"Yes." She'd never expected him to understand that part of it so clearly and so quickly. "I didn't see it exactly that way at the time, but in hindsight ... yes."
"How, exactly, did you see it at the time?"
Kitty dropped her lashes to hide her eyes and hoped the heat crawling up her neck wouldn't make it past the collar of her robe. "I'm not sure I remember, exactly," she told him. "When I woke up it hurt to blink. My head was pounding and my stomach..." She shuddered. "In the midst of all that physical misery, I assumed..." (and had been angry that she couldn't remember the details) "I assumed we'd..."
His mouth twitched.
"I assumed we'd had sex. Okay, I said it. Satisfied?"
He nodded. "And then...?"
"And then I got dressed. I found the marriage certificate on the floor. I was a young and foolish eighteen. And I stood there, looking at that certificate, thinking how a Wilder had kinda, sorta wedded after all."
"And 'kinda, sorta' didn't seem good enough?"
"Well..." It hadn't seemed good enough, not when it was Dylan whom she'd wed. "But I didn't think about making the marriage legal until I was walking home."
One of his eyebrows lifted. "I sense we're getting somewhere."
Kitty shifted on the bed and stared down at her lap. "Do you remember Ned DeBeck?"
"I remember some DeBecks. I don't know a Ned."
"The family's moved now, but Ned was my age. I ran into him as I was walking home that morning. Through high school he'd been ... persistent."
"He liked you?"
She shook her head. "He liked the idea of how easy Wilder women were supposed to be."
"Asshole." Dylan spit out the word and his hand tightened on hers. "So what did he say to you?"
She cleared her throat. "He'd seen us together the night before, and I looked pretty rumpled that morning."
"So he assumed I got what he'd been after, I suppose?"
Kitty nodded, focusing on a pulled thread of her robe, rubbing it with her free thumb. "I felt cheap and dirty and hungover and mad and I thought ... I thought..."
"You thought you'd show him."
Kitty shrugged, then met Dylan's gaze. "Yes."
He frowned. "But you never told anyone what you did?"
"Right."
"But that doesn't make sense, Kitty. What was the point of rebelling when nobody, including the asshole DeBeck, knew about it?"
"I knew about it. Do you see? It's what I thought that mattered."
He was silent for a few moments. "Yeah," he finally said. "I get that." He let go of her hand.
Kitty's fingers curled into the tousled bedspread. "I just wanted to be like everyone else," she whispered. "For once to be normal, conventional."
"And marrying a near stranger, then keeping it secret for eight years, will certainly do that for you," he said dryly.
She looked at him. "It's easy for you to be sarcastic. But how would you like to be a Wilder? To be me? I've only wanted a normal family my whole life. To have a husband, children, to be in love and be loved like everybody else. What chance do I have for that in Hot Water?"
Dylan looked away. "Maybe you have a chance to live without the kind of pain Bram has."
Kitty stared. Bram. Bram? "What does he have to do with this?"
Dylan shrugged, his expression cold, his voice flat and faraway-sounding. "Think about it, babe. That's where all that 'in love and be loved' can take you. Staring at someone's grave night after night after night. I don't want that for myself and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else either. Even you."
Kitty shivered. Not at the image of poor Bram, but because of the sudden absence of Dylan. Sure, he was still on the bed, but it was as if he'd turned himself off and was detached from her, from the room, from the world.
"And now that we've" - he seemed at a loss for the correct description this time - "consummated the marriage, Kitty, I hope to God you don't have any crazy ideas that I'm your ticket to conformity."
A Wilder and a Matthews? Truly married? Long ago she'd accepted that it was a fantasy which could never come true. He would end up married to someone with a pedigree. Someone like Honor Witherspoon. Kitty released a short laugh. "I know my place, Dylan."
At that, he came partly back to life. "Fuck, Kitty."
"See? You know it too."
"Damn it." He pushed away from the pillows and started toward her.
She jumped off the bed and backed away. "It was your