He smiled a little that she should defend his behaviour. His eyes looked quite different now, tender, whimsical, saying something she didn't as yet understand. But she was no longer afraid of him and very tightly she wrapped her arms about his neck. "I love you so . . . oh, please don't mind," she added, when he gave a start. "I've loved you all along, desperately. And because I love you, I want you to go on living. I can't bear the thought of being in this world without you, even if we must live apart in the future."
He trembled a little and she softly kissed his face.
"Don't be afraid, Ross. Axel Wright is a splendid surgeon, and I'll come with you to England. I'll be your faith if you've none of your own."
"My faith?" He framed her face in his hands and for a long moment he gazed into her eyes. He saw the love in them, the love he had never dared to look for.
"Oh, Fern," he groaned, "I wanted to walk out of your life as I walked into it, leaving you free, without any sad memories to haunt you, or a child to rear all on your own. I wanted to be a mere incident you would forget in the end."
"Ross !" She almost whimpered his name as he caught her close and buried his face in her hair. They clung closely in a kind of terror, for the barriers between them were beginning to fall and their feelings were sweeping them out turbulently on a dde of sheer release. He kissed her neck, then found her mouth, and afterwards he passionately whispered :
"From the moment I set eyes on you, with an almost boyish clamouring I had thought long dead in me, I wanted to hold you like this, kiss you as I have just kissed you."
Then she heard a rueful little laugh escape him.
"I couldn't help thinking you the loveliest creature I had ever seen, and I just couldn't deny myself the pleasure of flirting with you a little, but I never meant it to go any further. I wasn't even certain what was happening in my heart until the night I came to your
room with that wretched headache. You took away my pain, and invaded my heart for all time."
She couldn't take the words in for a moment, then their incredible, wonderful, lovely truth burst like a golden thunder inside her. "Darling ... oh, darling!" It seemed the only word she knew and she wanted to go on saying it for ever. "My darling!"
"Your wretched darling," he corrected. "I couldn't keep my hands off you. I've done exactly what I swore to myself I wouldn't do, and now you want a man who has chosen to die rather than live as half a man."
"That doesn't have to happen, Ross."
"There's a damn good chance of it happening."
"Won't you take a chance on it not happening, for my sake—mine and our baby's?"
"The—baby's?" he exclaimed
"Yes." She smiled at him. "You're going to be a father."
Self-reproach struggled with sheer delight in his eyes, and delight won. "You're quite a gal, aren't you?" His voice was deep, warm and utterly loving. "Quite a gal."
"Mm," and to prove it she suddenly gave him a hearty shake, "and your gal is ordering you to have that operation."
"Now don't bully me, I'm still in a state of shock." Then his face grew serious again. He held her close and gazed straight down into her eyes. "Sweetheart, could you bear it if I had the operation and it left me an invalid?"
"I want you," she gently replied, "in sickness and in health; for better or worse." "Me—and no one else?"
"Always you, since first we met." She lifted a loving hand and touched the drifting bronze curls on his forehead. "You didn't really believe Gladys Hammond's gossip, did you, Ross?"
"I guess I did for a while," he admitted, looking shamefaced. "You did care for the darn guy at one time."
"We both cared for other people at one time," she reminded him.
"Touche!" He laughingly dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. "But what I felt for Laraine was boy-girl stuff to what I happen to feel for you, you deceptively demure little thing. I love your loveliness. I love your warmth, your generosity, your laughter ... a thousand and one little things I learned to know about at Jenny's lodge. When we went home, after being at the lodge, I was going to ask you to stay with me. Then it seemed wrong of me, because at that time I had no intention of putting myself on Axel Wright's chopping block again."
"And now, darling?" She waited breathlessly for his reply.
"If you have faith, lovely, then I must have it too. Whatever happens, we'll be together."
And then she was utterly sure that everything would be all right. They would come back to Monterey next year and they would bring their baby with them. All three of them would play in a sunshine that would hold no more shadows.
Cap Flamingo Page 20
