“I drove out to return a check to Nash. He used it to pay for photographs but he says the money isn’t his.”
She walked forward and held it out, a fluttering testimonial to the truth.
“Why are you returning it?” he asked.
“I can’t take money for those photos. They were not for sale.”
“You want them back?”
A question rather than the truthful straight-out answers she sought, but at least he hadn’t denied knowledge. The check was Nash’s so he could have done so.
“That depends,” she said in answer to his question.
“On?”
“Your reason for acquiring them in such an underhanded fashion.”
His gaze narrowed in response to that pejorative description and Diana gave herself a swift mental kick. Nice job in keeping the discussion cool and unaccusatory. “That day I came to the gallery and expressed interest in your pictures, you told me I couldn’t buy them.”
“I doubted your motives.”
“You do a lot of that.”
She sucked in a breath and counted to five. That was just enough time to cool the instant denial on her tongue. Instead she nodded. “Yes, but I believe I’ve had just cause. Your gifts were an attempt to get me into bed. I thought your interest in my pictures was more of the same.”
“There you go. You wouldn’t trust that I might just want them, no strings attached.”
“Why did you want them?” she countered. “Because you like the images or because I took them?”
“Both, okay? I came to your gallery that day because you invited me to.”
Diana frowned.
“The day we had coffee, the first day it snowed. You told me I should come and check out your work, to ensure you knew your job.”
“And you liked them enough to buy some?”
“Yes, but I also wanted them because they were yours. If you don’t like that—” Max shrugged “—then, too bad.”
“Because they’re mine,” she echoed.
“At least I had some part of you to take back home. Something of you to love.”
Her eyes widened on that last word, then narrowed. “Love?”
That scornful note burrowed right under his skin and scraped every raw exposed nerve. “Yes, I said love. That’s what I offered you when I asked you to come home to Australia with me. That’s what—”
“You didn’t mention love,” she cut in, her cheeks colored with the same rising fervor he heard in her voice. “You mentioned wanting and that is something totally different. You don’t love me, Max. You never have.”
The accusation flayed the last of his patience, the last of his pride. “If I never loved you, then why did I come after you?”
“You’ve never come after me. Not once. Unless you count your attempts to bed me. I’m the one who came looking—”
“I don’t mean now. I mean ten years ago.”
“What are you saying?”
Their gazes locked, hers wide and bright with confusion. What the hell, Max thought. If she wanted proof of his love, of his commitment, then what more could he offer? “I came to New York the day of your wedding. I was there, Diana.”
“I don’t understand….”
“I came to America to find you, to talk you into coming home. I found out the address from a maid at your father’s Manhattan apartment and I drove out to the Hamptons. I wanted proof, too, you see. Proof that you were marrying another man instead of me.”
She shook her head in slow disbelief. “You were there…and you didn’t do anything?”
“You walked into that garden on your father’s arm wearing a white dress. What did you expect me to do?”
“If you loved me, then why did you let me marry him?”
“Because I imagined you wanted to marry him, Diana. What else would a man think when confronted with that scenario?”
Wired with all the pain of that discovery, his words cut through the cavernous silence of the barn and shimmered in her eyes.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked thickly.
“What do you suppose I could have said? ‘Congratulations’?”
“I meant now. I meant the other day. I meant any time. Oh, Max.” She lifted an unsteady hand, the one still holding the check, and dashed at the tears brimming from her eyes. “I didn’t know.”
Those last anguished words, the expression on her face, the tentative step she took toward him….
Max’s heart checked out for a beat. “Didn’t know what?”
“You told me you almost married someone once. That was me, wasn’t it? You came out here to marry me, even though you’d said you weren’t ready for that commitment.”
“I wanted you in my life, whatever it took.”
She nodded. Then made another futile attempt to stop the flow of tears. “Are you going to tell me why?”
The warm flood of hope stilled in his veins. “Curse it, Diana, I’ve just shown what you meant to me. I’ve laid myself bare. What more proof can you ask of me?”
“I don’t want proof, Max. I want to hear the words.”
“I love you? That’s all?”
She smiled through the tears. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Max.”
“What about the partnership? What about Click?”
“I decided on my way out here that I’m not taking it. I don’t want to be a partner in anything that isn’t mine, that isn’t here—” she touched a hand to her chest “—in my heart and my soul.”
“I thought that’s what photography was to you.”
“It is and will always be, but it’s not my yacht.”
The tears were streaming freely now, and she gave up her attempts to staunch them. They were happy tears, tears of the sun and of the heart and of her future. He hadn’t yet said the words but they were there, in the hint of a grin and the understanding in his eyes.
He knew what she was saying.
The yacht was their dream, the symbol of whatever they built together.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked.
She lifted her hand, soggy check and all, and touched his cheek. “This is what I want.”
He kissed her then, with a thoroughness that curled her toes and a tenderness that curled around her heart. And when he’d finished kissing her breathless, he lifted her by the waist and swung her around until she laughed out loud with giddy joy. And as he eased her back to her feet in a long, delicious slide down his body, she heard the teeniest clink of charms as the bracelet settled back into the corner of her coat pocket after the wild ride.
Later she would wear it, possibly with little else.
Later, when she was back in his bed.
But now she wanted to hear the words, this time with the proper reverence, this time with all the emotion he’d unfurled in her heart. “Tell me,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Tell me and then ask me all over again.”
He chuckled at the request but he didn’t have to ask her to explain. First he took the ruined check from her hand and tossed it away. A sign of how little money would matter in their future, she decided.
Without hesitation he went down on one knee, her hand gripped in his. And there, on the aged cobblestones before the witnessing eyes of the horse she called Maggie, he turned the first of her dreams into reality.
“I love you, Diana.” The intensity in his voice and in the forest-green depths of his eyes was a conduit straight to the core of her soul. “Will you come with me to Australia? Will you take my name and become part of my family? Will you be the heart of my life?”
“Yes.” She sunk down to meet him. “Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “And yes,” she breathed into his kiss, and Maggie whinnied her approval.
ISBN: 978-1-55254-860-8
BACK IN FORTUNE’S BED
Copyright © 2007 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Coming Next Month
Back in Fortune's Bed Page 14