An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,89

wanted to be honest with him. Or, maybe more accurately, she wanted to be honest with herself and she wanted someone else to listen.

“All those years with Ben...I mean, I thought I loved him. I did love him. But now I know how easy it was. How simple and uncomplicated it was. The whole time I got to love him I didn’t have to worry about his feelings for me. I could simply pretend and it was enough. We worked together. We ate together. We were a team. Even when he got sick that was easy, too. I knew what I had to do. Take care of him. Help him to get better. It didn’t start to get hard until—”

“Until you thought you were going to lose him.”

She shook her head. “No, I never thought I was going to lose him. I wouldn’t let myself form the idea. To me it was unfathomable. It was when I realized he thought he would lose his battle. When he decided it was all or nothing...without me, that’s when I knew I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

“So you ran.”

Anna winced. “I made a strategic exit. Everything is different now.”

Mark laughed. “Yeah, because you’re not in an imaginary relationship anymore. You’re in a real one.”

She hated to hear him verbalize it. But she knew it was true. All those years she thought she’d been in love, but never once had she been scared of it. Now she spent most of her days with a knot in her stomach that no amount of antacid would relieve and it wasn’t the baby’s fault.

“I was playing at love, wasn’t I?”

“I don’t think so. If it weren’t grounded in something real, you would have ditched him already and fallen in love with me instead. I would be your new fake work husband.”

Anna rolled her eyes to mock his cockiness, but it did give her some comfort to know that she wasn’t prone to falling in love with every man she worked with. “I don’t think so.”

“No? I would make an awesome fake husband. Just like I was a fabulous fake father all the way from Afghanistan.”

“I’m doing it, aren’t I? I’m having an actual relationship with him.”

“You are. And how does it make you feel?”

“Like a freaking scaredy cat.”

“That’s it? All you feel is fear?”

No, it wasn’t even remotely close to all she felt. Ben made her feel as though there was another person in the world who knew who she really was. Ben knew she started to get cranky when she was tired or hungry and he either made her sleep or fed her. Ben knew she liked to sleep on the right side of the bed so he slept on the left. Ben knew how she liked to be kissed and touched. Ben knew what her favorite maternity shirt was and that she secretly liked the name Gertrude for a girl, although he refused to allow his daughter to be named that.

Ben made her feel safe when she slept in his arms. Ben made her feel happy when she woke up and he was still there. Ben made love to her as though, even with her round body, she was still the sexiest woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

No wonder she was so scared. For six years he’d been her world and what she felt for him then was a mere fraction of what she felt for him now. Which made the idea of him not feeling the same way about her so much more daunting.

Yes, he cared for her. Yes, he wanted her. But did he need her? Did he get heart palpations at the idea of her not being in his life? It seemed very uncharacteristic of Ben to truly need anyone.

“Has he told you he loves you?”

“Ha!” Anna snorted. “Ben? Feelings? You met him, right? No. Don’t get romantic on me, Mark. We’re both realists. Ben doesn’t want to move in with me because he loves me. He wants to move in with me because he sees it as the next step in his plan to get me to marry him. Because that’s what he wants. The kid and me in that order. He thinks moving in will get him to marriage that much faster and he thinks marriage is the most secure way to lock it all up. He’s being expedient, that’s all. First he gets me to forgive him, then he gets me to date him, then have sex with him, now he