In the kitchen, she opened the tall fridge and pulled out a bottle of white. She took two glasses out of a cupboard, filled them both virtually to the rim and took a large drink from one. She gestured for him to take the other.
So she didn’t want to risk touching him. He could not blame her for that.
‘You were wonderful tonight,’ he said softly. ‘I could not take my eyes off you.’
A hesitant smile played on her lips. ‘Thank you. It helped knowing you were there. I know it must have taken a lot.’
‘Do not dare thank me,’ he said darkly. He did not want her gratitude. He downed the rest of his wine and put the glass down on the counter.
Her eyes had become wary. ‘Benjamin...?’
He held out a hand to stop her. ‘First, let me apologise unreservedly for the way I spoke to you and for throwing you out of my home.’
‘You hardly threw me out. You got your driver to take me to the airport.’
‘Do not make excuses for me.’ He glared at her. ‘I do not deserve excuses and I will not accept them. My behaviour, everything I have done to you has been abhorrent. I will not make excuses to myself any more. I did steal you from Javier. I have been a jealous fool. I saw you in Javier’s garden and have not been the same since.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked in a far softer tone than he deserved.
‘Something happened to me when I first set eyes on you. I could not get you from my mind. I was obsessed with you. I wanted you for myself because I am a selfish, greedy man. I chose you as leverage against Javier, not because I thought it was the most effective way to get my money back but to destroy your engagement.’
‘You wanted to destroy us?’
He gave a tight nod. Since making the decision to go to Madrid to support her, he had done nothing but think. It had not been a pleasant awakening.
‘I could not bear to think of you in his bed or him touching you,’ he told her. ‘I salved my conscience by telling myself you were better off without him, but you were right that time when you asked me who I thought I was deciding what was right for you. And you were right that everything I did was to serve my own agenda. You were my agenda. If you weren’t I would have paid you off when you suggested it. I would have done anything to have you and make you mine. And now I would do anything to make amends. I don’t deserve or expect your forgiveness. I have ruined your life. Javier would have been the better man for you to marry, and I do not say that lightly. He would never have tried to control you or influence where you worked.’
‘Only because he wouldn’t have cared,’ she interjected with a whisper.
‘But that is what you need, is it not? The freedom to live your life for what is best for you and your career without anything else fighting for space in a life already full with your dance and your parents? I took that away from you. I made what should have been the greatest night of your life a nightmare. When you reached out to me about your troubles I pushed you away because I didn’t believe an independent woman like you, who has never needed anyone, could need me when no one has ever needed me before. I was jealous too, of you living under the same skies as Javier, and jealous you had a passion that didn’t involve me.’
‘You were jealous of me dancing?’
‘Oui. Your dance. It is who you are, ma douce. It is one of the reasons I fell in love with you.’ Her eyes widened at his casual admission but he carried on, wanting to get everything off his chest while he had the chance. ‘When you commit to something you do not do it lightly. I cannot tell you how much I admire the dedication and commitment it must have taken you to become the woman you are today or how envious I am of the childhood you had.’
‘You’re jealous of my childhood? What on earth for? We were dirt poor.’
‘But rich with love. My father left when he couldn’t take playing second fiddle to Clara Casillas any longer—and to think I am anything like him just destroys me—and my mother...’ He breathed heavily. This was an admittance he had barely acknowledged to himself. ‘She loved me in the way an owner loves its pet. I was an accessory, conceived as a playmate for the children Clara would have. When Clara died she transferred her love to Clara’s sons. I could never make her smile the way they did. When my father left he didn’t give me a second thought and I didn’t give him one either. That’s what I mean about never being needed before.
‘Your parents love you. Whatever career path you chose they would have done anything they could to support and encourage you whatever the cost to themselves. And you are the same. When you love someone you give them your whole heart and I will never forgive myself for making you a pawn in my vengeance.’
He paused to get some air into his lungs.
Freya was staring at him, eyes wide, her mouth half open but no sound coming out.
‘You will have seen the deposit I made into your account. It’s the sum I should have paid you to begin with rather than force you into a marriage you did not want. Anything you want, for you or for your parents, message me—I don’t expect you to call. I know I can’t make things better by throwing money at it but, for the sake of my conscience, promise you will always come to me. I need to be able to sleep again, ma douce, and abandoning my plans for revenge on Luis isn’t enough.’
She smiled weakly. ‘You’re going to leave Luis alone?’
‘I have done enough damage to spend eternity in hell. I will let his own conscience punish him.’
Her chin wobbled. ‘I’m glad. And I’m proud of you.’
‘I do not deserve that,’ he said with a grimace.
‘You could have made a scene tonight but you didn’t. You walked away. Your soul isn’t a lost cause, whatever you believe.’
‘I only walked away because of you. You are more important to me than anything. More important than my hate for them. I can only apologise again and again that it was nearly too late for your performance before I realised it.’
‘But it wasn’t too late, was it? You were there. You came. That means the world.’
He managed the semblance of a smile. ‘You have a beautiful heart, ma douce. I hope one day you find a man deserving of it.’ He took one more deep breath and gave a sharp nod. ‘And now I shall leave you to your rest.’
Stepping over to her, he put his hands lightly on her shoulders, breathing in the scent he had missed so badly for the last time. Brushing his lips to her forehead, he whispered. ‘Au revoir, mon amour.’
He took comfort that she didn’t flinch away from his touch.
Holding his frame together by the skin of his teeth, he walked to the door.
He would fall apart when he was in the privacy of his home. There was a whole bar full of Scotch for him to drown his sorrows in.
‘So that’s it?’ she called after him, stopping him in his tracks. ‘You come here to pour your heart out and tell me you love me and then leave? What about all the things I need to say to you?’
He closed his eyes. ‘Whatever you need to say, I will listen.’
‘You can start by turning around and facing me.’
Slowly he turned, expecting to see anger, preparing for the full-scale verbal attack he deserved.
Instead...
Instead he was greeted by the softest, gentlest expression he had ever seen.
She treaded over to him and placed a hand on his cheek. ‘I took one look at you in Javier’s garden and I fell in love with you. I was obsessed with you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you even though they were thoughts I knew I shouldn’t have. When you stole me away...’ She sighed. ‘I have tried my hardest to hate you. There have been times when I have hated you but running beneath it all has been my heart beating harder than it has ever beaten before because it is beating for two. It is beating for you. I lost my ability to dance because my heart and soul became yours without my knowing. I could only dance in the chateau because that’s where you were. I needed to be near you. I still need to be near you. I can dance again now, I found a way through it,
but without you in my life the passion is lost. I do need you, Benjamin. Like a fish needs water. I can’t breathe properly without you.’
Her lips found his to press the most tender of kisses to them.
She sighed again. ‘I love you. When I dance it is your face I see before me and it lifts me higher than I have ever jumped before. You make me want a life that’s more than dance. You bring all the different colours and flavours of life out in me.’
He didn’t dare allow joy anywhere near him. ‘But can you forgive me? Can you ever trust me?’
‘I do trust you. As for forgiveness, I can promise to forgive you if you can promise to forgive yourself.’
‘I don’t know how,’ he answered honestly. He would never lie to her.
‘By drawing a line in the sand on the past. What’s done is done and we can’t change it. All we can do is look to the future and the only future I want is with you.’
‘The only future I want is with you. Without you I am nothing. I will follow you anywhere. To the ends of the earth. You can dance in China for all I care, I will be there with you.’
She kissed him again. ‘Then prove it to me.’
‘How?’
‘By loving me for ever.’
Suddenly feeling as if his heart would burst, Benjamin finally allowed himself to believe...
She loved him! This incredible woman who could move his heart with the tilt of her head loved him.
In his wildest fantasies he had never allowed himself to think that.
But she did. And he loved her.
Parting his lips, he kissed her back with all the love and passion she had filled his heart with, thanking all the deities in the skies for giving him this second chance to be a better man with this woman who completed him.
And he would love her for ever.
EPILOGUE
TERROR CLUTCHED AT Benjamin’s heart.
That was his wife, waiting in the wings, ready to come on stage and dazzle the packed theatre of families at the Orchestre National de Paris in her role as the Sugar Plum Fairy for this one-off Christmas production of The Nutcracker.
And this was their year-old son asleep on his lap, blissfully unaware his mother was about to perform for the first time since his birth. And in such a monumental, iconic role too.
It would also be her first performance since her mother had died peacefully in her sleep that summer. Freya and her father had consoled themselves that they had been given another two years with her, good years with months in which she’d been well enough to travel to Russia and New York and watch her only daughter guest star with some of the most famous ballet companies in the world and meet her first grandchild.
Benjamin had no idea how Freya was going to pull it off. His darling wife had had a roller-coaster year with tears and laughter, sadness and joy. All the ups and downs had only brought them closer together.
Freya was his world. Christopher, the dark-haired bundle of mischief in his arms, had completed them.
Gasps from the children in the audience brought him back to the present, and he blinked to see the vision in a glittering white tutu take to the stage.
Then the familiar tinkling music began and his wife transformed into the Sugar Plum Fairy.
With subtlety, charm and grace, she moved over the stage, that illusion of flight she did so perfectly enthralling the whole spellbound theatre.
‘She’s wonderful,’ whispered his father-in-law, sitting beside him in Benjamin’s private box.
Benjamin nodded his agreement, too choked to speak. He didn’t have to look to know Freya’s loving father had tears rolling down his face.
When the orchestra played its final note in the dance, the theatre erupted. Cheers and bellows rang out, a sound so different from what had played before that Christopher woke up.
Bouncing in excitement, he pointed to the stage. ‘Mama!’
‘Oui, that’s your mama,’ Benjamin whispered into his son’s ear. ‘And your grandfather is right—she is wonderful.’
* * * * *
Coming next month
THE BRIDE’S BABY OF SHAME
Caitlin Crews
“I can see you are not asleep,” came a familiar voice from much too close. “It is best to stop pretending, Sophie.”
It was a voice that should not have been anywhere near her, not here.
Not in Langston House where, in a few short hours, she would become the latest in a long line of unenthused countesses.
Sophie took her time turning over in her bed. And still, no matter how long she stared or blinked, she couldn’t make Renzo disappear.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“It turns out we have more to discuss.”
She didn’t like the way he said that, dark and something like lethal.
And Renzo was here.
Right here, in this bedroom Sophie had been installed in as the future Countess of Langston. It was all tapestries, priceless art, and frothy antique chairs that looked too fragile to sit in.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her lips too dry and her throat not much better.
“I think you do.” Renzo stood at the foot of her bed, one hand looped around one of the posts in a lazy, easy sort of grip that did absolutely nothing to calm Sophie’s nerves. “I think you came to tell me something last night but let my temper scare you off. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say you used my temper as an excuse to keep from telling me, would it not?”
Sophie found her hands covering her belly again, there beneath her comforter. Worse, Renzo’s dark gaze followed the movement, as if he could see straight through the pile of soft linen to the truth.
“I would like you to leave,” she told him, fighting to keep her voice calm. “I don’t know what showing up here, hours before I’m meant to marry, could possibly accomplish. Or is this a punishment?”
Renzo’s lips quirked into something no sane person would call a smile. He didn’t move and yet he seemed to loom there, growing larger by the second and consuming all the air in the bedchamber.
He made it hard to breathe. Or see straight.
“We will get to punishments in a moment,” Renzo said. His dark amber gaze raked over her, bold and harsh. His sensual mouth, the one she’d felt on every inch of her skin and woke in the night yearning for again, flattened. His gaze bored into her, so hard and deep she was sure he left marks. “Are you with child, Sophie?”
Continue reading
THE BRIDE’S BABY OF SHAME
Caitlin Crews
Available next month
Copyright ©2018 by Caitlin Crews
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, ON, M5H 4E3, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
(Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge)
Billionaire's Bride for Revenge (Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge) Page 17
