In reality it took him less than ten.
He was out of the car before the engine had completely died and took the stairs two at a time, throwing his summer jacket at Finn on the way to her room. “Jess! Where the hell were you? I’ve been worried sick—”
“Stop worrying. I’m fine. The babies are fine.” Her voice cut through his frantic response, cool and measured, and as her tone registered, he stopped in midstride.
“Did something happen?” he asked cautiously.
“No.” Again her tone was cool.
Something was wrong, very wrong, but he couldn’t imagine what it could be. He studied her for a moment. She looked fine, if a little pale.
Then he realized what she was doing. Packing. There was a half-filled suitcase on the bed and she was systematically emptying each of the drawers of her dresser. “What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
Frustration began to eat at the edges of his control, fueled by the adrenaline still rushing through his system. He hadn’t meant it in a literal sense. “Why?”
She shook her head, looking down at the bag she was filling. “Because. I’m going to move out. This marriage was a mistake.”
The panic gave way to a bone-deep fear. And an equally deep anger. “A mistake? What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve been acting weird for weeks, and then I get a call from Mort Brockhiser telling me you walked out in the middle of your appointment and he was worried you had gotten ill.”
“Ah. Mr. Brockhiser. Your good friend.” Her voice began to heat around the edges. “Your good friend the banker mentioned today that you’d offered to back up my loan application.”
“I—what?” He was taken aback. “That’s not right. I never—”
“He told me,” she said heatedly. “So don’t bother denying it.”
“I am denying it!” Ryan fell silent, his mind reviewing every scrap of his chance encounter with Brockhiser. He’d never…then his own words came floating back into his mind. What had he said? That he’d back anything she attempted? Hell, he hadn’t meant it literally. “Uh, I think you—and Mort—misunderstood what I said.” He strove for a calmer tone.
“It doesn’t matter.” She dismissed his overture with one crushing line.
“It matters to me. I told him if I were a banker I’d back anything you chose to try, because I believe in you,” he said stiffly. “Not because I intended to throw money at a bad risk.”
“It’s not a bad risk.”
“I know that!” he roared. “Didn’t I just say so?”
Jessie sank to the edge of the bed, massaging her back and sighing. “Look, Ryan, I’m sorry if I worried you. If I misunderstood anything, I’ll apologize for that, too—”
“You did.”
“But this—” she gestured absently around the room “—isn’t going to work.”
“What isn’t going to work?” He was afraid he knew what she meant, but he didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to believe it.
“Our marriage.”
“Why?”
“You only married me to get children!” she shouted.
“And you married me for the same reason!” he shot back, goaded beyond endurance.
There was a shocked silence in the room as the harsh words ricocheted over and over in the sullen atmosphere.
“And, of course, for my money,” he added bitterly.
“For your money?” She sucked in a deep breath, and her voice was outraged. “If I wanted your money so badly, then why am I so upset about you horning in on my loan?”
The question hammered at his mind for a moment, but he recovered swiftly. “Oh, I guess the room-by-room lists of valuables were just for fun.”
She stared at him blankly. Then her gaze sharpened. She stood and walked to her dresser, yanking open the top drawer and withdrawing the rest of the papers he’d found that day, tossing them wildly into the air, where they fluttered accusingly to the carpet. “If you’re talking about these, ‘just for fun’ is exactly what they were. Something to keep my mind off the fact that I was going stark raving mad lying here incubating. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask Finn. It was his suggestion.”
Her face was paper white now, and her hands were shaking as she turned away from him and picked up the sweater she’d discarded, tossing it in the suitcase without folding it. The small gesture was a measure of how truly upset she was, since the Jessie he knew wouldn’t even toss dirty clothes in a basket without folding them first.
“Jess,” he said quietly. Desperately. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I have to,” she replied equally quietly.
“Where? Where will you go?” Suddenly he was fighting for his marriage, his very life.
“I’m staying at the Hilton over near the Hynes Convention Center for three days. Then I’ll be moving back into my condo.”
He was stunned. “Your condo? I thought the lease was up at the end of this month.”
“I renewed it,” she said tonelessly.
I renewed it. The words were meaningless for a moment. Then, as he absorbed the blow, every ounce of hope drained out of him. She hadn’t just made that decision today—she’d only left the bank two hours ago. Which meant… “You never intended to stay married to me, did you?” he said, swallowing the pain that rose in intense waves to pummel his heart. “This was some temporary measure…for what? If it wasn’t the money, then why?”
She sat down again carefully, holding her hands under the bulk of their babies as if the extra weight hurt. “I thought it would work.” For the first time she looked fully at him, and there was a wealth of suffering in her eyes. “We had friendship—and I was pretty sure we would have passion, like you said—but I can’t live my life like this, Ryan.” She stood and walked awkwardly to the window, and her fingers were white on the sill. “It’s not enough. I never expected to have a real marriage and a real family, but you made me want it all—” She shook her head blindly, then threw it back to stare at the ceiling, and he could hear tears in her voice. “I can’t compete with a ghost. I’ll never be Wendy. And if you ever meet someone who can give you what you had with her, I don’t want to be around to watch. To be in the way. It would hurt too much.”
Dear God. Was she saying what he thought—hoped, prayed—she was saying? He started forward. “Jess—”
“No.” She flung out an arm, and he stopped. “Don’t. We’ll share the children, I promise you that. I won’t move away and I won’t deny you equal time. You’ll be able to—”
“Jessie!” He was nearly shouting. Again. Two strides brought him to her side, his heart beating a frantic rhythm in his chest. His fingers trembled as he reached for her shoulders and gently turned her around.
She was crying. It hurt him to see her tears, but hope and happiness were rising so rapidly he couldn’t focus on the pain. “Jess…are you saying…” He took a deep breath, knowing that if he were wrong, if he’d misunderstood her, his life as he knew it, needed it to be, would be over. He tried again. “Do you love me?”
Her eyes were deep, emerald pools, shimmering with tears that seemed to double their pace as they rolled down her face. She nodded.
She nodded! He exhaled without even realizing he’d been holding his breath. “Do you know,” he said carefully, his hands sliding down from her shoulders to grip her upper arms lightly, “how long I’ve loved you? How many years I’ve wanted you?”
She stared up at him, mesmerized by the intensity of his blue eyes as he held her gaze. She swallowed. “You…you love me?”
He shook her the tiniest bit, very lightly. “I love you. I’ve loved you forever.”
She couldn’t take it in. “But, you never told me—”
“You never seemed interested in hearing it.” His voice was soft, and echoes of old hurts vibrated.
She remembered other times when they’d skirted the edges of the past. Carefully, afraid to believe it, she said, “But when I came back to Boston you already w
ere married. I was…so shocked. And…hurt, too.”
His face grew even more sober. “I gave up. When you went south, I knew I didn’t have a chance. Then Wendy came along—”
“Don’t.” Quickly she reached up and placed her palm across his lips. “I understand. I don’t ever expect to take her place.”
“No,” he agreed. “You can never take her place.”
The words twisted like a knife deep in a wound, and she grimaced, lowering her head to hide her expression from him. You can deal with it, she thought to herself. He said he loves you, too.
“But that’s because you owned the largest piece of my heart long before I ever met Wendy.” His voice dropped. “I did love her, but there was a part of me that always recognized—and regretted—that she wasn’t you.”
Shock rippled through her and she sagged in his grip.
He made a sound of alarm, then maneuvered her to the edge of the bed, lowering himself to sit beside her with one heavy arm around her back. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. Then she raised a palm to the side of his face, closing her eyes briefly in pleasure at the feel of his warm, beard-stubbled jaw beneath her hand. “All these months,” she whispered, “I wanted you to love me. And now…you do.” She shook her head. “Pinch me. This is a dream.”
Ryan chuckled, the sound filled with relief. “I can think of a lot of things I’d like to do to you, but pinching you isn’t on the list.” He turned his face into her hand, pressing a slow kiss into the softness of her palm. “God, I love you. I’ve loved you forever, it seems.” He raised his gaze to hers. “Tell me.”
“I love you.” Her words were low and intense, and she leaned forward, inviting him to set his mouth on hers.
He gathered her closer, one arm around her, the other resting on her bulging belly. Gently, tenderly, he took her mouth in a kiss so sweet she felt more tears rising. “I have got to be the luckiest guy in the world.”
“And I’m the luckiest woman,” she added.
“Does this mean you’ll reconsider moving out?”
Her face fell as she remembered his reaction to her lease renewal. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I guess…it’s hard for me to let go of my independence.”
“Because you’ve never been able to depend on anyone else,” he said. “But I promise you that I will always be here, for whatever you need. If you don’t want my money, that’s fine. If you want it all, that’s fine, too. We’re one now, in all the ways that count.”
And she felt the same way. Once she’d feared commitment, her fear buried deep down in a place she hadn’t even been able to acknowledge. She’d been afraid that letting herself love would open her up to more of the heartache she’d experienced as a child, when she’d longed for love from people who didn’t have it to give. And because they hadn’t, she’d told herself it was better to live without it.
She smiled, tracing his lips with a tender finger. “Actually, we’ll soon be four. Isn’t that a scary thought?”
He shook his head. “Not in the least. Not when I know I’ll be sharing the future with you.”
Epilogue
“Catch, Daddy!”
Ryan put up a hand almost reflexively as a surprisingly well-aimed baseball came flying straight at his chest the moment he stepped out of the garage. “Hey!” he said, wincing as the ball stung his bare palm. “Wait until I change clothes and get a glove, okay, Liv?”
Olivia Shaughnessy spit elaborately onto the ground as only a four-year-old could and came swaggering toward her father. “Okay.”
“Where’s your sister?” Ryan scooped his eldest terror up in one arm and nuzzled her neck as she shrieked.
A window opened on the second floor. “Olivia!” Jessie’s dark head emerged. “I just got Tyler to sleep, and if you wake him, I swear I’ll serve you for dinner. Oh, hi!” Her face lit up as she saw that her husband was home. “Be right down.” And she vanished.
“Lanie’s helpin’ Finn paint Matthew’s room,” Livvie informed her father. “I was, too, but I got tired of painting.”
“I see.” As the back door opened, he glanced over his daughter’s shining copper curls, drinking in the sight of his wife standing on the stoop. She held a struggling tot on her hip, and she blew her hair out of her eyes with pursed lips as she smiled at Ryan.
“Look, Mattie! Daddy’s home.” The little boy squirmed down and raced over to attach himself to Ryan’s kneecap.
“Hi, squirt.” Ryan scooped up his nearly three-year-old son in his free arm and kissed him noisily, noticing splatters of blue paint liberally applied to the little hands. “Were you helping Finn, too?”
“Uh-huh.” Matthew held up his hands and regarded them, frowning. “Dirty.”
“Yeah.” Ryan squatted and set both children down. “Why don’t you guys go in and tell Finn it’s quitting time. Then wash your hands and get ready for dinner.”
He stood, smiling as they raced off, and opened his arms. Jessie came into them, sliding her hands around his waist and up his back beneath his summer suitcoat. “Hi, handsome.”
His heart skipped a beat at the warm, loving glow in her eyes. Dropping his head, he sought her mouth, enjoying the feel of her still-slim curves pressed against him. Would he ever get used to being loved by her? Even now, after five years and four children, she still had the power to turn his knees to jelly when she smiled. Her love was a miracle in his life.
“How was your day?” he asked. “Tyler still so bent out of shape?” Their youngest son would be six months old tomorrow and he was teething. Last night they had taken turns walking the fussing baby.
“Not so bad.” She pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, speaking against his skin. “That tooth is finally through. He took good naps today, and I bet he’ll sleep better tonight.”
A shiver of sexual pleasure ran down his spine at the feel of her soft, open mouth on him, and he ran his hands down her back to cup the warm curves of her bottom. “I hope so. I have big plans for tonight.”
She laughed, pressing herself closer against the unmistakable evidence of his “plans.” “You certainly do,” she murmured.
“Only if you’re not too tired, though.” Although his need for her was as strong as it had been the day they’d first made love, he knew that overseeing four children and a thriving business, even with the help of Finn and Penny, could be exhausting. The nights when he did nothing more than hold her in his arms were as sweet as the nights when they wrecked the bed, simply because there was no one else in the world with whom he’d rather spend his life.
“I got a nap today,” she said, unaware of the direction of his thoughts.
“Good.” He kissed her again, lingering over her, leisurely drawing her tongue into his mouth and tenderly exploring hers as he drew her closer against him. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “The day you decided you wanted to have a baby was the luckiest day of my life.”
“The day I decided it should be fathered by an ‘eminently available hunk’ was mine,” she said, her eyes dancing as he picked her up and carried her into the home that rang with the joyous sounds of the family they’d created together.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0320-4
BILLIONAIRE BACHELORS: RYAN
Copyright © 2002 by Anne Marie Rodgers
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 editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
&nb
sp; This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit Silhouette at www.eHarlequin.com
*Butler County Brides
Billionaire Bachelors: Ryan Page 16
