by Susan Napier
'Brought what?' Elizabeth asked.
He put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a handful of glitter.
'You've been walking around with it in your pocket?' she spat incredulously, trying to push the necklace back. 'You could have been mugged!' The thought of him lying bleeding in some dark alley made her blanch. 'Haven’t you got any sense? I thought you were supposed to be security-conscious—'
'Without you I have no reason for security. Here. It's for you.' He turned over her hand and placed it across her palm, folding his on top. 'Next time you wear it for me I'll know that you have forgiven me.'
'Next time?' she said faintly, feeling the heat of his hand go all the way up her arm to explode in the pulse at her throat.
'Oh, there will always be a next time for us, chérie, if you want there to be...' he said softly. 'You were too uncertain and I was too certain. I demanded your trust before you were free to give it. I was sure I wanted to spend my life, have my children with you, and like a child myself I decided to take what I wanted. I was greedy. This time we will take it slow.'
'Slow?' Elizabeth stared at the object between their hands, realising what it had taken for a proud man to come to her and admit his faults. She too had let her pride come between them, and that stupid lack of self-confidence that had assured her that such a man could not possibly want her for herself alone... She looked at him, at the thin, controlled line of his mouth and the narrowed silver eyes which masked his inner thoughts and she smiled suddenly, ruefully, as she realised that she didn’t have to try and read him; she could guess what was going on inside that handsome head. She knew him better than she had thought.
This, too, was a gamble for him, and one in which he clearly thought he had stacked the odds. If he had come this far, it was not on the off-chance of success. For all his appearance of humbleness he was enjoying the delicate battle, silently anticipating victory. For Jack Hawkwood was never one to underestimate his opponent. He had calmed down. He had thought. He had weighed and assessed the nuances of her behaviour. He had known, thank God, since he had walked through the door of the shop and seen her haunted violet eyes explode with pain and joy. 'How slow is slow?'
A lambent flame licked across the silver eyes. 'As slow as you like, chérie,' he said with a purring promise that made her breathless.
'Liar.'
‘I love you and I have brought you my betrothal gift. If you love me you will wear it...'
'And?' Her eyes were vivid with promise.
'And marry me.' The shining violet eyes dimmed the tiniest fraction and he continued smoothly, 'And make mad, passionate love to me all night in my hotel room until I have made you pregnant and your uncles force me with their shotgun to marry you, and my family honour is not tainted by rumours that the necklace has lost its devastating efficaciousness.' He watched with amusement the smug look of satisfaction that curved her small, kissable mouth. His Beth was definitely going to be a challenge.
‘If I'm not home tonight my uncles will worry,' she said, peeping at him through her lashes.
'Just a quick one, then,' he agreed blandly.
'Jack!' He laughed and swung her round and she allowed him to kiss her, letting thousands of dollars drip carelessly through her fingers until he caught them and thrust them back into his pocket.
‘I love you more than all the diamonds in the world,' she confided needlessly, when she resurfaced, prompting another submersion in the pleasure of a loving embrace.
'My uncles...' she murmured finally, as she tried to remember that she was a respectable businesswoman and shouldn’t be kissing on company time. She had already heard one irascible old customer stomp past with a mutter about 'promiscuous, long-haired louts'!
‘I have seen them already, I confess,' he whispered into the tiny, sweet-tasting hollow behind her ear. 'They are not averse to the novel idea of living in a chateau, especially one crammed with books, and perhaps you might care to run your business from there—Grandpère has many international connections that could be valuable to you. There is plenty of room, chérie, for I don’t intend for you to fill all the rooms with children...'
'But the sooner we start the sooner we'll be finished,' she teased him, eyes dancing, and as he bent to kiss her again a vagrant thought floated up through her consciousness.
'Jack...you don’t think that it's odd that Uncle Miles and Uncle Seymour never mentioned how well they got on with your grandfather? They let me think he might be an ogre!'
'Hmm?' His mouth wandered down the line of her jaw.
'Or that your grandfather never said why he didn’t answer all those calls and letters, even though he must have realised they were important...'
'Hmm...'
'Or that he didn’t turn a hair when I finally told him about the necklace... or seem to worry about how such an awful mistake could happen in the first place...' He nipped her throat and she gasped. 'And don’t you think it's funny that your grandfather should have said that about me having "finally found my way" there when he didn’t even know that I was coming—?'
'Beth?'
'Yes?' Her eyes widened at his impatient growl.
'No more detective work, please; the last case you handled was a disaster! The conspiracy theory might have some merit but, personally, chérie, I'd prefer to believe in the enchanting whims of fate and the beautifully wayward arrows of love. Not all the matchmaking relatives in the world would have persuaded me to marry the wrong woman...'
'Whereas I am very pleased to be marrying the wrong man!' stated Elizabeth firmly, and proceeded to prove it.