“Nor would I under similar circumstances,” Alice acceded with a sad smile. “There’s a lot my grandson doesn’t share—with me or with anyone else. He is fierce and loyal, but careful, too. He’s a good man. An honest one. But he doesn’t give his love easily. Nor do you. My dear, you need to decide if your love for Ilya is worth putting aside your past hurts.”
“I didn’t say I loved him,” Yasmin answered with all the stubbornness she’d inherited from her grandfather. It was an instinctive reaction, one that came from a place of self-protection.
Alice simply smiled at her, understanding clear in her eyes. “You’re a lot like Jim, but you have your father’s sensitivity, too. I think that if you and Ilya can weather this, and overcome it, you will be an unbreakable force together in the future. But you have to want it—and you have to fight for it if you do want it.”
“I don’t even know if he loves me. He’s never said as much.”
“No, he isn’t the kind of man who wears his heart on his sleeve. He used to be, but, like you, he was hurt. Are you willing to risk the rest of your life not knowing what the two of you could have had together? Are his past transgressions so bad that you can’t forgive him and move on?”
Yasmin let the words sink deeply into her heart. She’d barely let Ilya get a word in that day she’d left him. She’d still been filled with all the shock and hurt and confusion at the news he’d been engaged to Jennifer Morton. And now she knew he’d been the one who actually dragged her from the water and prevented her from drowning. Had she misjudged him so badly?
She thought about what he’d done since she left him. Giving her Blaze, hunting down Jennifer, pressing charges and making the other woman apologize—not only to her but the Hardacres, as well. And then there was what he’d done to help her hold on to Carter Air, sending Horvath Aviation business her way. Giving her the funds to repay her loan. She hadn’t asked for any of it, and yet he’d done all those things for her.
At the very least, she owed him a hearing.
“Well,” Alice said, rising to her feet again. “I have said what I came here to say. I hope to see you again soon, my dear.”
“Thank you for coming,” Yasmin said automatically as she saw Alice to the door. “I mean it. It’s been a difficult time.”
“Life’s never easy, but it is what you make of it.”
Yasmin closed the door behind Alice and leaned against it, letting Ilya’s grandmother’s words filter through her racing mind. Could she make it? Could they? Did it matter so very much that Ilya hadn’t told her the whole truth and if it did, could she forgive him?
There was only one way to find out.
Nineteen
“Come on, Blaze. We’re going for a ride.”
The puppy bounded toward her, tongue lolling in his mouth and his eyes bright with excitement at the word.
She took her time driving to Ilya’s hillside home, wondering all the way whether or not she should have called ahead first, at least to see if he was home. But it didn’t matter now; she was committed to seeing this through. Weariness pulled at her whole body. It had been a heck of a day so far and it didn’t look like it was letting up any time soon.
Next to her, harnessed in his special seat belt, Blaze got excited as she pulled up outside the gate to the house. She’d left her auto opener behind, believing she’d never need it again. She hesitated, debating whether to turn around and head back to the airfield or to press the buzzer and ask for admittance.
The gates ahead of her slowly rolled aside. That meant one of two things. Either Ilya was on his way out, or he’d seen her on the security camera and opened the gate himself.
She put the truck in gear and started her descent down the driveway. She passed the helipad, noting that one of the choppers from the Horvath fleet was there. Was Ilya planning on heading out somewhere? Or did he have visitors? Her hands were shaking as she pulled up outside the front of the house. Ilya was framed in the doorway.
Her heart all but beat itself out of her chest the moment she saw him there. Tall, strong and so handsome there should be a law against it. And so dear to her fragile heart that she barely knew what to do or say anymore. Beside her, Blaze gave a happy woof of recognition. She unclipped his harness and leaned across the door to open it and let him bound out.
Ilya bent to welcome the puppy, who wriggled and yipped and licked with all the joy and exuberance of a puppy who’d been parted from a loved one for months or years rather than days.
“Are you getting out?” Ilya asked, looking up at her across the bench seat of the truck. “Or were you just dropping him off for a visit?”
A surge of anger filled her. How dare he be flippant at a time like this? She fought the urge to pull the door closed, put the truck in gear and head back up the driveway. Didn’t he know how difficult this was for her?
How could he, a voice deep inside her asked, when you won’t even talk to him?
Yasmin released the breath she was holding and forced herself to get down from the truck. She walked toward Ilya, feeling distinctly lightheaded while at the same time feeling as though the weight of her future, both hers and Ilya’s, hung around her shoulders like a leaden cloak.
“Do you want to come in?” Ilya offered, standing up.
“I think that’s best,” she managed, her voice sounding stiff and unnatural to her own ears.
She walked through to the family room off the kitchen and stood at the sliding doors looking out to the patio. Blaze scratched at the glass, desperate to get outside and hunt out a play toy. She let him through and followed him outside.
“Can I get you anything?” Ilya asked from behind her.
“Some courage perhaps?” she answered wryly.
“Courage? Oh, I don’t know. I kind of think you’re one of the bravest women I know.”
“I don’t deserve that.”
“What makes you think that?”
“At the first sign of trouble, I run.”
“Self-preservation. There’s probably many an extinct species that wishes they’d perfected the art of running.”
She smiled at his attempt at humor.
“I had a visitor or two today,” she said. “And received a letter by special delivery.”
“Ah, yes.” Ilya nodded and looked across the patio to where Blaze was happily sniffing his way around the edge of the garden. “Shall we sit down and talk about that?”
She took a seat at the large granite outdoor table and rested her arms on the surface. The warmth of the sun still emanated from the smooth rock and she took strength from it.
“Did you always know?” she blurted out.
“Know?” Ilya looked directly at her.
“That it was me you saved from drowning.”
“No. Absolutely not. Not until the day we went up in the Ryan. When we talked, after...y’know.”
His eyes flared a deeper blue. She felt an answering curl of heat deep inside at the memory.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I couldn’t. You’d just shared your worst experience with me. Telling you about my part in it right then would have compounded what was already a terrible memory. After that, well, everything unraveled around us so quickly after that. I know it’s my fault and I shouldn’t make excuses, but I didn’t want to risk damaging the tentative relationship we were building.”
“Shouldn’t relationships be built on trust?”
He nodded and looked away briefly before turning his attention back to her. “They should, and I will always regret that I didn’t tell you sooner. That you had to find out the way you did. But I can’t undo the past. I’m always going to be linked to the worst thing in your life.
“When I got there, you were just entering the water. I could see you were already in a bad way. I asked Jen what she was thinking, letting you swim
in that state, but she said you wanted to. I watched you, saw the moment your arms looked like they were getting too heavy for you, when you started to sink. I went after you and brought you back to the beach.”
“Thank you. I never knew who pulled me out, never got the chance to say thanks.”
“It was what any decent person would have done. Unfortunately, decent people were thin on the sand that night.”
There was an undercurrent of fury in his voice, as if the whole episode still made him incredibly angry. Judging from his fists clenched on the table, it probably did.
“And you got Jennifer to apologize to me?”
“I did.”
“I’d begun to suspect her, but when were you sure it was her?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The first couple of weeks you were gone I didn’t know what to do—you kept rebuffing me at every turn so I had to find another way. I remembered you saying something about emails.”
He explained how he’d checked his home computer, apologizing for invading her private email, and told her how he’d asked his cousin for help in tracking down where the threatening emails had come from.
“So you went all bounty hunter on her? Even the police didn’t uncover all that,” Yasmin said incredulously.
“They probably didn’t see the urgency like I did. I had a lot more riding on it. I had to prove to you that I wasn’t who you thought I was. You needed to know who was behind that whole thing and you needed compensation for that.”
He explained how he’d turned Jennifer over to the police and the charges she was facing. It was something that the police would be in touch with Yasmin about. But he also mentioned how Jennifer clearly had an addiction problem, and she’d come willingly to apologize to the Hardacres and written the letter to Yasmin essentially admitting her guilt. He hinted that with Yasmin’s agreement, Jennifer may be eligible for treatment for her addictions in lieu of serious jailtime. As he spoke Yasmin realized just what a special person he was.
“Well, I’m glad you did all that. It allowed me to close a door on the past. By the way, Esme Hardacre stopped by today.”
He looked at her, waiting for her to say more. “And?”
“She wants to renegotiate our contract. I said I’d think about it.”
“If you do that, you won’t need my help any longer.”
Something in his voice made him sound lost. As if he thought that without the work he was putting her way, she wouldn’t need him anymore.
“Do you want me to need your help?”
He swallowed. “Not my help. To be totally honest with you, Yasmin, I want you to need me the way I need you. I love you.”
* * *
Yasmin’s eyes widened into giant slate-gray pools. Was it fear, rejection or hope that he saw reflected there? He prayed it was the latter. He’d done everything he could to make this right, everything in his power. Leaving it in her hands now was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Harder than landing a plane knowing that there was nothing that could be done for his father. Harder than standing at his mother’s grave and knowing that he hadn’t been enough to fill her life and keep her safe. Harder than admitting he’d been a poor judge of character when he’d chosen Jennifer to be his future bride.
But Yasmin was a chance at a future he’d never expected. A future he now wanted with his heart and soul. He’d move heaven and earth if she asked for it. But she wasn’t the kind of person to ask for anything. She was self-sufficient. An island. How did a man get across that sea of independence she surrounded herself with? How did he get her to understand how very much she meant to him, especially when he’d only just begun to understand it himself?
Yasmin’s voice was hesitant when she spoke. “Needing someone else scares me. It makes me feel less worthy. Certainly, less worthy of love.”
Ilya shook his head fiercely. “Never less worthy of love. You are an incredible woman. You’ve done so much. You never give up.”
“I gave up on us.”
“Extenuating circumstances.” He rushed to absolve her of any guilt.
“No, Ilya, I need to own this, the same way I need to own the fact that I let Jennifer—all the Jennifers of this world—drive my decisions and my idea of my own worth for far too long. The thing is, it wasn’t until I married you that I actually started to learn what love really was.”
Ilya let her words sink in, felt the burning spark of hope flicker to life in his chest.
She continued. “You weren’t what I expected at all. You have to realize, I was conditioned to hate you on sight.”
“I got that impression when you ran away from our wedding ceremony.”
“Not my finest moment and, again, one driven by fear. I don’t want fear to rule my life anymore, Ilya. I want to be in control.”
How could she not see that she was already in control? That she’d always been. Didn’t she understand that a weaker person could have been completely broken by what happened to her—from her parents abandoning her to a grumpy old man, to constantly trying to win his approval, to being the outsider even when she was at college? Each piece on its own was enough, but she’d dealt with all of that. He told her as much.
“Thank you for the compliments. It’s not often I get to see myself through someone else’s eyes.”
Blaze abandoned his circuit of the garden and came and sat on the patio between them, a contented little sigh coming from him before he put his head down and drifted off to sleep. Ilya looked at the puppy and, for a moment, envied him the simplicity of his life. But then, if Ilya’s life were that simple he wouldn’t have this beautiful, strong, complicated woman sitting opposite him. A woman who held his heart in her capable hands.
“I meant every one of them, just as I meant it when I said I love you. I know I let you down by not telling you the truth about me and Jen. I regret that more than I can say. Your trust is important to me, Yasmin. It’s everything. Without it I feel like I’m only half a person. You are my other half. Will you forgive me my silence? Will you give us, give me a second chance?”
“Ilya, I came here tonight not really knowing what I wanted to say. Trust is the biggest thing for me and I did feel betrayed by you. But my perception of that night, of your part in it, was warped—just like my perception of you when I saw you standing at the altar was warped by all the hideous things my grandfather used to say about your family.” She took a deep breath and reached across the table to grip his hands. “I don’t want to work against you anymore. I want to work with you. To be honest, I don’t want to accept the Hardacre contract. I want to work with you, properly, the way our grandfathers started to, the way they should have continued to. If you’re willing.
“I’m not going to let what other people say or said, or do or did, stand in the way of my happiness any longer. I’m the one who makes my decisions, my choices, and I choose you. For far too long I strove to find where I fit in this world. I didn’t fit with my mom and dad, and I never truly fit with Granddad, either. At school I was that kid who won the prizes but who no one wanted to sit with at lunch. At college, well...” She shrugged and took a deep breath. “I never felt like I fit anywhere, but I know where I want to belong. Here, with you. I love you, Ilya, and I want to tell you that every day for the rest of our lives. They’re not words that come easily to me, nor am I used to hearing them. I never thought I needed them, but I do. Can we try again? Can we make our marriage work?”
Ilya was out of his chair and pulling her into his arms before she even finished talking.
“I will tell you every minute of every day for the rest of my life how much you mean to me. I might not always use the exact words, but you will never need to doubt me or my love for you, ever again,” he vowed.
She looked up at him, her hands bracketing his face. “I’m going to need help on this one, on understanding what it takes to be a part of a couple,
on learning that I don’t have to stand on my own two feet on every issue, every single day. I’ll need help to learn how to open up to you, to be worthy of your love, too.”
“I’m here for you, always. No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” she repeated softly.
Ilya kissed her, his lips sealing a promise that transcended words and he knew, in his heart of hearts, that they’d work everything out together. And, as he removed her wedding ring from his pocket, where he put it each day, and replaced it on her finger, he knew they’d get there. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but they had the future. A long, long future.
Together.
* * * * *
If you loved this novel of sizzling drama,
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ONE HEIR... OR TWO?
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WANTING WHAT SHE CAN’T HAVE
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Tangled Vows (Marriage At First Sight Book 1) Page 16