Lovers Not Friends
Page 16
‘Oh, Blade.’ She shivered in the warm darkness. ‘How terrible.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was grim now. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man. Jim knows her mind is sick, but he couldn’t believe what she’d said to you. Apparently she told him you were upset at finding her so ill when he asked why you left crying that time. She’s eaten up with hate, Amy, riddled with it, but he’ll stay with her until the end. He’s that type of man.’ He looked at her for a long moment as she sat trying to absorb what he had said. ‘Would you like to see a picture of your mother?’
‘You have one?’ Her face lit up as a sudden thought occurred. ‘Is she—’
‘No, she’s not alive Amy, I’m sorry.’ He reached into his pocket for a dogeared photograph. ‘She died shortly after she’d had you in some sort of accident, which was one of the reasons Sandra’s mother went overboard. From that point she convinced herself she really had given birth to you, you became hers.’ He placed the faded snapshot in her hand gently.
‘It’s me.’ She looked down at the beautiful smiling face as a little shiver snaked down her spine.
‘Uncanny, isn’t it?’ Blade shook her gently as she continued staring at the photograph in dumb shock. ‘You understand what all this means, Amy? The future is ours again to do with what we want. No nightmares, no bad dreams. You can be yourself again.’
‘But I don’t know who I am any more.’ She raised her head to stare into his dark eyes. ‘It’s a strange feeling, Blade.’
‘You’re my wife.’ He kissed her tenderly, the burning passion that he was trying to keep in check flaring through as he felt her response. ‘And you’ll be our children’s mother. But most of all you are what you have become in the last twenty-two years. You have an identity in your own right, sweetheart, compounded of all the things that have made you you. You are brave and strong and incredibly selfless, you’re my beautiful, beautiful Amy and I love you more than life itself.’
She felt the tears hot on her face, but couldn’t have explained why she was crying. Maybe it was for the parents who were never hers, the sister who had never been a sister, her mother who had been grateful to give her away, but then, through the tears, the glorious realisation burst like a ray of white-gold sunlight. She was crying also with relief, with thankfulness, and with deep, deep gratitude that she had come home at last. Blade was her family, he always had been from the moment they had met. In him she was complete.
‘Let’s go and make a baby, Blade.’ She suddenly flung herself on him, smothering his face with kisses as she felt the hunger grow inside her. ‘This is the first day of the rest of our life, and we are going to have fat bonny babies, hundreds of them. I want to make love all day long every day.’ She began to laugh through the tears, her voice ecstatic. ‘And all night too.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ His face was ablaze with relief at her reaction, his body hard and strong as he gathered her into him. ‘But we’re not going anywhere. This first one can be conceived under the stars with the heavens open above us.’
And he was.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1113-1
LOVERS NOT FRIENDS
First North American Publication 2002.
Copyright © 1994 by Helen Brooks.
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