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She was babbling and she could see him teetering on the verge of his wary need to shore up the battlements. True to form.
She grabbed his shirt in her hands.
‘I love you, Edge. I dare you to believe me and step off that cliff with me.’
‘You always did enjoy tossing out dares, Sam.’ His mouth softened into the smile that melted her each time, but she was lost in the sea green of his eyes.
‘I dare you,’ she repeated and his hands swept down her back, moulding to her backside as he raised her towards him.
‘I love your posterior, Sam. Every lush inch of it.’
‘You shan’t distract me. I dare you to step off the ledge, Edge, and trust me to catch you.’
‘I’ll crush you. You nearly broke every bone in my body when you jumped off that temple. And you definitely broke my heart.’
She heard the catch in his voice, the need, the fear, the yearning.
‘You broke mine, so we’re even. Trust me.’ She brushed her mouth over his, fitting their lips together as perfectly as she had that first time so long ago. God, he tasted like heaven, like honey cakes and bliss and eternity.
‘Sam, I adore you...’
‘I dare you, love of my life. Jump...’
So he did.
Epilogue
The sound of hammering followed Edge as he crossed the lawn towards where Sam was standing beneath the willows, the rowboat shifting lazily on the water beside her. Her hair was loose over her shoulder and he brushed it aside to kiss her nape, breathing in the scent of another world.
His chosen, perfectly imperfect world.
His hand skimmed downwards, hesitating before coming to rest on the rise of her abdomen where their child was growing. She placed her hand on his, their fingers interlacing. He knew the heartbeat he felt was hers, not the child’s, but his breathing tightened anyway—with fear, with love, some more fear and finally with hope. He wanted this, with Sam, so badly. He was so much luckier than he deserved.
If he’d learned anything in these past months with Sam, it was that they were good for each other. Even when they fought he felt himself grow, open up to her, resting each time more easily on this trust he’d never trusted. On Sam. He had no idea how he’d survived for so long in his loneliness when being with her felt so natural. It was into this world, this reality they would bring their child...their children. It felt so right his heart cracked each time he allowed the realisation to settle.
Each time he let himself love her a little more.
‘Love of my life,’ he murmured against her skin and she sighed and took his hand, pulling him towards the wide wicker chair under the willows.
‘I knew not even you could write with all that noise. At least this time the nursery won’t take as long as the rest of the house did.’
‘It wasn’t the noise that distracted me. It was the sight of you through the window. We need a larger chair. Better yet, sit on me, you two.’
‘I’m beginning to feel like two. At least I no longer feel seasick. Perhaps our little girl was practising for all the voyages we shall take her on.’
He pulled her on to his lap, touching his lips to her forehead and breathing her in.
‘Or boy,’ he murmured against her skin and she took his hand, but he could feel that quiver of tension that came over her when she worried memories of Jacob were hurting him. ‘Whatever it is, Sam, I’m so happy I was clever enough to accept your proposal.’
‘Occasionally even you have bursts of intelligence.’ She snuggled more deeply against him and picked up the book that was resting on the arm of the chair. ‘Like this one. I never asked you, Edge, but now that I’ve read Treasures of Siwa again I couldn’t help wondering...’ She opened the book and he tensed as her fingers rested below a particular passage. ‘I wondered why Durham only sent a partial manuscript of this one and when I discovered you were the author I was so upset I forgot to ask you why. Was it because of this?’
He glanced at the page. Strange that he had not thought much about it when he wrote it almost two years ago in Brazil. It had just...come. Now it looked like a premonition.
Leila knew love was never intended for her kind and she had no such expectations. So when love came she hid it deep inside the caverns of her soul and turned her back on it, though it blazed hotter than the August sun.
But even the best hiding places must eventually be abandoned or they become graves. And so, when she stood at Gabriel’s side above the valley and felt his pain strike sharper and deeper than the swords that decimated her family and dreams, she finally said the words that would bring either damnation or release.
‘It was only ever you, Gabriel, my one and only love.’
