by Anna Durand
I held up a hand. "Even then, I knew you cared if I left. I'm not saying you don't love me. I'm saying you still don't understand how much it hurt me that you had no comment on the most emotional monologue I've ever delivered to anyone."
Exhaustion buried me under its weight. I stumbled to a wrought-iron bench and slumped onto it.
Rory knelt before me, eyes full of pain and compassion. "Emery, I wish I knew how to make things right, but this time, I have no bloody idea how. Please help me."
"I'm too tired, Rory."
"You said that yesterday. Taking care of me has drained you."
"Yeah." I shut my eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry."
"I'm the one who needs to apologize. Again and again, for all eternity if that will help." He tentatively laid a hand on my knee. "I miss you, Emery. I can't sleep without you."
"Did you not sleep when you were in France?"
"Not well, but that was different. I knew I'd be coming home to you. Now…" He drew in a breath, his lip quivering. "I no longer have the luxury of assuming you'll be there when I wake up in the morning."
I'd missed him so much last night, it felt like years had elapsed instead of a single day.
Rory rubbed his jaw. "Not signing the contract was a mistake because I broke a promise to you. But I don't regret not signing it, which I suppose is a contradiction. Can't help that. I never wanted to break a promise to you, but I couldn't bring myself to sign the contract. You told me you didn't care about the money, you didn't marry me for it, and I believed you."
"But?"
He inched his hand closer to mine, a finger's width away. "Part of me couldn't accept that anyone, especially a woman as vibrant and passionate as you, could want me without the enticement of money. Isobel cared for money and status more than love. I tried to become what she needed, tried until it had eaten up a part of me I may never get back, but it wasn't enough."
Unable to move, unwilling to move, I simply stared at him. Never before had he bared his soul to me like this, not even that day on Skye.
His fingers twitched as if he longed to touch me but feared I'd reject it.
I walked my fingers toward his until the tips of mine slipped between them.
The relief on his face made tears sting my eyes.
"You are not Isobel," he said. "I know this. You never needed anything from me but love, and I couldn't believe I deserved that. Mentioning the contract every time we grew closer… You were right. I used it as a wedge. I also used it as a sort of insurance policy, to keep you around even after you got tired of me. Not signing the damn thing, that was a sign I should've recognized sooner if I weren't such an eejit. I couldn't do it because I didn't want you to stay for money. I wanted you to stay for me."
"But I didn't know you never signed the contract." I shifted in place, unable to find a comfortable position on the bench. "Besides, it was the other stuff that mattered more. You don't trust me."
"I do."
"Really? You thought you had to pay me to stay. You wouldn't explain why you got drunk on our wedding night, or a ton of other things."
He nodded toward the empty space on the bench next to me. "May I sit beside you?"
"Do what you want."
He settled onto the bench, keeping a discreet distance between us. "I've been a bastard, I know. You have no reason at all to come back to me, but you are wrong. I trust you. The things I said over the past few weeks, they came from my fears and had nothing to do with you."
"Nothing? Come on, Rory."
"Well, they had something to do with you." He angled toward me, laying an arm atop the bench behind me. "The more time I spent with you, the harder it was to deny the truth. I fell in love with you, Emery. My behavior at the wedding, that was the day I realized how much you mean to me. When I saw you coming down the aisle toward me, in that fairytale dress with your hair gleaming in the sun like a halo. Your smile was so sweet and full of… love. And I knew I love you, more than I've loved anyone in my life."
I remembered his shell-shocked expression and the way he'd acted uncertain, confused, afraid.
"Getting buckled is a mistake I'll regret forever," he said, his voice soft and rife with emotion. "You deserved a perfect wedding, particularly after the way I bulldozed you into marrying me in front of a magistrate. Realizing I love you, it turned me into a bampot of the worst sort. I knew if you left me, and I was certain you would, I would never feel this way again."
He'd been certain I'd leave him? The statement sent my thoughts rewinding, replaying an assortment of conversations we'd had and the little things he'd said. When I complained about separate bedrooms, he'd told me, "Once you've lived with me for a while, you'll be glad of the privacy." After I inadvertently called him baby and suggested it meant I liked him, he'd replied, "You'll change your mind about that soon enough." Then there was his behavior, requiring separate bedrooms, locking himself away in his office sixteen hours a day to avoid spending time with me, not wanting to have sex until the wedding. He'd chalked that up to respect for our mothers, but I'd suspected at the time he wanted to keep his distance as a prophylactic against developing feelings for me.
So what had I done? Pushed him to be with me.
No wonder he'd gone a little crazy.
I wrapped my arms over my belly, feeling sick from a physical nausea and the sudden realization of my own role in this debacle. "This is partly my fault, I'm sorry."
"How on earth is it your fault?"
"You told me, in your own way, you weren't ready for a real relationship. I agreed to a marriage of convenience, then I demanded you care about me." I sank back against the bench, and his arm supported my shoulders. "I pushed you at every turn, tried to make you change. That's what Isobel did to you. I convinced myself I was your therapist." I snorted at my own arrogance. "And that you needed my help — wanted it, even. I drove you to drink. That's my doing."
"Emery…" He inched closer, his fingers grazing my shoulder. "Nothing is your fault. You put up with me no matter what I did, forgave me every time I acted like a bastard. Your love changed me, not because you forced me to do anything, but because I couldn't help loving you. I need you with me, and I have evolved."
"Just like that? It's been a day, Rory." With him so close, and his arm behind me, I longed to crawl into his arms and never leave. But had we really resolved anything? "Nobody changes overnight. You want me to come home, but that doesn't mean anything will be different if I do."
"I didn't change overnight." He brushed a lock of hair from my face. "You showed me how to love again. It took weeks. It took too much effort from you and not enough cooperation from me, but it happened. Last night without you, not knowing if you'll ever come home, I finally gave up being afraid of this. I will do anything for you. Please believe me, m'eudail."
Pain twisted around my navel again, and my gorge rose into my throat. I gulped it down, but the first beads of a cold sweat chilled my skin.
"You're unwell," Rory said.
He reached out to touch my forehead, but I batted his hand away.
"I've got the flu," I said. "Probably caught it from the chickens."
"Chickens?"
"You know, bird flu." I groaned. "Never mind, dumb joke."
He scrutinized me, lips tight, eyes searching. "Let me take you to a doctor."
"No, I'm fine, really." I heaved my body off the bench, and though I turned toward him, I couldn't meet his concerned gaze. "I need a nap, that's all. And you need to do more thinking before you announce you've overcome your fears. Please, go home. I'll call you tomorrow."
"I don't need more time, Emery. I need you." He unfurled his body from the bench, still inspecting me with a worried furrow in his forehead. "But I'm more concerned with your health today. You need a doctor."
"I need sleep." And a toilet or a bucket, because I felt on the verge of vomiting all over his nice leather shoes. "We'll talk more tomorrow, okay?"
; Without waiting for his answer, I hustled into the house with a shuffling gait, my feet heavy, and tripped over the threshold. Though I glimpsed Rory galloping after me, I slammed the door shut. Can't deal with this now, can't think about it. I staggered forward a few steps.
A sharp pain sliced into me on the lower right side, piercing straight through my body. I gasped, doubled over, and emptied my stomach on the pretty wood floor.
"Emery!"
Footsteps punctuated Erica's exclamation. Her arms came around me.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "I ruined your floor."
"What? Oh for heaven's sake, I don't care about the floor." She laid her palm on my forehead. "Sweetie, you're burning up."
"Might wanna find a bucket."
Erica hugged me to her side. "Lachlan! Hurry, something's wrong with Emery."
Her husband dashed out of the kitchen. "Ambulance?"
"Get Rory," Erica said. "He can get her to the hospital faster."
Lachlan stomped to the door, flung it open, and hollered, "Rory! Get in here, man, your wife needs a doctor. Now."
Footsteps pounding. Voices murmuring. Erica let go of me as a pair of larger, stronger arms hoisted me off my feet. I found myself in Rory's arms, clutched to his chest.
He cursed in Gaelic. "I'm taking you to hospital."
I nodded.
My husband barreled toward the Mercedes.
Lachlan hastened to open the back door, and Rory laid me tenderly on the backseat. He swept hair from my face and kissed my forehead.
"Donnae worry, love," he whispered. "I'm taking care of you."
I lunged my head forward and threw up on the floor.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I surfaced from unconsciousness with my eyes closed, groggy and confused, lying on a bed. The event that had brought me here replayed in my mind. The drive to the hospital. Rory carrying me into the emergency room. Nurses, doctors, questions. After a CT scan, they'd delivered the diagnosis. Appendicitis, they'd said. Need surgery, they'd said. Rory stayed by my side until they wheeled me off to the operating room.
Throughout the whole ordeal, he'd stayed calm and alert, asking questions I couldn't think of and ensuring the medical people had all the information they needed. He'd sat by my bed while we waited, combing his fingers through my hair, a reassuring smile on his lips.
Something creaked beside me.
I pried my lids apart and rolled my head in the direction of the sound.
Rory shifted in his uncomfortable chair again, eliciting another creak from it. His attention was focused on the badly creased home decor magazine he held.
"Hey," I said.
With a start, he dropped the magazine. "Emery, you're awake. How are you feeling?"
"Like I got sliced and diced." I managed a faint smile for him. "Thank you for coming with me."
"Of course I came." He scooted his chair closer to fold his hands around mine, the one with an IV stuck in its backside, careful not to put pressure on the needle. "I haven't taken care of you, but that changes now."
I shifted on the bed, feeling stiff and like I'd been cut open in several places. The incisions were small, the surgeon had told us before I went in.
"Easy," Rory said in that calm voice. "You've only just woken. Are you in pain?"
"Some."
He released my hand to scurry outside, returning a moment later to reclaim his place at my side. "A nurse will bring medicine for you."
"Thanks."
"Stop thanking me. I have more than enough to make up to you to fill several lifetimes." He focused on my hand, once again ensconced in his. "Will you let me look after you while you recover? I have no expectations of what will happen once you're well. But I'd like to care for you."
"Rory, about what I said earlier. I was sick, and I didn't mean —"
"Hush." He brushed the backs of his fingers over my cheek. "You're not to make major decisions for at least a week, two would be better. Anesthesia impairs your thinking."
"But I know what I —"
One finger on my lips, he silenced me. "No arguments this time. Wait two weeks. Then we can discuss things."
I knew better than to argue with the resolute solicitor. He wouldn't believe anything I said if I told him now, anyway. Maybe waiting a couple weeks was the right move.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead. "The surgeon says they'll release you later this evening. I can take you to Erica and Lachlan's if you'd feel more comfortable there."
"Oh Rory." I raised my unencumbered hand to his cheek. "I want to go home. With you."
A smile struggled to take hold, and his lips twitched and quivered with the effort until, at last, he mustered a vulnerable smile. "No more secrets, Em. I promise."
I nodded.
He held his cheek to mine.
No anesthesia made me want to go home and be with my husband. An epiphany accompanied by vomiting seemed strange, but I'd known the moment he scooped me up and rushed me to the car that I belonged with him, and that he had evolved. If he needed to prove it to himself, I could wait. In two weeks, I'd tell him.
I was staying, for good.
*****
Two weeks sounded like a long time, in the context of our quickie marriage, but the days seemed to fly by too fast. I wanted to memorize every second of these days, because for the first time since I'd met him Rory was not obsessed with work. I woke every morning to find him beside me in bed, still asleep or lying there waiting for me to wake up. Every morning he did the same thing when he noticed I'd awakened.
He smiled, leaned in to kiss me sweetly, and said, "Good morning, mo gaoloch."
Sometimes he'd substitute the old favorite m'eudail for mo gaoloch. I had no idea what those words meant, and I didn't want to ask and risk spoiling the mood, though from his tone of voice and the softness in his eyes I knew they were endearments.
The first morning post-surgery, he whipped up a sumptuous breakfast for me. Blueberry pancakes with loads of butter and maple syrup, both bacon and sausage, and scrambled eggs to boot. I'd slept downstairs because there was no way I'd make it up three flights to our bedroom. Rory had offered to carry me, but I opted for sleeping in the guest wing instead. We opted for it. He refused to go upstairs until I could walk up with him under my own power.
When he'd laid that breakfast out for me on the dining room table, I'd grinned and laughed. "Wow, you sure know how to treat a girl. Not sure I could eat this much in three days, but I'll give it a shot."
"You don't have to eat all of it." He scratched his jaw, eying the spread with a sheepish expression. "I may have overdone things."
He kept overdoing a lot of things, in a good way.
Like the afternoon when we'd lounged in the sitting room. He'd dragged the sofa over to the windows so I could enjoy the view while taking it easy, with a fleece throw over my legs — Rory insisted I must stay warm — and a mug of hot cocoa clasped between my hands.
After a period of quiet relaxation, Rory left his chair to perch on the sofa beside my hip. "I love you, Emery. Do you believe me?"
"Yes, I believe you." With one cocoa-warmed hand, I stroked his cheek. "I love you too."
He covered my hand with his, fastening it to his cheek, and turned his face into my palm to kiss it. "About Graham… I didn't assault him for my sake. His ridiculous article didn't humiliate me, it humiliated you, and I could not stand for that. Before you walked into his office, I'd threatened him with everything I could think of to make him issue an apology — to you."
"That apology was aimed at me?"
"It was." Rory rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. "Donnae care what the scunner says about me. But when he slandered you, I had to make it right. Would've skelped him bloody, if necessary. Graham has moved to Liverpool to be with his mother. As for Sebastian, he checked himself into a psychiatric clinic. The investigator determined Sebastian doesn't have the pictures of you anymore, and Graham admitted h
e found only the one image, on a website that archives other sites. The owners of that site complied with my demand they delete the image immediately. It's over, Emery."
Over? I had no idea how to process that fact.
"Thank you doesn't seem like enough, Rory. No one's ever fought for me before." I leaned forward to touch my lips to his. "You are my knight in a kilt."
"I've made too many mistakes to earn that designation." He twined our fingers, absorbed with the movements. "You were right. All those rules, I invented them as a means of keeping you at a distance. Didn't work. I think about you even when you're miles away."
"That a bad thing?"
"No." He aimed his beautiful smile at me. "It's wonderful."
On the second day, when I'd gotten sick of wandering the halls for exercise, I tried to walk outside. Rory had lunged between me and the vestibule door.
"Where are you going?" he demanded.
"For a walk."
"You can walk indoors. It's too soon to leave the house."
Stifling a laugh — really, his overprotectiveness was adorable — I'd tamped my humor down to a closed-mouth smile. "I can handle strolling around the front lawn. The doctor said I should get up and moving right away."
"He didn't say traipse into the wilds where you might break your stitches."
"It's staples, not stitches."
"That's worse. The staples might pop loose."
I took his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his. "Rory, you adorably silly man, I will be fine. Come with me. It'll make you feel better, and I'd love the company."
From then on, he'd taken me for a walk every day. I amused him with all sorts of descriptive phrases in the vein of "cute" and "adorable," some that made him roll his eyes and others that made his smile go steamy. On the fourth day of pampering, I'd finally asked him the question that kept niggling at me. I was reclining on the sofa in the sitting room while he kicked back in his big chair by the windows, ankles crossed, gaze on the vista beyond the glass.
"I think you've worked a total of three hours in the past four days," I said. "What happened to all that vital, important work that used to keep you busy sixteen hours a day?"
