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  “What? Why not?”

  “Don’t you see? This can’t happen. It just can’t. It’s an impossible situation, for a million different reasons.” Though all of them were crowding her head, she couldn’t put words to any of them.

  “Name one,” her mother commanded.

  “There’s…well…”

  Louisa cocked a brow. “Why, Corrine?”

  “Yes,” Mike said from the doorway, with a perfectly indescribable look on his face. “Why?”

  Corrine’s stomach dropped to her toes. So did her heart, and all her other vital organs.

  How much had he heard?

  There was no telling from the look on his face. “I—I thought you were chopping wood.”

  “I was. Until I got the strange feeling there was something far more interesting going on in here.” He leaned back against the doorjamb, casual as you please. “I was right.”

  “Yes, well.” Corrine leaped to her feet and became a whirlwind of activity, busying herself by straightening up an already tidy kitchen. “We were just—”

  “Talking about me,” he said, taking her shoulders, turning her to face him.

  How had he moved so fast? Reluctantly she looked into those dark eyes, thinking Please don’t have heard me, oh please don’t have heard.

  But those eyes were filled with knowing, and she swallowed hard. “You caught it all, didn’t you?” she whispered.

  “Every word.”

  13

  SHE LOVED HIM.

  Mike hadn’t imagined it, had never dared give thought to the possibility. But now his heart was racing, his entire body humming. He could think of nothing else. “Say it again,” he demanded.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Please?”

  That surprised her, and he realized he hadn’t often shown her his polite, gentle, tender side, not unless they were in bed.

  That would change, because he intended to make her the happiest woman on earth.

  “I think you should go,” she said calmly, her eyes alone showing her panic.

  “Nope, that wasn’t what you said.” He cocked his head and smiled, though he was so nervous he could hardly draw a breath. “Try again.”

  “No, I mean I think you should leave. Now.”

  He looked at Louisa, who gave a sympathetic shrug. “You have things to discuss,” she said. “I’m going to give you some privacy.”

  “We don’t need it,” Corrine said quickly, but her mother only put a finger to her lips.

  “Listen to him, honey. For once, slow down and listen.”

  Louisa left, and Corrine stood there looking cornered. When cornered, Mike knew, she came out fighting.

  But fight or discuss, calm or agitated, they were doing this. “We can make it,” he said softly. “We can make this work, no matter what our jobs are, no matter how different we are, no matter what. Are you getting this?” She studied her shoes. “If we try hard enough, nothing can stop us,” he insisted.

  “I can think of lots of things to stop us.”

  “Such as?” He smiled in the face of her fear, even as his heart constricted. “I know it’s terrifying.” Close enough to touch now, he took her hands in his. “Truth is, I’ve been terrified since the day I met you, and I didn’t realize why until just a moment ago, when I heard you say you love me.”

  She made a sound of misery and fury, and tried to tug her hands free.

  He held on.

  She tugged again, but he was quicker and stronger. “I love you back, Corrine. I always have and I always will.”

  She hadn’t so much as blinked. “What did you say?”

  “I said I love you back.” He waited while that sank in, while her eyes went from heated to glassy with shock. “I want this to work.”

  “Work.”

  “Between us. And I want forever. As in the white dress, the minivan, kids…”

  “Kids.”

  “Or not.” He shrugged. “I can go either way, unless we’re talking about us. Because that’s one thing I’m pretty set on, Corrine. You.”

  “You’re set.”

  He had to smile. “You’re sounding like a parrot. Tell me this is good news. Tell me you meant what you said to your mom. That you know we can do this.”

  She only stared at him.

  “Tell me something. Anything.”

  “You love me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to get married.”

  “Yes. Wait, I didn’t do that right at all.” He dropped to one knee, then reached for her hand. “Corrine.” His heart was in his throat. “You waltzed into my life and changed it forever with your incredible smile and fierce passion. You—”

  “My, God. Are you…proposing?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “You’d better hurry, then.” A half laugh escaped her. “I don’t think my legs are going to hold me.”

  “Did I mention your bossy ways?”

  “Mike—”

  “Yes,” he said with a laugh, even as his throat burned. “I’m proposing. I love you, Corrine. I want to love you forever. Will you marry me?”

  “If it’s just passion and a smile you’re attached to, I give those to you freely. You don’t have to marry me for them.”

  “I know.” He tugged her down to her knees in front of him. “But I want to marry you.”

  “I’m still ranked higher at work,” she warned.

  He had to laugh again. “This is not a trick. I actually want to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of my life.”

  “You’ve seen me first thing in the morning, right?” she asked with suspicion.

  “No, actually I haven’t.”

  “This is not a joke.”

  “Nope, it’s not. The answer is yes or no.”

  “How can it be that easy?” she cried. “My God, you’re looking at me with a straight face proposing m-m—”

  “Marriage. The word is marriage.”

  “We have no business doing this.”

  He cupped her face, waited until her wild eyes settled on his. “Do you love me?”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Do you?”

  Her hands came up to cover his. “Yes,” she said simply. “It’s crazy, but I do. I love you, Mike.”

  “Then everything else is a piece of cake,” he said, the fist around his heart loosening for the first time since he’d met her. He could have flown to Mars without a spacecraft. “Be my commander, be my lover, my best friend, my spouse. Be my life, Corrine.”

  “For better, for worse, and maybe lots of worse?”

  “Bring it on. All of it. Marry me.”

  “I will, Mike. Yes, I will.”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  “THE SPACE SHUTTLE LANDED without a hitch today,” the television anchor announced. “Thanks to the hard and amazing work of a select few, we’re one step closer to completing the International Space Station.”

  Corrine sighed with pleasure, both because the mission had been successful, and because her husband had come up behind her, slipped his big hands around her and was rubbing her stomach.

  “Nice?” he murmured, dipping down to kiss her neck.

  “Any nicer and you’ll send me into labor.” His hands stroked her nine-month-pregnant belly until she wanted to melt with bliss. “Just saw the news,” she told him. “They’re back. The landing was perfect.”

  “Not as perfect as ours last year.”

  “I know.” She sighed again, remembering just how wonderfully successful their own mission had been. “I’m ready to go back up.”

  Mike laughed and turned her in his arms. “Can you wait until you give birth, do you think?”

  “What do you think he’ll be when he grows up?” she wondered, feeling the baby within her kick with the velocity of a rocket.

  “She’ll be anything she wants, though I imagine stubborn as hell, poor baby. Just like her mommy.”

  “I’m not s
tubborn.”

  “Uh-huh. And I’m not the luckiest man on the planet.”

  “You’re the luckiest man on the planet?”

  He smiled that just-for-her smile he had, the one that made her feel like the most special, precious woman alive. Even after all this time, her heart went pitter-patter. Her mother had been right, as always. Love was worth the work.

  “What?” he asked with a little smile, his thumb gliding over her lower lip, his eyes full of so much warmth and love her throat tightened.

  Her stomach contracted.

  It wasn’t the first contraction, or the second, and she knew the time had come. “I love you, Mike.”

  “You say that as though you just realized it,” he said with a little laugh.

  “No.” She hid her wince as the contraction stole her breath. “I’ve always known,” she managed to say, watching his eyes mist. “Oh, and Mike?” Unable to keep it in, she gasped as the contraction ended. “It’s time.”

  “Baby, we can’t. You’re too far along for lovemaking now.”

  “No, I mean it’s time.”

  He blinked, then his jaw dropped. “Oh my God.”

  The look of pure terror on his face made her laugh in spite of her pain. “You’ve flown every aircraft known to man. You’ve traveled off this planet. And yet the thought of having a baby terrifies you?”

  He scooped her up into his arms. “Sit down,” he demanded.

  “I already am,” she said, as he paced the room with her.

  “We need to get organized!”

  “We are.” She pointed to the packed bag by their front door.

  “We need a doctor!”

  “Maybe,” she conceded, pulling him down for a quick kiss. “But honestly, Mike, everything I need, or will need, is right here. He’s holding me.”

  “God, Corrine.” He rubbed his cheek to hers. “You’ve given me everything I could ever need, too.”

  And five hours later, she gave him even more. A beautiful baby girl with dark, dark eyes and wild hair and a fierce, demanding cry that reminded him of his amazing, accomplished, beautiful wife.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7124-5

  HER PERFECT STRANGER

  Copyright © 2002 by Jill Shalvis.

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