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‘It is.’ A faint warmth hit Helena’s cheeks. So far he wasn’t doing so badly.
‘Good. Anyway. Before that, I had a meeting with our fathers that left me in a...not great mood. But it also got me thinking.’ He looked up, his serious eyes focused on hers. ‘The moment we sleep together, we’ve changed the game. There’s no hope of an annulment when we get back. You have to be sure that it’s what you want.’
‘An annulment?’ Helena shook her head a little to try and make sense of it. ‘You were refusing to sleep with me to make sure I had an out?’
‘That was one reason.’
‘What was the other?’
‘My father suggested that, should I have any problems getting you to agree to the same terms as Thea for the marriage, I should just get you pregnant to tie you to me, then make sure you signed before the child was born.’
Helena’s heart froze in her chest. ‘What did my father say?’ she asked. Because Ezekiel probably never knew what she’d been through, and she expected that kind of callousness from him anyway. But her own father...
‘He... Helena, he laughed. He said something about you making up for the past by marrying me, and he laughed when Dad told me to get you pregnant.’ He ran a shaking hand through his hair, and Helena wanted to hold him, to soothe him. To have him soothe her. But all she could hear in her mind was her father’s laughter, dismissing the most important thing—the worst thing—that had ever happened to her as a joke.
She’d known that she and Thea were often more useful than loved. She’d understood that this marriage was a business deal, convenient and lucrative rather than something to be celebrated.
But until this moment she’d never realised quite how little her father thought of her. And suddenly her heart felt as if it had been torn apart.
‘I couldn’t bear it.’ Flynn was still talking, and Helena tried to pay him proper attention again. ‘They were just so casual about the idea—about a child’s life. And I knew I couldn’t risk that. That we had to be sure, that everything had to be agreed before anything like that could happen.’
Helena swallowed and it felt as if there was a rock stuck in her throat. He hadn’t wanted her to be trapped, hadn’t wanted any child to be unwanted, or used, like he had been. Her soul ached for the boy Flynn must have been, and for the man he’d become. Her own battered heart reached out for his. Maybe they really could give each other what they’d lacked so far, all their lives—love.
He wanted so badly to do this right, to make a perfect future for them. And so what if he planned it out moment by moment? His reasons were good. His heart was good.
And Helena wanted that heart for her own. More than she’d ever done as a fourteen-year-old child. More even than when she’d envied her sister her golden, good fiancé. More than when she’d stepped into that borrowed wedding dress, and more certainly than when she’d propositioned him in her negligee on their wedding night. More still than when he’d chosen her the perfect engagement ring.
She was in love with her own husband, and it scared her and filled her more than she’d ever known anything could.
‘I think you should ask me that question again now,’ she said, nerves making her whole body feel as if it was vibrating from the inside out. She needed to tell him the truth, needed to confess. But if she did...it could destroy the cautious happiness they were building together. Once they were home, once the paperwork was signed, maybe then she could talk about what had happened to her, what she’d done. Maybe then she could make him understand.
But first she had to make him love her.
Flynn smiled up at her, already on his knees again. ‘Helena. Will you be my wife? In every way there is?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed and felt that amazed joy flooding through her.
* * *
Flynn swept her up in his arms the moment she spoke. He owed her a proper kiss, after their first public one, and that was what he intended to give her. Lowering his mouth to hers, he tried to convey everything he felt—every hope, every dream—through a kiss.
From her eager response, he hoped he had got pretty close.
It amazed him to think that just last week he hadn’t known this woman—not really. He knew Helena, Thea’s sister, or Helena, Thomas’s daughter. But he had no idea of the wonder, the humour, the warmth and the beauty that lay beyond those labels.
‘I can’t believe I came so close to marrying the wrong woman,’ he murmured against her lips, and felt rather than saw her smile in response. ‘This is it. This is exactly how it was meant to be all along.’
‘I know,’ Helena said, and he could hear her happiness in the words. ‘I know. And we so almost didn’t...’
‘But we did. We have each other now.’ It might not be love yet, Flynn thought, but he could see the pathway there. Could see every step between here and their future.
Helena pulled back a little, still smiling, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. ‘You haven’t even put the ring on me yet.’
‘I haven’t?’ Flynn blinked, and saw it sitting on the table beside them. Pulling it free of its velvet box, he lifted Helena’s left hand and slipped it on next to her wedding ring. ‘There.’
‘There,’ Helena echoed, staring down at her hand. ‘It really is the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.’
‘For the most beautiful woman,’ Flynn said, knowing it was corny and not even caring. Somehow this moment, alone on the terrace, felt more permanent, more official than the big church ceremony and the signed register. This was the moment he’d remember as their true wedding. The moment they understood each other and committed to their future.
Helena smiled up at him, then caught her lip between her teeth, the way he already knew she always did when she was deciding whether or not to say something.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You may as well say whatever it is. After your response to my initial proposal, it’s unlikely you can come up with anything worse.’
‘True. And I do think you’ll like this one more.’ Swaying closer, she wrapped herself tighter around his body, pressing herself against him until it felt as if even air couldn’t squeeze between them. His body began to react immediately, even before Helena rose up on her tiptoes, brushing against him every slow inch of the way, and whispered in his ear, ‘So, do you want tiramisu for dessert? Or me?’
He swallowed, trying to cling on to the composure he was so famed for in the boardroom. The plan was to wait. He’d already pushed so far up against every line he’d drawn for himself. And there was more than business on the line here, he admitted to himself, more than money. He had to be sure he could risk his heart. ‘Are you sure? The contract—’
‘Paperwork’s a formality,’ she murmured against the skin of his neck, placing kisses between each word. ‘I’m yours now, whatever happens. So take me.’
The words ripped through the last of his self-control and Flynn hauled her up his body into another kiss, this one harder, more desperate, more wanting.
‘Upstairs,’ he managed, just, as her hands clutched at his back. ‘Now.’
He didn’t need to say it twice.
* * *
It was several hours later, with the sky dark outside the bedroom window, that Flynn tugged her closer against his naked body and said, ‘We never did get that tiramisu.’
Helena laughed against his skin, her hands still roaming over his chest. ‘You never got me in that negligee, either.’
‘Maybe tomorrow night,’ Flynn said, yawning.
‘Maybe,’ Helena agreed, although she knew they’d never make it that far. By tomorrow night they’d be too desperate for each other again, too consumed with want that they’d forget all about her fancy nightie. Just as they had done tonight.
It had been more than she’d dreamt it could be. The way he moved against her, with
in her...the way he touched her, with a sort of reverence she’d never imagined a man could have for her body. As if he were drinking in every detail of her, and each one intoxicated him.
She should never have worried about them being compatible, and she almost laughed when she thought that, until a couple of hours ago, she’d honestly been afraid he hadn’t wanted her.
She’d been scared, she admitted to herself, lying in the darkness in her husband’s arms. She’d not wanted to think about it, but there had been very few men since she’d fallen pregnant at sixteen, and none that made Helena feel the way that Flynn did. She’d worried whether she’d be enough for him, worried more about protection until he’d pulled a condom from his wallet, and worried most that he’d be able to tell her secrets with one glance at her body.
He hadn’t, though. And since his eyes and hands and mouth had covered every inch of her, she didn’t imagine he would now.
Her past was locked away until she chose to share it with him. He’d be hurt, she knew, that she’d kept it from him, but she liked to think he’d understand. Especially now—they were already so close, and after so little time. By the time it mattered, when they talked again about children, they’d be a proper unit. A family, even. He’d understand.
And he’d understand, she thought, if she told him she wanted to adopt. He might even welcome it. As long as she got the timing right, they would make it work, she was sure of it.
They had to. She’d committed now, and so had he. There wasn’t any room to step back any more.
