Page 97 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“I don’t see why.” Her insides were scraped hollow, her composure hanging by a thread, but the tiniest spark of hope was glinting inside her. “Pearl is b-better.”
“Pearl is sweet enough to make my teeth ache, but she isn’tyou, is she?” He put his hand on the table, palm up. “Will you please come home with me, where you belong?”
“Virgil,” she choked in protest. Her eyes were leaking so much, she couldn’t see.
“Here you are, ma’am. That’s clean.” Someone offered a handkerchief. “I was going to see if you’d take that for a letter.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She took it and tried to dry her streaming eyes and jammed the rough cotton against her running nose. “I’m trying to—” She lowered the balled handkerchief into her lap. “I can’t be the woman who steals her sister’s husband.” Her voice rang with the agony of her impossible position. “No one would respect me, least of all you. I remember what you said when you wrote to Pearl to ask her to marry you. You said you don’t abide liars, cheats, and thieves, and I—”
“You’re all of those things,” he cut in flatly.
She dragged in a gasp that felt like fire and sat back in her chair, stung to her bones.
“You lied when you said we didn’t love each other. You cheated me out of three days of marriage we could have already had. And you’ve stolen my heart.” The hard line of his mouth slowly softened into a wry smile, one that dawned wide across his face and seemed to reach straight into her heart like sunshine, filling her with his love. “Now, how do you plan to make that up to me?”
Oh, this man.
She was still fighting the tears that wanted to leak from her eyes, but they were turning from desolation into something more hopeful.
She couldn’t believe he was doing this, declaring himself so publicly. Part of her was saying,Be careful. You’ve been here before, but he wasn’t trying to manipulate her. He was trying to convince her.
He was making it clear to all and sundry that she was someone worth loving. Someone he would fight for. Because he loved her. Reallylovedher.
Her throat held a huge lump that wouldn’t allow her to speak.
“You’re not any of those things anyway.” He used one bent knuckle to brush away the tear tracking down her cheek. “Not deep down. Not when it counts. You could prove it by being truthful about whether you love me,” he added in a low rumble.
“I do.” Her heart shuddered as she let her love break through the log jam inside her. Her love for him poured out in fresh tears and a shaken declaration of, “I love you so much I thought I would die without you.”
A look flashed on his face that mirrored her own agonized joy.
He pulled her onto her feet and into his arms, holding her close and hard. His hand cupped the back of her head, and his mouth pressed to her temple, her cheek. She lifted her mouth, and his lips were on hers, urgent and fervent and cherishing.
Dimly she was aware of sound around them, but in this second, Virgil’s kiss was her whole world.Virgilwas. Her heart was thudding, and her insides were quaking as she let her love for him suffuse her whole being.
More crucially, she allowed the belief that he loved her back to pour through her. He’d had thousands of paths and choices he could have made that wouldn’t have led him here to her today. He wantedher, and the knowledge of that had her clinging to the back of his shirt as they kissed for long enough that the whoops grew to a volume they couldn’t ignore.
He lifted his head, and she ducked her face into his chest, embarrassed by their public display.
“Serve a round on me, Cecil,” he called out.
There was another whoop, and the men disbursed from gawking at them.
“Damned Peeping Toms,” Virgil muttered, still holding her close and rubbing her back. He touched his mouth to her ear, asking, “You’ll marry me?”
“Are you sure, Virgil? What about running for marshal?”
“I don’t want to be a marshal.” He huffed an exasperated breath. “Once I won, I’d have to arrest myself for the murder of everyone who had brought up your name during elections.”
She snorted and petted the front of his shirt. “That is a conundrum.”
“One I could avoid by not running at all.”
“And Pearl?” she asked with concern.
“She can stay with us until she finds her own husband.” He sounded unbothered. “She won’t want for offers.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
