And there it was. The crux of her pain, the center of everything. As much as she loved him, he just couldn’t be the man she needed, and she’d rather have no one than suffer a life with a man who had a yawning cavern where his heart should be.
“I won’t. I want to make a commitment to them, to you all, that I’ll always be there for you. Being with you, well...” he shook his head “...it opened my eyes, made me see things I didn’t want to see. Reminded me of things I always wanted but convinced myself I could do without—things I didn’t deserve to have. For the first time since I was a kid and you and your sister lived next door, I started to feel like I belonged somewhere, to someone.”
“None of that guarantees me anything,” she retorted. “I don’t want to live with the fear that one day I’ll wake up again and reach for you and you’ll be gone. And what if, next time, you don’t come back? How on earth am I supposed to deal with that? More important, how are the children?”
“It won’t happen,” he insisted.
“But how do I know that?”
“Because I’m stepping back from operations, for good. The company is undergoing some restructuring and the operations division is going to be under the control of a team I trust implicitly. A team on which I am only to be an adviser rather than an on-site operator. I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I wouldn’t send my people into the field unless I was prepared to go there myself—it’s who I’ve always been. But I learned that I’ve changed. I have a responsibility to the ones I love, to be there for them. I don’t want to put myself in a position where I might die and leave you behind, Kayla.”
Kayla looked at him in disbelief. “You really expect me to believe that?”
“I wish you would. The same as I wish you would give me a last chance to show you I can be the man you need, the father the children need. I’ve learned a lot these past few weeks, not least of which is that emotion is not always a weakness. It can be a strength, too. I’ve always been too afraid to feel, because when I did, it only hurt or led to being a weapon that allowed others to hurt me. It was easier to simply stop caring.”
Her eyes filled with tears and they began to spill down her cheeks unhindered. “Van, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry for me, Kayla. Just tell me that you love me. Just tell me...” His voice broke and he dragged in a breath before continuing. “Just tell me, please, that you’ll let me love you, too.”
“I want to, Van, I really do, but I don’t know if I can trust you. And it’s not just me I’m talking about, but Sienna and this little guy here, too.” She rubbed her small round belly protectively. “I can’t let you into our lives again if you’re only going to walk out when the going gets tough.”
“I don’t want to be that man anymore. I want to feel. I want to experience love and enjoy my life and I know I won’t be able to do that without you by my side. I don’t know why I never saw it before, why I kept pushing it away. I want to go to sleep at night and know that the first ray of sunshine in my life each morning will be seeing you there by my side. I know I’ve treated you badly but I can’t let you go. I never understood why, Kayla, but it’s because I love you—even when I didn’t want to, I loved you. I just didn’t know how to deal with it.”
She wiped her face dry. He was saying all the right things but did he believe them himself? Could she? “What makes you think you can deal with it now?”
“That’s a good question. I think I’ve finally realized what’s important in life. I’ve spent all my years trying to find myself worthy in one way or another. When I didn’t find that at home, with my adoptive parents, I looked for it in the army. And I was a damn good soldier. I fit there. I could hone my instincts and my skills and be great at something and be proud that what I was doing was serving the greater good. But I still never found that elusive sense of home that I was searching for. When I quit the army, I knew I had the skills to make a lot of money, so I did. I carved a new niche for myself, created a place where I thought I’d made a home. But it wasn’t a home until you lived there, too. Having you and Sienna under my roof reminded me of what it felt like being at your parents’ house. Feeling the love your family shared for one another. Even when your parents were angry at you, you could still feel that they loved you. It was something that was constant and I wanted that constancy but I didn’t feel like I’d ever earned it. And when you offered it, I didn’t know how to handle it.”
Kayla stared at him. She’d never seen him look this shattered or broken inside. Not even when Sienna died, or on that awful morning years ago when she and her sister had found him curled up asleep on their front porch with bruises from head to foot courtesy of his dad.
“Van, you don’t earn love. It’s not a reward for good behavior. It’s something freely given,” she said softly.
“I’m learning that now,” he said with an ironic quirk of his lips. “Your family was the only thing that kept me from running away as a kid. Did you know that?”
Kayla nodded. Her sister had told her one night after they’d heard yelling from Van’s house that she wished Van would just run away because then he might get put into foster care and surely that would be better than what he endured in his own home. But he stayed, until he was eighteen.
“What made you join the army?” she asked. “You could have gone away to college, gone anywhere. But you enlisted.”
“I had a lot of anger in me. I needed to channel it somewhere with a purpose or I knew I’d go off the rails. I’d started drinking already, using a fake ID or stealing my dad’s beers from the fridge. It was a problem before I even knew it. And that’s something else you need to know, Kayla. I’m an alcoholic. There, I’ve said it. That’s the first time I’ve admitted it to myself—did you know that? I’m an alcoholic and I come from a long line of alcoholics. The reason I was put up for adoption was because my birth parents had fallen so deep into substance abuse that they could no longer care for me. And the scary thing is, their DNA is in me, and in our children.”
He dropped his head and stared at the floor, Kayla battled the desire to go to him and comfort him. She was beginning to understand a whole lot more about Van Murphy and the way he’d behaved. Both his self-destructive behaviors and the ones that were the exact opposite, when he found it necessary to control and protect everything around him.
“DNA is one thing, but you still make your own choices, Van.”
He coughed a humorless laugh. “Yeah, I read somewhere that DNA loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. Well, I kept pushing myself into environments that made me very dangerous. It got to the point where I chased death. You know, when I agreed to be a donor for your sister, I never believed I’d live long enough to see her bear her children. It was only after she died that I realized that I didn’t want to stay on that fast road to a short future.” He sat up and looked Kayla straight in the eye. “The first time we made love was the first time I felt truly alive, but it terrified me so much more than anything I’d ever done before. That’s why I left you. I didn’t know how to deal with how you made me feel or how much I wanted to stay with you. I felt like I had to punish myself for wanting to be with you. Like I’d failed you somehow, or disrespected you. I had to punish myself for that, so I had to leave. In the end, I decided to blame the whole episode on the drink, y’know? And I stopped drinking from that night on to make sure I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“Not long after that, I discovered the truth about my birth parents and everything slotted into place about who and what I was. I was glad I’d left you then. I wasn’t worthy of love or family. I was glad that my parents’ problem ended with me. That was my choice, my decision. And with your sister gone, God rest her beautiful soul, I wouldn’t have kids, ever.”
The last pieces fell into place and painful understanding dawned. “Until I turned up in your office with one and wanting to hav
e more of them. I’m so sorry, Van. I had no idea.”
“I’ve tried to be strong. I’ve worked hard to make the right choices. But deep down, I’m still a weak man. I have no idea how to be a good father, Kayla. With my background of violence and alcohol and the very fact it’s ingrained into me, how could I be?”
Her heart fractured on his words. Despite what she’d kept telling herself, she could see he had a heart. One that was broken and bruised and buried deep beneath so many years of abuse that it was a fragile thing. One that needed constancy and tenderness to thrive. She could do that—she could help his love thrive and grow. And together they could give their children the love, devotion and stability they needed to teach them what was right and wrong and guide them through their lives. They would give their all to them and hope that it would be enough.
“All it takes is love, Van. Just love. Together we can do this, I promise.”
“Together?”
The look in his eyes, the yearning and hope she saw there, shrank all her fears into a tiny knot in the recesses of her heart. Maybe someday the knot would go away, and maybe it wouldn’t, but she knew if it didn’t, she’d learn to manage it because Van deserved for her to try. When had he ever known unconditional love? When had he ever been told he deserved it just as much as anyone else? Someone had to show him and that started with her.
“Yes, together,” she said firmly. She got up from her chair and dropped to her knees in front of him. “I love you, Van Murphy. You don’t need to be alone anymore, ever, but promise me you won’t push me away when you most need me. Promise me you’ll let me love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
“I do promise. I know I’m not worthy of you,” he said. “But I want you so much I don’t feel like a whole person unless you’re with me. Does that make me weak, Kayla?”
His honesty drove right through her. “No,” she assured him. “Admitting it is what makes you strong. Fear is what makes us brave in the long run. Doing what’s right, even when we’re scared. That’s what makes the difference. And, Van, loving you is what’s right for me. We’ll make it through this.”
Van reached for her and pulled her to him. “You know, I believe you. I love you so much, Kayla. Please, don’t ever leave me again.”
She smiled up at him. “Only if you promise the same.”
“I do,” he said fervently. “I really do. Will you come home with me tomorrow? You and Sienna? Will you be my family?”
“We already are,” she answered.
Kayla lifted her face to his and as his lips claimed hers in a seal of their declaration to one another, she knew they’d weather the storms that would undoubtedly come their way.
Together.
Always.
* * * * *
If you liked this story of a billionaire tamed by the love of the right woman—and her baby—pick up these other novels from USA TODAY bestselling author Yvonne Lindsay
A FATHER’S SECRET
THE CHILD THEY DIDN’T EXPECT
WANTING WHAT SHE CAN’T HAVE
FOR THE SAKE OF THE SECRET CHILD
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And don’t miss the next BILLIONAIRES AND BABIES story, THE BABY PROPOSAL by Andrea Laurence
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His Secretary’s Little Secret
by Catherine Mann
One
Portia Soto’s mama always said doctors didn’t grow on trees. That an exotic name couldn’t make up for her plain looks. And to count her blessings if she got a proposal from a podiatrist twice her age.
Clearly, Portia’s mama hadn’t counted on her daughter ever sitting beneath a towering palm watching Dr. Easton Lourdes hang upside down by his knees as he tried to save an ivory-billed woodpecker. An endangered species and thus warranting the wildlife preserve veterinarian’s full attention. Which was convenient, since that meant he wouldn’t notice he’d totally captured Portia’s.
Between the branches of the ancient black mangrove, small stars winked into her vision, the lingering violet of sunset fading into black. The moments just after sunset in the wildlife preserve were Portia’s favorite. Night birds trilled overlapping tunes through the dense, steamy woods. Everything seemed somehow prettier, more lush and flamboyant in the absence of sunlight—the preserve transformed into a decadent Eden. At night, the place was a mysterious beauty, far more enticing than Portia had ever considered herself to be.
Except she didn’t feel much like herself when she was around Dr. Lourdes.
To be frank, Easton was hot. Really hot. Sexy in a shaggy-haired, unconventional way. An extremely wealthy heir to a family fortune, and a genius veterinarian with a specialty in exotic animals.
He also happened to be the unsuspecting father of Portia’s unborn baby, thanks to one impulsive night during a tropical storm nearly two months ago.
In the time that had passed since their unplanned hookup, she’d done her best to put their relationship back on a professional level, to safeguard her hard-won space and independence. A task that had been increasingly difficult to stick to, what with him casting steamy, pensive looks her way when he thought she wasn’t aware.
But wow, was she ever aware of him. Always.
So apparently, for Portia, doctors did grow on trees. But that didn’t stop the chaos overtaking her life in spite of her best efforts to carefully organize and control her world. She wanted to figure out her plan for the future before she told her onetime lover about their baby. But she was running out of time.
They’d had an impulsive encounter during the stress and fear of being in close quarters during a tropical storm. Such an atypical thing for her to do—have a one-night stand, much less a one-night stand with her boss. She’d always followed the rules, and she’d denied her attraction to Easton until the tension of that tumultuous frightful storm had led her to give in.
She’d enjoyed every moment of that night, but the next morning she’d freaked out. She’d worrie
d about putting her much-needed job and on-site housing in jeopardy—and about how intensely being with Easton had moved her. She didn’t have time for messy emotions, much less a relationship. She’d been living day to day, working to keep her head above water financially, especially since her brother had started college four years ago.
Now she had no choice but to think about the future for her child. Her need to establish her independence had to be placed on the fast track for her child’s sake. She refused to let her baby have the unsure life she herself had lived through because of her parents’ lack of any care or planning for their children’s welfare.
The thought of the future nudged Portia into movement. A small movement, of course. It wasn’t as if she could just run out of here and leave her boss without the spotlight she was holding. Her hand fell to her still smooth stomach covered by a loose T-shirt layered over trim cargo shorts—her fieldwork basics. Neatly pressed, of course.
A leaf plummeted to the ground with surprising speed. Ten more fell down from the limb above her head, reminding Portia to pay attention to the man above her.
“Can you adjust the spotlight to the left?”
“Sure, how far?”
“To the left.”
Ah, nice and vague. Her favorite sort of directions. “Four inches? Twelve inches?”
“Move and I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“That works—” Portia checked her response. She’d been second-guessing herself more than ever since that night. Things that hadn’t bothered her before now suddenly worried her.
“Stop.”
Four inches. She’d moved four flipping inches. How much easier would it have been for him to say that?
She sighed. She was irritable, nauseated and her swollen breasts hurt like crazy. She needed a new bra ASAP. Under cover of the dark, she repositioned one poking end away from her tender flesh. “Can you see now?”
One Heir...or Two? Page 17