by Rachel Lee
She ached for him. Oh, how she ached for him, understanding that, however alone she had felt, he had been utterly isolated.
“I’m…unnatural,” he said, his voice husky. “I know that. I understand that. And it’s human instinct to avoid people who are…mutants.”
“Oh, my God.” Honor barely breathed the words, as she understood fully, for the first time, the scars that this man bore.
“So I can understand why you wouldn’t want to stay indefinitely.”
“But you want to keep me around for…a little while?” Anger was beginning to stir in her, but not anger at him. No, it was anger against all the people who had made him feel that he wasn’t good enough.
“As long as you can stand me.”
Considering that he considered himself totally undesirable, that admission had taken guts. Guts of the kind she seemed to be a little short of herself. She was asking him to take a blind leap she wasn’t prepared to take herself, and the understanding shamed her.
Tilting her face up, she kissed him with every ounce of passion and love she felt for him. “Then you’d better plan on marrying me.”
He went instantly still. Not stiff, not rigid, just utterly, perfectly still, as if everything in him were arrested in a moment of utter amazement. When he spoke, his voice was thick. “Marriage?”
“Kids, too, I think. We haven’t exactly been behaving like responsible adults in that department, but that’s okay, because I want several. Well, maybe a half dozen.”
“Kids?”
He looked stunned, and she was scared half out of her mind, because there really wasn’t any reason on earth why he should want her. Why he should love her. Jerry hadn’t—
“Stop it,” Ian said fiercely. “Stop thinking about that creep. He was wrong about you. Wrong about everything. I want you. I need you. I love you, damn it! And if you’re crazy enough to love me, then I’m not crazy enough to let you get away!”
“Even if I want kids and marriage?”
“Especially if you want kids and marriage. I never hoped— Oh, God, baby, I never dared even dream it!”
For a long, long time she held him as close as she could and considered how odd it was that they had both lost their dreams and then rediscovered them because of that wicked old woman who was probably even now gracing the halls of hell.
A long time later, Honor asked the question again. “Ian, why did you burn the diary? It was proof you hadn’t done anything wrong. You could have cleared your name.”
He sighed and stared into the deepening twilight for a few minutes before he answered. “All that mattered,” he said finally, “was that I was free. I was free of all of it, but I don’t know how to explain it. It was as if reading it in that diary was a vindication for me. Nobody else mattered.”
“But Annie thinks—”
“I don’t know what Annie really thinks,” he said, interrupting her. “Nor does it matter. She’s the only person who might have been interested in the truth anymore, and I just couldn’t do it to her. She’s had to live with enough. She didn’t need to know that her mother was a murderer, or that her stepfather raped her sister. What possible good could it do anyone now to have all that filth come out?”
“But people still think you did terrible things.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “But I know I didn’t. That’s all that matters. I came back here with some crazy notion of laying old ghosts to rest, and that damned diary did it for me. I don’t know how or why, but it did it. I’m free of my past, Honor. Finally.”
He rolled onto his side and smiled at her, really smiled, and it transformed his entire face. “Now I have a future for the first time in my life. I want to build it with you, with our babies. I want to build it with sunshine and happiness. Away from here. Away from old ghosts and old memories. I want us both to have a fresh start, even if it’s just a couple of miles up the road.
“I want us to build our own house and fill it with ghosts of our own making. Fill it with laughter and joy and all the things life should be blessed with. There’s no room in tomorrow for the bitterness of yesterday.”
He sighed, his smile fading just a little bit. “I set her free, too, Honor. She’s gone. Can you feel it?”
Honor nodded and kissed his chin. “You set us all free. I love you.”
He cupped her chin and smiled down into her misty blue eyes. “So…will you marry me?”
“I thought that was obvious!”
He chuckled. “Honey, I may be a telepath, but I’m also a very ordinary man. I need the words as much as the next guy.”
So she leaned up to his ear and whispered all the words he wanted to hear. And in her ear he whispered all the words she needed to hear.
The only thunder that night was in their hearts and minds, in their souls and bodies.
And it was just the beginning.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8362-0
IMMINENT THUNDER
Copyright © 1993 by Susan Civil
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit Silhouette at www.eHarlequin.com