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Her heart thudded against her chest and she shook her head and covered his lips with her fingers. ‘Don’t. Don’t say that,’ she urged softly. ‘It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. I know you can’t say the words and I know you don’t do commitment but I’m yours for as long as you want me. We don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to.’
His eyes glittered. ‘You’d do that? You’d stay with me without any sort of commitment?’
‘Of course. How can you doubt it?’ She brushed her fingers over his brow. ‘I just want to be with you. I love you, Rafael. And I don’t expect you to love me back, but I want the chance to make you happy for as long as you’ll let me.’
He was still. ‘You love me?’
‘Of course. How can you even ask that?’
‘But you didn’t come back to Rio. You vanished for a week. If I hadn’t tracked you down you would have been out of my life.’
‘Because that’s what I thought was best for you. My father will always cause problems between us.’
‘Forget about your father.’ He studied her face. ‘Why would you stay with me? What do you get from me in return?’
She smiled. ‘I get to see parrots and butterflies, I get to swim in a forest pool but most of all I get to sleep alongside a man who makes me feel like a woman for the first time in my life.’
His eyes were full of dark shadows. ‘I ought to be telling you to run. I ought to be telling you that I won’t be good for you because I’ve never been good for anyone in my life. But I’m too selfish for any of that. I want you. And I always go after what I want.’
‘And I’m glad you do. Telling me to run wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. I’m not leaving until you’ve had enough of me. And I know you haven’t.’
‘I’ll never have enough of you.’ He took her face in his hands and stood looking at her for so long that she started to feel nervous.
‘What? What’s the matter?’
He didn’t reply and his breathing was unsteady, as if he was dragging something out from deep inside himself.
She frowned. ‘Rafael? What’s wrong?’
‘I love you, too.’ He spoke the words hesitantly, with none of his usual confidence. And she felt her heart perform a series of elaborate acrobatics in her chest. ‘I never thought I’d say those words to anyone. I never thought I was capable of feeling love. But I am. With you.’
She opened her mouth but he shook his head.
‘Don’t interrupt me,’ he said hoarsely, a flash of humour in his eyes. ‘I’ve never done this before so I might get it wrong if you interrupt me.’
Grace didn’t feel capable of speaking so she just stood, trapped in a bubble of happiness as she listened.
‘You arrived in my forest and you were so gutsy and optimistic. You were prepared to fly all that way to try and talk me into saving your business and no matter what I did or said, how horrid I was, you seemed to find it impossible t
o see bad in me.’
‘I didn’t see bad in you,’ she said quietly. ‘I saw pain and disillusionment. But nothing bad.’
‘You tramped through the rainforest without a word of complaint—’
‘I loved it—’
‘And then you came to my bed.’ He looked her direct in the eye and let his hands drop to his sides. ‘You were a virgin, weren’t you?’
Colour bloomed in her cheeks and she opened her mouth and closed it again.
He rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose and gave a soft curse. ‘I thought so. It took a few days for it to sink in but then it did. Why did you do it, Grace? Why did you give so much?’
That was easy to answer. ‘Because I wanted to. I think I fell in love with you almost immediately even though I knew that didn’t make sense. I just wanted to be with you. In every way possible. I didn’t care about the consequences.’
‘I’ve never met anyone like you before,’ he muttered, sliding his arms round her again and hauling her against him. ‘You are so incredibly generous and you take nothing back.’
‘Yes, I do.’ There was humour in her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘I made you sit with me for hours going through numbers. For most people that would have been torture.’
