“I’m asking you to marry me. To let me share your life, to have you share mine. And I ask you that here, on holy ground, while the sun beams between the stones.”

Emotion welled up until she thought she could drown in it. “Don’t ask me, Murphy.”

“I have asked you. But you haven’t answered.”

“I can’t. I can’t do what you’re asking.”

His eyes flashed, temper and pain like twin suns inside him. “You can do anything you choose to do. Say you won’t, and be honest.”

“All right, I won’t. And I have been honest, right from the start.”

“No more to me than to yourself,” he shot back. He was bleeding from a hundred wounds and could do nothing to stop it.

“I have.” She could only meet temper with temper, and hurt with hurt. “I told you all along there was no courtship, no future, and never pretended otherwise. I slept with you,” she said, her voice rising in panic, “because I wanted you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll change everything for you.”

“You said you loved me.”

“I do love you.” She said it in fury. “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. But it isn’t enough.”

“For me it’s more than enough.”

“Well, not for me. I’m not you, Murphy. I’m not Brianna, I’m not Maggie.” She whirled away, fighting the urge to pound her fists on the stones until they bled. “Whatever was taken away from me when my mother told me just who I am, I’m getting it back. I’m taking it back. I have a life.”

Eyes dark and churning, she spun back to him. “Do you think I don’t know what you want? I saw your face when you walked in this morning and I was cooking breakfast. That’s what you want, Murphy, a woman who’ll tend your house, welcome you in bed, have your children, and be content year after year with gardens and a view of the valley and turf fires.”

She cut to the core of what he was. “And such things are beneath the likes of you.”

“They’re not for me,” she countered, refusing to let the bitter words hurt her. “I have a career I’ve put on hold long enough. I have a country, a city, a home to get back to.”

“You have a home here.”

“I have a family here,” she said carefully. “I have people who mean a great deal to me here. But that doesn’t make it home.”

“What stops it?” he demanded. “What stops you? You think I want you so you can cook my meals and wash my dirty shirts? I’ve been doing that fine on my own for years, and can do it still. I don’t give a damn if you never lift a hand. I can hire help if it comes to that. I’m not a poor man. You have a career—who’s asking you not to? You could paint from dawn till dusk and I’d only be proud of you.”