The muscles in his jaw tightened as he fixed his gaze on the pool of liquor on the tabletop. "Holly is ... not open for discussion."

"You screwed things up with her, didn't you?"

Jerking back his head, he glared at her. "How did you-"

"Of course you did, or you wouldn't be here with another woman. What did you do this time? Turn your marriage proposal into a marriage contract? Ask her to sign a partnership agreement? Try to negotiate a topping clause, wherein you could get rid of her if someone better came along?"

He continued to glare at her as he quietly, coldly answered, "I told her I loved her."

Clearly surprised, Sophy fell silent. Lacie took advantage of it to leave.

He hardly noticed. Though he owed Sophy no explanation, he drew a deep breath and offered it anyway.

Sophie stared accusingly at him. "And so you did what everyone else has done. You left her. You proved to her that she's right to be afraid. You asked her to marry you, you told her you loved her, and you left her without even saying goodbye. You did what everyone else has done. You took from her, and then you walked away."

Tom opened his mouth to argue, to insist that it hadn't happened that way at all. She'd told him she wouldn't love him, wouldn't marry him, wouldn't give him anything at all. After that, how could he have stayed? How could he have seen her every day, held her, kissed her, made love to her, knowing that the most important relationship in his life meant nothing to her?

But from Holly's viewpoint, it had happened exactly that way. After swearing to her that he would never do what the first boy, and the next and the next, had done, he had. Exactly.

Panic tightened his chest and formed a lump in his throat. He'd never meant for her to look at it that way, had never intended to do anything that might hurt her.

Dropping the necklace on the tabletop, he raised both hands to his face, rubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes. "I never meant for her to think ... I just couldn't stay there, knowing she was never going to let me be any more important than every other man she'd-"

"Tom."

He looked up, and saw that Sophy was gone and standing in her place...

"Holly," he breathed. Reaching out one unsteady hand, he touched her cheek, her jaw, before sliding his hand to the back of her neck, pulling her close, and covering her face with kisses. "I'm so sorry," he murmured. "I never meant ... I've missed you ... I need you... "

She slid her hands into his hair, holding him still for a sweet, gentle kiss. Then she leaned back and took a deep breath. "Listen up, because I'm going to tell you something I've never said to any other man in my entire life. I love you, Tom Flynn. I tried not to, because the possibility of loving and losing you scared me to death, but I couldn't stop it from happening. No matter how much I ignored it, no matter how much I pretended you were just like all the others, you weren't, because I never cared about the others and I ... I love you."

He raised one hand to her wrist, kissing the palm, and felt the rapid beat of her pulse. "I left Tuesday morning because-"

"I took away your hope. I thought I could keep you in my life without having to take any chances, without risking a broken heart. I didn't consider what that would do to you. I was selfish." She kissed him again, then nervously smiled. "Do you still want to marry me?"

When he opened his mouth, she hastily covered it with her fingers. "No, don't say it. Just... Ask any question you want, because I'm about to say your favorite word."

He had a lot of favorite words, starting and ending with Holly. But he knew the word she was talking about. Yes, he'd told her, because it was full of possibilities. Like them. He slid his arms around her waist and held her close. "Hmm... Do you understand the difference now between having sex and making love?"

She smiled slowly, seductively, but in a whole different way from what he was accustomed to. The old seductiveness-that was Holly putting on an act for any man in the area. This was Holly playing to him, and only him. "Yes."

"Did it mean something to you?"

"Yes."

"Did you hate going to bed without me and waking up without me and spending the entire day without seeing me even once?"

"Yes. Terribly."

He felt her breath on his jaw, smelled her fragrance when he breathed, swore he heard the faint thud of her heart. Or maybe it was his heart pounding. He'd never felt so nervous, so lucky, so incredibly grateful, in his life. He brushed his mouth across hers, just a quick taste; then, able to manage little more than a whisper, he asked, "Do you really love me?"

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"And will you marry me?"

"Ye-"

Before she could finish, he kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, hungrily, greedily, claiming her. Heat rushed through him, making him hard and desperately in need. Painfully aware that they were in a public place, he forced her back, then tenderly stroked her face. "One more question: Will you come home with me and make love with me and make me forget my name?"

She smiled that intimately seductive smile again, making him ache inside, and whispered, "Oh, yes. Every night for the rest of our lives."

Epilogue.

T he clock on the office wall gave two soft bongs at midnight . It was now officially the second Sunday in March. More important, Tom thought as he opened the safe, it was the day after he'd achieved his second- most-crucial goal. He and Holly had been married the day before. She had looked more beautiful than ever, and he had felt ... blessed. He'd known without a doubt that she was the best thing ever to happen to him. It was nothing less than a miracle that she felt the same about him.

Her pastor had performed the service in the church where her family had worshiped for two hundred years, and Father Shanahan had been there to offer his own blessing, along with most of the residents of Bethlehem . Josie Dalton and Gracie Brown-Grayson had served as flower girls, and Bree had been maid of honor. Margery, doing well enough in rehab to merit a day out, had watched from the second row with tears in her eyes.

At the reception afterward, Agatha Winchester and Bud Grayson had had eyes only for each other, leading to whispers about the possibility of an other wedding soon, and Harry and Maeve, he'd gathered from the gossip, were becoming quite a couple, too.

Tom grinned. He was remembering people's names, keeping them straight, learning the details of their lives. He was going to fit in in Bethlehem just fine. The only thing missing from the celebration had been Sophy. He had tried to find her, had driven the streets of the old neighborhood, asked everyone about her. No one had known anything.

Father Shanahan had chuckled. "Oh, Sophy... She's an angel, you know."

At the time, Tom had written it off as an old man's fondness for a kind young woman. In odd moments since, he'd wondered. He'd struck her with his car, and yet she'd been uninjured. She'd waltzed into his office past the tightest security in the city. She'd known things she shouldn't know, popped up every time he'd needed her, and given him the pushes necessary to achieve his goal. He'd needed assistance, and she'd provided it.

Divine assistance? Was it possible...?

Smiling at the notion, he opened the envelope for the third time that year, took out a pen, and drew a line through a goal. Get married. He'd done it, once and for all time.

Before he could return the paper to the enve lope, a shuffle sounded in the hallway. "Tom?" Holly murmured an instant before appearing in the doorway. Her hair was mussed-his fault-and her eyes were glazed with sleepy satisfaction-his fault, too, he thought with a grin. She was wearing the top half of the pajama set her friends had given her as a gag. He wore the bottoms.

She climbed onto his lap, dangling her legs over the arm of the chair, and gave him a kiss. "Working on your wedding night? What did I do wrong?"

"Not a thing. I'm not working."

"Then what's that?"

He glanced at the paper on the desk pad and thought that someday he would share it with her, but not tonight. "It's just some notes. If I carry you back to bed, will you give me a chance to make you say your favorite word again?"

Her grin was lazy and wicked and did wonderful things to his could. "You do what you did earlier, and I'll say any word you want."

As he reached to turn off the lamp, his gaze fell on the paper again. He blinked, closed his eyes, then looked again. Survive had been lined out, and a new one had been written underneath. The ink was the same-hell, the handwriting was the same-but he knew for a fact he hadn't added that new goal. Not that he had any problem with it.

And live happily ever after.

Who knew where it had come from? Maybe from the same good luck-the same miracle-that had given him Holly.

He turned off the lamp and carried her out of the office, down the hall to their bedroom, where a few candles burned. He was about to blow one out when she stopped him. "On your birthday, when Maggie put the candles on your cake... What did you wish for?"

He recalled that night easily enough, recalled sitting at Maggie's table and thinking about beginning his search for a wife. He hadn't put a wish into words ... or had he? He'd certainly gotten everything he'd been thinking about and then some.

Leaving the candles burning, he lay down, wrapped his arms around her-around his wife-and pulled her close so she fitted snugly against him. "You, darlin'," he murmured, brushing his mouth against hers. "I wished for you."

end.