Marriage Is Just The Beginning. Betty Sanders Jane

age, and she enjoys the other children, when she isn’t fighting with them.”

      Grant half smiled. Hope blossomed in Sharon’s heart.

      She pressed on, willing him to listen, to understand and to concede. “I think if you give this some thought, you will see that it makes perfect sense. We have been friends forever and we still get along, something lots of married folks can’t say. Neither of us wants to be married, but both of us wants the best for Cassie. You want a mother and I want a daughter.” She paused, then said softly, “It sounds like the perfect solution to me.”

      

      Grant sat alone in the family room. A log cracked in the fireplace—a loud, popping noise—as flames licked along its side, fueled by bright orange coals beneath. The house settled a bit with a groan, not unlike an old man whose bones protested as he burrowed a little deeper beneath the covers. Except the house settled under a blanket of snow that had fallen steadily throughout the day and was only now starting to slacken.

      All around him was darkness, except for the dancing, flickering light from the fire, which cast an orange-yellow glow that didn’t quite penetrate the shadows. The clock on the mantel chimed twelve times with a solid certainty that Grant suddenly envied. Cassie had long since been tucked into bed, lost to the land of sleep and dreams. A land Grant wouldn’t mind visiting himself…if only he could.

       It sounds like the perfect solution to me.

      Sharon’s words haunted him, as they had since she’d uttered them, before she’d calmly walked from his kitchen to allow him to think about her offer.

      He shouldn’t need to think, should be able to dismiss the proposal as if it had never been spoken. But he couldn’t. Arguments piled in his mind like the snow outside, and remained there because he could not refute the truth. If he viewed the situation coldly and objectively, her proposal did sound like the perfect solution.

      If Sharon truly meant that she didn’t want to marry for love, did not want any emotional involvement. And he had no reason to think she was lying. She had always been honest with him in the past.

      Why, then, would she want to marry him? She was far too young and attractive, warmhearted and giving, to tie herself to a man who would never offer her children of her own, never offer her a true marriage. A man who was not capable of loving again.