Façade

by Jessica Steele

  Ellis smiled his confirmation. 'I thought my heart would stop when I heard you ask me to marry you,' he confessed. 'For a couple of seconds I couldn't believe it. My God, I thought, she does trust me—she trusts me— she must do. Then—Oh God, is she saying she loves me?'

  'All that went through your mind when…'

  'Yes, my darling,' he said, gathering her up close. 'But it was too much to take in in just a few seconds.'

  'So you had to ask why.'

  'Thank God you trusted me enough to tell me. These last weeks since you told me plainly that you would be happier never to see me again—and I had to take it—have been hell.' His cheek was near to hers, she kissed it, and was pulled closer still.

  With both of them hungry for physical contact, many minutes passed in the flat without a word being spoken. And Sorrel's cheeks had a warm look to them when, still wanting, Ellis pulled his head back to look into her love-filled eyes.

  'Thank God,' he said then on a relieved breath, 'even if there are a few gaps in the eight years we have to fill in, that at last we have the most essential matter settled.'

  In Sorrel's view, she had been more than a little forward already. 'You mean—er—about us getting married?' she asked uncertainly. But she knew she had got it right, when Ellis kissed the tip of her nose, that quirk breaking as he teased:

  'Don't, for the Lord's, sake go coy on me at this stage, Miss Maitland—or I'll make you wait a week before I take you up on your proposal, instead of the three days I have in mind to make you Mrs Galbraith.'

  'You wouldn't?' A smile of pure happiness beamed from her as she asked the unnecessary question.

  'No,' he agreed, 'I wouldn't. I've waited too damn long as it is,' he growled.

  His eyes were on the laughter in her eyes when she heard the words she had doubted hearing that day he had taken her in out of the rain. Though, if what he said broke from Ellis again as if without his known volition, there was no doubt in her mind about what she was hearing this time. For it was all there, in his look, in his fractured breath, as:

  'God, how I love you,' he said.