Anything For You (Harlequin Blaze)
Page 22
“Don’t you get it, Sam? I have been in love with you since I was fourteen years old. I have watched you sleep with a cavalcade of bimbos, I have cried myself to sleep over wanting you, and I’ve given my body to you knowing that you don’t feel the same way. I can’t do it anymore. I certainly can’t marry you because you miss me and you hate change and you want your old pal back. I want more. I want all of you, and I know I can never have it and I’d rather have bloody nothing than accept some…feeble half measure that would only make us both incredibly miserable,” Delaney said, all her thoughts and feelings tumbling out of her. Tears were streaming down her face and she swiped at them ineffectually with the back of her hand.
Sam looked stricken. The grocery bag dropped from his fingers and hit the floor with a crack of breaking eggs as he stared at her.
“Say it again,” he demanded, moving toward her with intent.
She wiped at her face some more and threw her hands up helplessly.
“I love you. I love you. I love you. Always have, probably always will. Happy?” she said.
He stopped when he was standing mere inches away. Reaching out, he captured her face in his hands and smoothed his thumbs across her cheekbones to clear her tears.
“You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that,” he said.
And then he kissed her. A long, slow, infinitely tender kiss that filled Delaney with wonder and a breathless, terrifying hope. She pulled back to stare intently into his face.
“Sam?”
“I am an idiot. Laney…how can one man be so dumb? I love you. I love you so much that not having you in my life makes my chest ache.”
He stared at her, his eyes a fierce, clear blue.
“All these years I’ve wasted, keeping you by my side but at arm’s length. Can you forgive me? I promise to try and make it up to you each and every day. I’ll be your slave. I’ll be your whatever. Because I love you. I always have, and I always will. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing at night. I dream about touching you, making love to you. I can’t live without you.”
She was trembling, and she reached out a hand to cup his dear face in her hand. She couldn’t believe this was happening, but inside her, the pain that had wrapped itself around her heart was dissolving.
“Sam. So long. I can’t believe we’ve waited so long.”
“Maybe we’re just slow learners,” Sam said. “I can’t believe how close I came to losing you.”
Her heart lurched in her chest as she saw tears shimmering on the ends of his lashes. She caught one on the tip of her finger.
“No more tears,” she said.
“No. Not even at our wedding.”
She smiled and leaned toward him, glorying in the love shining openly from his eyes and the fact that at last she could say all that she wanted to.
“I adore you,” she whispered as she pressed her lips against his. “I absolutely adore you.”
“The feeling is incredibly mutual,” Sam said.
His hands slid around her, pulling her close. She could feel his heart pumping under her hand, a ragged rhythm that exactly matched her own.
And it did, she realized—at last, Sam’s heart matched her own.
“Take me to bed,” she said as she swayed toward him. “Take me to bed and let’s start making up for lost time.”
Sam grinned down at her.
“Mrs. Kirk, you are full of excellent ideas this morning,” he said as he stooped to pick her up in his arms.
“Mrs. Kirk? No one said anything about giving up my name,” she said teasingly as he strode through the house.
Sam tossed her onto the bed and covered her body with his. “You’re mine, and everyone’s going to know it. You got a problem with that?”
She stared up at the passion and determination and love in his face.
It seemed that sometimes you could have it all.
“No,” she said. “No problem at all.”
ISBN: 1-55254-587-3
ANYTHING FOR YOU
Copyright © 2006 by Small Cow Productions PTY Ltd.
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