by Sandra Hyatt
It wasn’t Gillian he was afraid of hurting.
It was, he understood with blinding clarity, about protecting the shell of a life he’d been living. It was about fear.
His fear of loving.
That was why he’d fought the rising tide of emotions he felt for her. Because he didn’t want to feel anything at all. Because the greater the love, the greater the pain of loss.
But if he carried on behaving like an idiot—doing the very thing he’d assured her he’d never do, proving all her initial doubts about him right—he would lose her. And that loss would be insurmountable.
Because he loved her, whether he’d wanted to or not.
This feeling he’d fought so hard to deny pulsed through him with every beat of his heart, permeated him with every breath he took.
Love.
She’d offered it tonight and he’d walked away from it. From her. From a woman who was so much more than he deserved.
He turned from the window and raced for the door.
He had to get back to her.
And he had to find a way to convince her he was staying. For good.
Mrs. McDonald, knitting in hand, had come over as soon as Gillian called her. She’d been going quietly insane stuck inside the house waiting—hoping—for Max’s return.
She drove slowly to the beach and parked in the same lot she and Max had used when he’d brought her here for a picnic.
The view over the darkened sea was supposed to help give her perspective.
It did. But small and insignificant wasn’t the perspective she’d wanted.
How did she find a way forward from here? For herself and for Ethan and for Max. She should never have questioned where their relationship was going, she should never have given voice, even in private, to her wish for more children. But most of all she shouldn’t have told him she loved him. She had broken all the rules.
A dark gleaming sedan pulled alongside her car. She muttered her irritation with the lone driver. The whole deserted lot and he had to park right beside her. The driver got out.
Max?
He tugged on the handle of her locked passenger door. She considered ignoring him but what would that achieve except prolong the inevitable? He had something he wanted to say to her. She may as well let him get it over with.
Taking a deep breath, she hardened herself against him and pressed the button for the central locking. Max opened the door and a chill wind swept in. He eased in beside her and shut the door. Shutting out the wind, shutting her in the confined space of her car with him and bringing with him the faint scent of Eternity.
“What are you doing here?” Wasn’t that the very same question she’d asked him the first time she saw him just a few short weeks ago? Weeks that would turn her life upside down and inside out.
“We need to talk.”
And that could well have been his same answer. An answer that back then had sent her world careening down the unforeseen path. What new path would tonight’s “talk” send them down? She could hardly bear to think. “You don’t need to say anything.”
“Yes, I do. And you need to listen to it. I’ve made some changes.”
Her heart plummeted. A path over a precipice? She stared straight ahead. Even though the engine wasn’t running and she was going nowhere, she gripped the wheel. It gave her something to hold on to. The illusion of control. Please just let him get this over with quickly. She waited, frowning at the ocean.
“I bought a new car. Actually, I bought two. I have a friend who’s a dealer.”
That statement was so vastly different from what she’d been expecting, so seemingly inappropriate, that she turned to him for verification.
What was she supposed to say? How nice for you. The car’s badge glinted in the glow from the streetlight.
He studied her face. “They’ve both got four doors,” he said as though that was supposed to mean something.
This was getting stranger and stranger. Surely he hadn’t tracked her to here to tell her about his nighttime vehicle purchases.
Max looked up at the roof for a second. “I’m not doing this right.”
“If I’m supposed to understand what you’re talking about then no, you’re not doing it right.”
“The day I first moved in with you I asked what it would take to make you believe that I was going to stay. One of things you said was trading in the coupe for something more suitable for a child. I did.”
She remembered that conversation, remembered how back then she hadn’t thought he had what it would take to be a part of their lives.
“And it’s a hybrid. Better for the environment. I’m thinking of the future. Of all our children and of our grandkids.”
Of all our children and of our grandkids. Now, darn it, hope was flickering. “You’re not leaving?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that?” he asked gently. “No, I’m not leaving. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
“I thought I’d panicked you with…what I’d said.”
“That you love me?” She nodded.
His smile was soft. “You did. But in a good way—eventually. In a way that forced me to think things through and come to some realizations and to make some decisions about us and about our future.”
She could feel her heart beating but she held tight to the fact that he was using words like us and future and the hope burned a little brighter.
“I’ve hated not being able to share things, like what’s happening at work, with you. And I don’t want our jobs to come between us.”
“I could look for something new,” she said tentatively. If he was saying what she thought he was, if he was holding out hope for her, she’d do whatever it took to grasp hold of it. What they could have was worth any price.
He touched her face, reverence in the brush of his fingertips. “You love your job and there’s not much else like that around here. On the other hand, as part of my work with Hannah’s Hope I’ve been talking with Ward about the Cara Miller Foundation a lot lately. It’s got me thinking that that side of things is something I’d like to be involved in.” His thumb stroked her jaw. “I could bring a lot to it. They’re looking at opening an office on the West Coast. It may take a little time but once I find someone to take over for me with Rafe I’m moving over to the foundation. You can stay with the Gazette and keep doing what you do so infuriatingly well.”
She leaned into his palm, overwhelmed. “You’d do that?”
“For you? For us? Yes. I’d do anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do because I love you.”
For a second she thought that maybe the crash of the ocean had distorted his words.
He framed her face with his hands and said it again. “I love you, Gillian Mitchell. After Dylan died I realized I’d never told him I loved him. We were thirteen and it just wasn’t the sort of thing we’d say to each other. But it seemed so wrong and I felt so guilty about it and about being alive that since that day I’ve never said those words to anyone else I love, either. But, Gillian, you fill the places in me that Dylan’s death left barren. Fill them so much that it hurts. In the best possible way. Like learning to use a limb that’s been broken. I love Ethan and I love you. I love you together, I love you separately. I want to marry you again—properly. I want to declare my love for you in a church with family and friends as witnesses to the fact that I’m going to share my life with you forever and always. I just need to hear you say those three words you said earlier one more time.”
She kissed him gently, sweetly and drew back just enough to whisper, “I love you,” before he was kissing her back.
Epilogue
The first few notes from the organ silenced the guests in the brimming Beverly Hills church. Sunlight streamed through high stained-glass windows and heads swiveled as Gillian took her first steps up the long aisle, the short train of her white dress trailing behind her.
So many faces. So many friend
s.
In six short months her life had changed almost beyond recognition.
Her gaze took it all in. The cavernous church seemed to swell with happiness. Hers and that of the guests. Everyone was smiling. Laura, flanked by the rest of her family, was smiling broadest of all, though she was also dabbing at her eyes with a dainty, white handkerchief.
Gillian’s arm was linked through her mother’s. The woman who’d been both mother and father to her was giving her away. Her mother, usually cynical about men, adored Max.
A sound behind her caught her attention and Gillian glanced back. Lilly and Nicole in their white-satin flower-girl dresses had stopped to help Ethan, who’d dropped the cushion that held their carefully chosen rings. Fortunately, the rings had been secured with a stitch to protect against just such an event.
Lilly picked up the velvet cushion and Nicole took Ethan’s hand as Gillian turned back for the front. They’d make it there. Ethan had the girls helping, and failing that the church was filled with friends who’d be only too happy to assist. She saw Mrs. McDonald out of the corner of her eye, poised and ready to swoop to Ethan’s aid. The race to help could well turn into a melee.
They were here for them not just today, but for the rest of their lives.
She looked ahead and found her true north when her gaze locked with Max’s, the face of the rest of her life, and couldn’t believe such utter happiness had come her way.
She felt herself drawn toward him. He looked so serious, so intense, so…proud. Her heart swelled even further.
Max was working for the Cara Miller Foundation now, helping the charity achieve amazing results.
The scent of white rosebuds drifted from the bouquet she held in front of the almost unnoticeable swell of her stomach. Six more months and Ethan would have a little brother or sister. And Max was possibly even more excited about the prospect than she was. He was already talking about possible names and plans for the nursery in their new home.
Drawn to the blue eyes watching her so intensely—as though she was the only woman, the only person, in the world—Gillian stopped in front of Max. His gaze softened on her as he reached for her hand and interlaced his fingers with hers, holding her as though he’d never let her go.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Sandra Hyatt for her contribution to The Takeover miniseries.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8799-4
REVEALED: HIS SECRET CHILD
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