But she didn’t want their last night together before the game to be filled with rancor. “We’ll find another way.”
Ian heaved a sigh and finished the whisky.
“If he wasn’t a villain intent on separating us forever, I’d like yourcapo,” she murmured. “He behaved like a gentleman.”
“Alberti was that way. He protected my mother for years before I was born.” Emotion brought a flush to his cheeks. “And after.”
“You learned your protective ways from him.”
He nodded slowly. “My father was a wonderful man, but he had his flaws too. He made a lot of poor decisions and didn’t know how to safeguard his family or his business.”
Diana didn’t voice her opinion that Ian had been left to deal with the fallout of his father’s choices. “Despite it, you still love and respect his memory. I’m envious. It’s difficult for me to remember the good parts of my childhood without remembering the pain of my mother leaving.”
She hadn’t recognized how much it weighed on her until it slipped out; she was unaccustomed to admitting weakness.
“Betraying a child that way should be criminal,” Ian declared with an edge in his voice. “It would have been hard enough surviving that, but then she turned back up in your life and demanded your unfailing devotion. While withholding her affection and attention.”
Diana flapped a hand to dismiss the notion, but Ian caught it nimbly and spooled her into his arms.
She inhaled deeply to savor the scent of his soap and him, and a whimper escaped her. She’d ached to linger in his embrace this way since they’d left Monaco.
Within the warm, safe circle of his arms, she finally acknowledged that the only thing truly dividing them was their own free will. She could either choose a path driven by fear and the need for certainty over everything—or she could release her death grip on control and open herself up to happiness.
The choice was hers. And Ian’s.
As she melted against his chest, he murmured, “I can forgive my parents their mistakes, but I’ll never get past the way your mother hurt and manipulated you. I understand why you wouldn’t want a family.”
“I never said I didn’t want a family.”
Slowly, Diana raised her head and met his gaze. “If you wanted, I’d have one with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ianwaveredonhisfeet.
A strange tingling sensation pricked his fingers. In the back of his mind, he knew it was a symptom of someone who’d gone into shock.
He blinked at Diana.
She wanted something he’d dreamed of and never admitted to himself until that moment.
He tried to remember all the reasons he couldn’t welcome her confession.
He failed.
And he couldn’t stop himself from grinning like a hopeless fool.
No, not a hopeless one. That was the trouble.
His hopes were immeasurably high.
Diana maneuvered them to the nearby settee. She muttered something about fetching another whisky, but his arms clamped around her waist.
“Don’t go.”
“I shouldn’t have said—”
“Yes, you should,” he growled.
