’t have a lifetime stretching ahead to make something of himself.

Those years were streaming behind him. A path to where he was now. To what he might have to give up.

But that’s not going to be enough, is it? Her words finally reached him.

“What does that mean? It’s not enough?”

“We can be in love all we want, but love can’t change the facts. When we’re here, alone, you don’t have to worry about other men looking at me. About me talking with other men. And I don’t have to worry about how I appear to the people who matter in your life. Love isn’t going to make you look any less like those fifty-year-old guys who drive convertibles with the tops down in forty-degree weather when you’re with me. You’d lose credibility.”

Duane didn’t want to hear her.

“No one said it’s going to be easy,” he told her, “or that there wouldn’t be problems.”

He waited for her to help him out—mostly because he had no idea what to do here. She sat watching him, apparently waiting for more.

He wanted—needed—to give her more. But his mind seemed to be frozen. He’d come to propose. He had unresolved issues with proposing.

He cared about her a great deal.

“I know us being together won’t be easy.” He had to say something. They were both waiting on him. “But I can’t walk away from you, Soph. That’s it for me. My bottom line. I can’t walk away.”

Seconds passed. And then some more. God, he wished she’d say something. Anything. Give him some clue to what she was thinking behind that half frown and those tear-glazed eyes. But he made himself wait.

Made himself give her time.

Maybe the struggle wasn’t worth it to her. She was young. Had her whole life ahead of her. Didn’t need to settle for all the problems being with him brought her. Didn’t—

“I…guess I’m not ready to walk away, either,” she said.

Duane tried to tamp down the relief flooding through him. She was letting him off the hook. Again. But he had to be smart here. Responsible. Make sound decisions. “You don’t seem too happy about that.”

Sophie’s shrug said so much. He only wished he could decipher what.

They were at a standstill. Staring at each other. Waiting for something to happen.

Duane dropped to one knee.

“Sophie Curtis, will you marry me?” The words came out exactly as he’d said them every other time he’d asked.

But he’d never had a ring in his pocket.

“Duane, get up.” Sophie tugged on his hand. “You don’t have to do this.”

But their world was quickly crumbling. He had to do something.

“You’re twenty-eight, Soph. You’re going to be wanting kids. And if I don’t start having them soon, I’m going to be too old to play with them. Or even make it to their graduation.”

“You’re forty-six,” she said. “You’ve got a good forty years left in you. At least. I hardly think we have to worry about wheeling your chair to any graduation.”

She was splitting hairs. And so was he.