And No Regrets
Page 18
“I—hope not,” he said deliberately. “Why did you look after me when I had fever?”
“Humane reasons—I wouldn’t see a dog suffer—”
“Why were you so jealous of Patsy?” His voice soft-stroked her.
“I—I was your wife—”
‘You’re still my wife.”
Something in his tone—something she had never heard before—made her pulses race. “You—you might, have told me the truth about Patsy at Bula,” she said shakily.
“I was using her as a sort of last defence against your invasion, Clare,” he said deliberately. “Someone once said that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. That was me till I met you—and even afterwards, for a long time. Then without doing a thing, you got to work on me—”
His voice went on, soft yet crisp. With the months her influence had gained strength. He’d half expected it, living with a woman in that environment, but had been unprepared for the sudden shock of finding himself not merely fond of her, but desperately in love with her. Did she remember the night he had gone out after the leopard?
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That was it,” he said laconically.
Well, the fires had gone on leaping, but he hadn’t trusted them. Common sense told him that their aloneness together in the bush had caused attraction to spark. He was determined to believe it just an attraction.
“We didn’t question each other, you and I,” he said. “Neither did we ever admit, in words, to any deeper emotion than liking. I thought it better to let that situation go on—for your sake.”
“For my sake?” She raised her head and looked at him with big, wet eyes that were just beginning to believe all this. “You thought it wrong to keep me with you in the bush?”
“You’ll never know the hell I’ve been through,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “watching you grow thinner, hearing that time that you’d fought a fever all alone—”
“Ross,” she put a hand against his cheek, “anywhere with you would be heaven, and if I looked as though I was pining, it was because you were sending me away when with every particle of my heart I wanted to stay.”
He lifted his own hand and pressed it over hers, then drew it round until her palm was under his warm lips. “I really thought I could let you go, until you started talking about going home to England with Carter. My arrogance couldn’t support that.” He gave a short laugh, and his breath fanned warm against her arm. “You’re my wife and I’ll live in a cottage in a rustic English village, if you want that, Clare.”
“Such a setting wouldn’t suit you at all, Ross.”
“But if it’s what you want—” His face had a wrenched look that tore furiously at her heart. “It’s what you want, honey, that counts.”
“I want you,” she said very simply. “I’ve never wanted anything else but you....”
And then she drew back a little, unready for the sudden blaze of love in his eyes, the unleashed love of a very masculine male. “You still don’t know everything about me, Clare,” he spoke passionately. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever known myself. I’m sure of this, though—” she felt his sudden ferocious grip on her hands, “I might well kill the next man who so much as looks at you.”
For a long moment the threat seemed to hang vibrant in the air. A dark tress of hair had fallen forward over her eyes and he pushed it back, letting his fingers linger and slowly move round to the nape of her neck. “Clare,” his voice had grown raw, “I want to take you right inside where I live, if you can bear that?”
She nodded. She was no longer afraid of anything. “Oh, Ross,” she said, and was suddenly swept hard and close to him, to suffer the fierce possessiveness of his arms, and the hard, sweet strength of his kisses.
“I love you, Clare.” He spoke it against her eyes. “I want to keep saying it, over and over. I love you.” Sweet music to which she could have listened for ever ... let it never fade or die.
“Take a good long look at me,” he smiled wryly and held her a little away from him. “I inhabit this body no longer. It has been taken over by a dark little slip of a thing ... a rather beautiful slip of a thing, I might add.”
He stared down into her eyes, his own eyes merciless with love. Then she smiled, her hands tightened on his shoulders, and the scent of his flowers was all about them as the boat steamed on towards Lagos ... where they would both disembark for Bula. Three wonderful honeymoon months at Bula, then the world was theirs.
Table of Contents
Start