by Lucy Monroe
“Yes. I tried.” She was looking at Amber again, her hazel eyes filled with appeal. “But when I arrived in Boston with you, I had to research George Wentworth. I couldn’t give my baby over to just anyone even if he was your biological father. I was frightened of what would happen to me, but even more terrified of losing you. I was going to plead for mercy…I hoped…” She swallowed a sob. “I hoped that he would let me visit you. But when I researched him, I discovered he was a merciless shark. The article had said something about how even personal tragedy had not slowed him down businesswise. He acted as if he’d never lost a daughter and didn’t notice the one he still had.
“I knew the man described in the articles I read about him and by the employees I managed to talk to would press charges and I would end up in prison. I would have faced that…but learning how he treated the daughter he still had was something else altogether. He ignored her. She was raised by nannies and servants and hardly ever saw him.”
She looked at George as if she couldn’t quite believe he was the man she was describing and then back to her daughter. “You were such a loving little girl and affectionate. You would have shriveled up and died under that kind of care. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give you back. And he never changed. I kept tabs and watched his daughter Eleanor be sent to boarding school when she was barely eight years old.”
Helen’s eyes filled with tears as she met Ellie’s gaze. “It hurt so much to see you treated like that. I loved your sister with all my heart and you by proxy. I couldn’t change your life, but I couldn’t let your father do the same thing to Amber.”
“I understand,” Ellie said. And she did. Someone looking from the outside might not, but she’d lived that emotional wasteland. “I’m glad my sister escaped having a childhood like mine. I’m glad you were there to love her.”
“But she needed me. If you’d given me back, we would have had each other,” Amber said in a low whisper.
“I thought of that and I just couldn’t sacrifice your happiness for hers.” Helen buried her face in her hands and started to sob. “I’m sorry.”
Ellie’s dad moved to sit on the other side of Helen. He pulled her into his arms and just held her as if he alone in that room could understand her mother’s pain and guilt. And perhaps it was true. If everything he’d said over the past week plus was true, he carried a load of guilt for his treatment of Ellie easily as heavy as Helen’s.
“If my biological father was such a horrible man why isn’t he threatening prison and yelling at her?” Amber asked Ellie, her eyes filled with a confusion Ellie understood only too well.
“He almost died a couple of weeks ago and it changed him. I think he really loves me finally and I know he’s going to love you.”
“But, Mom?”
“Nothing is going to happen to your mom. Dad doesn’t want to hurt her and neither do I. I only want to know you. I’d like to know her, too, if she’ll let me. She was a good mom to you. She took care of you and after hearing her story, I’m convinced she didn’t do anything with malice.”
“Are you for real?” Amber asked. “Nobody reacts like that to something like this.”
Sandor laughed, hugging her. “Ellie is a special woman.”
“I’m glad.” The controlled facade cracked for just a second as Amber’s chin wobbled. “I don’t want my mom hurt.”
“She won’t be,” George said with conviction as he continued to hold the crying woman. “She did better by my daughter than I did. I stopped looking for you after only a year. I have no excuse for that. I was a rotten father to your sister, but she loved me in spite of it.”
“There are worse fathers than you were, much worse,” Ellie said.
“Thank you, sweetheart, but when I remember the times your eyes so like your mother’s begged me to show a spark of affection and then I didn’t…I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You hugged me sometimes.”
“I bet you remember every single time because those times were so rare.”
“You really were a bastard,” Amber breathed.
George flinched. “Yes. I was and I thank God, Ellie never gave up on me. I’ve seen the error of my ways. I want to make up for them. I think we can build a family now. All of us, if you’re willing.”
“I won’t leave my mom out.”
“Like Ellie, I would appreciate the chance to get to know her, too.”
At that Helen pulled out of his arms, wiping her face. She looked ravaged, but at peace and just a little bemused. “I’ve been so terrified for years. I can’t believe things are happening this way.”
Ellie’s dad grimaced. “They wouldn’t have…a few weeks ago.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t find me then,” Amber quipped.
Ellie agreed, but said nothing. The visit continued on a more positive note from there. Strangely, though, Ellie felt herself pulling into the background, listening to her dad talk with Amber and Helen. She soaked up everything they all said and enjoyed hearing it, but she couldn’t participate.
If Amber felt stunned and traumatized by events, so did Ellie. She still wasn’t used to having a dad that wanted to be a dad and now she had a sister and that just blew her away. She’d been alone so long, she wasn’t sure how to be part of a family and she wondered in a distant part of her mind if that was one of the reasons she’d put off talking about her relationship with Sandor.
She was scared of giving in and becoming part of a family and having it all taken away again. It was the kind of fear only someone who’d lived so long on the fringes of other people’s happiness could understand. Her mind worked out the disturbing thoughts as she listened to the others talk.
She learned that Amber was in town for a shoot and planned to meet back up with Miguel afterward. She was very animated when she talked about him and that made both Ellie and her dad smile. At some point, Sandor ordered dinner to be delivered. They all ate, still talking.
It was late when Sandor stood and said, “Ellie needs rest. It has been a very traumatic few weeks for her. Perhaps this visit can continue tomorrow?”
Amber looked at Ellie and bit her lip in a gesture Ellie recognized. “You haven’t been talking much.”
“I’m soaking it all in. I’m um…not used to being part of a family,” she said, exposing one of her inner revelations.
“Our dad seems so wonderful now, it’s hard to believe he raised you the way he did.”
Ellie smiled. “He’s not as bad as everyone is painting him.”
“Yes, I was.”
She shrugged. “Then it doesn’t matter. You’re my dad and I love you. I always have and I always will, but this family thing…it’s going to take some getting used to. I like it a lot, though.” She smiled again, hoping they could all read her sincerity.
Amber nodded. “I have a feeling I’m going to like you a lot, too.”
“You are going to love her, just as she will love you,” Sandor corrected with a warm smile. “She is infinitely lovable and it is clear you are a very special woman, too.”
Ellie felt faint. Okay, that was the second oblique reference and that meant she wasn’t imagining them.
Her dad cleared his throat. “I would like to stay here a while longer…to talk out what I learned from my legal counsel with Helen in regard to the kidnapping and the statute of limitations and such.”
“Is everything going to be okay?” Ellie asked. “She won’t go to jail?”
“She will not. I have already put efforts into motion to assure that Helen suffers no more from the tragedy of her past.”
“You did that before you even met us?” Amber asked with awe in her voice.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” She jumped up and hugged him.
Ellie felt a twinge…not of envy, but of sadness. She did love her dad, but she wondered if she would ever have the easy relationship with him that her sister was already developing. Even if she didn’t, what they had was so much better than wha
t she’d known growing up, she wouldn’t ever moan for things to be different. She felt truly blessed. Overwhelmed, but blessed.
“Then you all don’t mind if I go to the hotel?”
“No, of course not. I am very glad you have someone to take care of you like Sandor,” Helen said, just as if she was Ellie’s mom, too.
It was nice.
Ellie discovered that Sandor had booked them into the same room at the hotel when he followed her into it and closed the door behind them. She noticed his suitcase as well as hers had been delivered from the plane and stood against one wall side by side.
“We share a room?” she asked.
“Always.”
She nodded and Sandor went very still. “What did that little nod mean?”
“What did the oblique references you’ve made to love today mean?” she countered.
“That I love you,” he replied without hesitation.
“No. You can’t.”
“I assure you, I do.”
“But you don’t believe in love.”
“Belief is not always necessary for a state of being. I learned quickly enough how much I love you when you refused to come back to me, or talk to me about our future.”
“Not before then.”
“I was slow, but what I lack in speed to the mark I make up for in longitude.” He pulled her into his arms. “I will love you forever.”
She buried her nose in his chest, breathing in the beautiful scent she associated only with him. “I thought a man loved me once, but I was wrong,” she whispered against him.
“Your other lover?”
She tilted her head back to see his face. “You’re so sure there has only been one?”
“Yes. Your heart is connected to sexual intimacy for you. You would not allow a man you did not love into your body and if you had loved another after him, you would have married.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. Only a fool would let you go if you loved him.”
“You are so sure another man would have loved me back?”
“I am positive it is a foregone conclusion.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You are irresistibly lovable.”
“He didn’t think so.”
“The first lover?”
“Yes.”
“He was an idiot.”
She nodded, having come to the same conclusion but for different reasons. “I was nineteen. He was my bodyguard. I mistook sexual pleasure for the love of a lifetime until I overheard him talking about what a score he was going to make marrying me. He wanted a piece of my dad’s empire and wasn’t above using me to get it. He had it all planned. He wasn’t even normally a bodyguard. He was trained in business, but took the job to get close to me. Apparently everyone knew how my dad ignored me and he thought I’d be lonely and easy to seduce. He was right. He even had sex with me without protection in hopes of getting me pregnant. Thankfully it didn’t happen.”
Sandor’s arms tightened and anger radiated off of him with palpable force. “That bastard.”
“Yes, he was. He taught me a valuable lesson, though, sex is not love.” Would he understand what she was asking without her actually asking anything?
“No, it is not.” This time he kissed her temple and then her lips, oh so softly. “Sex is something a person can live without, but if you take your love from me, I will wither and die.”
“You did not just say that,” she choked.
“I did.”
She shook her head.
He nodded. “Oh, yes. What happened to the bodyguard?”
“I told my dad I thought he was sexually attracted to me. That he’d made advances. He fired him. He never knew it had already gone way beyond mere attraction to final follow-through.”
Sandor pulled her to bed and tumbled them both down onto it without letting her go. They remained facing each other, lying on their sides. “I am sexually attracted to you, Ellie. More than is comfortable in any sort of clothing.” He illustrated by pressing an unmistakable hardness against her. “But I love you, too,agape mou .”
“What does that mean?”
“My love.”
“Oh.” He’d called her that before.
“Is it my crazy man behavior before you realized you had a sister? You forgave your father far worse, can you not forgive me for accusing you of being with another man?” He really seemed agitated about it.
She cupped his cheek. “I know the pictures were damaging. If I’d argued with you, I would have convinced you it wasn’t me and to help me find out who she was. I knew that. I was much angrier about your deal with my dad.”
“You use the past tense. You are no longer angry?”
She shook her head with a sigh. “What would be the point? Holding onto anger just leads to bitterness and that twists a person’s soul.”
He didn’t look appreciably comforted by that statement. “But you still do not wish to marry me?”
“I can forgive, but I don’t know if I can trust and I need to trust you to marry you.”
“I did not tell you about the deal because I knew it would upset you.”
“You were right.”
“But I would have wanted you even if your father had not made his offer. From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you. Your father noticed my interest. It was only after doing so that he made his offer.”
“He told me that. He said he thought I was interested, too.”
“You were.”
“I was,” she agreed.
“Ellie, I need you to be mine for a lifetime. You can trust me. I will never hide anything from you again.”
“Because you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Like with your mom?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m scared, Sandor. I realized tonight that I don’t know how to be part of a family. I don’t know how to believe in the goodness going on around me…how to believe that you can love me.” The admission hurt.
But he shook his head decisively. “You are fooling yourself to think that. Belief is something you are very good at. You had faith in your father for years when anyone else would have given up on him. You had faith in me, or you never would have come back from Spain prepared to marry me. You’re a woman full of faith and I’m the man prepared to prove to you that it’s grounded in something real.”
“You think you can do that?”
“Give me a try.”
She stared at him. It couldn’t be that easy. “Is this the happily ever after from the fairy tales?”
“I am no knight, but I think, Elliemou , that this is the happy beginning of two people so much in love they cannot live apart.”
“You won’t leave me?”
“Never.”
“I won’t have to be alone ever again.”
“I will be your anchor and you will be my sea, surrounding me, washing over me, keeping me always with you.”
“And you will stay steadily always with me.”
“Yes.”
“I do love you, Sandor.”
“Mama said you did.”
“She did?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When?”
“When I cried in my coffee over losing you.”
“You did not.”
“I most certainly did. You can call and ask her, but later…right now I have something else in mind to do with your mouth.”
She’d opened it to ask him what when he kissed her.
She’d been isolated for so long, and now she had a family. A whole family. Warmth and gratitude filled her as her brain lost contact with reality under Sandor’s loving and provoking kiss.
Ellie went back to visit her sister the next day as promised and this time, found that she could not keep quiet. They talked and talked until once again Sandor was declaring it time to return to the hotel. They stayed in Southern California for three days, returning to Boston with Helen and Amber’s promise to come to visit very soon.
&nb
sp; When Ellie and Sandor were married a month later, Amber stood up for Ellie while George Wentworth, Helen Taylor and Hera Christofides looked on in teary-eyed bliss. There was another man there. He looked familiar, but Ellie was sure she’d never met him. When he put his arm around Hera Christofides and smiled down at her, Ellie almost fainted.
She turned to Sandor right in the middle of their wedding vows and blurted, “You found your father.”
