‘Oh, Jared, I love you so much!’ she whispered inanely.
‘I rehearsed it a million times but I couldn’t get it right. I was so scared you’d say no.’
‘How could you think that?’
‘Because I’m a man,’ he laughed huskily against her pale hair. ‘And I hate being vulnerable.’
‘I love you this much because you’re vulnerable. You so rarely show it, yet it’s a part of you that makes me weak with love, darling, so weak I—’
‘You can afford to be weak. You’re a woman.’ He touched her face with a strong, loving hand. ‘It’s so different for me. And, no matter how many times you’ve made it clear that you like the idea of marriage, I still felt nervous.’
Her smile was tender. ‘Is that why you let me see your experiments with our names?’
‘I arranged it all very carefully,’ he confessed. ‘I made sure the offices were deserted. I left you in here for just long enough. I knew you’d sit in my chair. You always do when I’m not around.’
Tears stung her eyes. ‘It’s such a wonderful chair…’
‘Just as I knew you’d read our names. I figured if you read them and didn’t want to marry me, I’d know as soon as I walked in.’
‘I’ve wanted to marry you since the day we met!’
‘People can change their minds, darling. I was so afraid that you might have changed yours.’
‘But I was never the one against marriage.’ She lifted her head to stare in wonder at him. ‘It was always you. I can’t believe you’ve even asked me. When did you decide? What happened to change your mind?’
‘You happened,’ he said deeply. ‘You. I started to change the minute I met you. I knew it even as it was happening. But it was such a slow, gradual process, Clara. Everything started to unravel the night we met, but there was so much to unravel that it’s basically taken the full two years to get me to this point. And you were right. It was fate that Susie had the accident.’
‘I kept telling you it was fate,’ she said with a loving smile. ‘I just knew it, even as I was praying for her to recover and railing against the terrible injuries she’d suffered. But everything seemed to fall into place from the minute you arrived in Rhossana.’
‘No. It started falling into place before that. Long before Susie’s accident. Long before the wedding. It really all began the night I met you and saw myself reflected in your beautiful eyes.’
‘Ah…’ She studied him.
He smiled, reading her expression accurately. ‘Yes. Do you know why I fell so heavily for you in just one night? It was when you told me that your parents had died in a fire when you were eight years old.’
Clara stared into his blue eyes, realising the full impact her words must have had on him. She remembered saying it to him, that was the odd thing. She remembered every second of the night they had met.
‘What else did you say, Clara?’ he asked, touching her face.
‘That my parents had died and that a part of me had died with them for ever,’ she whispered, and shivered in his arms as she realised anew the enormity of the love between them, which had sprung up so powerfully that very first night.
‘It was as though I’d lived it myself,’ Jared told her deeply. Tears sheened his blue eyes. ‘I loved you that very first night. And I wanted to tell you my story even then, Clara. It was the first time I had ever wanted to tell anyone. But something in me couldn’t. I just…’ He looked away, too moved to continue, and she saw the tightening of his mouth as he fought to control his feelings.
‘You were too used to living behind that wall of silence.’ She said it for him, her voice husky with love.
‘Yes, but I knew you were the one. I knew it before we even left the party. I couldn’t sleep when I got home. All I could do was remember my own past. I was burning inside with the need to tell you, and thought I’d never be able to do it.’
‘I was deeply affected too,’ she confessed, holding his hand and stroking the long fingers. ‘I remember sitting there, with you, hearing myself say all that and thinking: Why am I telling him all this? What’s making me talk this way?’
‘You probably sensed a soulmate in me as soon as we met.’
‘Oh, yes. I sensed that.’
‘And although I couldn’t bring myself to tell you about my father, I knew if I could tell anyone, it was you. That’s why I insisted you move in with me so quickly. I figured if I kept you around on a daily basis, I’d one day be able to tell you everything. And I hoped, somewhere right at the back of my mind, that telling you would break the spell. That I’d be able to break out of that terrible silence. That I’d be free for the first time. And that some day I’d be able to start considering marriage as a real-life maybe instead of a total impossibility.’
‘I can’t believe you felt like that from the very beginning.’ She was amazed at what had been going on in his complicated mind the whole time she’d been living with him. ‘You always seemed so completely against marriage. You said you’d never marry. Never.’
‘I was used to saying and thinking it,’ he admitted. ‘But, darling, I’m very human. I wanted love. I wanted you to be mine for ever. I—I wanted children, too.’
‘Blackheath and Son International!’
‘I need someone to inherit all this.’
‘Darling, I’ll give you a whole rugby team!’
‘I want them born in Wales.’ He suddenly pulled her into his arms again, crushing her against his powerful chest, and she listened to his heartbeat as though it were the most important sound in the world.
‘Do you want to live there?’ she asked his chest.
‘I want a home there.’ He drew back to look at her, face tight with controlled emotion. ‘I want to buy a plot of land on the outskirts of Rhossana. Design and build my own house. And I want it to be the most unusual, beautiful and unique house that’s ever been built on Welsh soil! Will you be happy to live in Rhossana? It won’t be all year. We’ll just go there for weekends, brief holidays—that kind of thing. I can hardly move my whole business empire to a tiny little seaside town in the middle of nowhere. There’d be nothing left for my sons to inherit!’
‘I’ll be very happy to live there.’
He studied her in silence for a second, then said deeply, ‘I want to call our first son Bryn.’
‘I think that’s a lovely idea.’
‘And I’ll call the house Blackheath Manor.’ He frowned thoughtfully. He’d obviously been planning all this for some time, perhaps since they’d first arrived in Rhossana a week ago. That complex brain had been ticking over all these problems and working out ways around any barriers it found.
‘Blackheath Manor sounds lovely,’ Clara said, interested to hear more and encouraging him to tell her all his secret plans. ‘I’m sure your father would have been very proud if he’d seen it.’
‘It’s going to be the most unusual design, Clara!’ His eyes shone with excitement as he felt and responded to her encouragement. ‘I’ve already figured it all out!’
Clara smiled, knowing full well that he had.
‘A towering white house with a central square surrounded by spherical towers, and turrets and triangular wings extending on four sides.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Goodness! What on earth will the townsfolk think of it?’
‘That it belongs to Jared Blackheath,’ he drawled, with an arrogant glint in his eyes. ‘Built and designed by him, worth millions and sitting in the middle of fifty acres of the richest land in all Rhossana!’
‘What a wonderful monster you are!’
‘And,’ he enthused, ‘I’m going to commission a twenty-foot-tall oil painting of my father from the best artist in Europe! Bryn Blackheath when he was young, well-loved and the most handsome man in town. I’ll have it hung at the top of the grand staircase once the house is built.’
‘And then throw a big party,’ she suggested, ‘inviting all Rhossana as well as half the most famous, glamorous and wealthy pe
ople in the land?’
‘Stop pinching my ideas!’ he drawled, and kissed her nose.
Clara laughed softly and then said, ‘Is that how you want our wedding to be, darling? Full of the glitterati and—?’
‘No.’ He grew serious again. ‘But, on the other hand, I don’t want it to be conventional. I couldn’t handle it, Clara.’
‘The paparazzi?’
He shuddered, then looked uncertainly at her and said in a halting voice, ‘I—well, I started to think in Wales…’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘I’d quite like to get married on the cliffs of Rhossana Bay.’ He watched her carefully for any sign of disagreement. ‘With you in a long white lace dress, barefoot, with flowers in your hair. Very bohemian. Completely untraditional. And I’d just wear—say, grey trousers and a white shirt. But no jacket, no tie.’
‘And who,’ she asked with a loving smile, ‘would marry us that way?’
‘Well, I was thinking of Dai Williams’s father.’
‘Isn’t he the local priest? Would he be allowed to conduct a ceremony like that?’
‘So long as it was all above board and totally legal, I don’t see that there would be a problem.’ He gave a fond smile. ‘The seagulls would be our congregation. Gareth and Susie would be our only witnesses. And we would marry at dawn, secretly, so that nobody else knew we were there.’
Clara kissed him. Romantic man, she thought. I knew he was, as soon as I saw those passionate blue eyes. Imagine Jared wanting to get married at dawn on the cliffs overlooking a Welsh sea. Most people would see him marrying at a sophisticated city cathedral, with hundreds of guests going on to an expensive party at an even more sophisticated hotel.
‘Would you be happy with that?’ he asked deeply.
‘Delighted,’ she said, kissing him.
‘Of course, we’ll have to fit it around your filming schedule.’ He frowned, that complex brain starting to tick over the problems again. ‘You’ll be filming this series for five months, won’t you? And then I’d want to make you pregnant…’
Her heart somersaulted with love. ‘Yes…’ Her fingers linked with his. ‘Pregnant right away. As soon as the cameras stop turning I want to start making babies with you.’
‘What if you win the award, though?’ He studied her anxiously. ‘It might make you discontent to just be—’
‘I’ve always wanted to be barefoot and pregnant for you, darling. Ever since I met you. What makes you think an award for Best Actress will change that?’ She slid her arms around his neck, pulled his head down towards her to kiss him, and murmured against his lips, ‘I’m a woman before I’m an actress. I’d much rather win Best Lover, Wife and Mother Award from you than anything anyone else could ever give me…’
His mouth burned down passionately over hers, and as she returned his kiss wholeheartedly she thought how wonderful life could be if you just followed your feelings, remained patient, trusted fate and believed in true love.
She’d always wanted children. Just the thought of being pregnant was suddenly more wonderful than any other thought she’d had. Next thing on the list, she thought with delirious happiness, is to be barefoot and pregnant…
And eight months later, she achieved her goal.
She also won the coveted gold statuette for Best Actress, but Baby Bryn rather disgraced himself when he was two by trying to feed it to the dog.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1110-0
RED-HOT LOVER
First North American Publication 2002.
Copyright © 1998 by Sarah Holland.
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