“No,” Jefferson muttered, realizing just how foolish that statement sounded when said aloud. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?” Justice asked. “Are you saying Anna would want you alone and lonely for the rest of your life to prove that you loved her?”
Jefferson thought about the young woman he’d loved and lost so long ago. “No,” he admitted, “she wouldn’t have.”
Odd, but for the first time, he realized that the mental images he had of Anna and their time together had grown hazy. To be expected, he guessed, since time had a way of dulling the edges of pain or grief. Leaving behind only the vaguest feeling of guilt for having to live on. To keep breathing while the one you loved was gone.
“Jefferson,” Jesse said softly, “if you had a child already, would you be able to love the one Maura’s carrying?”
“That’s a stupid question,” he shot back.
“Is it?” Jesse laughed at him. “You’re standing there telling us that you can’t love Maura because you already loved Anna. How does that make sense?”
It wasn’t just loving Maura that made him feel as though he were somehow betraying Anna, Jefferson thought with a glaring flash of insight. It was the fact that what he felt for Maura was so much more than what he’d once known. But he couldn’t tell his brothers that. They already thought he was crazy.
While it was hard, he realized that the love he’d had for Anna had been a young man’s love. Innocent in its way and it had ended before it could be tested. But he could love more now, deeper now, because he’d lived longer, knew more, had experienced more. His life had made him more than he had been at the time, so he was capable of feeling more than he’d been able to at twenty. Was it really that simple? Had he missed this revelation somehow because he’d been so determined to give Anna the loyalty he’d thought she deserved?
Justice was right. Anna wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone and empty for the rest of his life in some bizarre tribute to her. A heavy load slid off his heart as he drew a deep, easy breath for the first time in weeks.
“God knows I’m no expert,” Justice was saying. “Took long enough for me to realize what an ass I’d been in letting Maggie go. But I wised up in time. Are you gonna be able to say the same?”
Jefferson’s hand tightened around the beer bottle. He knew what he wanted now, but would he be able to make Maura believe him?
“Yeah, I am,” he said aloud, imagining the look on Maura’s face when he showed up on her front porch at the farmhouse. “I’m going back to Ireland.”
“For how long?”
He looked at Jesse. “Permanently.”
“What about the studio?” Justice asked.
“I can handle it by phone and fax,” Jefferson said, setting his beer down onto the closest table. “And I can be back here easily enough if I have to handle something in person.”
“You? On a farm?” Jesse asked with a broad smile.
“Me on a farm,” he repeated, already mentally arranging his move to the country, the woman he loved. “Why’s that so hard to believe? Hell, we grew up on a ranch! Maura would never be happy anywhere else and I can work from anywhere. Besides,” he added with a wide smile, “I have to get back. Find out if Michael’s grandchild has been born. See if Cara’s moving back to London. And it’s lambing season, so Maura will be shorthanded…”
“Lambs?”
Jefferson laughed at Justice’s horrified expression. “I know. You’re a cattleman to the bone, but you’re going to have to come visit our sheep.”
God, he felt like he could climb mountains, run all the way to Ireland with his feet never even touching the water. He knew what he wanted. And he wouldn’t settle for less than all. If Maura didn’t agree right away, he’d just kidnap her, haul her in front of the village priest and marry her whether she liked it or not.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said, checking his watch and mentally calculating the time he would need to tie up some loose ends and then get to the airport.
Jesse and Justice exchanged a glance and ordinarily, Jefferson would have been curious. But at the moment, he was too busy planning his reunion with Maura. He left the house, his brothers right behind him. But when he got to his car, he stopped.
“What the hell happened?”
All four tires were flat. The small, sapphire-blue sports car was practically resting on its rims in the dirt of the drive. Jefferson looked at his brothers. “Do you know something about this?”
“Hey,” Jesse said, lifting both hands, “don’t look at me.”
Justice scrubbed one hand across his jaw and muttered, “I told the man one tire.”
Before Jefferson could say anything to that, the throaty purr of an expensive engine rolled toward them. He looked up to watch a King family limo, all shining black paint and chrome, glide up the drive. “What the…”
Justice clapped one hand to Jefferson’s shoulder. “This is why the flat tires. We had to keep you here. Although, Mike was a bit more thorough than I’d planned.”
“What are you talking about?” His gaze was still fixed on the limo as the driver hopped out, opened the rear door and Maura stepped from the car, looking straight at him.
“Don’t screw it up,” Jesse muttered.
Justice shoved him and said, “We’ll be in the barn. You two take your time.”
Jefferson never even saw them leave. His gaze was fixed on the woman he loved and he couldn’t have looked away if his life had depended on it. He wasn’t betraying Anna by moving on. He knew that now. The living had to live. And he had no interest in doing that without Maura.
From the moment she’d stepped foot onto the King family jet, Maura had felt as though she were walking into a fairy tale. Surrounded by luxury, she’d flown halfway across the world for this moment. She’d slept in a bed thirty thousand feet in the air. At her arrival in Los Angeles, she’d been swept into the private opulence of the limousine and driven off down freeways choking with more traffic than she’d seen in her lifetime. And through it all, she’d had one thought in her mind. Getting to Jefferson. Making him see all that he was giving up when he turned his back on what they’d found.
When the limo turned into the long, winding drive of the King ranch, she had felt a slight stirring of nerves. Anxious, she had worried that going with her instincts might not have been the best idea. But she was committed to her plan and she wouldn’t back out now that the moment had arrived.
Yet when she stepped out of the car, all she could do was look at Jefferson. He looked wildly handsome in his white shirt and black slacks with the wind ruffling his hair across his forehead. Even the baby inside her jumped and kicked, feeling the excitement of being with its father again.
Maura felt the hot, dry wind tug at her hair and burn her eyes. Surely that was the reason her vision was blurring with unshed tears. The King family ranch was a lovely place, what she noticed of it, but her gaze locked unerringly on Jefferson.
“Maura,” he said, taking a step toward her.
“No. Stay there, if you please.” Instantly, she held up one hand to keep him at bay. If he came too close, she might give in to her urge to run into his arms, when what she needed to do was stand her ground and speak her heart. “I’ve come all this way to have my say, Jefferson King, and you’ll do me the courtesy of standing there to listen.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said.
“That’s for me to decide,” she told him and paid no attention as the driver of her limo discreetly slipped off in the direction of the barn. “I’ve spent the last several hours thinking of exactly what I want to tell you and now I will.”
“Fine,” he said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Have at it.”
“Good then. Where to begin?” She took a deep breath, met his eyes and said the first thing that came to her mind. “You’re a bloody fool to walk away from me, Jefferson King.”
“That’s what you wanted to tell me?” he asked, sm
iling. “You came all this way to insult me?”
“That and more. I’ll say this to your face as it’s not something a woman wants to tell a man over the telephone.” She walked toward him then, steel in her spine and fury in her steps, despite her earlier hesitation to be too close. “The reason I refused to marry you when you offered me a cold, empty marriage for the sake of our child or for convenience’s sake was because I love you, you great ape of a man.”
He gave her a slow smile. “You love me.”
“I did. I do. But don’t hold that lapse against me.” Sputtering now, as thoughts crashed through her mind in a kaleidoscope of images and words, she wondered where her carefully rehearsed speech had disappeared to. Then she gave it up and spoke from the heart. “Though I love you, I won’t marry a man who won’t love me back.”
She glowered at him, seeing him now through her tears and anger and wanting nothing more than to throw herself into his arms and taste his kiss on her lips again. “So I’ve come to tell you that refusing to love another out of loyalty to your first wife is a foolish waste—though I’ll say it speaks well of you to remember her and care for the memory.”
“Thanks,” he said, then added, “God, I love you.”
She rolled right over his words, intent on telling him everything that was inside her. “Still, the living must live, Jefferson. Denying your heart is just another kind of death. I won’t do that. And I hate that you’re willing to. I’ll tell you now, I will love you till I die, but I won’t stop living. I’ll be there, in Ireland, when you come to your senses.”
“Maura,” he said, “I love you.”
“I’ve not finished,” she told him sternly. Why couldn’t the man be silent and let her get this said? “You’ll miss me, Jefferson, and the life we could have had. You’ll pine for me and I swear you’ll regret ever walking away. And when, in your misery, you finally realize that loving me is what you were meant to do, remember it was I who told you. ’Twas me who came here to look you in the eye and give you one last chance. And blast it all, remember it was love that brought me here.”
“I said I love you.”
“What?” She whipped her head back to shake her hair out of her eyes and blinked up at him as if he were suddenly speaking Gaelic. “What was that? What did you just say?”
“I said, I love you.”
She looked up into his eyes and read the truth of his words shining back at her. A bright burst of light exploded in the center of her chest and Maura thought with those words ringing in her ears, she wouldn’t have need of a plane to get back home. She’d simply float across the Atlantic.
“You love me.”
“I do,” he said, grinning now as he reached for her.
She went willingly, throwing herself at him as she’d longed to do from the first moment she stepped out of that long, elegant car. Her arms came around his neck and she clung to him as she muttered thickly, “Well, why the devil didn’t you say so?”
He laughed out loud and, arms wrapped around her waist, he lifted her off her feet and swung her in circles around the drive. “Who could get a word in when you’re on a rant?”
“True, it’s true. I’ve a terrible temper, I know, but it’s just that I hurt so badly and I wanted you to be as miserable as I was feeling,” she whispered into the curve of his neck, inhaling his scent, feeling the hard, solid strength of him pressed against her.
“I was,” he confessed, his strong arms crushing her to him. “Without you, there’s nothing. I know that now.”
“Oh, Jefferson, I’ve missed you so.”
“I was coming to you,” he told her, his voice husky and filled with emotion. “I’d just decided to go back to Ireland and convince you to marry me, even if I had to abduct you.”
She laughed a little, relief and wonder tangling up inside her. “I’m almost sorry to have missed that.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” he promised. “I want to live in Ireland, with you and our baby, at the farm.”
She pulled her head back to stare up at him in wonder as the last of the dream slid into place. “You’d live in Ireland?”
“It’s not a hardship,” he told her. “I think I love the place almost as much as you do.”
“You’re a lovely man,” she said on a sigh. “Have I mentioned that lately?”
He grinned. “Not lately, no.”
She’d come so far, hoped and dreamed so much and now that she had everything she had ever wanted in the circle of her arms, she could only hold on to him, reeling at the happiness coursing through her. Finally though, he set her on her feet, but left his hands at her waist as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.
“I’ll still have to do some traveling at times,” he was telling her, “but you and the baby can come with me. We’ll have so many adventures, love. Our life will be full and happy, I promise you.”
“I believe you,” she said, lifting one hand to cup his cheek.
“Maura,” he said softly, staring into her eyes like a man who’d just awakened from a long sleep to find his heart’s desire landing at his feet. “I’m going to ask you again. The right way this time. I want you to marry me. For real. Forever.”
“Ah, Jefferson, now I’m going to cry,” she said, and felt the tears sliding along her cheeks.
“Don’t,” he whispered, bending to kiss her briefly, hungrily. “Don’t cry.” He smoothed her tears away with his thumbs and smiled into her eyes. “I’m really not worthy of you at all, am I?”
She laughed and leaned into him, relishing the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear. Wrapping both arms around his middle, she said, “Oh, you darlin’ man…if every woman waited for a man who was worthy of her, there’d be no marriages, would there?”
He laughed aloud and pulled her tightly against him. “You’re the one for me, Maura. The only one.”
“And you for me, Jefferson. I will love you always.”
“I’m counting on it,” he told her, and gave her a soul-searing kiss that promised a lifetime of love more powerful than either of them had ever imagined.
And when that kiss ended, they parted to the sound of hearty applause and sharp whistles. Looking toward the barn, Jefferson grinned, took Maura’s hand in his and said, “Come with me. I want you to meet my family.”
“Our family,” she corrected and laid her head against his shoulder.
Then together, they walked away from the past and into the future.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4283-2
WEDDING AT KING’S CONVENIENCE
Copyright © 2009 by Maureen Child
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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*Summer of Secrets
*Summer of Secrets
†Reasons for Revenge
†Reasons for Revenge
†Reasons for Revenge
††Kings of California
††Kings of California
††Kings of California
††Kings of California
††Kings of California
††Kings of Ca
lifornia
‡The Guardians
‡The Guardians
‡The Guardians
Wedding at King's Convenience Page 14
