The Art of Persuasion: Book 4 of The Swashbuckling Romance Series

by Myers, Heather C.

  Matt shakes his head. I know he doesn’t get it. Hell, I don’t even get it. There’s no way I can rationalize Henry’s motivation for anything so I won’t even try. Instead, I focus on Matt’s arms around me and my head on his chest and my ear listening to his heart beat over and over again. It gives me focus. It reminds me that this is real, that he’s real and not some dream my head conjured up so my conscious could teach me a lesson.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” he murmurs into my hair, kissing the top of my head and rocking me back and forth.

  I don’t ever want him to let go. I want to stay in his arms forever and I never want to leave.

  “You okay, then?” Sarah asks.

  I pull away from Matt but he doesn’t let me out of my arms and I’m glad. I watch her wipe Henry’s blood on the skirt of her dress. Before I can stop myself, I lean over, as far away from Matt and myself as I can possibly go, and retch up all the contents of my stomach, as much as I have in there.

  Matt holds my hair back – which, I’ve decided, is one of the most romantic things a guy can do for a girl just after jewelry, flowers, and chocolates – and rubs my back. Sarah makes a face but keeps her comments to herself. I don’t care what anyone thinks, personally. I just watched a wife impale her husband with a cutlass. How no one else is throwing up, I don’t have a clue. My reaction is normal.

  When I finish, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “I think I’m ready for bed,” I tell Matt.

  The only thing I do regret about throwing up is the bad breath that accompanies it. Matt doesn’t seem to care, however, and plants a closed-mouth kiss right on my lips. He’s the grossest, sweetest guy I’ve ever known.

  “Let’s get you to bed, then,” he says with a smile of utter happiness that I can’t help but smile back.

  The world is okay again. Even though it’s dark and uncertain, he provides that calm stability I never knew I needed, and I’ll never let go.

  .

  Chapter 23

  “How is she?”

  I keep my eyes closed even though I’m awake and I know Sarah’s talking about me. I can feel Matt shift from beside me and I tense my body up to restrain myself from stopping him from leaving. He’s been by my side constantly the past few days, which is sweet. Henry didn’t hurt me too bad so I’m fully capable of walking around and using the restroom on my own. I don’t even feel smothered where I want to scream at Matt to give me a few hours to myself, which is how I thought I’d be.

  Instead, I love having him around. I love having him near me. I don’t care that we haven’t been separated for seventy-two hours – except when I had to use the restroom; I’m not a weirdo – I haven’t gotten sick of him yet and I highly doubt I’ll get sick of him at all.

  Which, to me, is a very good sign for our relationship.

  Thankfully, Matt doesn’t leave the bed, but he’s angled himself away from me so he can speak without disturbing me too much.

  “She’s fine,” he assures her. “She’s just resting.”

  “Good,” Sarah says. I can still hear the distance in her voice so I assume she’s still standing in the doorway. “She needs all the rest she can get.”

  I can feel Matt move – I would be he nods his agreement – but he doesn’t say anything. He has my hand in his lap and his fingertip is tracing mindless patterns on the inside of my wrist. I’m glad I’m not ticklish, but the intimate gesture makes my insides erupt in goosebumps.

  “Henry?” he asks after a moment of silence. I’m not sure if it’s awkward or not – I don’t think it is – but there’s something heavy among us. Something that needs to get resolved before everyone can relax and things can resume normally from this point on.

  “Gone,” she replies, and there’s no emotion in her voice, though maybe I’m mistaken and there’s too much that it comes out void. All I know is her voice is flat, thick, and weighted, but I can’t be certain of her feelings or what she’s thinking. Sarah is a tough nut to crack and a part of me believes she’s not even certain how she feels regarding the whole situation. Except that Henry is gone and she’ll never see him again. Especially not after what he did to Matt. “The authorities took him away. They almost didn’t until Stephanie returned and gave her statement. They believed the whore over a pirate’s sister and established business woman.” A noise came from her nose – possibly a weird mix of a snort and a grunt.

  “Can they prove it was him?” Matt asks.

  “Isla did that for me,” Sarah says. I tense at the mention of my name but hope I’ve kept my breathing steady so Matt doesn’t notice. “She solved the whole thing, didn’t she? The girl’s smarter than she looks, I’ll say.”

  I frown at the backhanded compliment.

  "Be careful with her, Matt," Sarah says. "You break her heart, I'm sure she'll break your neck."

  "Is that..." Matt cuts himself off and I can picture him shaking his head. "Is that your way of saying you approve of her? And me? Together?"

  I hear a snort and a sigh come out of Sarah simultaneously. She has talent, that one. But I feel my heart slow down, causing my chest to tighten. Her answer is important to me. I know that Matt will be with me no matter what she says but it would be so much easier if she just approves of our relationship. I understand that she's the most important person in Matt's life right now and probably will always be. And that's okay. Who am I to try come between them? But I also know I'm important, too. I could care less what Sarah thinks of me but I know it's important to Matt. And if it's important to Matt, it's important to me.

  "Honestly, Matt?" Sarah finally says. "Isla is one of those girls that only comes once in a lifetime. And if she's from the - where you say she's from - then she is once in a lifetime. I don't think anyone will ever be good enough for you. But if she makes you happy and if you say you love her, I understand that's a lot coming from you. And I trust you. I just want you happy."

  "Isla makes me happy," he assures her. There's warmth in his tone and something else. Love. He loves me.

  I know he's told it to me. But there's something about hearing it, something that makes it even more authentic. It makes my heart turn into a bunch of butterflies. It makes my blood turn into rainbows. It makes my pulse dance to a bubbly beat. It makes my lips curl up despite my best efforts.

  "You can stop pretending, Isla," Sarah tells me even though my eyes are still closed. "We know you've been awake for a while now."

  I pop one eye open and Sarah gives me a look. I shrug my shoulders and sit up. She rolls her eyes.

  “Supper is in an hour,” she says. “I won’t wait for you. Neither will the girls, so if you want food in your bellies – good food, I might add – you won’t…” She gestures, her face turning the color of her hair. I bite my lip to keep from laughing at her discomfort. “Just… if you… Supper. Okay.” And she exits then, with that last outburst of awkwardness.

  I start laughing out loud.

  I pop one eye open and shoot Sarah a smile. She rolls her eyes and walks out of my room, closing the door behind her. Matt doesn't even watch her go. His eyes are focused primarily on me, on my face. His fingertips are brushing my cheeks, where Henry slapped me. There's a wrinkle between his brows and a small frown on his lips.

  "It's not your fault," I tell him. My voice is scratchy and raw. I'm still tired and Matt knows it.

  "It is," he insists, though his voice gentle, it's firm. "If I had just listened to you instead of arguing with you, if I had just" -

  I place my finger over his lips and it immediately silences him. I let it linger and he presses them into a kiss. I smile.

  "We were both being dumb," I tell him. "You were right though. A part of me was jealous of the two of you. I didn't like seeing you kiss anyone" -

  "She kissed me," Matt says. He's not defensive anymore but it's important that I know he's telling the truth. "I promise you, I will never lie to you, Isla. Corsa and I have a brief history where we slept together a few times. Sh
e got jealous whenever I would speak to anyone else, including Sarah. It's why I thought she killed the girls - I considered both close acquaintances. And before you ask, no, I did not sleep with them. I assumed that seeing you with me triggered something in her and she was working through the girls she perceived as threats until she got to you. I confronted her that night. She was going to tell me everything but instead of talking, she kissed me. And that's when you walked in."

  I want to look away. These are things I definitely don't want to hear. But I force myself to hear him. I force myself to acknowledge his words with a nod because he needs to know I believe him, even if it's not something I want to hear.

  "But I've never felt anything close for anybody the way I feel for you," he says, curling an errant strand of hair around his finger. "You are everything to me, Isla Barnes. From the minute you appeared in my bedroom in nothing but your starkies, my life was changed. It wasn't even mine anymore. It was yours and it will always be yours, for as long as you'll have me."

  "I want you for a long time, Matt," I say. "I need you to know that because I can't, I don't know what I would be if you left."

  My eyes water with tears. I don’t know why this happens because I’m definitely not sad. If anything, I’m happy, I’m grateful, I’m so fulfilled and content, I could explode the way a firework does. And to be honest, I’m a little bit afraid because now I have something to lose. And I can’t lose Matt. No matter what, I can’t lose him.

  "Don't say that," he says, wiping away a tear that slipped down my cheek. I hadn’t even felt it fall. "I would never leave your side. I'm not the one with the ability to travel through time. I'm not the one with that choice."

  My eyes spring open. My choice! My choice! I've made my choice, I think it's always been my choice regardless of my inner conflict. Do I have to tell Becky directly or is it something the Universe just knows because I don't want to leave Matt. I can't. Not after everything we've been through. Not after the love I discovered I could feel for him.

  How silly of me, to have even debated this, when it’s always been Matt. He’s always been my choice. I wish Becky were here, so I could drop to my knees and thank her, so I could apologize for being such a smartass, resistant bee to everything she was trying to say. I don’t care if she throws it in my face for the rest of my life. All I care about is being with Matt now until forever. And she’s responsible for that. I wish I could thank her for all she’s done.

  I swallow. My throat feels tight but I don’t know why. I don’t know what to say. I think I’ve stopped crying because there aren’t any more tears but I also can’t be sure. All I know is I have this love for Matt and there are no words for my feelings, no words to accurately describe how I feel to him. And that’s the real tragedy, isn’t it? Because no matter what I do, no matter what I say, he’ll never know how much I love him. All I can do instead is to vow to show him, to tell him as best as I can, just what he means to me and how happy I am that he’s in my life in any capacity, let alone my…

  Boyfriend doesn’t feel right. Not only because it’s a historical time period but because boyfriend seems a little juvenile, especially for someone as adult as Matt is.

  He’s my partner. My equal. My other half, though I feel whole in of myself. He’s just the cherry on top.

  Instead, I pull him close to me so my lips caress his ear and his hair falls in my face and I can feel the locks dance across my skin.

  “I love you, Matt Scott,” I whisper to him. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  I feel him smile against my cheek. I somehow know that Becky knows, that the Universe knows. I feel a permanence with Matt. No matter where this life takes me, no matter where I end up, I realize that where he goes, I go, where he is, I am. Home isn’t a place. Home isn’t somewhere to be, somewhere I grew up or somewhere I live. It’s not something familiar.

  Home is a person. Home is Matt. And with Matt, I’m home.

  The End