‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘I wasn’t stalking you, Annie. I was keeping you safe. If Gaultier had come after you to get more information on me—I’d seen the way he looked at you. He wanted you, Annie. As long as he was alive, I didn’t think you were safe, and I couldn’t watch you myself, so Ruth did it for me. To keep you safe.’
She shuddered, not wanting to think about Gaultier. ‘And Roger? You set up a meeting, deliberately, while I was out. Why did you need to meet him?’
He looked away. ‘You were married to him. He was bringing up my son. I wanted to be sure he was kind to you. When I came after you, I was hoping you’d still be single, that this business with Gaultier would be cleared up in a few months. But you were married, and there was a baby, and months turned to years. It looked as if I might never get a chance to be with you, but I could still keep you safe. And then Roger died.’
‘And if he hadn’t?’
‘Then I would have come to you when Gaultier was out of the way and told you both the truth. Asked for a chance to get to know my son, to have a part in his life. I knew from Ruth that you’d told Stephen about Etienne, that he knew Roger was his stepfather. But I swear, I would have done nothing without talking to you. I don’t want to harm any of you, Annie. I just want a chance to take care of you. To make you happy.’
‘But you lied to me, you and Ruth!’ she said, her tears of anguish and betrayal welling over. ‘You made a fool of me, when I should have recognised you. Why? You should have trusted me—you should have known I’d love you.’
‘I did trust you, but I didn’t know any such thing. I knew you collected lame ducks, and I didn’t want to be one of them. I just didn’t want your pity.’ He swallowed and turned away so she couldn’t see his expression.
‘I needed to know that you could still want me for myself, and not just because of some misplaced loyalty to Stephen’s father or because you felt sorry for me—’
‘Sorry for you? Why should I feel sorry for you? You’re hugely successful, you’ve got vast amounts of money, you could have anyone you wanted. Why should I feel sorry for you, for God’s sake?’
‘Because you didn’t recognise me. Because I don’t recognise me. Because of this face—’
‘But your face is fine,’ she said, confused. ‘OK, it’s not your original face, but it’s all right. It’s just a face. What’s wrong with that?’
He turned back to her, his eyes anguished. ‘What’s wrong? It’s disfigured, that’s what’s wrong. It isn’t me, Annie. Not only am I not called my proper name, but I don’t even look like me any more. And I know you well enough to know how kind you are. I didn’t want to wake up one day and find you’d married me for the wrong reasons, that it was pity in your eyes and not love. And so I lied, to give you time to fall in love with me, and it backfired. Well, Ruth warned me. She said it was stupid. She told me I’d blow it, and she was right.’
His voice cracked and he turned away abruptly. ‘I can’t do this any more, Annie. I’ve done all I can. You’re safe now, both of you, that’s all that really matters. Stephen’s got the money, you’ve got this house—’
‘What money?’ she asked, confused. ‘What house?’
‘The trust fund. That legacy from a cousin who didn’t exist.’
She felt her stomach drop. ‘That was you? You gave Stephen nearly half a million pounds, just like that?’
‘I didn’t want you to have to stay with Roger if you weren’t happy. I thought if you had financial independence, you could start again somewhere else. There was provision for it to be used for housing you both. And this house—it’s in your name. You can do what you like with it. Just give me a few days to pack up and get out. I did it all for you anyway—I thought you’d like it, because of the barn in France you said you liked that day.’
‘Up in the hills,’ she said slowly. ‘You remembered.’
‘I remember everything about us,’ he told her, turning back to face her, his eyes ravaged with pain and regret. ‘Every last, incredible moment. And Cardiff. Another one for the memory banks. I shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have made love to you, either time. But I wasn’t strong enough to walk away from you, and wrong as it was, I can’t regret it. France, because it gave the world our son, and Cardiff—how could I regret anything so beautiful?’
He reached out, picked up a bunch of keys, held them out to her.
‘Here. The keys of your house—with my love. I’m sorry it didn’t work for us. I hope you’ll both be happy.’
The keys fell through her fingers, and she stared at him, searching his face and finding what she was looking for. At last.
‘I did know you,’ she said in wonder. ‘When you came in. My heart nearly stopped. You said I looked as if I’d seen a ghost, and maybe I had, because it’s all still there when I look closely. I just wasn’t expecting it, because I knew you were dead, so I reasoned it away.’ She stooped and picked up the keys, put them back on the side, let out her breath on a rush.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, tears spilling down her face. ‘I’ve been such a fool. I was just so scared. This thing’s so big—it isn’t every day a person like me gets tangled up in some international incident. I didn’t know who to speak to, how to know if Stephen was safe. I should have known you couldn’t hurt him. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I shouldn’t have doubted you—not for a moment. You promised I could trust you. I should have listened to you.’
For an age he stood there staring at her, then with a ragged groan he folded her against his chest and held her tight.
‘Oh, God, I thought I’d lost you,’ he said unsteadily, and his lips found hers and he kissed her as if he’d die without her. Then he lifted his head and stared down into her eyes, the tears clumping on his lashes. ‘Marry me,’ he said. ‘Please. If you want to. Let me be with you. We can live wherever you like, do whatever you want. The girls can come, too, if you like. You don’t even have to marry me if you don’t want to. Just say you’ll be with me, all of you.’
‘Even Vicky?’
He laughed, the sound music to her ears. ‘Even Vicky. She’s lovely. I’ll even put up with the cat if I have to.’
His hands slid to her shoulders, held her away so he could search her eyes. ‘Answer me, Annie, for pity’s sake,’ he said, his voice now shaking with emotion.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, my darling. I’ll marry you.’
‘Thank God,’ he said raggedly. ‘Oh, thank God.’ He drew her back into his arms and held her close. ‘What are we going to tell Stephen?’
‘The truth,’ she said. ‘That you were hurt, that I thought you were dead, that you’ve been waiting for us until it was safe. He loves you, Michael. He knew you wouldn’t hurt him—and it took him to tell me.’
‘We’ll go now—bring him back here, where he belongs.’
‘Perhaps you need to get dressed first.’
He gave a strained chuckle. ‘Give me five minutes.’
* * *
‘You’re my father? My real father? The Frenchman?’
Michael nodded. ‘Yes.’ It was all he could manage. The emotion was choking him, and after shutting it all down for so long, there was a hell of a lot of it to deal with.
‘But I thought you were dead?’
‘So did I,’ his mother said gently. ‘But he wasn’t. He just couldn’t tell us.’
‘Why?’
He drew Stephen closer. ‘Because in the army there are some things that have to be secret, even from the people you love,’ he explained simply.
‘But you’re allowed to not be secret now?’
He nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Why didn’t Mummy know you?’
‘Because I look different. My face was hurt, and it’s changed the way I look. But
my eyes are still the same as yours. See.’
He took Stephen’s hand, led him to the mirror in the hall. ‘Can you see?’
They met each other’s eyes in the glass, and Stephen nodded. ‘They’re the same.’ And then he smiled and said, ‘So—can I call you Daddy?’ and Michael thought his heart would burst.
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, and then Stephen was in his arms, and Annie, too, and he forgot the pain. Forgot everything except the future, and that was going to be just fine…
* * *
It was hours later, and Stephen was finally asleep, out for the count in the guest bedroom at one end of the suspended steel walkway that linked the two upper rooms at each end of the barn. Annie and Michael lay naked on the huge bed in the master bedroom at the other end, the lights on full as she traced the network of scars on his body with her fingertip. Learning him, his history, charting every single nick and graze that had ever happened to him.
Her finger hesitated over a puckered line along his ribs. ‘What’s this one?’
‘A gunshot. I got it the year before I went to France.’
‘And this?’
She drew her finger along the length of the great, curving scar that went from spine to navel around his waist. ‘That was France. I had a ruptured kidney, they had to remove it.’
‘And this?’
‘Liver. They sorted it. It’s fine now.’
She touched his face again, her fingers gentle, seeking. She touched his chin, opened his mouth, looked at his teeth, finding tiny scars in his mouth to show how the surgeons had done their miraculous work on his face. It must have hurt so much. ‘You were very lucky,’ she said softly.
He laughed with only a trace of bitterness. ‘I didn’t feel lucky at the time.’
‘In the hospital, you were talking about morphine.’
He couldn’t suppress the shudder. ‘I got a bit hooked,’ he said. ‘Coming off it was hell, but it was better than the alternative.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she kissed him gently, her lips touching every wound, every mark and nick and scratch on him, healing him inside as well as out.
‘I’m so sorry. You must have been in so much pain.’
He shrugged. ‘It happens. It’s called collateral damage. David’s death, what happened to me, what happened to Ruth—we all know it’s out there. We just have to hope it doesn’t get us. At least it’s over now and we know it’s finished.’
A shiver went over her, and she snuggled closer. ‘Tell me about that night,’ she said, curling into his side and resting a hand over his heart, so she could feel the deep, steady, even beat that told her he was indeed alive.
‘It was stupid. Things like that so often are. Somebody told David about Ruth when he checked in to report something, and he went out of his mind. He grabbed me and dragged me to one side, and muttered something to me in English. I thought we’d got away with it, but then I realised we were getting funny looks. Our cover was blown. I told him—said we had to get out that night. We should have gone straight away, but he didn’t want to arouse any more suspicion, and there was one more thing he wanted to check.
‘I should have said no. I was in charge, and I should have just got us out, but it gave me time to say goodbye to you—’
He broke off, grazing her cheek gently with his thumb. ‘I knew there was a good chance we’d die that night, and I couldn’t bear the thought of dying without making love to you just once before I said goodbye.’
‘Au revoir.’
‘You noticed.’
‘Oh, yes. I thought of it later, realised you must have known something was going on, but I had no idea.’
He gave a humourless laugh. ‘You wouldn’t. If you’d known anything your life would have been in danger, too. But I couldn’t resist spending those last hours with you, making love to you. And you were so incredible—so responsive, so tender. It broke my heart to leave you. I really thought I was going to die that night.’
‘I knew something was going on. That’s why I gave you the ring.’
‘I wore it—right up until three weeks ago. I’m afraid I lost it on Sunday.’
‘No. I’ve got it in my bag. It was in your things at the hospital. That was how I knew.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I wondered.’
‘Well, that and calling yourself Armstrong. That was a bit of a give-away.’
‘I can’t believe I did that.’
‘I can. You had a head injury. So what happened then, after you left me that night?’
‘We went to town. He wanted to phone Ruth, to talk to her before we did anything else. There was a call box. We were dragged out of it, hauled down an alley and kicked to death. At least, they thought so. Something must have spooked them before they had time to finish me off, though, and I had just enough time to find my phone and dial a number that would bring in reinforcements before I passed out.’
‘So someone from your team rescued you?’
He nodded. ‘We were wearing tracking devices. I don’t know what was said. I just know I woke up in England in a haze of morphine and stayed there for weeks—and that was the good bit. Then I set about finding Ruth, to make sure she was all right.’
‘But she wasn’t, was she? Tim said something about her trying to kill herself.’
‘Mmm. Guilt. Someone told her that David had been informed about the rape, so she thought it was her fault he’d died. It wasn’t. It was mine. I should have got us straight out, but—’
‘He was a grown man. It was his own fault he blew his cover. Don’t forget he nearly got you killed, too.’
‘But I was his boss.’
‘I think you’ve paid your debt,’ she said softly. She touched his face again, her fingers trembling against the tortured flesh. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, swallowing her tears.
‘I’m sorry, too. Sorry I lost you, sorry that by the time I’d found you, you were married to Roger and beyond my reach.’
She sighed gently. ‘Poor Roger. He was a lovely man, but he was Liz’s husband really till the day he died. Our marriage was only ever in name, you know.’
He went still, then lifted his head from the pillow and searched her eyes, his puzzled. ‘In name? You didn’t—?’
She shook her head, her fingers stroking him still. ‘Not once. There was never any suggestion that we should. We had separate rooms.’
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jerking convulsively. ‘If you could know how many times I’ve lain here and tortured myself with an image of you with him—’
‘No. There’s only ever been you, in thirty years.’
He stared at her again. ‘What?’
‘In France—that was my first time. And Cardiff was the second.’
‘And third,’ he said, his voice gruff with emotion. ‘Oh, Annie. I don’t deserve you.’
‘Oh, I think you do—but I want the truth from now on.’
‘And nothing but the truth, so help me God.’ His smile was wry and uncertain. ‘You do trust me now, don’t you?’ he asked, searching her face for any last trace of doubt, but there was none.
‘Yes, my darling. I trust you. I’d trust you with my life. I might as well, as it seems you’ve been looking after it for nine years anyway.’ She pressed her lips to his jaw, over the scars. ‘It’s my turn now to look after you, and I intend to devote every waking minute to it—well, when I’m not working, anyway.’
‘What about the tearoom?’
‘What about it?’
‘Do you still want to run it? You don’t need to. We’ve got enough money, after all, you hardly need to work. You could sell it.’ He hugged her gently. ‘Your regulars could come here for coffee and have a swim. I wouldn’t mind if it meant
I had you.’
‘Don’t you mean my freeloaders?’ she teased, and he groaned.
‘OK, I’m sorry. Your friends.’
‘Better. I don’t know. It all depends.’
‘On what?’
She lifted her face, met his eyes. ‘We didn’t take precautions on Sunday. If I’m pregnant—’
He felt a giant hand squeeze his heart tight. ‘Is it likely?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. And if not, we can always keep trying—if you want to?’
He felt tears well in his eyes, but he didn’t care. This was Annie, and he had no secrets from her. Not now. ‘Oh, yes, I want to. It ripped me apart not being there for you when you had Stephen. Missing his babyhood—’ He broke off. ‘I know I won’t get that chance again, but another baby, that would be incredible. Maybe a sister for him—’
‘Or two?’
‘As many as you like. There can’t be too many. I love kids. I love you. How can I be too happy?’
She laughed and snuggled closer. ‘You can’t—and you’ll deserve every second of it. Even the dirty nappies.’
‘Oh, joy,’ he murmured, but he was still smiling, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781459227408
Copyright © 2012 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holder of the individual works as follows:
VALTIERI’S BRIDE
Copyright © 2012 by Caroline Anderson
A BRIDE WORTH WAITING FOR
Copyright © 2006 by Caroline Anderson
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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