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‘Don’t tell me that it does! Don’t tell me that!’
His eyes were holding hers now, and she could not stop that either—they were pouring into her.
‘Because I won’t believe you. Call me arrogant, conceited and presumptuous, but I won’t believe you! I won’t believe you, Rosalie, because my head is full of memories that give the lie to that! Memories that burn and scorch within me. Memories of the nights we have spent in each other’s arms! Memories that glow with all the warmth and radiance of the summer sun. Memories of the days we have spent in each other’s company. Good days...precious to me—so precious.’ And now his voice was ragged with the emotion he was no longer trying to hold in check. ‘Days I never want to end. Nights I never want to lose.’
His hands closed around hers, so warm, so strong, so comforting and protective. So possessive.
‘You told me that you wanted to set me free,’ he was saying now. ‘But I don’t want to be free of you! I don’t ever want to be free of you!’
Her face was working, and inside her heart was working, too. ‘You...you said... We agreed...when we married...six months...to get the merger done...’
He crushed her hands with his. Strong and warm and enclosing.
‘I’ve told you—to hell with the merger! I don’t want it any more!’ His voice was vehement, then urgent. ‘Because there is only one thing I do want.’
He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them, one after another, his gaze pouring into her like velvet.
‘I wanted to tell you before you fled back to London. To tell you that our time together has changed me—changed me completely!’ He made a face, half-rueful, half-wry. ‘Rosalie, I freely confess that one of the main attractions of keeping our marriage temporary—of keeping you temporary—was the fact that it had been the way I’d always lived my life. It suited me.’
The rueful expression deepened.
‘It suited me very well. So well it made me reluctant to agree to marry Ariadne, even though—as my mother and your father were so keen to point out—it would have been so “suitable.” The relief I felt when she jilted me only confirmed that I was not ready to settle down. But what I was too blind to realise—’ and now there was more than ruefulness in his voice...there was a twist of pain and remorse that caught at her as he spoke ‘—was how everything would change...with you! With you in my life! Day after day. Night after night. Just being with you.’ His expression changed again, and now there was a blaze in his eyes. ‘Just you...making everything wonderful!’ he said.
He kissed her hands again, keeping them fast in his as if he would never let them go again. His face was blurring in her vision now, and she could not breathe...dared not...could only gaze at him, listen to him speak...her heart so full she thought it must overflow with hope, with longing to hear what he was telling her...confessing...
He was speaking again now, and she clung to his words...to the hands holding hers so close, so fast...
‘I was starting to feel it more and more. I was even welcoming the delays your father was putting in my way because they would give me more time with you! But I still never realised why I was feeling it—or what it was that I was feeling! It took that last weekend on Kallistris, seeing Maria and Panos’s grandchildren, to open my eyes to what I truly wanted. Not the promise of my old freedom! What use would that be to me when my old life had gone for ever? I didn’t want it back! What I wanted...’ his voice softened ‘...was what I already had—with you. Only with you. You in my life, just as we were—for always. And more.’ He took a breath. ‘Children. A family...’ He paused. ‘A wife to love and be loved by...’ He paused again. ‘You, Rosalie. Only you.’
Her tears were falling openly now, sliding down her paper-white cheeks. He brushed them away with his mouth softly, like velvet, and then his lips found hers, soft and quivering, and he kissed them, too.
‘Only you,’ he said again.
He drew back, his eyes full with all that he had said.
‘I wanted you to come and join me in Thessaloniki—wanted you to start to discover your feelings just as I was discovering mine. I was starting to think about not wanting our marriage to end—wanting to make it permanent in the most binding way of all. Then Ariadne phoned, telling me that of all bitter ironies you believed she carried my baby—her, the very last person I would want to be the mother of my child now that I’d realised there was only one woman I could ever think to have a child with, to spend my life with! And everything exploded in my face!’
He gave a shudder, his face convulsing.
‘Being without you these two
endless weeks has been agony!’ He shook his head, his eyes filled with remembered pain. ‘Proving to me just how much you’ve come to mean to me! I’ve been desperate for you, Rosalie! Desperate to find you—desperate to tell you the truth. Not only the truth that my mother had got it so wrong about Ariadne, but the most important truth to me of all! That I love you and want you, beyond all things, to come back to me. To make our marriage real—and for ever.’
His gaze was pouring into hers again, his dark eyes turning to liquid gold. Turning her to liquid gold as well.
‘Can you...? Will you...?’ His voice was husky. ‘Do you want that, too? Can you love me as I have come to love you? I won’t give up hope, Rosalie! Ask of me anything but that!’
He gazed at her, drinking her in. His expression had changed again. Intensity and ardour softened it now, making it tender. Cherishing. Loving...
‘The fact that you are sitting here with tears pouring down your face from those eyes that have beguiled me since I first beheld them, and that you have let me kiss you as I have, and that your hands, Rosalie, are clutching mine as if you would never let them go... All that, my dearest heart, gives me cause to hope...’
She gave a choke—a cry from her throat. ‘I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, Xandros! Because I knew that wasn’t what you wanted! It was no part of why we married. We were always destined to part! So...’ She took a ragged breath, so much emotion inside her. ‘Do you really mean what you have just said?’
His hands tightened on hers and he gave her an old-fashioned look before getting to his feet, retaining her hands, which he lifted with his.
‘There may be only one way to prove myself,’ he said, and the glint in his eyes was pure gold.
He drew her to her feet, her limbs unresisting. Her tears were drying on her cheeks and her vision was clearing. She was focussing on the one man alone she would ever want. The man who was now lowering his mouth to hers...
