Want & Need (23 page)
Authors: CJ Laurence
“What the hell are you doing?” Paul said, sitting up.
He looked down and pulled the duvet up around me even though I was already plenty covered.
“I think I could ask you the same thing. Or should I say who?” he said, his eyes falling on me.
Paul glared at him, anger and hatred rolling off him in waves. “Get out.”
“Is
she
why you’ve vanished for the past week?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I think it’s very much my business considering past events, don’t you?”
That was it—I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. “Where do you get off being a bully?”
Roger’s mouth fell open. “I beg your pardon?”
“Kyra…” Paul whispered, placing a hand on my arm.
“You heard me,” I said, ignoring Paul. This arrogant bastard had not only tortured the love of my life for years but had also intruded on our most intimate moment yet. He was getting both barrels. “There’s no wonder really that Rebecca wanted nothing to do with you, is there?”
Paul groaned and put his head in his hands. Roger’s expression darkened as confusion and anger mixed together.
“You know nothing of our family situation, young lady. Be very careful.”
“Don’t I? So I don’t know how she left home the second she legally could and disowned you? I don’t know you had to buy her that yard and house to prevent your own daughter from living in a caravan because she preferred it to living with you? I also don’t know that she changed her surname to dissolve any association to you and only comes round for Christmas and birthdays as part of a deal because of the yard you bought her?”
He looked at me as hurt spread across his face for just a moment before his arrogance returned.
He glared at Paul. “You told her about Rebecca?”
I snorted. “No. I met her.”
“You what?” Roger said, now yelling at Paul. “You took her to meet Rebecca? What did we talk about back in the summer? I thought it had been made quite clear to you where we stood on that score and the situation with her?” He jerked his head towards me as he spoke the last couple of words.
“Oh, I know all about that,” I jumped in again before Paul could respond. “How you made him sleep with Mrs. Peters as part of your perverted little sex club, and told him if he wanted to be with me, then he’d have to share me with everyone else. Seriously, how sick are you?”
Roger’s face flashed a wry smile before he responded. “Listen to me, young lady. I know my own son better than you do. I know what he needs better than anyone else, and getting involved in a monogamous relationship is not something he needs or wants.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.
“I know all about Cassie.”
He sucked in a deep breath but remained silent, giving me the opportunity to carry on.
“And I also know the only reason Paul won’t get involved with anyone is because he doesn’t want to see his own father fucking his girlfriend.”
I was so angry I didn’t care what I said as I felt the situation we were currently in was all down to him anyway. If he hadn’t forced Paul into his seedy sex club all those years ago, then maybe things with Paul and I would have turned out differently the first time around.
“He had jealousy issues,” Roger said, dropping his arms to his sides. “It’s the best thing for him.”
“Is it? So you don’t think him getting what he actually wants is the best thing for him? Him living the life he actually wants wouldn’t be the best thing for him, then?”
“Paul?” Roger said, glancing at his son.
“I hate it,” he said. “I always have done. I can’t stand the way you and Mum live. I would rather die alone than subject any wife of mine to what you do.”
“Oh.”
“And if you don’t let me live my own life, at the age of thirty-five, you’ll find yourselves completely childless.”
Giving us both a curious look, Roger nodded his head and closed the door, disappearing.
Paul and I both let out a sigh of relief before we flopped back onto the soft pillows and stared up at the ceiling in silence. A couple of minutes later, he rolled over on top of me, scooping his arms underneath my back as he nestled himself cheekily between my legs.
“Well, I guess that’s the complications over and done with,” he said.
I giggled at him as he nuzzled into my neck and slowly started planting kisses across my skin.
“I’m completely and utterly madly in love with you,” he whispered, his thumbs stroking my back.
I gasped in shock at the sudden outburst of his feelings. I rested my hands on his shoulders, ready to push him off me should this go very wrong.
“I know,” he said, raising his face so he could look me in the eye. “I said the dreaded ‘L’ word.”
I smiled at his sarcasm, giving him a withering look.
“I’ve tried to tell you twice in the past week and both times I’ve been interrupted so I figured I may as well just say it now the opportunity arose.”
I looked into those hypnotizing blue eyes swimming with love and tenderness. Why had I not seen this side of him before? It made my heart heavy and ache at the thought of where this could have gone if this had happened months ago.
“I’m crazy about you too,” I said, careful not to jump in with the ‘L’ word.
He grinned at me with a satisfied look on his face. “That’ll do,” he whispered. “That’ll more than do.”
Well, it was fair to say my life changed rather drastically over the past six months.
Paul and his parents managed to iron things out—eventually. It was Paul’s mum who finally made Roger see they couldn’t impose their own lifestyle choices onto their children. Paul made his plans about the future of their business quite clear. In the end, they decided to split the businesses up. Paul kept the nightclubs and took sole charge of them whilst his parents continued on with their own lifestyle choice of the club. They would sell it on in the future, when they were too old, and keep the money behind for Paul and Rebecca once they were gone. They had also moved out of the house and bought themselves a new estate a few miles down the road. Paul had been utterly gobsmacked when they handed him the keys and told him they didn’t want to force him out of his childhood home.
Paul also kept himself at the head of Mr. Collins’s company and all was going swimmingly well. The new branch out in Germany had sprung into life last month and he had moved two of the directors out there permanently to control it whilst he stayed back here—with me.
I wanted to keep my job at the company but Paul refused to have me stuck behind a desk, restrained from the joys of a good life when he had more than enough money to “keep me,” aside from my own small fortune from Mum’s shares. After some rather heated discussions we came to an agreement and a very suitable compromise was reached for both of us. His relationship with Rebecca had flourished considerably since everything happened and I found myself going into business with her. I evented her top horses, including Eloise, and helped her with her breeding and training programmes. Burying myself in horses for hours every day was perfect heaven to me.
Ash and Ben announced they were getting married at the end of the year after they had now permanently relocated themselves out in Texas. Ash was teaching Ben about horses and they were making a good go at running a dude ranch along with some help from the locals.
Tim was awaiting his trial, which was scheduled for next month. He pleaded guilty to all charges and it was pretty much set in stone he was going away for life. The children who he had taken inheritance from over the years were all given their money back from their unfortunate mothers and any leftover had been donated to local equine charities.
Nelson had been flown over here and was currently standing at stud at the yard. We were making an attempt at introducing American Quarter Horses over here and it was going well. It was a joyful relief for me to ride him after the seriousness of the competitions I had with the eventers.
Molly and Chris had gotten divorced rather quickly. Chris pushed it all through, at an insane cost, and managed to get it finalised last week. We kept in touch loosely as after being victims to the same thing, it had been daft not to. We had always gotten along anyway. Molly moved to Wales to get a fresh start. She never attempted any sort of contact with me and I was grateful.
Scott moved out to the States courtesy of his father. I was a little saddened to hear he had been shot and killed in a series of riots that took place in Boston where he was visiting for a few days. I knew he never intended me any harm and I felt that was a rather sticky end to meet. Paul, on the other hand, along with Ash, were rather obvious in their gleeful snickering.
I was now living with Paul. I moved in when his parents moved out in the new year. It didn’t feel rushed or forced; it just felt right. I had even managed to say the dreaded ‘L’ word to him shortly after I moved in. He reacted with a couple of tears but insisted it was merely his eyes sweating and I wasn’t to tell a soul about his strange bodily function.
This evening, I lay in bed listening to the rhythmic breathing of my sleeping beautiful Greek god next to me. I lifted my left hand up in the moonlight streaming through our window and twirled the sparkling diamond around my third finger with an aching smile spreading onto my face. He’d proposed to me only a few short hours previously.
I’d been competing at a one-day event with one of the up and coming youngsters. After a rather sticky situation at one of the fences out on the cross country course, we came home, splattered in mud and me utterly overjoyed I was still alive after he refused a simple log fence and sent me flying into a puddle of mud.
I slid down from the saddle weak at the knees and gasping for breath. I’d turned to lead the horse back to the lorry when Paul’s grinning face greeted me. He hugged me in his designer clothes before bending down on one knee. Opening a dark blue velvet box, he presented me with a stunning diamond ring and the words, “If this is the worst you’ll ever look, which I think it is, then I’d still marry you right now if I could. Will you marry me?”
He’d been grinning like a Cheshire cat as he’d said it, full well knowing how I’d react to him doing that to me at such a horrifying moment.
I pushed him over into the squelching grass before jumping on him like a starfish on ecstasy and screaming my answer in delight. I then interrogated him as to why he couldn’t have given me hearts and flowers and let me look my best.
His response, with a big grin, had simply been, “Because then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.”
I couldn’t believe after the past year of insane highs and hitting real rock bottoms, after giving in to my wants of him and then ignoring him for the needs of my own life, I finally found everything I ever wanted and needed in him.
I had finally found my happy ending.
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