by Maisey Yates
When she walked in, Leon was sitting behind the desk. She just stood there, staring at him for a long moment. As if somehow looking at him now could get her through the rest of her life.
The sad thing was, she would see him again. She would see him hundreds of times. Thousands of times. But she wouldn’t touch him. She wouldn’t have him. Isabella bonded them together. Prevented her from walking away completely.
She looked away from him. “All right. I hope that we can see to all this as civilly as possible.”
“Why would you have concerns about my civility?”
“Maybe it’s mine that I’m worried about,” she said.
“You have always been perfectly civil.”
She looked back at him. “Yes. And I’m through with that. I’m tired of blending into the wood paneling of this old estate. I’m tired of trying to be accommodating to you. Just as I was accommodating to my father. I’m tired of waiting around for things to happen simply because I’m so quiet. Because I’m so good.”
“You aren’t quiet or good at all,” he said, his voice frayed. “If you were you would still be here with me.”
“Yes. Warming your bed as you saw fit and getting out of your way when you decided you wanted to warm someone else’s.”
“When did I ever say I wouldn’t be faithful to you? You were the one who decided you couldn’t believe me.” He cleared his throat. “But that is not what we’re here to discuss.”
“We’re here to discuss custody,” she said, swallowing hard.
“No,” he said. “I lied. I asked you to come here because I wanted to give you something.”
She blinked rapidly. “What?”
“Only everything.” He pushed a stack of papers over the desk toward her, then stood. “The house. The company. Everything. It’s yours. There are no conditions. You love this house. And the company should always have been yours.”
“But you can’t… Our marriage means it’s yours. I left you, which means I’m the one who forfeits it.”
He shook his head. “Your father told me to take care of you. And I failed at every opportunity. At every turn. I told myself I was protecting you by staying away from you, when I was, in fact, protecting myself. Ensuring I could have everything I wanted at no cost to me.”
“But…”
“This is your home. Your history. Your legacy. I never want you to feel as though you have to be with me to have it. I never want you to feel as though I kept on taking from you. Not after what I took already. Though… Rose, I swear I will be faithful to you. If you would have me.”
“No,” she said, taking a step back. “I can’t. I can’t put myself through it.”
“I am giving you everything! And my word. Why do you not believe me?”
“It wasn’t about believing you. It was about believing in myself. What would you say if Isabella wanted to marry a man who didn’t love her?”
He looked as though he had been punched in the face. “I would tell her to stay far away from any man who didn’t see her as the treasure that she is.”
“And you would ask me to take less?”
“Yes. I would have. Not because I think you deserve less, Rose. But because I wanted you. I wanted you and I didn’t want to have to give everything to have you. From the very beginning.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you that when we danced together the night of your prom I wanted you. But what I didn’t tell you was how much deeper it went. Because I didn’t want to acknowledge it to myself. I didn’t want to admit it.”
“What are you saying exactly?”
“I’m a coward. I told you I didn’t know how to love. I wished that I didn’t. For so many years I wished that I didn’t.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I did. I could see it in your eyes, every time I looked at you. And… Dear God, Rose, you have no idea how much I wanted to reach out and claim that. To claim you.”
He hadn’t moved. He was still standing behind his desk, the large expanse of furniture between them. And she was still standing there, frozen, unable to take the chance. Unable to make the move. For fear of rejection.
Just rejection. She had been running scared for so long for fear of something that wasn’t even fatal.
She looked at Leon, and she understood. For the very first time, she understood. It wasn’t rejection he feared. It was loss. Loss he had experienced on such a keen, deep level. He had lived his entire life in avoidance of feeling that kind of pain ever again.
“And then I thought… Rose, I thought that if I married you, perhaps I could put my feelings for you in a separate compartment. Perhaps I could have you without truly having you. Without being changed by you. That was why I didn’t come to you on our wedding night. Because I figured out very quickly that could not be. When I kissed you, the world turned upside down. It inverted beneath my feet, and I knew that if I were to ever put my hands on you, if I were ever to join my body to yours I would never be the same. And I had been… I had been changed by love already. I have been broken by it.”
“I know,” she said, her tone hushed.
“No. I don’t think you do. I don’t think you really understand what I’m trying to say. Because I didn’t truly understand it. I had to be reduced to nothing so that I could understand exactly what I was. So I could understand what I was running from. When everything was removed, there was nothing but the truth. There was nothing but you. And I… I loved you easily. When there was no past… It was so simple to love you.”
Her throat tightened, her chest feeling like a heavy weight was settled over the top of it. “Please don’t. Please don’t torment me with this. With the fact that you loved me when you didn’t remember—”
“I’m not trying to torment you. I want you to know the truth. All these years… All this time… It was the broken things that kept me from you. It was the damage in my soul. But there was one part of me that recognized you from that first moment. That recognized you were my truth. That you were life. But I ran from it. Because I was afraid of what it would do to me to want again. To hope again. To love again. And when I woke up in that hospital bed I didn’t have fear. I had you. And I was free to have you.”
“But now you remember again. So all of it was for nothing.”
He slammed his hand down on the top of his desk, knocking over an hourglass, the glass clattering against the wood. “No. It was for everything. Because before, I had kept myself protected. Before, I had prevented myself from touching you out of a sense of self-preservation. So while I had the fantasy of what it might be like to have you, I didn’t have the knowledge. But I have it now. When all of the fear was removed I claimed you. And I can’t forget that.” He put his fingertips on the side of the hourglass, turning it back onto its end. “I think I forgot myself sixteen years ago, not two months ago. I lost myself in grief.” He looked up at her. “I do not want to forget again. I do not want my destruction to be the legacy of my son who I love so very much. I do not want the man I have been to be my legacy.”
She struggled to take a breath, struggled not to hope. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“I will always be afraid. I will always be afraid of losing you. I will always be afraid of the dangers that lurk around every corner when it comes to Isabella. Because that’s what it is to love. But it’s only a small part. Loss is only great when love is great, and I had allowed myself to forget how truly great love was. I would not even allow myself to remember Michael with any sense of joy. It is difficult. It is difficult to remember something you lost. But he was beautiful. And I should remember him that way. I should remember my time with him that way.”
“Leon… There is no right way to deal with such a thing.”
“There are wrong ways. Marrying a woman, wishing to possess her without actually
caring for her, betraying her… Betraying your marriage vows, that’s the wrong way. I have been such a coward,” he repeated. “And you… You were brave. You stood out there in the rain and you demanded more for both of us. I was the one who could not give that to you. But I asked you to come here today not to discuss custody, and not even to sign over the house and Tanner Investments.”
“Really?” The word was soft, strangled.
“I asked you to come here today because I needed to ask the impossible of you one more time.”
Hope, joy and pain washed over her in equal measure. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“I am a man with nothing. Being with me will give you nothing. The house is yours. The company is yours. I have nothing to offer you but myself, and it is a sorry offering indeed. This place is yours. You could have me thrown out for trespassing, erase my name from the door at Tanner Investments as though I were never there. The power is yours. But I need to ask this. Please forgive me. Please give me a second chance.”
She swallowed hard, using every ounce of her strength not to launch herself over the desk and throw herself into his arms. “Why? Why should I give you a second chance now?” She was trembling. Inside and out. “The house, the company. None of that means a damn thing, you foolish man. I was ready to leave it all. I don’t want it. The only thing that matters is your heart. Are you prepared to give the impossible back to me?”
He rounded the desk, moving to stand in front of her, taking her hand in his, his dark eyes blazing into hers. “No,” he said, “no, I’m not.”
Her heart sank down into her stomach. “Oh.”
“Because loving you was never impossible. And you should never have felt as though it was.”
A rush of breath escaped her lips. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to be a little bit more explicit.”
“I love you, Rose. When everything inside of me was a lie, you were the truth. When I knew nothing, I knew you. When I lost touch with everything, with the man I was, the man I wanted to be, you brought me back home. I loved you, but I was afraid to embrace you. And I love you now, without fear. Without reservation.”
She was trembling. Shaking from her core. She could scarcely breathe, scarcely speak. But one thing was certain. No matter the pain they had endured together, no matter who owned the house, no matter how she’d been hurt by his rejection…
Her love for him remained.
“Tell me more,” she said.
“I love you,” he ground out. “And I am terrified to my soul over it. It is why I ran from you, so far and so fast. It’s why I’m giving you all of these things…my possessions, because I feel too unequal, too empty to offer only myself. I am a sinner, Rose. Some would say beyond redemption. Perhaps they are correct. Perhaps I have no right to ask for love, not after what I’ve done. But I am. Because I have to. As certainly as I have to breathe to live, I have to love you. And beg for your love in return.”
A tear slid down her cheek, the clouds parting in her soul and allowing a shaft of light to shine through.
Hope.
It was brighter than fear. Brighter than anger. Stronger than pain. It flooded her, warmed her. And she knew that this was the moment. When she stayed safe, but wounded, hiding in the dark.
Or when she stepped into the light and embraced forgiveness. Redemption. Love.
There was no question. Because all she had ever wanted was there, in the light. And all she had to do was reach out and take him.
“Oh, Leon, I love you, too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him on the cheek, the jaw, the corner of his mouth. “I really do.”
“Why do you love me?” he asked, the words raw and tortured.
She traced his features with her fingertips, memorized his face. “That is the hardest and easiest question. Sometimes I think my love for you simply walked in right along with you, that very first day you came to Tanner house. That in that moment it lodged itself in me, and I have never been free of it since. But it’s more than that. Deeper. You always saw me. Who I could be. Not just the small, mousy creature I felt like. And you challenged me. In a lot of ways I wish you hadn’t. And in the years since, in this moment, it has become a choice. One I have made knowing you, all of you. Your perfections and your broken edges. It is more precious because of that. More real. More costly and more special than you’ll ever know.”
“I know you have no reason to trust me.”
“That isn’t true. Because for all your sins you didn’t lie to me.”
“Except for the marriage vows.”
“Yes. That was wrong of you. Though given the circumstances…you were not given much choice but to marry me out of your loyalty to my father.” She cleared her throat. “I never went and asked you for what I wanted. You know, before your accident, I was going to ask you for a divorce.”
He took a step back. “You were?”
“Yes. I thought I was being brave. I thought I was moving on with my life by separating from you. But the simple fact is I was just running. I either hid, or I ran. But I certainly never asked you for what I wanted.”
“Ask me,” he said, his voice raw as he gathered her back into his arms. “Ask me now.”
“Be my husband. In every sense of the word. Love me. Love our children, and in that I include Isabella. Be faithful to me.”
“I swear it,” he said. “With all of the memories of my grief, all of the memories of my sins, with the man I have been and the man I hope to be, I swear it. I will be your husband, I will forsake all others and I will do it happily. I will choose love over fear, every day. And some days I know it will have to be a choice, a very purposeful choice, but I swear to you that I will come to you when it threatens to overwhelm me.”
“So will I. I’m not going to stay silent when I want something from you. I’m going to tell you.”
“Good.”
“I might make your life a living hell.”
He cupped her cheek, skimming his thumb over her cheekbone. “The only living hell I can imagine is a life without you. I know what love costs, Rose. I know it better than most. And I choose it anyway. I choose you.” He leaned in, kissing her lips lightly. “When I say that I love you it is with the knowledge of what that might cost. When I say that I love you, you can trust that it’s real.”
“I do,” she said, her lips brushing against his as she spoke.
Rose remembered clearly being told that Leon’s survival was a miracle after the accident. And it was. But here in her home—their home—safe in his embrace, she understood that survival wasn’t the true miracle.
It was living.
EPILOGUE
LEON REMARRIED ROSE the following year. It was entirely different to that first wedding three years earlier. When a pale, young bride had walked toward him, unsure of what exactly she was getting herself into.
Giving herself to a man she knew didn’t love her.
Things had changed. He had changed.
Today, when Rose walked down the aisle toward him, it wasn’t in a heavy veil that concealed her face from him. Today, she had her hair loose, with a crown of pink flowers adding a pop of brightness to her pale blonde beauty.
Her dress was simple. Long and flowing, swirling around her feet. She looked like an angel. And if anyone would have asked, he would have said that Rose Tanner was, without a doubt, his angel.
She had saved him. From his grief. From loneliness. And most especially from himself.
This time, when he took her hands in his and made vows, they were vows he had written himself. Vows that came from his heart, not from tradition. Not from anyone else.
“Rose, I made promises to you once before. But they were empty. I didn’t keep them. I spoke the words, but I didn’t make vows. But now…now I’m making vows. You’re the reason my hear
t beats. You’re the reason I live. The reason I love. I promise you my life. I promise my love and my fidelity. I know there is no happiness for me outside of this, outside of us. I spent years taking you for granted. I spent years squandering what we could have had. I was given a precious gift, and I was far too lost to truly appreciate it.” He tightened his hold on her hands. “But now I know. I have seen death, Rose. And I have lived it. A sort of survival that isn’t living at all, just breathing. But you…you are life. My life. My breath. My truth.”
When they had finished speaking their vows, Rose turned and took Isabella from the arms of her maid of honor, holding the little girl—who was growing far too quickly for Leon’s taste—close. “I promise to love you, too,” she whispered. “We’re a family.”
Leon took hold of his daughter’s hand. “You both have me. My heart. Always.”
Later, there was cake, and there was dancing. And a very cranky Isabella had to be taken back to the house by the nanny.
But Leon and Rose stayed, until the very last song. He held her tightly against him, letting the music wrap itself around them.
The whole world, all of the people, the past and everyone in it, fell away.
And all he could see were Rose’s blue eyes.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, don’t miss the start of Maisey Yates’s fabulous new trilogy; HEIRS BEFORE VOWS…
THE SPANIARD’S PREGNANT BRIDE
Available October 2016
And look out for
THE PRINCE’S PREGNANT MISTRESS
And
THE ITALIAN’S PREGNANT VIRGIN
Coming soon!
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE PLAYBOY’S RUTHLESS PURSUIT by Miranda Lee.
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Wealthy heroes with a heart of gold…family sagas…