“Do we…?” she began to ask on a breath.
He knew she was asking about a condom.
“I don’t want anything to come between us,” he said, repeating what he’d told her earlier.
Melanie cupped his face, her expression glowing with the love she’d confessed, along with everything else.
“Me, either,” she said. “I want it all with you, Zane.”
Then, so slowly that it slayed him, she skimmed her fingers down his chest, his stomach, resting them on his length, which was pulsing in anticipation of being inside her.
She made his wish come true, guiding him into her and then rising up to take him all the way in.
At first, his vision went blank at the feel of her, but it returned in blazing color as he slid out, then in, again and again, as she kept time with him.
Wanting to go deeper, wanting everything he could get from her, he lifted one of her legs, and she answered by bending it to the side.
Her flexibility pumped him, and he drove into her once more…twice more…another time….
Pressure curled inside of him, melting inward, then arching. Arching some more.
And his passion kept arching, escalating, expanding into something like a bridge stretching from him to her, connecting them, its apex climbing and climbing until…
The arch shattered, but the link remained, as he kept hold of Melanie, his future wife, the woman he would forgive just about anything.
Because love had allowed it, he thought. Love made anything possible.
He stayed inside her as they leisurely kissed, his arm curled over her head, one of her legs wrapped around him.
It wasn’t until long afterward, when the sun had risen all the way and they’d showered together, that they got ready to tell Livie the toughest secret she would ever have to keep.
At least until Zane could show Melanie that the world didn’t matter when it came to them.
“Do you think Livie will be…happy?” Melanie asked while donning a sundress.
“I can’t believe you’d think otherwise.” He took her into his arms. “My daughter loves you beyond comprehension, just like I do.”
Her smile was filled with wonder, as if she couldn’t believe love was this simple. He could hardly believe it either, but they were going to make it so.
He’d forgiven her, and it’d been easy.
Still, a stray notion chewed at the back of his mind.
Forgiveness. If Melanie had taught him so much that he could forgive her, shouldn’t he let it branch out to other parts of his life?
The image of the Santa Magdalena Diamond floated through his consciousness, but he blanked it out.
He wasn’t going to think of the McCords now.
He wasn’t going to think about them for a good, long while.
Taking Melanie’s hand, he led her out of the room and to Livie’s. And when they awakened her, she smiled up at them, as if unsurprised to see them together, greeting her first thing in the morning.
Zane squeezed Melanie’s hand, then asked his daughter, “Can you keep a secret?”
Livie blinked, nodding eagerly as she made her way to a sitting position.
Melanie beamed. “When I told you I’m never going anywhere, I meant it.”
As the child’s eyes grew wider, Zane and Melanie explained the rest, and when they were done, she bounded into their arms, hugging them with a fierceness that told him she’d been hoping for this moment.
And when they broke apart to laugh with each other, as the girl started firing off when, where, why and how questions, Zane didn’t see his past in his daughter anymore.
He just saw Livie—a happy little girl who wanted to move forward, too.
Soon, they were all embracing again, the family they were meant to be.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3567-4
THE TEXAS BILLIONAIRE’S BRIDE
Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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*Kane’s Crossing
*Kane’s Crossing
*Kane’s Crossing
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**Montana Mavericks: The Kingsleys
*Kane’s Crossing
†The Fortunes of Texas: Reunion
††Most Likely To…
§The Suds Club
§The Suds Club
§The Suds Club
‡The Foleys and the McCords
The Texas Billionaire’s Bride Page 17