‘‘Just be quiet.’’ There was no stopping now, whatever the consequences, not with this roaring sea crashing in her head. ‘‘You just think about that, Ethan Quinn. You give that some good long thought and don’t you dare call me fragile again.’’

He gave her a slow nod. ‘‘It’s not the word that’s coming to mind at the moment.’’

‘‘Good. I haven’t needed you or anyone to help me build a decent life for my baby. I used muscle, and I used guts to do what needed to be done, so don’t you tell me I’m china.’’

‘‘You wouldn’t have had to do it all alone if you weren’t too damn proud to settle things with your father.’’

The truth of that put a hitch in her step. But she balled her fists and rushed on. ‘‘We’re talking about you and me. You say you love me, Ethan, but you don’t for one minute understand me.’’

‘‘I’m starting to agree with that,’’ he muttered.

‘‘You’ve got some ego-ridden male idea in your head that I need to be taken care of, protected, coddled—when what I need is to be needed and respected and loved. And you’d know that if you paid attention. You ask yourself this, Ethan, who seduced whom? Who said ‘I love you’ first. Who proposed marriage? Are you so nearsighted you can’t see I’ve had to take every step first with you?’’

‘‘You make it sound like you’ve been leading me by the nose, Grace. I don’t care for that.’’

‘‘I couldn’t lead you by the nose if I jabbed a fish hook in it. You go exactly where you want to go, Ethan, but you can be so infuriatingly slow. I love that about you, and I admire it, and now I understand it more. You had a terrible period in your life when you had no control, now you take care not to lose it. But you can slip from control into stubbornness in one short step, and that’s just what you’ve done.’’

‘‘I’m not being stubborn. I’m being right.’’

‘‘Right? It’s right for two people to love each other and not build a life out of it? It’s right to pay all your life for what someone else did to you when you were too young to defend yourself against it? Is it right for you to say you can’t and won’t marry me because you’re . . . stained and you made some ridiculous promise to yourself never to have a family of your own?’’

It sounded off when she said it like that. It sounded . . . stupid. ‘‘It’s the way it is.’’

‘‘Because you say so.’’

‘‘I told you how it is, Grace. I gave you the choice.’’