Seduced by the Baron (The Fairy Tales of New York Book 4) (26 page)

Faith shook her head, conscious of the brush of the earring. Was it possible that the same time she was realizing her love for him that he was having the same epiphany?

He sounded so definite. Looked so resolute.

“And yet you didn’t say anything.” He walked away that day
apparently l
oving her and didn’t
think
to tell her?

“No. I didn’t. I wasn’t going to tell you I loved you at the hospital, Faith, with you half out of your mind with worry about your father and weighed down with guilt about not being there for him. I didn’t think you were in the right frame of mind and probably wouldn’t be while your pop was so unwell.”

“So you left.” Faith knew it wasn’t a fair statement. She’d told him to go after all. But a tiny part of her had hoped that he’d stay. If he did really love her, wouldn’t he have stayed and fought for her?

“Yes. You told me to go. So I did. I didn’t want to. But Mercy said I should give you some time and space so I left.”

He walked towards her then. Slowly. Purposefully. “But I’m back now and I’m not going anywhere. If I have to stay a decade, or sell the business or rattle around in this basement like a hunchback forever to convince you to love me, I will. Whatever it takes, Faith. Because I never knew what it meant to love until you, and I can’t bear the thought of being without you for one more moment. I want to spend every second left on this earth with you. Making you happy.”

Hot tears needled the backs of Faith’s eyes and for once she was grateful for the shit-lighting as she blinked them back. It had taken her twenty-seven years to hear this kind of declaration and it had exceeded her expectations on a grand scale.

Raf loved her.
He
really
loved her.

“Please say something,” he said.

Faith gave a shaky laugh. “Like what?”

“How about I love you too?”

She dragged in an even shakier breath. “Yes,” she said, nodding because she couldn’t hold it back anymore. “I do. I love you too. I think I fell in love with you on the rink that night when you told me I was the best part. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to but…I did anyway.”

“Oh thank God,” he muttered reaching for her.

Faith held her hands up warding him off and he stopped, dropping his hands by his side. Love was all well and good but the practicalities of their lives suggested being together was another matter.

“Faith?”

“I don’t see how we can work, Raf. I have to stay here in New York. I’m not giving up Columbia, not for a second time and I couldn’t be that far away from Pop. I know he’s better now but I’m always going to want to be nearby.”

He grinned, then he chuckled, then he walked right into her space and pulled her to him. “Of course,” he said pushing her hair back off her face with both hands. “Of course, I understand that. I understand all of that.”

He kissed her long and deep and hard and she clung to him sucking up every last morsel.

“I want to live happily ever after with you, Faith, however that works out. Whatever it looks like. Hell, I’ll buy the house across the street if I have to and I’ll figure out how to work in the business around us and yes, there’ll be travel but as long as I get to come back to you then I don’t care.”

Faith couldn’t believe what he was saying. That she’d gotten so lucky. “But you’re the one making all the concessions. It’s too much. What if you come to resent that?”

He shook his head. “Not possible. I only ever plan on loving one woman and that one is you, Faith Sullivan. You. Forever. Nothing is too much for you.
Nothing.
”

Faith laughed. “You really mean that?”

“I do,” he said, their gazes locking, his blazing with absolute sincerity. “Do you believe me?”

The promise in his eyes took her breath away. And she gave herself up to it. “I do.”

Forever started today.

THE END

‡

September…

F
aith Quartermaine sighed
happily as she watched her wedding guests tuck into the most divine key lime pie. The day had been perfect, exactly as she’d wanted it – low key and intimate. A simple City Hall ceremony, a gorgeous understated gown and a supper at Sully’s with a very exclusive guest list of eleven. Twelve if she included her beautiful new niece, Abbey Kathleen Sullivan.

Which Faith most certainly did.

She glanced at a radiant Dawn. She didn’t look like a woman who had endured a thirty-hour marathon labor five days ago. Finn, who hadn’t coped with those thirty hours at all, was just as glowing, utterly besotted with the sleeping bundle in his arms.

A fit and healthy Pop looked on, clearly smitten with his granddaughter. He’d gone from strength to strength embracing the changes around him much better than any of them had given him credit for. The fact that he simply adored the bright and sparky twenty-two-year-old, Geraldine, who had become his right-hand woman at Sully’s, had definitely helped.

Casey laughed at something on his phone and showed Ronan who also laughed. Faith rolled her eyes that they couldn’t go without social media for a couple of hours but she wasn’t complaining. They’d both moved back to the pub when she’d moved in with Raf three streets away and even though Pop didn’t need anyone around, she’d felt better knowing he had company.

Faith’s gaze flicked to Seb who was whispering something to Mercy that looked kinda dirty if her expression was anything to go by. They’d just bought a house together and looking at them she wondered how long it would be before Seb put a ring on her finger. Not too long, she’d wager.

Not for Zel and Ty either if she wasn’t very much mistaken. Zel was looking as glamorous as ever and Ty couldn’t keep his eyes, or hands, off her. The fact that they’d just announced their own pregnancy lead Faith to suspect that there may well be a race to see who was first down the aisle between Zel and Mercy.

“Would you like my last piece of pie?”

Faith smiled at Raf’s low voice so near her ear as he presented a laden spoon to her mouth. “You know I do,” she murmured.

He grinned as he fed it to her. “Happy?”

Faith’s heart was fit to burst. The last eight months had been like a dream come true. “Over the moon. Although – ” she ran her hand down her favorite pear-green tie, “I can’t believe you wore this.”

He chuckled. “It’s my lucky tie.”

Faith laughed too. It had certainly seen a lot. “I can’t believe your parents are divorced,” she said, sneaking a look at the end of the table where they were chatting like old friends. “They get on so well.”

“Sure,” he said. “They’re good at like. Just lousy at love.”

“Unlike their son,” she said, brushing a kiss on his mouth, “who is most excellent at love.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet. You wait til Paris.”

Faith’s belly fluttered in excitement. She couldn’t believe they were getting on a plane to Paris in ten hours.

“You may be sorry after I’ve dragged you through the hundredth gallery.”

“Never,” he whispered, nuzzling the side of her neck where her green venetian glass earring swung. “Now are you going to make that speech you’ve been keeping so secret so I can take you home to perform my conjugal duties before we have to leave for JFK or are we going to be here all afternoon?”

Faith rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay.” She kissed him, then stood and all eyes turned to her. “I know all the speeches have been made but I’d like to say a couple more things. One is a confession, the other is a toast, so everyone charge your glasses with this most excellent rosé.”

The full bottle of Rosa with Faith’s gorgeous label starring a bouquet of impressionist roses was passed around. The label had already won a swag of awards and Faith had been commissioned by several other companies to do labels for them.

“Firstly, on this my wedding day, I feel the need to come clean about the great altar wine incident at St. J’s over a decade ago.” Everyone laughed. “I know the four of us have held our silence over the years and that Ty thought it was Zel for about a decade – ”

The little crowd ooh’d and turned to Ty and Zel who grinned at each other.

“But I think on a day like this it’s time to fess up. It was me.
I
took the wine.”

There was more ooh’ing and laughing and general disbelief before Raf stood and slid his hand around her waist. “Are you telling me I married a petty thief?”

“I’m afraid so,” Faith said with a nod.

“At least she knows how to hold her liquor better these days,” Zel chimed in.

“We all do,” Dawn added.

Raf pressed a kiss to Faith’s temple as the good-natured ribbing died down. “Secondly, a toast.” Faith raised her glass and looked at Zelda, Dawn and Mercedes in turn. “To happily ever afters.”

The three of them stood and also raised their glasses. “To happily ever afters,” they murmured.

And Faith smiled because they’d been right, it
was
her turn.

Pursued by the Rogue

by Kelly Hunter

Copyright © 2015

I
t was a
good thing Dawn had Mercy and Zel in the cab with her. If she’d been alone she’d have told the driver to turn around and take her home. Through the tunnel, take an hour, take two. She’d have headed back to the Soho apartment she’d paid a fortune for and bailed on this school friends’ reunion that Mercy had insisted would be good for them all.

At the very least, Dawn should have tried to get the venue changed. Somewhere in Manhattan would have been good. Hell’s Kitchen, Little Italy,
anywhere
would have been preferable to an old Irish pub in Brooklyn that was choc full of memories she didn’t want to own.

Memories of a night full of music and laughter and Finbar Sullivan’s cap sitting jauntily on her head. He’d given it to her between the sets of Irish folk music he’d played with his brothers. Told her she was a pretty girl.

She’d been so starved for love and attention back then.

So very enamored of Faith’s fun-loving brother whose passion for music had poured from his fingertips.

So here she was, ten years later, heading back to that place with mixed feelings.
Surely
he wouldn’t be there.

Finbar Sullivan was probably somewhere in Europe right this minute, mesmerizing crowds with the music he coaxed from his ten million dollar violin.

He’d become a concert violinist at some point during these past ten years. A composer, a recording artist, a star of the classical music world – all of those things. Chances of finding him at the pub tonight were slim.

Which was why Dawn had cancelled all her afternoon meetings in order to stand in front of her cupboard in the hope of figuring out what to wear to a reunion with old friends, and possibly, maybe, but probably not Finn.

Who was probably in Berlin, playing with the Philharmonic there this evening.

Or something.

In the end, she’d chosen to wear comfortable jeans, a forest-green silk camisole and a dusky pink jacket that fell to mid-thigh. She’d been to an upmarket hair care salon in an attempt to make her blonde hair fall sleek and straight to frame a face that hadn’t grown prettier with age, even if she now had a much better clue when it came to making the best of it.

She looked as good as she was ever going to look and it still wasn’t enough to satisfy the insecurity gnawing at her belly. Because apart from the ghost of her first lover to contend with, she was also catching up with Faith for the first time in years.

Dawn hadn’t had much to do with Faith after the incident with the altar wine all those years ago. She’d blamed it on her punishments, on her study load, on them being relegated to different dorm rooms and on Mercy and Zel being gone. Anything but the truth.

Truth was, Dawn hadn’t been able be around Faith and not think of Finn and guilt and loss. She hadn’t had the emotional strength for it back then. Even now, her emotions felt stretched thin.

She’d cut Faith out of her life completely, and Faith – who’d once been as close as a sister – had thought it was because of the altar wine incident.

Dawn had a
lot
of making up to do if she wanted Faith Sullivan to call her a friend again.

The cab pulled up in front of Sully’s all too soon and Zel paid the fare as they all piled out.

Trying desperately not to chew on her lip and ruin her understated lipstick, Dawn followed the others into the pub’s gaping maw.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior.

And during that time she knew without seeing that Finbar Sullivan wasn’t performing on the world stage this evening.

He was right here.

She knew it by the prickle of awareness that burrowed beneath her skin and nested low in her belly. A sixth sense that she couldn’t explain and barely believed in. And then she saw him, and it was as if her world narrowed down to the head of a pin and there was nothing else in it but for a pair of shamrock-green eyes focused utterly on her. There was a body to go with it, long and lean. A mess of shaggy dark hair. A wave of feeling big enough to drown in.