and a little wet from the snow, and she felt heat rise from somewhere deep inside of her, a place and a shivery feeling she never knew existed. His tongue played along the line of her lips, then scandalously slipped inside.
Oh, but this was better than her dreams. Her hands moved to his shoulders. His hands held her head.
He kissed her eyes and nose and cheeks, then moved to her ear. He whispered her name, then pressed his hips harder against her thighs. "I want you Nellie ... I want you. Can you feel how I want you?"
She moaned his name.
His mouth was at her ear again and he chanted her name in barely a whisper. It was the most erotic thing in the world. His lips skimmed her neck and jaw and lips. He kissed her brow, and then he was whispering in her other ear, as chills went down her whole body. "Marry me," he said.
She froze. "What?"
He pulled away and looked down at her. "I asked you to marry me."
She flattened her hands against his shoulders and pushed hard. "Let me up."
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"Let me up." She bucked up against him, and he sat up, his knees still straddling her legs. "Now." Her voice sounded gritty and cold and distant. She turned her head away and closed her eyes. She was such a fool.
"Nellie? Stop. Please." He tried to turn her back to face him.
She held up a hand to warn him away. She thought she might easily just crack in two. She squirmed out from under him, then stood and turned her back to him. Her legs felt like wood. Still she trudged through the powdery snow and picked up her hat, whipping it in the air to shake out the snow.
He was standing stiffly when she turned around. She could see he did not understand. "I'm sorry, Conn. I'm sorry about this, about everything."
"Don't you understand that I care about you? I want you in my life, and I want to make your life better."
She just shook her head, unable to tell him how impossible this was. She was too old, just too, too old for him. People would laugh behind their backs and she loved him too much to expose him to any pain. He couldn't seem to see how useless the idea was.
When she had turned twenty-one and was a woman, he was thirteen and had hardly left his childhood. Yet she knew he wouldn't understand. She was the one who had to remain sane. She was the one who had to say no.
He walked toward her. "There must be something I can do. Something to make you admit you care."
"I do care."
"Then why won't you marry me?"
"I can't."
"Tell me what I can do."
Her face felt twisted and tortured, and tears burned in her eyes. "You can't do anything."
He held out his hand for her. The look in his eyes was almost pleading. He obviously couldn't see how impossible marriage would be for them.
"I'm forty. You're thirty-two."
He jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground. His voice was so very quiet. "That doesn't matter to me."
"But it should. And it matters to me." She began to walk backward toward the park path, putting distance between them.
He looked up. "Please, Nellie."
"I'm sorry, Conn."
"I'll give you everything you need."
"You can't give me what I need. No one can."
He stood there looking as empty as she felt.
"Tell me what it is, and I'll try."
"Eight years. I need eight less years." Then she turned and ran away.
Chapter 7
Snow kept falling and falling. Conn stood at his window trying not to think so he wouldn't feel. Snow and ice had whirled down so rapidly that it obscured buildings. Wind drove blinding clouds of it around street corners and made the snow stick to the buildings, frosting everything.
He didn't know how long he stood there. He'd watched the storm whip up even stronger, and at the height of it you could hardly see out the windows. Sometime ago night had fallen and with it the slowing of the storm.
But to him, time meant nothing now. He wasn't used to losing, especially something that meant so much to him. He wanted her in his life. He wanted to grow old with her and have babies and laugh and cry and love her.
And he'd made such a mess of things.
He wondered if he had taken one too many punches. There had to be a reason he would do