Hannah groaned out loud.What did it all mean?Her brain refused to work, she was so tired.She walked back to her room and crawled under the sheets.Darryn’s scent was still hanging in the room, was still lingering on the sheets.She pressed her face into it and with his name on her lips, drifted off.
She’d think again tomorrow.
*
Darryn threw thehotel room key on the small table near the door and looked around him.He didn’t want to be here.But how did he get Hannah to listen to him?After he’d left Hannah, he’d gotten a hotel room and had then walked around the city, trying to figure out what to do.
That had been a few hours ago, and he still didn’t know what he should do.Why was she being so difficult?She said she loved him, but she didn’t want to be with him?How was that supposed to work?
His phone rang, and he quickly picked it up.
But it was his brother Don, not Hannah as he’d hoped.
“Well, at least you had the brains to go to Hannah, but it sounds as if you made a mess of the rest!”Don exclaimed over the phone.
Darryn swore.“What the hell do you know about it?”
“Women talk.”
Darryn grimaced.“So I’m the bad guy without giving my side of the story?I really don’t need this from you now.I—”
“Why did you go to New York?”Don interrupted him.
“To be with Hannah, of course.”
“And?”
“And to ask her to quit her job so we could be together.That’s what you guys did, right?I’d thought that would be what she wanted as well, but obviously—”
“What exactly does this ‘be together’ mean?”asked Don.
“That we’d get married, stay in the same house, in the same place, I assumed but—”
“And did you ask her to marry you?”
Darryn did a double take.Married to Hannah.He hadn’t thought about it, but he liked the sound of it.
“No, I didn’t ask in so many words, but isn’t that what being together means?”
Don laughed.“Man, you have a lot to learn, and clearly you haven’t learned anything from the mistakes Dale and David made.When I gave them a few pointers, you fled, if memory serves me right.I was the only one who knew what to do,” he said, sounding pleased with himself.“Let me give you a tip.You have to tell a woman exactly what you mean, what you want.I know, we don’t understand that.But you can either love a woman or understand her.I know what I prefer.
“So if I ask her to marry me, she’ll quit her job?”
“You don’t tell a Sutherland woman what to do.Haven’t you learned anything?Get a ring, go down on one knee, ask her in so many words to marry you—the whole shebang.As for the rest?You ask, you suggest, you compromise, you never, ever tell her.”
Darryn swore.
“If you love her, you do whatever it takes.It’s that simple.”
Long after Don had ended the call, Darryn still stood with the phone in his hand.
His phone rang again, and he grimaced when he saw the caller ID.So someone had spoken to his mother as well.Bloody hell.
“Mom,” he said in a clipped voice.
“Wow, you sound chirpy,” she said.
“I know why you’re calling.”
