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Gripping his cheeks, she forced his gaze back to hers. ‘Maxim, you don’t have to lose me. I love you,’ she said again, but she refused to bask in the fierce emotion in his eyes. She couldn’t settle for less, the way she had settled so often before. ‘But you made it very clear yesterday you can never love me back. Is that really the truth?’
He shook his head, but his expression became bleak. ‘I lied,’ he said, his voice full of emotion as he covered her hands with his and stood up. ‘Because I’m a coward,’ he said, dragging her hands from his cheeks. ‘Because I’m afraid of what I feel for you.’ He placed their joined hands over her belly. ‘And for our child. Because I am scared I can never be enough. And that I will fail you, the way I failed my mother.’
Cara looked stunned, Maxim realised, but so beautiful his heart broke just looking at her. She still loved him, but how could he take comfort from that until she knew the truth—until she knew what he’d done all those years ago? How could he ever hope to deserve her love if he did not tell her what he had done to his own mother?
‘How did you fail your mother, Maxim?’ she said, the sweet compassion in her eyes wrenching the truth he had never wanted to reveal out of his mouth.
‘She was frail, fragile, as I told you, ever since I was a young boy. My birth and the miscarriages she had suffered had hurt her, both physically and mentally. She had dark moods, days when she could barely function, and when that happened she needed me to cook for her, to talk to her, to get her out of bed. The day I came here...’ he looked at the house he had always hated, until he had found his salvation inside it ‘...to tell my father I knew I was his son. I was so excited. It was my birthday. I was fifteen and I believed myself a man. I thought he would want me. But he didn’t. And I was so devastated, so hurt and angry, I took it out on her. I left Burgundy, even though she begged me not to. Even though I knew she would struggle on her own. She needed me and I left anyway. Five months later, she was dead.’
Once the words were out, he waited to see the love in Cara’s eyes curdle and die, to turn into the disgust with himself he had felt for so many years. But the warmth in his wife’s deep blue eyes didn’t falter or fade, it didn’t even flicker, she simply absorbed his confession and then wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him away from the darkness—and back into the light.
‘Maxim, that’s madness. You weren’t responsible for her death. You were her son, not her parent. Whatever you did or didn’t do for her, you weren’t responsible for her pain or her fragility, or her depression.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the house he’d saved because he couldn’t bear to lose the one thing he had that would remind him of their one night together. ‘If anyone was responsible,’ she added as she turned back to him, ‘it was your father. He didn’t deserve a son like you.’
Her faith in him seemed to seep into his bones as they stood in the sunlight together. He held her too tightly. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to loosen his grip. Not for a while.
‘Can you give me another chance?’ he asked. ‘To make this marriage a real marriage. To become a real father to our son. To figure out how to love you.’
It was the hardest but also the easiest question he’d ever asked of anyone.
The bright smile she sent him reached into his soul and lightened his heart, until it bobbed into his throat.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But first I want something from you.’
‘Whatever it is, it is yours,’ he said, knowing he would be willing to give her anything she desired. If she wanted a palace—if she wanted two—he would buy it for her. She was worth every penny he had, every second of his time it took to earn those pennies. Whatever he had to do to be worthy of her love, he would do it.
‘I want you to promise that you will stay in my bed until morning,’ she said.
>
‘That is all?’ He blinked, baffled not just by the simplicity of her request but by the strength of the wonder that barrelled through him at the thought of waking up with her soft body in his arms and never having to let go of her again. Ever.
She nodded.
He threw back his head and laughed, the joy—that he had found her and would never ever have to lose her—almost too much to bear.
‘Do I have your promise?’ she asked, her voice stern but her eyes sparkling with the same joy exploding in his chest.
‘My beautiful wife,’ he murmured as he lowered his head to hers, ready to kiss them both into oblivion then kick in the door of the old farmhouse and carry her upstairs to the bedroom they had shared all those months ago, ‘I promise I will hold you until morning, every day for the rest of our lives.’
EPILOGUE
‘LET ME TAKE le bébé. You must sleep.’
‘Go for it, Papa.’ Cara smiled as her husband leant across the wide double bed they had shared all night, every night, for the first time three months ago—the day their marriage had become a real marriage—and scooped their week-old son into his arms.
Tucking the tiny body against his naked chest, he placed a firm hand against the baby’s back and crooned in a deep, gentle voice, ‘Shh, mon petit garçon, it is time to sleep. Your mother has fed you enough for one night.’
The baby stopped fidgeting on hearing his father’s voice, and gave a loud burp.
Cara chuckled wearily.
‘Our son is very greedy,’ Maxim murmured, but she could hear the fierce pride in his voice. ‘Hopefully, he will give us both some rest now.’
‘Fingers crossed,’ Cara said around a huge yawn. Tucking her now empty breast back into her maternity bra, she snuggled back under the bed’s summer quilt, contentment rolling through on a wave of fatigue as Maxim whispered instructions to his son and the baby’s eyes drifted shut. At last.
The fatigue was joined by a wave of love—for both the guys in her life—which crested as her heart beat a strong, steady tattoo against her ribs.
Seriously, was there anything more wonderful than watching this man become the father he was always meant to be? How could Maxim ever have believed he wasn’t capable of loving her, or their child?
