by Cindy Gerard
“Shh. Shush, baby,” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m so sorry I was so stupid. I tried. Lord, I tried to convince myself I was hanging around to protect you and then I started fabricating any excuse I could come up with to stay. And that scared the hell out of me.”
“And it doesn’t scare you anymore?”
He pushed out a laugh and set her gently away from him. Bracketing her face in his hands, he wiped away her tears with a sweep of his thumbs. “It scares me to death. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at this commitment thing, Phoebe. But I’m going to give it everything I have. I learned something recently. This beautiful, wiser, older woman taught me that by confronting my fears, my life could be so much richer.”
He brought her hands to his mouth. “Marry me, Phoebe. Tonight.”
She laughed through her tears. “Tonight?”
“Okay. So that’s rushing it. Tomorrow, then. But don’t make me wait any longer. I have so many things I want to show you. So many places I want to take you. We’ll start at the family compound in Harwich-port. I want to honeymoon with you there where I can get my fill of you in a bed, in a bath, in the kitchen. Hell, I want you everywhere. I want to make love to you under the stars at the Cape.”
He stopped, laughed. “Say yes, Phoebe, and it’ll be just you and me and several days of showing you how sorry I am that I hurt you and how much I love you.”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
He drew her into a long, drugging kiss that told her as much about how he loved her as the amazing words he’d just spoken.
“You’re the best adventure I’ve ever had, Phoebe Richards,” he said, scooping her into his arms and carrying her toward the bedroom. “And you’re the only one I’ll ever need.”
She laughed again with pure, unbridled joy. “But what if I want to see Borneo?”
He planted a knee on the bed then eased her to her back and started dragging off his shirt. “Then I’ll take you to Borneo. Better yet, I’ll take you to the Galápagos.” He grinned as he started working on her slacks. “You’ll love it. They have turtles.”
“Not only didn’t I make it to Tahiti,” Daniel confessed later as they lay in each other’s arms, “I didn’t even make it out of Boston. Oh, I was going—at least I thought I was—but I just kept coming up with reasons to stay.”
“What kind of reasons?” she asked as she trailed her fingers back and forth over his chest.
“Well, after I left you at the library, I went back to my place. I’d decided I’d forgotten something. I hadn’t, but hey, I was in total denial and it was another excuse to postpone leaving. Anyway, Ash happened to drop by as I was on my way out for the second time. And he laid into me good.”
“About me?”
“Yeah,” he said, squeezing her arm. “About you.”
Phoebe thought of everything the sheikh had said to her at Karen’s party. She had no doubt that he could be very convincing. He’d certainly convinced Karen that he wanted to stake a claim when he’d kissed her. Bless you, Ash, she said silently. And good luck.
“Anyway, he said I couldn’t leave. Made up some pretense of needing to go over my portfolio. I knew what he was doing. He was giving me time to think through the panic and I was just desperate enough for another reason to stay that I let him convince me.
“And then there was Claudia.”
Phoebe lifted up on her elbow so she could see his face. “Claudia?”
“Yeah, Our Lady of the Eternal Lost Cause.” He tucked a drift of hair behind her ear. “She took over where Ash left off. And as long as I’m confessing, I didn’t just happen by the bar tonight. Claudia was a plant.”
“A plant?”
He pulled her back down beside him. “Don’t be mad, but I sent her to the library to test the waters this afternoon. When your friends were determined to take you out, she went with the flow and invited herself along. You didn’t notice that she left the table several times?”
“Well, yeah, but— Oh. She was calling you, wasn’t she? Giving you a play-by-play. And that’s how you just happened to be there.”
He nodded and tucked her head beneath his chin. “I was so proud of you when you flattened that creep.”
“I was proud of me, too.”
Her bedroom grew quiet again before Daniel finally spoke. “Can you ever forgive me for being such a fool?”
Could she forgive him? How could she make him understand that she already had?
“I think,” she said, as it came to her, “that this story will answer your question.
“Once upon a time,” she began, making up her romantic fairy tale as she went, “there was a handsome, fearless knight. He’d slain many dragons, conquered many evil foes and was known throughout the land for his brave deeds and stalwart courage. There was only one thing the white knight feared. He was afraid to trust his heart to a princess for safekeeping.”
He shifted to his side, caressed her face with his hand, with his eyes. “I think I know this guy. He was a bigger fool than I was.”
“No, no, he was very wise. One day,” she continued, snuggling against him so that her lips brushed his throat when she spoke, “the handsome knight was struck from his horse in the heat of battle. He landed so hard that his heart spilled right out of his chest. And as he lay there, watching it beat, exposed and vulnerable, who do you think was there to pick it up and give it back to him, proving that he could trust her to keep it safe?”
He stroked his hand down the length of her back and made her shiver. “His princess?”
“No. It was a turtle. But the knight didn’t care. He was so happy to have his heart back safe and sound that he kissed the turtle—”
“—who had pretty pink cheeks,” he interrupted with a smile so tender it brought tears again, “and she was really a princess under the spell of an evil witch.”
“Wrong again,” she said patiently and tipped her head up so she could see his face. “He was right not to trust the princess because his true love was the turtle who, as you said, was under a spell. When the prince kissed the turtle, she transformed into a librarian who had given up waiting for her white knight to come and save her from an empty and lonely life.”
His eyes were as misty as hers now. “And did he save her, Phoebe?”
She cupped his face in her hands, loving the feel of his stubbled jaw against her palms, the beauty that made him Daniel. “She let him save her because it was important to his ego.”
She felt his love and his trust wrap around her as surely as the arms that held her.
“I think I know how this ends,” he whispered, moving over her. “And the knight and the beautiful librarian spent the rest of their lives in an enchanted kingdom, with Arthur the cat, where they all lived happily ever after.”
She smiled into his eyes, secure in his love, empowered by his trust and, as always, stunned by the depth of his need. “Very happily ever after.”
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to
Cindy Gerard for her contribution to the
DYNASTIES: THE BARONES series.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8630-0
THE LIBRARIAN’S PASSIONATE KNIGHT
Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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