He didn’t smile back. His eyes were full of pain as he said, “That’s when I came to you, Beth. I felt I finally had a grasp on a future. I threw in my jobs and came down to Melbourne to tell you.”
Her smile died. She could imagine his jubilance, the exhilarating anticipation of sharing his achievement with her. To have all those wonderful, positive feelings dashed...
“It was the first week in February,” he went on. “By the time I got to the address you’d given me, it was too late to catch you before you went to school. Though it didn’t really matter. I was happy to wander around the area where you lived, imagining how it was for you.”
“Why didn’t you knock on our door?”
“I wanted to see you first. I liked your family, but you—you were all-important to me. I imagined it so many ways, how your eyes would light up and you’d run to me, dropping everything so we could hug. And I’d twirl you around and we’d laugh and be deliriously happy. And you’d be so much more grown up at sixteen. We could plan our future together.”
Young romantic dreams. Her heart wept for them. For her own, too, dying their long, slow death.
He sighed, and there was darkly remembered torment in his eyes as he said, “When I saw you with Kevin—at first, I couldn’t believe it. You weren’t at school. You had a baby.”
The bottom dropping out of his world, making chaos of it. Beth could see—feel—how devastating that moment had been to him.
“I’d never even looked at another girl, Beth,” he pleaded softly. “There was only you.”
“It’s all right,” she soothed, no forgiveness necessary. “I understand how it was for you. If I’d seen you even hugging some other girl, I would have felt the same.”
He sadly shook his head. “All I could think of was...it wasn’t my baby. You’d had a child with someone else.”
The ultimate betrayal.
The three years apart had created a gap for damage to be done. If there’d been communication between them, letters...
“Knowing what I do now,” he went on regretfully, “I should have confronted the situation, spoken to you, instead of walking away. All I can say is, something inside me broke that day. I couldn’t face it, Beth.”
Something inside me broke.
It was Jamie, her Jamie who had broken.
And Jim Neilson had emerged from the wreckage.
She reached up and stroked the cheek of the man who was now both Jamie and Jim, her eyes assuring him there was no diminishment in her love for him. “It’s behind us. It happened. It’s gone. We found each other again. That’s a miracle, isn’t it?”
He looked relieved at her simple acceptance of the present. His face relaxed. His eyes glowed with love for her. “Will you marry me, Beth? Share the future with me?” he asked softly.
“You know I will,” she answered, her heart almost bursting with happiness.
“Always and forever?” he asked, echoing words said long ago, two children forging an eternal bond that neither would ever let go.
“Always and forever,” she repeated huskily.
Beth and Jamie, Jamie and Beth.
They kissed.
And the bond was complete.
Above them, in a sky filling with stars, a full moon was rising.
S
HE wore yellow.
A garland of daisies in her golden hair, a posy of daisies in her hand.
She was sunshine and summer and all the warm things of life.
Her father walked her towards him. Her brother Chris stood at his side.
The words of a poem came to him, one recited and learnt long ago in the valley schoolroom.
This be the verse you engrave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
She stepped beside him and gave him her hand. In just a few minutes they would exchange golden rings, tokens of the formal bond they were about to declare. But her hand was enough.
He had come home.
IMPRINT: Harlequin eBook
ISBN: 9781460818336
TITLE: The Collector's Edition
First Australian Publication 2011
Copyright © 2011 – Emma Darcy
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