For Revenge or Redemption? (18 page)

‘I think even you must agree she’s a very beautiful lady.’

‘Oh, Seth…’ As things started to sink in, she found her voice at least. ‘Then there isn’t…?’

‘Isn’t what?’

‘Anyone else?’ She felt as though she was on an emotional rollercoaster, first down, then up, up so high that she felt dizzy from the heights to which she was being driven.

‘Why does that surprise you so much, Grace? Haven’t you realised yet how much I love you?’

Her heart swelled until she thought it was going to burst, her mind still unable to grasp that he was actually admitting to loving her. ‘But I thought…’

‘You thought what? That I’d even want to look at another woman after being with you?’ Seeing her shake her head with incredulity, that look of amazed incomprehension still etched on her face, he went on, ‘What is it going to take, Grace? A full admission—that I fell in love with you so long ago? That
that
was what kept me driven and made me so determined to make you pay for shunning me in the way you did?’ His grimace was self-deprecating. ‘Although I didn’t fully realise that that’s what it was until I started to get to know the real Grace Tyler for myself.’

She bit her lower lip to try and contain the joy that was oozing through every last part of her, unable to quite believe that she could be the only woman in his heart—this man she adored with her whole being, with her very life.

‘But you forced us to stay apart. Sleep in separate rooms. You haven’t even wanted to touch me for goodness knows how long,’ she added, hurting as she remembered it, and feeling surprisingly shy, in the light of having recently supplied him with a big, beautiful baby son.

‘Oh, I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to!’ he stressed fervently, expressing all the torture it had cost him to exercise such restraint and self-denial. ‘But it was the only way I could trust myself to keep my hands off you. After what had happened to your mother and all the problems you suffered, first with your miscarriage and then carrying Cory, I didn’t want to do anything that would endanger your life or the life of our baby. I wasn’t prepared to take any chances, and I knew I’d only wind up making love to you if I shared your bed.

‘I also thought that it wouldn’t do us any harm to cultivate some other aspects of our relationship—like trust and openness and friendship—without our very pleasurable but uncontrollable need for each other swamping everything else that we should have been sharing. I didn’t consider that in doing so I was just pushing you further away from me. But I wanted you—loved you—from the moment that I first laid eyes on you in that boatyard—a haughty little snob who couldn’t fight what was happening between us no matter how much she might have wanted to.’

‘Was that why you bought my statue?’

‘What do you think?’ he said. With a wry twist of his mouth, he added, ‘Although at the time I felt it gave me some kind of advantage over you to own it. But why did you sell it? It wasn’t just because you didn’t want to keep anything of your father’s, or to get out of a financial fix, was it?’

She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time for holding anything back.

‘It always made me unhappy to look at it, because of the time in my life that it reminded me of. I’d treated you so badly and I was so sorry for that. When I lost the baby, the one thing that had come about because of that beautiful time we had together—and it was beautiful, no matter what I wanted you to think at the time—I thought I was being punished. And in a way I was, because that miscarriage brought home to me what was valuable in my life and what wasn’t—and it certainly wasn’t any of the material things I’d thought were so important to me. I knew that what
you
had were the things that really mattered—candidness. Integrity. Being true to yourself. When I thought I’d killed all those things I’d respected about you, I can’t tell you how unhappy that made me.’

Lovingly she ran a hand over the gleaming gold name of the siren he had compared her with in the beginning. ‘But I hadn’t, had I?’ she murmured wistfully. He was still the same man she had met what seemed a lifetime ago now: ambitious. Energetic. Driven. But also compassionate and tender. She liked to think, though, that she wasn’t the same girl. Or at least she hoped she wasn’t.

His eyes followed the slender fingers that were tracing his handiwork before he covered her hand, his fingers interlocking with hers.

‘What do you think?’ he breathed, pulling a wry face.

‘I think I love you,’ she whispered, with all the feeling in her heart, and gave a small gasp as he caught her to him.

So much time, so much love, had been wasted because
of her pride—because of his, he thought. But he intended to change all that, starting from now.

‘I’ll take you out in it some time,’ he murmured breathlessly, alluding to the little boat he had built for her, when they finally managed to come up for air, reluctantly breaking from their desperately impassioned kiss. ‘But first I need to get home and persuade Nadia that Cory and Truffle could do with some fresh air and exercise, and a bit of human-canine bonding. Because right now, Mrs Mason, I really need to avail myself of the long-awaited delights of my wife’s bed.’

Excitement leaped in her as he urged her back towards the car. She hadn’t imagined she could be so happy and wondered by what miracle it had all come about.

A couple of hours later, lying in his arms in the beautiful bedroom from which he had once exiled himself, she noticed him looking up at the bookcase and the figurine.

‘You called me naïve and a fool that day you gave it to me,’ Grace reminded him a little reproachfully, still wondering why he had said it. ‘I thought it was because you realised I loved you even then, and that I still did, and that you were feeling sorry for me.’

He laughed indulgently at that. ‘I must confess I started to suspect how you felt about me then, but I didn’t dare hope for too much. But I called you a fool, my love, for destroying what we could have had from the beginning—and naïve because you let social differences stand in our way. I wanted to tell you how I felt that day—on your birthday—but you didn’t trust me enough to talk about your feelings, and I was afraid that I might have been imagining what I wanted to believe. All I hoped was that, if I could do enough to show you how much I cared, you might eventually realise how much I loved you.’

And he had, Grace realised. In so many ways. He’d given
her everything she had ever wanted, that she could ever want: in his child; in a gentler view of her father the day he had surprised her with that figurine; with the boat this afternoon. He’d also saved the company, because shares had rocketed over the past couple of months, and he’d guaranteed her a seat on the board whenever she wanted to return.

‘When I discovered I’d been your first lover, I can’t begin to tell you how that made me feel. But the thought of another man holding you like this, making love to you—’ his deep voice shook with something close to anguish ‘—when it should have been me…’

‘There was only ever you,’ she murmured against the dark strength of his throat, desperate that he should know that, and realising how much it would mean to him to be told.

‘You mean…?’ From the way his voice tailed off and those powerful arms tightened around her, she knew he was totally overwhelmed by her admission. ‘You should have let me know,’ he breathed at length. ‘Opened up to me. Although I knew you’d never admit to loving me, that you didn’t trust any man enough to allow your feelings to be exposed so completely.’ He paused, then added, ‘Which was why I forced you into it in the way I did this afternoon.’

‘So it was all a ploy!’ She thumped him on his deep bared chest, feeling the thrill of his strength, the solidity of velvet-clad muscle that made her heart race as she remembered how tenderly he used that strength in making love to her. Never had she imagined she could be so happy, or as lucky as to be given a second chance with this wonderful man. But she was, she thought ecstatically, because she knew now how much he loved her, and she also knew that she was worthy of that love. And unlike the other men she had known—Paul, her father, her grandfather—she knew instinctively that this man she cared for more than anything else in the world was never going to let her down.

‘I know I should have trusted you.’ She brought herself up on an elbow. ‘Told you how I felt.’ Lovingly she brushed back the familiarly loose strands of hair from his forehead.

‘Then tell me now.’

‘I love you,’ she murmured, lowering her lips to his, and then, rolling on top of him, set out to prove it in the most pleasurable way she knew.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2010

Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,

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© Elizabeth Power 2010

ISBN: 978-1-408-91930-9