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His eyes were a very clear green as they searched hers. ‘I’ve scared you. I didn’t mean to do that, but you wanted to know the worst. And I suppose the worst is that I love you. You will no doubt think me a fool and a cad and you would be quite right, but I fell in love with you eight years ago and I didn’t even understand it. I made a terrible mistake with Dora and she paid the price, poor girl. She could have been happy with someone else. She deserved to be. Dora was what I thought I wished to be after I escaped that hellish war, but with you I was completely myself—good, bad and boring.’
‘You were never boring,’ Sam managed to say, trying to cling to something in this foreign landscape. Beautiful but foreign, like a dream.
He smiled again.
‘Yes, I was, rigid, boring, trying to herd you into a corner where you wouldn’t threaten me. But I couldn’t and I didn’t really want to. If I had, I wouldn’t have followed you around everywhere those weeks, scolding like a pathetic mother hen. I employed every excuse I could to be around you and not once did it occur to me why until you fell on top of me and knocked some sense into me when it was far too late. That moment shifted my life on its axis, Sam. I never admitted it, but from that moment onwards the only time you weren’t at its centre was when Jacob was born. For a while I had him and I was so happy...’
He looked down again and she risked her dream by taking his hand and threading their fingers together. He closed his eyes.
‘I wish... I wish he had met you. I wish he were here with us.’
Sam wrapped herself around him, her face against his chest.
‘I would have loved him and loved him and loved him.’ She spoke the words to his heart, her lips reverberating with its beat. His hand smoothed her hair, gently pulling the pins out of it.
‘I know that, little mountain goat. I told him all about you, everything I could remember. I wrote my first book for him, but you inspired it like a madcap Don Quixote, tilting at pyramids and ambitious priests and wrathful gods. I don’t know if he liked my stories, but I know he loved your drawings.’
‘I want you to tell me all about him, everything and anything you wish. I’m so afraid to ask and have you push me away again, but I’m tired of being afraid with you. And you are such an idiot, Edge. It’s my fault, but you are an idiot. Do you really believe I would have made the same mistake twice? I only married Ricki because you were married to Dora.’
‘You don’t mean...you were very young, isolated...’ He shook his head and the warmth was already being furled back in, but she held on to his hand, ready to weather this wave as well.
‘I know that is how you thought of me, but I wasn’t being madcap Sam when I kissed you eight years ago, Edge. When you told me about Dora that day you smashed a world I’d hardly even realised existed. I was miserable and lonely and it was even worse when Mama and I returned to Venice. I needed so desperately to be loved and I made a horrible mistake. I told you I wanted a family, but that wasn’t why I proposed to you. I may not have admitted to myself I still...cared for you, but within two days of seeing you at Qetara I knew I couldn’t bear for you to disappear, not again. I had to try...’
His hand jerked in hers and the battle for and against believing her was evident in the tension that deepened the lines about his mouth. She clasped her hands tighter around his. She needed him to believe her. If he were to trust her, to open to her, he had to believe her.
‘I was young, but not a child, eight years ago, Edge. It wasn’t an infatuation, no matter how handsome you were and how peculiar my upbringing. Because even then I knew you, Edge. Down to my core and down to yours. That hasn’t changed. I never thought of it, but I could always feel who you were behind those mile-high walls you erected and I think you always knew it, too, even if it didn’t affect you as it did me. When you left I was determined to overcome you, but I never did, Edge. I’m so glad you were brave enough to tell me you love me because the words have been burning inside me for weeks and weeks, but I was terrified of chasing you away again and I’m exhausted with being patient. I love you so much. You are the only man I have ever loved.’
‘Sam... God, Sam, I need this to be true.’
‘Of course it is true, Edge. Can you not see it? It is in every one of these drawings I have been hoarding and hiding from you. Lucas was right when he said that I’d drawn you into my illustrations for your books even before I knew you were the author. I wove you into my life the only way I could. I don’t need you to give me a home or children. You are my home. I need to be with you because I am utterly myself with you, even when you are impossible. And I am beginning to believe it is the same for you, so it is good Rafe and Lucas and Chase interfered in our lives. What do people do without big brothers?’
