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‘I love you, Jade, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want you to be my wife.’
And then his lips dipped lower and his mouth sought hers, and she was lost in the heady feel of his kiss and the warm bloom of love that burst into life inside her.
She wanted to give herself up entirely to the feeling; she wanted to let herself go in the wonder of his announcement. But there were more questions to be answered, more ghosts to put to rest, and breathlessly she pulled away, her senses reeling, her bones close to fluid.
‘I don’t understand. I was so sure you still loved Zoë. I thought there was no room for anyone else.’
He pulled back a little, his eyes thoughtful, one hand playing in her hair, absently running the length between his fingers. ‘I think I’ll always love Zoë. She’ll always be special. But I’ve done what I set out to do and that part of my life is closed now. Do you understand?’
‘I think I do. I went out to Yarrabee a few weeks after I came back. I went and walked around the town. I went back to my old school and to the place we once lived. I sat at my parents’ graves and I talked to them both for a while. I haven’t done that for so long. And it helped me to understand that I could finally put all the disappointments and bitterness about the past away. I didn’t have to change my accent and deny my origins. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone else, to fit someone else’s pattern. I decided I could just be me.’
She looked up at him. ‘You made me see that, Loukas. It was you who made me realise that I should just be myself.’
He smiled. ‘You know, I never thought I could love again. I never thought I would trust myself to it. But then you came into my life and showed me how good life could be, and I had to have more. I had no choice but to fall in love with you, even though it took me a long time to recognise it.’
He took both her hands again and held them between his as he searched her eyes. ‘And the way you kiss me tells me that you must still feel something for me.’
She swallowed, nodding just enough to confirm that what he said was true.
‘Then say you’ll marry me? I don’t care where we live—whether it’s Sydney, LA, or any place in between. You’re everything I want in a woman, Jade. You’re everything I want in a wife.’
She pulled away, out of his grip, her nails biting into the flesh of her arms. ‘But you don’t know that. You don’t know that at all.’
‘I know all I need to know about you to know that you’re the one. I want you—exactly as you are.’
She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. ‘Please don’t say that. Not yet, at least.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know it’s hard for you. I know there’s so much deception and betrayal in our history. But if I said to you that from now on there will be nothing but honesty, nothing but the truth, would that convince you?’
Her head dropped towards the floor, her hands linked over her brow.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
She looked up, way up, casting her eyes beyond him into heaven, almost as if she was seeking some kind of divine intervention. And that was what she felt she needed right now. Anything to make this task easier. Anything to shortcut the pain and the shock, to head off the memories of Grace telling her that no one would ever want her as she was.
No one.
‘If we’re going to be completely honest,’ she started, shoving Grace’s words and her own doubts into the furthest regions of her mind. ‘If we’re going to deal with nothing but the truth, then before we go any further there’s something you need to know…’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I HAVEN’T been completely honest with you.’
Darkness swirled heavy and muggy in his thoughts, threatening to dampen and weigh down the exhilaration of knowing that he was close to his goal, that he was so very close to having her agree to become his wife.
And damned if he was getting this close only to lose her again!
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean there’s something I haven’t told you yet that you should know before you even think about marrying me. Something that may change your mind completely.’
