by Susan Meier
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “Audra, everything in life doesn’t boil down to simple logic.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Really.”
“So you’re here for something illogical?”
“Actually, yes.” He took a few steps further into her office. “I’m here to ask you to marry me.”
Damn it. She should have expected this. He wasn’t the kind of guy to let a woman reject him. He was so accustomed to getting his own way he probably believed proposing was the right thing to do—at least for the moment. Once his panic over being left had disappeared, then he could reject her.
“No.”
“No?”
“Come on, Dominic. You’re just angry that I rejected you. So you’re offering me what I told you I wanted. Marriage. But you don’t want to marry me. For all practical intents and purposes I’m the maid’s daughter.”
“Is that what this is all about?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No! Audra, I genuinely believed I wouldn’t ever want to marry anybody.”
“Oh, I get it. What my mother said has sunk in. You realize you do need a mother for Joshua. I’m the logical choice.” She shook her head in misery. “But I don’t want that, either.” It hurt to remember their last argument, and the way he let her go, not even calling after her as she left his foyer. There was no way she’d start this again.
“Okay. I must be doing this all wrong, because this time I know we want the same thing.” He paused, closed his eyes.
“The house is empty without you.” He opened his eyes and caught her gaze again. “I feel like half a person. I get up every day with the realization that this day is going to go on just like every other day before it. That the sun will come out but it won’t make any difference. I can have anything that I want, anytime I want it, but it won’t matter.”
He drew in a breath and walked a little closer to her desk. “Some days I wake up so empty, I swear it’s a physical pain.”
She knew the feeling very well. She’d lived it for months after David and was now experiencing an even worse version because she loved Dominic a hundred times more than she’d ever loved David.
“Sounds like depression,” she said, rising from her seat so she could show him to the door. “I’d suggest you call your doctor.”
“There’s no reason to call a doctor. I’ve figured out what was wrong.”
“Well, your doctor’s the only one who can prescribe antidepressants.” She rounded her desk. “I can’t help you with that.”
He caught her arm and stopped her. “I don’t want a doctor. I don’t need antidepressants. I just need to get you back into my life.”
“I already figured out that’s why you’re asking me to marry you. I rejected you because you told me you would never marry me, so now—”
“Audra, I love you.”
For a few seconds the world stopped spinning. Time suspended. Still, those words could only be part of his ploy not to be rejected by her. “Nice try.”
“Not really. So far loving you has only made me miserable. But I can’t seem to change the fact that I do love you.” He laughed. “You are perfect—almost as if you were made for me to love. You laugh at my jokes, don’t let me be less than the man I can be, and you love me, too.” Holding her gaze, he said, “You said it Friday. I dismissed it as meaningless. But nothing you say is meaningless. You love me. And I love you. And even though I have no idea how to make a marriage work, I also had no idea how to raise a baby, yet I caught on. So, seeing as how we’ll already start off loving each other, I’d say spending the rest of our lives together should be easy.”
She didn’t say anything, simply stared at him, hoping against hope that he meant the things he was saying.
“I now understand Peter and Marsha. Why they didn’t want to be apart. Why they took three million pictures of every darned thing they did together. They could have been the two poorest people in the world and they would have been happy. Because they had each other.”
“You don’t care that I’m your house manager’s daughter?”
He laughed. “Only that she’d skin me alive if I hurt you.” He took a step closer and caught her arms. “What I feel for you has nothing to do with who your mother is. Nothing to do with Joshua. It has nothing to do with losing my old life or taking over Peter’s. I finally realized you would have changed my world all by yourself.”
“Really?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable and desperate. Even she heard it. She wanted to believe him so badly that she prayed she wasn’t misinterpreting him.
He smiled. “Really.”
“You love me?”
He chuckled. “I love you.”
“Forever?”
“Forever…and with all the accompanying mushiness. Watching one of the CDs you made for Joshua caused me to see that I felt about you the way Peter felt about Marsha, but I hadn’t said it very well. Because I was totally out of my element. Facing something I not only never thought I’d face, but something I didn’t think I wanted. I honestly didn’t believe I was the kind of guy to marry anybody. But I want to marry you and it scares me.”
She laughed.
“I think you’re the most beautiful, most wonderful, most maddening person in the world. But that last part is what I know will keep us from getting bored.”
She laughed.
“So do you want to tell the friends who are listening at the door that they have another wedding to plan?”
“Yes and no.”
“Yes and no?”
“The last wedding I had sort of left me with a bad taste in my mouth for standing at the back of a church in a wedding gown.” She sucked in a breath. “I’d like to go to a justice of the peace and then take off for somewhere tropical.”
“You just were someplace tropical.”
“And I sat around thinking of you the whole time. So now it would be nice to actually be there with you.”
“After three months of being overwhelmed with work, two weeks on an island sounds like heaven.”
“You’re the boss.”
He laughed. “Nah. No bosses here. I like us better as a team.”
She smiled. “So do I.”
Then he kissed her, long and deep, connecting their lives, entwining their destinies. He didn’t have to say the words. She didn’t need to hear them. His kiss and the way her body responded to it said it all.
Thanks to all the ladies of Wedding Belles for a fun experience writing this continuity, and special thanks to Kim, Lydia and Suzy, the editors of my book, for their help and insight.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2008
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
/> Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Linda Susan Meier 2008
ISBN: 9781408903940