by Trish Wylie
Releasing his other hand, he framed her face, leaning in closer to inform her in no uncertain terms, ‘You won’t lose me. Get that straight. You’ve got me. You had me again at that first dumb T-shirt. And as to you being scared—nah.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re the bravest woman I know. You went through all of that on your own when you didn’t have to and you came out the other side and still took a chance on us again.’
‘Well, I did try for a while to keep you at arm’s length but you wouldn’t let me, remember?’
‘And why do you think that might be?’
The way that her gorgeous eyes shimmered at him told him that she knew the answer now.
So he leaned in further and claimed her mouth, tasting the saltiness on her lips from her tears as he kissed the last of them away.
And the familiar heat between them fired immediately; as if all of the confessions had somehow seeded a deep need in them to finally let out in one go all the emotion that they had been holding back.
Connor kissed the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, down the side of her face to the neck she automatically tilted his way, while she told him again, ‘I love you, Connor Flanaghan.’
He leaned back long enough to pull her sweater over her head, before he kissed her again, the words husky against her mouth.
‘And I love you. I’ve been trying to show you how much this last while by making love to you every chance I got. I don’t know how you didn’t know that.’
Shannon lifted her hands and framed his face, her eyes filled with emotion. ‘Show me again and I promise I’ll listen this time.’ She took a breath. ‘But I don’t want anything between us again. I want a baby with you, Connor. Not to replace the one we lost, ’cos that’ll never happen. But I want children with you. I want us to have a family. I know that’s not maybe what a lot of people our ages want, but I don’t care.’
‘Then we’ll just stay in bed until we make one.’ He leaned his forehead against hers. ‘All that time when I knew there was something you were holding back from me I thought that it was that you’d fallen in love with someone else and he had broken your heart. So I decided I would spend as long as it took getting you to trust me and love me. Even earlier on, when I was being such a pain, I kept coming back to argue with you and listen to everything you threw at me—even when I didn’t realize why I kept coming back. But somewhere inside I knew why I was doing it. I wasn’t letting you go again. I’m never letting you go again. We’re going to get married and have dozens of kids and we’ll find a house and live happily ever after. It’s just that simple.’
Her hands rose to rest on his against her face, her voice back to the confident tone that he loved. ‘Yes, to all of those things. I want to spend the rest of my life with you—making love and arguing and making up and laughing and doing all the things that other couples who love each other do. I want you to bring bags of Dolly Mixtures for us to eat on film nights—like the boiled sweets that old man in front us that night does every week for his wife, and has done every Friday night for forty years.’
Connor’s smile grew. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’
‘I thought you’d read something into it at the time—having just done the same thing for me. When you remembered them that night I think I knew then that I wasn’t going to be able to resist you this time round. It frightened the life out of me. So I tried pushing you away again. But you wouldn’t go. And I couldn’t resist when you wouldn’t go.’
‘I’m irresistible. That’s basically what you’re saying?’
‘Heaven help me—yes it is.’
‘Good.’ He kissed her again, long and slow, feeling her lean into him as his body started to tighten with need. So he lifted his mouth an inch from hers to tell her, ‘Then let’s start right now with making that family. As one of six I have a tradition to uphold.’
‘And then we can go to the party tomorrow night and tell Mario he’s going to get his wish to be a bridesmaid…’
‘The hell we will.’
Shannon laughed, the sound warming his heart in a way it hadn’t been warmed in seven years. She was his. For better or worse. Together they could get through anything. Apart they were both giant big train wrecks.
Maybe that was part of what that dumb film he’d watched with her had been about? Who knew?
As he stood and tugged her to her feet, his eyes dropped to the message on her T-shirt.
And when he looked at her face, she was lifting her chin, obviously having read it herself.
She grinned at him. ‘It’s my favourite one.’
Connor read it again: ‘Here I am. Now what are your other two wishes?’
He laughed, leaning in to kiss her soundly again as he led her to the huge bed on the other side of the room. ‘I need one that says “Marry me and make love every day for the rest of our lives.”’
Shannon was already reaching for the buttons on his shirt. ‘Then I’ll need one that says
“Yes to all of the above.”’
And Connor proceeded to show her he was very happy with that answer.
The slow and torturous way.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1374-0
AT THE BILLIONAIRE’S BIDDING
First North American Publication 2008.
Previously published in the U.K. under the title
THE RETURN OF THE REBEL.
Copyright © 2007 by Trish Wylie.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN