Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [74]
“I can’t marry you,” she said, shaking her head to reinforce her refusal.
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t work.”
“Why wouldn’t it work? We’ve been living together for almost half a year, and you can’t say that we don’t get along. We’ve had some great times. We fight, sure, but that’s half the fun. And you can’t say that you don’t love me, because I know you do,” he finished tightly.
Dione stared at him in silent dismay. She’d tried so hard not to let him know, but he’d seen through her pitiful defenses anyway. He’d demolished every wall that she’d built. She couldn’t stay. She’d have to leave immediately, get away from him while she still could. “There’s no sense in dragging this out,” she said, pulling away from him. “I’ll leave today.”
Once she was free of his grip she knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up with her. Her conscience twinged at leaving him alone to make his way back to the house—what if he fell? But needs must when the devil drives, and her devil was driving her mercilessly. She went straight to her room and began pulling out her clothes. She was swift and efficient; she had all the clothes lying on the bed in neat stacks when she realized that the new clothes she’d bought made it impossible for her to fit everything into her two suitcases. She’d either have to leave them there, or buy another suitcase. If she bought another suitcase, she’d have to beg a ride from someone…no, where was her brain? She could always call a taxi. She didn’t have to beg for anything.
“Dee, you’re not leaving,” Blake said gently from the doorway. “Put everything back and calm down.”
“I have to leave. I don’t have any reason to say.” It had been a waste of breath for him to tell her to calm down. She was utterly calm, knowing what she had to do.
“I’m not reason enough to stay? You love me. I’ve known for quite a while. It’s in your eyes when you look at me, your touch, your voice, everything about you. You make me feel ten feet tall, darling. And if I still needed proof, I had it when you let me make love to you. You’re not a woman to give herself to any man without love. You love me, even if you’re too stubborn to tell me the words.”
“I told you,” she said, her voice muffled with pain. “I always fall in love with my patients. It’s practically required.”
“You don’t go to bed with all of your patients, do you?”
He already knew the answer to that. He didn’t need the miserable little shake of her head, or the whispered, “No,” to reassure him.
“It’s not one-sided,” he murmured, coming up behind her to wrap his arms around her middle. “I love you, so much I hurt. You love me, and I love you; it’s only natural that we get married.”
“But you don’t love me!” she shouted, driven beyond control at hearing those precious words. It was unfair that she should be punished so much for loving him, but everything had to be paid for in coin. For daring to transgress, she would pay with her heart. She began to struggle against the bonds of flesh that held her, but he merely tightened his hold, not enough to hurt her, but she was securely restrained. After a moment of futile effort she let her head drop back against his shoulder. “You only think you love me,” she wept, her voice thick with the tears lodged in her throat. “I’ve been through it before; a patient becomes so dependent on me, so fixated on me, that he confuses his feelings of need with love. It won’t last, Blake, believe me. You don’t really love me; it’s just that I’m the only toy in your playground right now. When you go back to work you’ll be seeing other women and everything will fall back into proportion. It would be awful if I married you and then you found out it had all been a mistake.”
“I’m a man,” he said slowly. “There have been other women who I wanted, other women who caught my interest, but give me credit for being intelligent enough to know the difference between the way I felt with them and the way I feel about you. I want to be with you, talk with you, fight with you, watch you laugh,