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“Well, that’s good,” Sarah muttered. “But I would still have liked to interview her myself. Just because someone is good with kids doesn’t mean they’re going to be good with my kid.”
“It looks like she is doing well, though?”
“Yes, but that’s just good luck. And what do you mean, ‘until today’? Did you make her leave the ambassador’s family?”
His laugh was abrupt. “It is an honour for her, believe me, and the ambassador likewise.
Sarah ground her teeth together. “You are really arrogant, you know that?”
He shrugged. “I have been told so before.”
“Why tonight?” She honed back in on his original statement. “What’s happening?”
His eyes sparkled. “We are getting married.”
“What?”
She froze, her body as still as a statue’s.
“You know our deal,” he said quietly.
At the look of consternation that spread over her features, he reached down and laced his fingers through hers, drawing her away from Lexi’s playroom and towards his bedroom. Her heart raced against her ribcage as he pushed the door inwards.
It was just as she remembered it.
“Our deal was that we’d wait; wait until Lexi had settled in. To make sure she was happy.”
He shrugged. “She seems very happy to me.”
“But she’s just moved in here. This isn’t real. You can’t give her expensive gifts every day to win her over.”
His smile was distracted. “Why not?”
At her look of raw disbelief he lifted his hands apologetically. “That was a joke. Lexi will be happy here, and you know that. She will be happy with me, just as you will be.”
Sarah stared at him, and the sense of his confident proclamation spread over her. The view dazzled behind him, as the sun began to cower in the distance, fading away to make way for night. “You know I’m right. And so we’ll get married, like I want, and like you want. You know it’s why you’re here.”
“I’m here because you made it impossible for me not to be.”
He nodded, his expression a picture of calm patience. But there was something in the set of his jaw and the darkness of his eyes that made her wonder if he was grappling with stronger feelings than he was showing. “Look around you, Sarah. This life is what you deserve, and this life is one Lexi deserves. Why are you fighting it?”
Tears cloyed at her throat but she refused to give in to them. “Because I don’t know what we’re doing.” She dug her fingernails into her palm, so hard that the sharp pain almost distracted her from the stress she was feeling. “I don’t understand why you’re back, five years after leaving with only a … a stupid note.”
She was nervous. It was obvious, even to someone who didn’t know Sarah Smith so intimately.
“Because I could not forget you.”
“You had to go away for five years to work that out?” She demanded wearily.
“Well, Sarah? Shall we talk about how you forgot me?”
She drifted her eyes shut, hiding the v
ortex of pain his words stirred up. “Forgot you? You have haunted me every day since you left.”
It was beneath him to be glad for that; and yet he was. “That is mutual.” He reached for her hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss against the sensitive flesh of her inner-wrist.
She jerked it away. “Stop. Don’t. This isn’t… I don’t know. I’m so confused.”
