She thought seriously of punching him. Instead, she gritted her teeth. "It's not my love that's in question here."
He regarded her blankly.
She snatched one of the throw pillows from the couch and hurled it at him.
"Damn! You made me spill my Dr Pepper."
She jumped up. "I'm outta here."
He slammed down the can and jumped up, too. "You're not a reasonable woman, Rachel. Has anybody ever pointed that out to you?"
"Reasonable!" She was spitting mad. "Just because I won't be your charity case, you think I'm unreasonable?"
"Charity case? Is that what you think you are?"
"I know it. Ethan's not the only saint in the Bonner family."
"You think I'm a saint?" Instead of being annoyed, he looked rather pleased.
"Brother…" she muttered.
He pushed his index finger toward her. "I'm going to marry you, Rachel. So just get that through your head right now."
"Why would you want to marry me? You don't love me!"
"Says who?"
"Don't play games with me. It's too important." Her anger fled. She bit her lip. "Please, Gabe."
He went to her at once, and pulled her down on the couch next to him. "Why would I play games about something like this? Don't you think it's important to me, too?"
"Not the way it is to me. You care about me, but I need more. Can't you understand that?"
"Of course I can. Rachel, don't you know how I feel about you?"
"Not the way you felt about Cherry, that's for sure." She hated the sharp note she heard in her voice, hated herself for being jealous of a dead woman.
"My life with Cherry is over," he said quietly.
She gazed down at her hands. "I don't think it'll ever be over. And I can't live in competition."
"You aren't in competition with Cherry."
He didn't understand at all. She twisted her fingers and thought about walking from the room, but she had just enough fight left to give him one more chance. "Then tell me something bad about her."
"What do you mean?"
One part of her said to back off while her pride was still intact, but some things were more important than pride. "You said I wasn't in competition with her, but I don't think that's true." She felt petty and miserable. She couldn't look at him, so she continued to gaze at her hands. "I need to hear something bad about her."
"This is silly."
"To you, maybe, but not to me."
"Rachel, why are you putting yourself through this?"
"There had to be something about her that wasn't wonderful. I mean… Did she snore?" She finally looked up and regarded him hopefully. "I don't snore."
He slipped his hand over her clenched ones. "Neither did she."
"Maybe she-I don't know. Put the newspaper in the trash before you had a chance to read it?"
"Once or twice, I guess."
She hated the compassion she saw in his expression, but she had to see this through. Her mind searched for something an almost-perfect woman might have done. "Did she ever… use your razor to shave her legs?"
"She didn't like the razors I used." He paused and regarded her pointedly. "Unlike you."
She began to feel desperate. Surely there was something. "I'm a very good cook."
If anything, his expression grew even more sympathetic. "She baked bread at least once a week."
The only time Rachel had tried to bake bread, she'd killed the yeast. "I hardly ever get traffic tickets."
He lifted one eyebrow.
She rushed on. "And sometimes people who are exceptionally kindhearted don't tell jokes well. They sort of screw up the punch line."
"You're reaching." He kissed her on the forehead, then let her go and sank back into the corner of the couch. "You really want to go through with this, don't you? Even though it doesn't have anything to do with you."
"She seems so perfect."
He took a deep breath. "All right, then. Listen up because I'm only going to say this once, so you'd better pay attention. I loved Cherry with all my heart, and now I feel the same way about you."
She exhaled a long, slow breath.
He said, "You might not have been able to save Dwayne's soul, but you sure saved mine. You pulled me out of all that self-pity I was caught in and turned my life upside down. I started to live again."
She could feel herself melting, and she moved toward him, but he held up his hand. "I'm not finished. You're the one who brought this up, so now you can listen. Cherry was… She was almost too good. She never lost her temper, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get a bad word out of her about anybody, including people who were real creeps. Even if she was tired or not feeling well or Jamie had been acting up, she wouldn't snap or be grouchy, she'd just get quiet. She was so damned sweet."
"That makes me feel a lot better," she said dryly.
"Now here's the part I'm only going to say once." He drew a deep breath. "Sometimes living with Cherry was a little like living with Mother Teresa or somebody. She was so sweet, so reasonable, so damn good, that I didn't have a lot of room for error when it came to my own shortcomings."
Happiness unfolded inside her like a fan of rainbows. "Really?"
"Really."
"And with me?"
He smiled. "I have a lot of room for error."
She beamed at him.
"One other thing." He frowned. "Cherry used to hum. When she was cooking, cleaning, even reading a magazine, she'd hum. Sometimes it was okay, but other times, it kind of got on my nerves."
"Random humming can be annoying." Rachel found that she was starting to like Cherry Bonner.
"And the thing was… Because she always overlooked all my flaws, I could never get on her case about it."
"You poor thing." She bit her bottom lip. "Was she… I know I'm a jerk for asking, but… In bed?"
He began to look amused. "You're a mass of insecurities, aren't you?"
"Never mind. Forget I asked."
"It wouldn't be fair to Cherry if I held up a sex kitten like yourself as a standard for comparison."
Her eyes widened, and she smiled. "Really?"
He laughed.
She hurled herself across the couch, and his arms tightened around her as if he wouldn't ever let her go. His lips brushed her hair, and his voice grew gruff with emotion. "Cherry was the love of my boyhood, Rach. You're the love of my manhood. And I do love you, with all my heart. Please don't leave me."
She couldn't respond because his mouth had settled over hers, and she lost herself in a kiss so shattering that nothing else existed.
When they drew apart, she found herself gazing into his eyes, and it was like looking into his soul. All the barriers between them were gone.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" he whispered.
She tilted her head in inquiry.
He brushed her lips. "Aren't you forgetting to say, 'I love you, too, Gabe'? What about that?"
She drew back, smiled into his eyes. "Is there any doubt?"
"You're not the only one who needs to hear the words."
"I love you, Gabe. All the way to the bottom of my soul."
He shuddered. "No more talk of leaving me?"
"No more."
"No more arguments about getting married?"
"Not a single one."
"You'll put up with my brothers?"
"Don't remind me."
"And Chip's going to belong to both of us?"
She nodded, unable for a moment to speak. Now that he'd set his heart to it, Gabe Bonner would be a better father to her son than Dwayne Snopes could ever have dreamed of being.
She stroked the stubborn line of his jaw, kissed him again. She wanted to laugh and sing and burst out in tears all at once. The emotions were too much, so she hid behind some gentle teasing. "Don't think I'm going to forget about that million dollars. You were right about me not keeping those diamonds, and you're not competent to handle your own money."