“Not today. My ego’s had all it can take for the month. This is something different.”

Hannah discovered she’d been holding her breath without realizing it and she exhaled quickly. “What is it, Norman?”

“Remember that letter you found in Lucy Richards’s desk? The one I said I’d let you read if I ever asked you to marry me?”

Hannah started holding her breath again and this time it was deliberate. Of course she remembered the letter! It had come from the Seattle Police Department and it had just about killed her not to open it. After she’d handed it over, still tightly sealed, Norman had told her it held information about him that might just kill his mother if it were to be made public. And while this information might not put him out of business in Lake Eden, it would certainly change his patients’ opinion of him.

“You remember the letter, don’t you, Hannah?” Norman prompted.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Hannah managed to say, and a tingle of apprehension ran through her. Was Norman going to tell her his secret at long last?

“Well I didn’t let you read the letter before I proposed. And I need to know if that’s why you turned me down.”

“No,” Hannah said, quite honestly. “The letter had nothing to do with my decision. I just chose not to choose right then. I explained all that down at the café.”

“Okay, I just had to check. It was really bothering me. I figured if that letter was the only thing standing between fried egg sandwiches at my bachelor kitchen table and happily ever after with you, I’d bite the bullet and publish the darned thing in the Lake Eden Journal.”

Hannah’s eyes widened. “But you said it would just about kill your mother!”

“I didn’t mean it literally. It would embarrass her a lot, but I’m pretty sure she’d get over it eventually.”

“You’d take a chance like that?”

“Yes, if you’d marry me.”

Hannah was silent for a long moment. She knew Norman adored his mother, but he must love her even more. She was tempted, sorely tempted to say yes, but she couldn’t.

“Hannah? Should I take that letter to Rod at the paper? I really will do it, you know.”

“I know. And that’s very sweet, but I can’t marry you.” Hannah saw Norman’s face fall and she softened her response, “

at least not yet.”

Chapter

Chapter

Twelve