by Неизвестный
She smiled then, a brief and lovely expression of fond-ness that fleetingly lit up the room. "That sounds like Anthony. He’s a wonderful man."
He ached to have her smile at him that way and had to swallow the surge of jealousy that rose in his throat.
"Yeah, well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I behaved like such an ass where he was concerned. You’re not a bone to be fought over and carried off by the bigger, stronger dog and I had no business acting as if you were."
"You’re naturally competitive, Dante. It’s as much a part of you as the color of your hair."
"That’s all very fine but when a man becomes too focused on winning to value the prize, his achievements are worthless. I wanted to possess you, to show the world that I’d got the woman no other man had managed to win. And I ended up with nothing."
She pierced him with a look then, her eyes intolerably huge and solemn. "We made a dreadful mess of things between us, didn’t we?"
"I certainly did, right down to letting a jerk like Newbury get to me." He could hardly speak for the lump in his throat. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought he was close to breaking down and bawling. But it had been so long since he’d cried that he couldn’t remember how anymore.
Pulling himself together, he went on. "By the way, he’s no longer with the company. He got caught harass-ing a young woman in accounting and was given his walking papers. Not only that, his wife kicked him out, as well. Seems she decided she’d rather be on her own than put up with a guy like that—which brings me to what I really came here to say. You don’t have to marry me, Leila. The blackmail’s at an end. I’ve come to set you free. There’ll be no more ultimatums, no more high-handed demands."
"Then what do you want, Dante?"
"To help you, not because I expect anything in return but because I love you. If I cannot be your husband, at least let me be your friend. The babies I will love be-cause we created them together, because they will be all that is wonderful about you and, hopefully, the best that is in me. So let me give, for a change."
When she didn’t answer, he spread his hands help-lessly and struggled to find the right words. "I know it’s not enough to say ‘I love you,’ that showing it is what counts. I know, too, that I screwed up royally but, if it’s not too late, I’d like to try to make it up to you now."
"It wasn’t all your fault," she choked, starting to cry herself. In the fading light, her eyes gleamed like beau-tiful deep-water pools ready to overflow. "I did my share of damage."
He’d promised himself he’d keep his distance at least until he’d said everything he came to say. But for the first time in weeks she was close enough to touch, and the sight of her distress was more than he could bear.
"Oh, hell, Leila," he said hoarsely, reaching for her,
"the last thing I want is to cause you any more pain." She came into his arms and rested against him, her head tucked against his shoulder and her belly nestled between his hips. How was it possible, he agonized, that while their bodies had always found such a perfect fit, their minds had been out of kilter almost from the first?
"Don’t cry," he begged, combing his fingers through her hair.
"I can’t help it," she wept, her body shaking with sobs. "If I’d had more faith in you, I could have pre-vented so much heartache for both of us. But I wanted to teach you a lesson and we’ve both ended up paying for it. I humiliated you in front of everyone you care about, your family, your colleagues, your friends, and—"
"And I needed to be taught that lesson, sweetheart. I’ve been carrying a chip on my shoulder that’s ruled my life for too long. Call it reverse snobbery or whatever you like, but for what it’s worth, Leila, pride and success are cold bedfellows when they’re all a man has left. There’s nothing so glaringly clear as hindsight, and if I had it all to do over again, I’d go about it differently. Whatever else my failings, though, I do know when to quit and all I can say now is I’m sorry for having made you pay for my..."
He struggled briefly with himself, hating the word that came to mind but knowing of no other that would do.
"...My insecurities. And to try in some small way to make up for what I’ve done." Ùnwillingly, he let go of her and fished out the box he’d stashed inside his bag. Tipping out the contents on the table, he continued, "No one holds greater stock in family than I do, and these heirlooms `didn’t belong in a pawn shop."
"But they weren’t" she said softly, staring down at the lovely, familiar pieces glimmering in the twilight.
"They were in the hands of an estate jeweler."
"Same thing, different name. What matters is that now they’re back where they belong."
"How did you know what I’d done?" she whispered, tears tracking silver down her cheeks again.
‘‘I went to your mother to pay off her creditors. When she said you’d already taken care of them, I bullied her into telling me how."
"I can’t let you do this, Dante. My father’s debts aren’t your responsibility.”
‘‘They’re not yours, either.’’ Aiming to lessen the ten-sion, he tried for a laugh which fell sadly short of the mark. "If the thought of accepting charity from me sits ill with you, think of it as taking care of our children’s inheritance."
She dipped her head in a gesture of acceptance.
"Thank you."
Over the din of the party next door, he heard the roar of the Beaver plane returning. "You’re welcome. And now that I’ve taken care of what I came to say and do, I’ll leave you to your summer hideaway?
"But you can’t leave now!" she exclaimed. "There’s no way off the island until tomorrow."
"The pilot who brought me in had to make a delivery on Cortes. I arranged for him to pick me up on his way back to Vancouver?
He slung the empty bag over his shoulder and looked at her long and hard, committing to memory the sight of her every feature. "Take care of yourself, Leila, and of our babies. I won’t bother you again but know that I’m only a phone call away if you need me. I’ve ar-ranged for money to be deposited to your account, so you don’t need to worry on that score."
"You don’t have to do that," she protested.
"Yes, I do," he said. "I might have lost you, but I’ve still got to live with myself. And although we might not be a couple any longer, they are my babies you’re car-rying." He wanted to kiss her before he left. Wanted it so badly that the pain almost crippled him. But he dared not. There’d never be a time when he could kiss Leila goodbye with any sort of equanimity.
So he lifted his hand in a salute and got the hell out of the house before she saw that his vision was blurred and he was choking on tears.
Blindly, he stumbled down the path and climbed the ramp. The Beaver was just nosing up to the end of the dock. Vancouver lay only an hour’s flight away, but if it were half a world away, the pain of— leaving her couldn’t have been worse.
He felt empty inside. Used up. He had nothing of value to give anyone because he had no heart. He’d left it behind with her.
This time, he was the one walking away. Not in anger but in defeat. Her wounded lion no longer stalking proudly but limping with pain.
Horrified, she watched as his silhouette grew smaller against the crimson horizon, unable to believe that the fire and fury of their love had been reduced to this feeble submissive flicker.
She could not let it happen. He’d come to her and laid his heart at her feet and not asked for a thing in return. He had made it possible for them to forge a new kind of commitment to each other for their children’s sakes. But romantic love, the kind that dreams were made of, was fragile as spun glass. lf she let him go now, they would never repair the damage.
The realization spurred her to action.
"Wait!" she cried, her feet at last obeying the com-mands of her heart and propelling her out of the house and down the steps to the path. "Dante, come back!" But her words were swallowed up by the music from next door and the idle of the Boat plane eng
ine. He could not hear her. By the time she’d reached the top of the ramp, he was balanced on a pontoon and reaching up one hand to hoist himself into the Beaver’s cabin. Tears streaming down her face, she broke into a run. Beneath her sandaled feet the dock was slippery smooth. Be careful, her brain warned. A fall could be dangerous. Hurry, her heart urged. Don’t let him leave. But she was already too late. The gap between plane and dock was widening, the span of wings turning in a slow circle as the pilot guided his craft into the bay. Swiping at the tears, she watched helplessly as the water foamed in the wake of the departing float plane. When it was no more than a speck in the sky, she slumped against the foot of the railing and buried her face in her hands.
To have come so close to paradise only to lose it was more than she could bear. The memories were just too painful, bringing alive again the feel of his hand at the nape of her neck, echoing his husky, low-pitched voice murmuring "Leila?" in perfect imitation of the real thing.
The sobs welled up, threatening to rip her apart. She wanted to sink into nothingness, bury herself in endless night.
But something — someone — called her back —
"Leila...sweetheart." The hands that raised her to her feet were real, the shoulder against which she buried her face broad and welcoming, and the heart thumping un-evenly beneath the solid wall of muscle, as tortured as her own.
"Leila, sweetheart," he said again. Dazed, she dared to look up. "How are you here, Dante?" she whispered, her voice still drowning in tears.
"You flew away."
Oh, the idiocy of the words! And how little they mat-tered when, after all, the only ones worth saying were, I love you. Please don't ever leave me again. But he spoke first. "I couldn’t leave you," he said, his mouth whispering over hers. "I promised myself I wouldn’t pressure you to let me stay, but at the last min-ute, I just couldn’t go."
"But I saw you," she said on a hiccupping sob. "You climbed in the plane and left me."
He loomed over her in the dusk, his strength tempered by a humility she’d never seen in him before. "I’m noth-ing without you, my Leila, so I came back."
"Thank God you did," she said softly, touching her fingertips to his jaw, ‘ ‘because I think I might have died if you had not."
As if she weighed no more than a child, he scooped her up in his arms and strode back along the dock toward the house. Before she’d left for the Drummonds’, she’d lighted citronella candles on the deck to ward off the mosquitoes. By their glow he navigated the steps and, settling himself on the sun chaise, held her firmly on his lap.
For the longest time he stayed with her there, holding her, kissing her hair, saying little things like, "l love you, I missed you, I’m a fool and I don’t deserve you." Twilight slipped unnoticed into the night. The party next door moved inside and let the frogs and crickets serenade the dark. At length the air grew cool and a chill crept over her that not even Dante’s arms could dispel.
"I think we’d be more comfortable inside," she said.
"I’m afraid to move in case I wake up to find I’ve been dreaming and you’re nothing but a fantasy."
"l’m real,"’ she said, taking his hand and holding it a little to the left of her navel. "We’re real. These are your babies romping around in here, Dante."
"Well, I’ll be damned!" By the light of the citronella candles he gazed at her, his eyes full of awe. "I can actually feel the little devils playing football." She stroked his cheek. "It’s been a long time since their father kissed their mother."
He inched his mouth toward her in agonizing slow motion. "Like this, you mean?" he murmured, mes-merizing her with the smoky intent in his voice, and touched his lips to hers, blocking out the halo of can-dlelight surrounding his head and stealing her breath away, even though the kiss was over before she’d begun to tire of it.
"Not quite," she managed, as the spark she’d feared could never be rekindled roared alive again.
His hand came up to capture her chin. "Then how about this?"
Every part of her grew still. Her heart, her breathing, the pulsing ache of desire he so easily aroused in her, all hung in the balance as he brought his mouth to hers a second time. And then, at the moment of actual con-tact, something inside her exploded, sending the blood sizzling through her veins and the telltale moisture flood-ing between her thighs. She clutched at the front of his shirt, helpless to stem the moans rising low in her throat. Her lips opened to the demands he made on them, her tongue welcomed his with eager, pulsing little thrusts, and she was lost. If he had flung her down on the bare wooden boards of the deck and taken her, violently and without a shred of feeling, she would have welcomed him. Because any-thing was better than the gnawing, empty yearning of the last two months.
But he didn’t. He seduced her with tenderness, kissing her, stroking her, and whispering over and over that he’d love her until he died and on through eternity.
Finally, when she was molten with desire and begging with incoherent little cries for him to make love to her, he swung to his feet and carried her through to the bed-room. "I want to make this last all night," he said, strip-ping away her clothes a layer at a time and branding with his mouth each inch of bare skin as he exposed it,
"and savor every second."
But the fever that had her running her hands over every lovely contour of his body was contagious.
Cursing with impatience, he flung off his own clothing and, catching her to him, buried himself inside her with one swift, sleek thrust.
"Tell me that I’ll never lose you again," he begged, rocking against her.
"Never," she gasped, struggling to withstand the tide racing toward her and failing. The weight of him, the vigor, the driving, powerful strength, swept her into the undertow, filling all the lonely, empty comers of her heart and reviving her soul even as her body convulsed in helpless spasms beneath his.
It was the most purely lovely experience of her life.
"You know," he said afterward, lacing her fingers with his and pressing a kiss to her hand, "I’ll be thirty-eight years old in September and I’ve spent most of them trying to compensate for the fact that I was born poor. You’d think I’d have learned differently a long time ago, but only since I met you have I realized that being rich has nothing to do with money. For that reason alone, I honor you, Leila, my love."
She turned on her side and snuggled close to him.
"Do you‘?" she said, feeling him stir against her again.
"Enough to make an honest woman out of me?"
"Oh, yes," he said raggedly, drawing her on top of him. "Just name the day and I’ll be there." Locked together in a harmony of perfect trust and pas-sion, they at last got it right, making love with long, slow pleasure in each other, on a dot of an island in blue Canadian waters. And rediscovering with sleepy sensu-ality all those things which first had drawn them together on a speck of an island in the Caribbean.
The difference lay not in the miles separating one par-adise from another, but in the certainty that comes of a woman belonging to the only man on earth who makes her feel whole.
She and Dante had more than a wedding day to look forward to. They had the rest of their lives. They had forever.