by Nora Roberts
"Yeah." He ached everywhere. "That about sums it up."
"Let me tell you what I see, Michael. I see someone who has done what he had to do to survive. And I understand that very well, even living in my pathetic, rarefied world."
"I didn't mean—"
"Someone who didn't give up, no matter what got in the way," she interrupted, staring him down. "I see someone who decided to take a new direction in his life and is making it work. He has ambition, decency, and courage. And I see a man who can still grieve over a child he never had a chance to know."
She was making him into something he wasn't, and she was scaring the life out of him. "I'm not what you're looking for."
"You're what I found. I have to live with that, and when you go, I will."
"I'm doing you a favor," he muttered. "You can't even see it. You'd have figured it out for yourself sooner or later. You've already got the seed in your head."
"Which means?"
"You know it isn't going anywhere with us. It can't, and you knew it."
"Did I? Why don't you explain how you've come to that conclusion?"
There were dozens of examples, but only one stuck out. "You're damn careful not to touch me when anyone's around."
"Is that so?" She set down her glass with a snap. "Stay right there." Incensed, she marched to the door and out, leaving him scowling after her.
Why the hell was he getting into all this? he asked himself. Why was he arguing with her? Why couldn't he just touch her one more time, just hold her one more time. Then he'd go.
Laura strode back in, dragging Thomas in her wake. "You're supposed to be resting," her father scolded. "Oh, hello, Michael. I was about to go down and—"
"Talk later," Laura ordered, then marched straight to Michael.
"Hey," was all he managed before she grabbed him by the hair, dragged his head down, and fixed her lips hotly on his. He lifted his hands, dropped them again, then gave up and crushed her against him. Her body was drum-tight, all but vibrating with fury, but her mouth was soft, sweet, and the kiss weakened his knees.
"There." She pulled away, spun toward a baffled and grinning Thomas. "Thanks, Dad. If you wouldn't mind leaving us alone again?''
"No, fine. Michael, I believe you and I will have a little talk later." Thomas closed the door discreetly behind him.
"Satisfied?" Laura demanded.
Not nearly. She'd just churned up all the urges he'd nearly managed to quell. Saying nothing, he yanked her against him again. "What the hell was that supposed to prove? It doesn't change—"
And then he broke, just broke. Shuddering, he buried his face in her hair, fought to find his breath. "I thought you were dead," he managed. "Oh, God, Laura, I thought you were dead."
"Oh, Michael.'' Every drop of temper drained out of her as she stroked his back. "It was horrible for you. I'm sorry, so sorry. We're fine now. You saved me."
Gently, she cupped his face and studied those dark, stormy eyes. "You saved my life," she murmured and touched her lips to his.
"No." He jerked back, shocked at how close she'd come to bringing him to his knees. "We're not going that route, we're not mixing this up again."
She stood where she was, watching all those violent emotions flit over his face. And slowly, her aching heart began to swell, and to heal. Her smile bloomed. "Why, you're afraid of me, aren't you? Afraid of us. I see I have been stupid after all, thinking it was only me. You're in love with me, Michael, and it scares you."
"Don't put words in my mouth," he began, then backed up a full step as she came toward him. "Don't."
"What'll happen if I touch you now?" The sense of power, of right, glowed inside her. "You might shatter. Tough guy, holding it all in. I could break you, just by doing this." And she laid her hand on his cheek.
"You're making a mistake." He clamped a hand on her wrist, and his fingers trembled. "You don't know what you're doing. I can't be what you need."
"Why don't you tell me what you think I need, then?"
"You figure I'll polish up and start playing tennis at the club? Go to the gallery openings and buy a tux? It's never going to happen. I'm not going to start drinking brandy and playing billiards or sit in a steam room with a bunch of overweight rich guys and talk about the latest stock reports."
She began to laugh, and the laughter made her head ache and spin so that she had to sit on the arm of the settee until she caught her breath. "That's telling me."
"You think this is a joke? So will all your fancy friends. There goes Laura Templeton with that mongrel she picked up."
She sobered quickly. "I could slap you. I could actually slap you for that." In fact, she had to grip her hands together to stop herself from doing just that. "That's insulting, to me and to those I consider my friends. You think I care about any of that? Do you really think so little of me?"
"I think everything of you," he said and stopped her tirade before it could begin.
"If that's true, then you should respect what it is I do need. With some alterations it's the same thing I've needed my whole life. I need my family and my work. My home. I need to feel that I put in as much as I take out. I need my children to be happy and safe. And I need someone I love, and who loves me, to share it all, to be there for me. I need someone who'll depend on me and whom I can depend on. I want someone who'll listen and understand, who'll touch me when I need to be touched. Who'll make my heart beat a little faster when he looks at me. The way you look at me, Michael. The way you're looking at me right now."
"You're not going to let me walk," he said quietly.
"Yes, yes, I will." She reached into the box, took out the locket. "If you need to go, to prove something, to escape from something, even if that something is what we feel for each other, I can't stop you."
She laid the locket down again, gently. "But I won't stop loving you, or needing you. I'll just live without you. I'll live without the life we could make, without seeing my children light up when you walk into the room, without the other children we could make together."
She narrowed her eyes when she saw the flicker in his eye. "Did you think I wouldn't want more children? That I haven't already dreamed what it would be like to hold a baby we made together?"
"No, I didn't think you'd want more children, with me." She was breaking him, bit by bit. "Laura…"
She rose, waited, but he only shook his head. "A family, Michael, that's all I've ever really dreamed of. You changed a great deal inside of me, but never that. You gave me all those firsts, and because I was so dazzled by you, so in love with you, I didn't see that I could give you something back. I'll give you a family, Michael."
He wondered if he could speak, how any man could when faced with the gift of everything he would ever need. Every treasure imagined and sought and despaired of.
"I'm wrong for you. I've got to be wrong for you, and it was never supposed to come to this between us. I took you because I could, because I wanted you more than I'd ever wanted anything."
"You're right for me," she corrected. "You have to be right for me. And what was it never supposed to come to between us, Michael?"
"To plans. To futures." His gaze was drawn to the open box again, and all those tiny, precious treasures. "I've barely started to get my business off the ground, hardly made a dent in getting my life into some kind of decent order. I've got nothing for you."
"Don't you? Don't you have dreams, Michael? And aren't some of them the same as mine?" She wanted to reach for him then, but this time he would have to reach first.
She would let him walk, he realized. If he turned and stepped back out the door, they would both go on.
She was waiting for him. She was willing to take him just as he was. And with her, he realized, he might find there was more in him, more for him, than he'd ever allowed himself to dream.
"I'm going to give you one more chance before I say what I have to say. What I wasn't going to say. What I didn't think you'd want to hear."
H
ow many chances did a man get? he wondered. How many lives? How many offers of everything that mattered? He took a step toward her, stopped.
"Once I say it, the door closes. For both of us. Do you understand that?"
Her lips curved. "Do you?"
"I understood it the minute I saw you again." His eyes went dark, dangerous. "Stay or run, Laura."
She lifted her chin. This time she would say it. "Stay."
"Then you'll have to live with it. And me." He took her hand. Not gently, but possessively, his battered fingers clamping onto hers. "I've never loved another woman. That's a first you gave me."
She closed her eyes. "I feel as though I've waited my whole life to hear you say that."
"I haven't said it yet." He lifted his free hand to her face. "Look at me when I do. I love you, Laura," he said when her eyes opened. "Maybe I always did. I know I always will. I'll never lie to you or leave you to handle things alone. I'll be a father to your children. All of them. I'll love them, all of them. And they'll never have to wonder if I do."
"Michael." Overcome, she turned her lips into his palm, kissing his hurts much as Kayla had. "That's everything."
"No, it's not. So here's the rest." He waited until her eyes cleared and met his. "If you want to take a chance on this, I'll give you whatever I have, whatever I can make and whatever I can be."
The words were just there, he realized. Just there, waiting to be said. Absently he reached over, plucked a tulip from the vase on the table beside them. Held it out to her. "Marry me. Be my family."
Rather than take the flower, she closed her hand over his around the stem. "Yes." She touched her lips to his cheek, settled her head with a sigh on his shoulder. "Yes," she said again, feeling his heart thud against hers as she looked into the simple box filled with dreams.
"I've found you," she murmured, turning her mouth up to Michael's. "We've found each other. Finally."