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‘You mean seduce me.’ Bess dredged up remembered outrage.
‘Persuade, seduce, whatever it took.’ His mouth lifted in a crooked smile that looked painful. ‘I refused to consider the possibility of failure. Youhadto come back to me.’
Her stomach churned. ‘Because you wanted me as your hostess. For your business.’
Jack’s harsh laugh surprised her. ‘That’s what I told myself, just as I used that excuse when I proposed marriage. The truth was inconceivable to me then.’
‘What truth? What are you talking about, Jack?’
His gaze meshed with hers and his humourless laugh died. ‘That I love you.’
Bess stared, dumbfounded, trying to convince herself she’d heard the wordlovefrom Jack. Her heart pounded so fast she couldn’t catch a breath. ‘Say that again.’
Gently he pulled her nearer. ‘I love you. It’s taken me a couple of years to work it out.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m a slow learner but my excuse is that I’d never come across love before, not personally, nor really seen it up close until Michael and Freya. I didn’t understand what I was experiencing. Sorry, I’m rambling.’
Jack, rambling? Because he was nervous? Bess gasped. ‘You mean it.’
‘Of course I mean it! You think I’d lie about that?’
Her voice was soft, stunned. ‘No, you always tell the truth.’
‘Except when I don’tknowthe truth. I told myself I married you because it was convenient and you’d be useful, and of course because of the attraction between us.’ His eyes flared brighter. ‘But what I felt was deeper, inexplicably deeper. It was only when you walked out that I realised how much I felt. Even then I had trouble putting a name to it.’ His mouth lifted at one corner, that self-deprecating smile dragging the air from Bess’s lungs.
She goggled, her mind whirling.
‘I love you, Bess. I want to spend my life with you. I was too slow to realise it and, lately, too scared to tell you in case you rejected me.’
Jack, scared? It was inconceivable. Until she forgot her own confusion and excitement and really looked at him. Despite his smile his gaze was shadowed, the corners of his mouth pinched and the pulse at the base of his throat pounded out of control.
This was no ruse to persuade her into marriage. It was real. More, he’d found the perfect home she’d lovebeforeher pregnancy. He’d acted because of his feelings for her, not because of their baby.
‘Oh, Jack!’
Bess was too choked to say more. Everything she’d felt for so long, all the stress and hope and despair, constricted her throat. She pressed her lips to his throat where his pulse raced, her hand softening on his chest.
He murmured something against her ear. It might have been her name. She couldn’t tell over the tumult of her blood.
Bess’s lashes were wet when he finally pulled back enough to look down at her.
It felt like the world had spun off its axis, taking her to a bright new reality. Every sense was sharpened, all those feelings she’d tried so hard to ram down out of sight burst free. Joy. Wonder. Love.
‘Are those happy tears?’
She sniffed. ‘I’m not crying.’
‘Of course not.’ Jack tenderly swiped his thumb across her cheek. The gesture was at odds with the tumult within. Far from rejecting him, Elisabeth was nestling close, stars in her eyes, and he felt on the brink of heaven.
Exhilaration filled him. Enough, almost, to trounce the nerves that jittered in his belly.
Itcouldn’tbe merely pity she felt.
Shewasn’tgoing to push him away.
Nevertheless, his hold tightened as he pulled her to him, her heart against his.
Last night had been phenomenal, not merely for the peaks of sexual satisfaction they’d achieved, but for that profound, previously unnamed element that had added meaning and poignancy to physical intimacy.
Love. His heart welled with it.
