by Helen Brooks
'Me?'
'Yes, you,' he groaned slowly. 'What I want to do to you right at this moment is not conducive to good driving, but I have to get to where other people are to talk to you. I cannot trust myself if we are alone, and I have to explain without touching you…'
'But why do we need other people?' she asked dazedly, and then, as she glanced down, the state of his body provided the answer. His arousal was hot and fierce. 'Oh…'
'Yes, oh,' he agreed grimly, not looking at her now. But she didn't mind—oh, she didn't, she didn't, she didn't. Because it was going to be all right, however grim and controlled and austere he appeared right now. He had come for her, hadn't he? Braved her parents, her brothers, and come to seek her out. It had to be all right…didn't it?
It did. He parked right in the middle of the town at the edge of the market square, which was still full of mums and tots sitting by the fountain, commuters having a break in the sunshine before their journey home, shoppers, and the inevitable courting couples sitting close on the wooden slatted seats.
'I love you, Claire, and I cannot let you go.' It was said without any preamble, but as she turned to him again he opened his door and got out, walking round to her side and drawing her out of the car with a shake of his head. 'Out, wench,' he said wryly, 'I need to talk to you, to explain, to…to ask your forgiveness. And one more minute in that car and all these little children are going to have a firsthand demonstration of the facts of life.'
'Romano…' But he drew her over to a vacant seat, with just a few pigeons pecking desultorily at the crumbs of a broken ice-cream cornet as their audience.
'I cannot live without you at my side, Claire.' She stared at him, stilled by the desperate note in his voice that had wiped away any amusement or lightness. 'But it will not be easy. You have to understand this—understand what you would be taking on if you want me. It is not right, it is not fair that I ask you to marry me like this—you are warmth and light and purity and I…I am dark, here, in the heart of me.'
'You are asking me to marry you?' she asked stupidly, her senses drinking in the closeness of him, the smell, the sheer sensual power, even as her mind refused to cooperate with any coherent instructions.
'You once said to me that you would not let the past beat you—you remember this?' he asked huskily.
She shook her head numbly, her mind refusing to concentrate on anything but the fact, the glorious, wonderful, amazing fact, that he wanted to marry her.
'Sì, you did, and it hit me like the…the nail from the blue?'
'A bolt from the blue,' she corrected him dazedly, her eyes drinking in the sheer beauty of him.
'Ah, yes, the bolt. And that was because for the last three years the past has beaten me, held me, ground me into the dust. I did not want to acknowledge it, but it is true. And then, when I met you, when I fell instantly and terribly in love, the past was there in all its blackness, telling me that this would not work either, that you could not be what you seemed, that even if you were it would all turn to ashes given time. And so I played the coward—'
'No—no, you didn't. You were trying to be honest—'
'I played the coward, Claire.' He interrupted her quick and fervent protest with an upraised hand and a crooked, pained smile that smote at her heart. 'I thought I could get through. I told myself it was not right to inflict my nightmares on you—I still think that. But the fact of the matter is…I am useless without you in my life. I have not slept, eaten; I have been unable to work—and then I realised that I would rather be a coward with you than without you. If you still wanted me, that is. I faced the fact that I might have driven you away for good and sent myself half-mad in the process.'
'You couldn't drive me away,' she said simply. 'Where could I go that I didn't carry you with me in my heart?'
'I do not deserve you, and I will be hell to live with— you understand this? The years of my boyhood, the time with Bianca—I cannot easily express what I feel. I am bound, deep inside.'
'I'll release you.' She moved closer to him now, lifting her arms up round his neck but without any pressure, resting against him as she spoke into his throat. 'Do you hear me? I'll release you.'
'And I will be jealous. I know this. When I saw Attilio with his hands on you—' He stopped abruptly. 'I could have ripped him apart, limb by limb,' he groaned huskily. 'Can you cope with a man like this?'
'All my life.' She nuzzled into his throat now, licking his skin with a delicate, tentative tongue, and immediately his arms came round her and he crushed her to him.
'But I will love you, Claire, this I can promise,' he said hoarsely. 'I will love you for eternity. There will never be anyone else. You will be the air I breathe, my sun, moon and stars, my wife, the mother of my children, the other half of me. I will love you, want you, every day, every moment. Hell, I could eat you alive…'
And as the pigeons flew in a startled arc into the evening air, surprised and not a little shocked at the passions that afflicted these strange human creatures, he gathered her up into his arms, his mouth hot and sensuous on hers as he carried her back to the car, and to the beginning of his walk out of the shadows and into the glorious light of love.