His Bid for a Bride

by Carole Mortimer

  At that moment she was glad she had refused to drop her gaze from his, otherwise she might have missed that sudden blaze of emotion in his eyes, an emotion that was quickly masked but that she had seen anyway.

  Her own eyes widened expectantly as she waited for his answer.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FALKNER stood up restlessly, wearing faded blue denims and a light blue shirt now in preference to the suit he had been wearing earlier, the slight awkwardness of his right leg emphasised this evening too, testament to his tiredness.

  This evidence of his tiredness pulled at Skye’s heartstrings, and it took every ounce of her will-power not to say something. That, and the fact that she knew she would only be inviting a cutting comment from Falkner if she so much as dared to mention his past injury.

  ‘Well?’ she finally prompted in much the same way he had seconds earlier.

  His mouth tightened ominously. ‘Surely it’s obvious why,’ he snapped dismissively. ‘Besides, we’ve moved on from there—’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Skye cut in quickly; he wasn’t going to change the subject that easily! ‘And it isn’t obvious at all, Falkner,’ she continued evenly. ‘At least, not to me. At the time you asked me to marry you I believed it was out of pity for my suddenly fath—’ She drew in a deeply controlling breath. ‘For my fatherless, moneyless state—’

  ‘And so it was,’ Falkner confirmed impatiently.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she sharply repeated Belinda’s rebuke of a short time ago. ‘Okay, I accept that the first part of that statement may be true,’ she murmured huskily. ‘But the second part certainly wasn’t,’ she came back strongly. ‘And, as one of my trustees, you knew that it wasn’t,’ she added pointedly.

  That was the ‘something’ that had kept niggling at her subconscious, the ‘something’ that didn’t quite add up, the ‘something’ she had been too upset to make sense of for four days, the ‘something’ she so desperately needed an answer to now. Because Falkner had known that in only seven months’ time she would inherit the money from her trust fund, that she would then be a wealthy young lady, that she had no need of a protector, financial or otherwise…

  Falkner frowned darkly. ‘I—you—’

  ‘Yes?’ she prompted tensely, sitting forward on her seat as she looked up at him expectantly, reassured by this suddenly speechless Falkner.

  His expression became derisive. ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a lawyer, Skye? Because you certainly have the aggressive style of a prosecution lawyer!’ he added mockingly.

  He was trying to change the subject, and Skye refused to let him.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ she dismissed impatiently. ‘Now would you please answer the question?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve forgotten what it was.’

  Somehow, she didn’t think so! ‘Why did you ask me to marry you?’ she repeated evenly.

  He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his denims, his shoulders hunched defensively. ‘Why do you think I asked you?’ he finally murmured slowly.

  ‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be here asking you!’ she came back frustratedly.

  He really didn’t want to answer this question, did he? Could it possibly be for the reason she had thought—hoped? Skye was still too uncertain of the answer to dare to hope too deeply…!

  He gave a deep sigh, shaking his head. ‘Whether you want to believe it or not, I did feel sorry for you. Not only because of your father, but because of what I had just learnt about your uncle Seamus too. I wanted—’ He broke off, breathing heavily. ‘I just wanted to take care of you!’ he finished frustratedly.

  Skye frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you were alone. Because of my friendship for your father. Because—’

  ‘Did you marry Selina for those reasons too?’ Skye cut in determinedly, standing up too now to face him unflinchingly as he stood only feet away from her. ‘Or did you marry her because she was like me?’ she added huskily.

  There, she had said it now, had said what Belinda had been implying earlier, and what Skye herself had concluded after looking at the photograph album. Heaven help her if they were both wrong!

  Falkner’s expression darkened, his eyes blazing silver in the paleness of his face. ‘Selina was absolutely nothing like you!’ he rasped coldly. ‘Nothing!’ he added forcefully.

  Skye flinched at the vehemence in his tone. Did he mean that Selina was so much more than her, or did he mean the opposite? She simply didn’t know!

  That uncertainty kept her rooted to the spot as Falkner stepped forward to grasp her by the tops of her arms. ‘Why are you asking me these things, Skye?’ Falkner demanded bleakly, shaking her slightly.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ she choked, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘Don’t you really know, Falkner?’

  A nerve pulsed in his rigidly clenched jaw as he became suddenly still, his gaze searching now. ‘Tell me,’ he finally invited huskily.

  She swallowed hard. ‘I’m asking—I’m asking for the sake of a young almost-eighteen-year-old girl who fell in love with you six years ago!’ she blurted out, beyond caution now, beyond anything but telling Falkner how she felt. And if he rejected her, if she was wrong and he didn’t care for her after all, then she would have to live with that! ‘I’m asking for the sake of the almost-twenty-five-year-old young woman who is still in love with you!’ she added brokenly.

  If he should turn her away now—if he should—

  ‘Dear heaven!’ Falkner groaned emotionally, staring down at her disbelievingly, his hands having tightened painfully on her arms. ‘Skye…?’

  ‘Falkner…!’ she came back achingly, the tears spilling hotly over her lashes now to fall unheeded down her cheeks.

  Please, she pleaded inwardly as he continued to stare at her incredulously. Oh, please…!

  ‘You love me?’ he repeated huskily.

  She nodded. ‘I always have. I always will,’ she added with a certainty that allowed no quarter.

  ‘Dear heaven…!’ he repeated achingly before gathering her up in his arms and crushing her to his chest. ‘Skye!’ he groaned emotionally, his face buried in her hair.

  She wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t be wrong!

  Her own arms moved up about his waist as she pressed even closer against him. How she loved this man!

  Falkner moved back slightly, his hands moving up to cradle either side of her face as he looked down at her. ‘You have the courage of a lioness,’ he murmured admiringly. ‘I’m not sure I could have done what you just did,’ he explained huskily at her questioning look. ‘But I’m very glad that you did!’ he added fervently, bending his head to kiss her lingeringly on the lips. ‘I love you, Skye O’Hara,’ he told her forcefully. ‘I always have. I always will,’ he echoed her own vow of seconds ago.

  ‘Oh, Falkner!’ she groaned brokenly. ‘How much time we’ve wasted!’

  ‘But no more,’ he declared firmly. ‘Marry me, Skye. Marry me, and make my life complete!’

  ‘Gladly!’ she assured him emotionally, her own lips parting now as Falkner began to kiss her.

  She had come home. Neither Ireland nor England was where she belonged; wherever this man was, whatever he was, whatever he became, that was where she wanted to be!

  She melted against him, their two bodies melding into one, the two halves of a perfect whole.

  ‘You’ve let your soup get cold,’ Skye murmured a long time later, sitting on Falkner’s knee as the two of them now occupied the chair behind his desk. ‘Mrs Graham isn’t going to be pleased,’ she added teasingly.

  Falkner smiled down at her, one of his hands playing with the silky fire of her hair. ‘Mrs Graham will forgive me once she knows you’re going to be my wife.’ His smile faded, his arms tightening about her. ‘I’ll never let you go now, Skye, you do realize that?’

  She looked up at him with sleepy satiation. ‘From now on, Falkner, you’ll have trouble going anywhere without me. “Wither thou goest”, and all that,’
she added self-consciously, still shaken as to how much she had realized she needed him. After years of believing Falkner would never be hers, the thought now of ever being away from him filled her with desolation.

  ‘And all that,’ Falkner echoed firmly. ‘I only feel completely alive when I’m with you, Skye, feel as if I’ve merely existed for the last six and a half years.’

  Skye turned to him frowningly. ‘The last six and a half years…? But, Falkner—’

  ‘I fell in love with you the first time I met you,’ he admitted shakily. ‘Of course, I tried to deny it, even to myself; after all, you weren’t quite eighteen, and I was a worldly-wise thirty-two-year-old,’ he acknowledged grimly. ‘The whole idea was ridiculous, was what I told myself. Or else it was premature senility setting in,’ he added self-derisively. ‘I couldn’t possibly have fallen in love with someone I had just met, let alone a baby like you!’

  Skye reached up to caress the smoothness of his cheek, revelling in the freedom to be allowed such intimacies. ‘But you had,’ she prompted softly.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded grimly. ‘After weeks of hell, when I tried to deny the truth even to myself—when I lost three straight competitions in a row, I’ll have you know!—I knew I was just wasting my time trying to do any such thing. Why do you think I sent Storm to you, after all, if it wasn’t in the hope that I might hear from you again—if only to ask me why I had changed my mind?’

  ‘I had no idea!’ Her eyes widened incredulously. ‘And I was so stunned by his arrival, so tied up in knots at the fact that I had fallen in love with you, that I didn’t even write you a thank-you letter!’

  ‘No.’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘But I was glad you had Storm anyway, hoped that you might occasionally think of me—and think of me kindly,’ he added self-derisively.

  ‘I’ve thought of nothing else but you for six years!’ she told him forcefully. ‘When I saw your engagement, and then wedding, in the newspapers, I thought I was going to die!’ Her eyes became haunted by the memory of her complete desolation five years ago.

  ‘Oh, Skye!’ He buried his face in her throat, breathing in her perfume, the warmth that was her, like a dying man gasping for air. ‘Marrying Selina was the biggest—and most selfish!—mistake of my life.’ He straightened, shaking his head. ‘I met her at some party or other of Belinda’s.’ His eyes were bleak as he looked into the past. ‘The only thing about her that I really saw was her resemblance to you. The only thing I wanted to see, I think,’ he added heavily. ‘We were actually in church, signing the register, when I finally realized exactly what I was doing, that the woman standing beside me was a stranger. By which time, it was too late,’ he concluded self-disgustedly.

  Skye felt a shiver down her spine at the finality of those words, the fact that both she and Belinda had been right in their surmise doing nothing to alleviate the sadness that she felt for Selina and Falkner; in the circumstances Falkner was describing, their marriage had never stood a chance of succeeding.

  ‘I was completely unfair to Selina,’ Falkner continued determinedly. ‘Is it any wonder, under the circumstances I’ve described, that she looked to other men to give her the love and attention I was incapable of giving her? I did try, Skye, I really did, knew that I owed it to Selina to try and make it work. But it was no good; we were more or less separated anyway, by the time I had the accident, and in the circumstances I thought it best to let her divorce me. She’s happily remarried now with a baby son,’ he added thankfully.

  Skye moistened her lips. ‘There were rumours—it was said—’

  ‘That there was another woman?’ Falkner finished wryly. ‘That was you, Skye. I told you, it’s always been you.’ His eyes glowed with that love as he looked at her.

  Her eyes widened. ‘You told Selina about me?’ He had told his wife, when Skye herself hadn’t even known how he felt about her…?

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t have to. Skye, between a husband and wife—there can’t be those sort of secrets.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I didn’t want her, Skye,’ he explained gruffly. ‘I couldn’t—I didn’t feel that way about her—our marriage was a sham almost from start to finish!’

  Skye could only stare at him as the full import of his words became clear to her.

  ‘I may be many things, Skye, and my behaviour towards Selina was despicable, but after the first few months I knew I couldn’t continue to live a lie,’ he added heavily.

  It seemed incredible to Skye that the marriage had lasted as long as it had. But she knew exactly what Falkner meant about it being a lie to pretend to care for someone else. It was because she felt that way herself that she had made the claim that she would never marry; if she couldn’t be with Falkner, then she didn’t want to be with anyone…

  ‘It was a living hell, Skye,’ Falkner continued at her silence. ‘I was living with one woman, while in love with another one. It was a relief to us both, I think, when it finally broke down altogether. If it hadn’t been for Connor—’

  ‘My father knew about all this?’ Skye gasped.

  Falkner grimaced. ‘Not that I was in love with you, no. But he was very supportive during that disruptive time of my life, and as a consequence the two of us became good friends.’ He shrugged. ‘But can you imagine your father’s horror if I had ever admitted to him it was his cherished only daughter I was in love with?’

  Skye wasn’t so sure her father would have been horrified…After all, he had chosen Falkner, of all people, to be one of her trustees. Perhaps if there had been more time, if her father hadn’t died, he might even have tried, in his own inimitable style, to get the two of them together. Skye liked to think so.

  Falkner sighed. ‘Of course, I wished things had been different, but after the accident, my long convalescence, and subsequent divorce, it had become an impossible situation. Your father apart, there was no way I could ever even consider asking you to marry me, a man so much older than you, who was crippled and divorced into the bargain!’ Falkner murmured huskily.

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered to me,’ she told him intensely.

  He gave a self-derisive grimace. ‘But I didn’t know that! Skye, the last three years have been absolute hell, believing, after the mess I had made of my life, that I stood absolutely no chance with you. You asked me once why, if I was such a good friend of your father’s, you hadn’t seen me during the last six months?’ He sighed as she nodded slowly. ‘If you remember, I told you you were mistaken, that I had seen him, that I had seen you too?’

  She swallowed hard, clearly remembering that conversation. ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘You were in London with Connor three months ago, and you came to meet your father after a business meeting at a hotel there. Skye, I was the person Connor was meeting that day, and I watched from a hotel window as the two of you met outside in the street.’

  Which was why he had shown no surprise by her changed appearance when he’d come to the hospital last week—her extra slenderness and short hair; he had already known of those changes because he had seen her!

  ‘Over the last three years I’ve seen you five times under similar circumstances,’ he added huskily.

  ‘Falkner, I think you’re wrong about my father not knowing how you felt about me,’ she insisted slowly. ‘He had no idea how I felt about you, certainly, because I had done such a good job over the years of hiding it from him,’ she admitted self-derisively. ‘But I don’t believe for a moment that he didn’t realize exactly who it was you were in love with. He talked about you to me several times,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘And on each of those occasions I was the one to change the subject, giving the deliberate impression that I wasn’t in the least interested in anything to do with you.’

  She really did believe that her father wholeheartedly approved of Falkner as a husband for her, felt more positive than ever, after listening to what Falkner had just said, that her father would never have entrusted her future to a man he didn’t have complete trust in himself. In
every way.

  ‘He’s probably out there somewhere right now smiling at the rightness of all this,’ she continued huskily. ‘So I’ll ask you again, Falkner.’ She straightened, looking at him intently. ‘Why did you ask me to marry you on Friday?’

  His expression softened, his eyes glittering emotionally. ‘Because I love you more than life itself. Because I thought I might be able to persuade you into marriage in a weak moment. Because I hoped that once we were married I might one day be able to persuade you into loving me. Because the thought of you going out of my life a second time is more than I can bear. Because—’

  ‘Enough.’ She placed gentle fingertips over his lips. ‘I’ll marry you, Falkner, but only because all the things you’ve just said about me could as easily be said of me concerning you! You’ll never know how tempted I was to accept your proposal in the hope that one day you might learn to love me! Isn’t it wonderful that we already love each other?’ Her eyes misted with tears of happiness.

  ‘Wonderful!’ Falkner echoed emotionally.

  Thank you, Da, Skye offered up a silent prayer even as she and Falkner kissed each other as if they never wanted to stop. Thank you. Thank you!

  EPILOGUE

  ‘WHAT are you doing?’

  Skye turned to smile at Falkner as he stood in the stable doorway, her love for him glowing in her eyes.

  The last year of being married to Falkner had been the happiest of her life, the two of them rarely apart, enjoying their silences together as much as they did their chats, the teasing repartee that had become such a part of their relationship. As for their lovemaking…Falkner had been perfectly correct in his claim that the damage to his right leg wasn’t noticeable when he was ‘lying horizontal’!

  Skye put her arms about his waist to hug him tight as he joined her in Storm’s stall. ‘I was just explaining to Storm that he’ll have to be put out to pasture for a while,’ she murmured softly.