Slipping out of her linen jacket and unbuttoning her blouse, she turned toward the bedroom. At the bureau, she stopped to step Out of her skirt, and balanced first on one leg, then the other, to peel off her silk stockings. Finally, clad only in a peach satin camisole and panties, she went to unlatch the tall, narrow windows and let in the sweet night air.
Just as she turned the handle and pushed open the first
pane, the bedside lamp clicked on. “Not that I don’t ap preciate the striptease, my love, but I can’t say I care to have half of Paris horning in on it, too.”
The words, laced with amusement, floated from the other end of the room and surely, if there hadn’t been a
-waist-high wrought-iron grille between her and the out side, she’d have pitched forward and fallen five floors to her death ‘on the avenue below.
Clutching the velvet drapery, she fought to control the wild fluttering of her heart. “Well, I’m not quite finished yet,” she said breathlessly. “I’m saving the best part for last and intend it to be a very private viewing.”
She dared to turn then, and nieet his gaze. He lay stretched out on the bed, feet crossed at the ankles, hands linked behind his head. He needed a shave, his clothes were travel-wrinkled, his hair a mess, and he looked so utterly gorgeous that she went weak at the knees.
“Hello, Max,” she said.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
There weren’t sparks flying through the air, but there should have been. The atmosphere was so rarefied her lungs could barely function.
She wished she could think of something memorable to say, something she and Max would look back on in their dotage and laugh about. She wished she could find the courage to run to him; to feel his arms close around her and know that, this time, she’d finally come home to stay, even though she was half a world away from Vancouver.
Instead, she simply stared—at his beautiful, sexy mouth, his serious, summer-blue eyes, his wonderful, un forgettable face. And because she was a dolt who never could keep herself together where he was concerned, she
did what she always did when the feelings grew too in tense to bear. She started to cry.
For once, it was the right thing to do. He leaped off the bed and was at her side in a single bound. “You dope!” he growled. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again. Do you always just walk inio your hotel room and start undressing, without first checking to make sure the place is secure?”
“Don’t yell at me!” she sobbed.
“Why not? It’s what I seem to do best.”
But he wasn’t yelling, not at all. His voice was flowing over her like warm honey laced with deep, dark chocolate. His hands were stroking over her skin and leaving trails of tenderness in their wake. He was murmuring magical healing words; calling .her his darling, his very own be loved. And telling her he’d missed her so badly he’d damn near gone mad.
“I’m such an ass,” he said. “A permanent work-in progress. I don’t know how you’re ever going to train me to behave. But I hope you’ll at least give it a try. Because I need you, my Gabriella, and I’m sorry if it’s too soon for you to hear this, but I just don’t think I can go another day without you.”
“I thought you’d given up on us,” she said, still snif fling like a baby. “I really didn’t think—”
“On me, perhaps, but never on you. I’ve gone through a living hell these last two months but it was worth it if, at the end of it all, we’re together again. It took me a long time to face up to the fact that each time you left me, I drove you to it, and even longer for me to admit how badly I missed you, or how empty my life was without you in it. So I decided that instead of hoping you’d have the good sense to come back to me, I’d do better by corn-
ing to you for a change and throwing myself on your mercy.”
He looked at her searchingly. “Have I left it too late, Gabriella? Is the kind of glamorous life you lead here more appealing than being plain Mrs. Max Logan? Do I have to follow you all over the world in order to stay close to you?”
“There was a time when you’d have run anywhere in the world, just to get away from me,” she reminded him. “Have you forgotten what an unwilling bridegroom you were?”
“No. But I know now that we’d have ended up at the altar sooner or later. It just came sooner than I was ready to accept it, that’s all. But I’m ready now, Gabriella, and not so proud or stubborn that I won’t get down on my knees and beg for another chance, if that’s what it’ll take.”
“If you’d kiss me,” she said, melting against him, “I think I might be persuaded to dispense with the groveling and settle in favor of being plain Mrs. Max Logan.”
He didn’t need a second invitation. His lips closed over hers with such sureness and passion that all the dark, ter rible doubts she’d entertained over the last two months— the last two years—finally sank into oblivion.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take her to bed in that elegant Parisian hotel room. For them to renew their vows to one another in the most ro mantic city in the world. For him to bring her to the edge of insanity and tell her he loved her as they fell together into that deep, thrilling chasm of release.
But the truly remarkable thing was that they could just as well have been in a hut in the Himalayas, or a tent in
the Sahara, because what made it Unique and glorious was the trust they’d forged from all the tears and miseiy—not just in the moment but in tomorrow and all the long, lovely years that stretched ahead.
The Millionaire's Marriage Page 17