Desperate Desire
Page 16
‘If I hadn’t been half blind I wouldn’t have been here and I wouldn’t have met you, so you’re partly right,’ he said dryly. ‘And I wouldn’t have proposed to you. But now I’m not half blind and I’m as normal as I’ll ever be, and I’m proposing again. Lenore, will you marry me before I go away?’
‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why?’
‘For the same reason I asked you before,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Good God, woman, do I have to spell it out in words of one syllable? I want to legalise whatever it is that’s going on between us. What sort of a guy do you think I am? Do you think I’m the sort who sleeps around promiscuously without caring, without loving? I want to marry for all the usual reasons a man wants to marry a woman. I like being with you and I want to make sure that you’re mine and only mine. I want to have the right to come home to you and live with you whenever I can. I want to look after you, protect you. I want to share this house with you. I want to give it to you and let you turn it into a music centre. I want to marry you because . . . because . . . Oh, hell, I guess it’s because I love you. So what’s your answer?’ This time his eyes glittered with passion. ‘You haven’t found some other guy you prefer to me, have you?’ he demanded suspiciously.
‘No, no—oh no, I haven’t,’ Lenore replied quickly. ‘Would I be here with you now if I had? Would I have done with you what we did in the night if I had? Oh, Adam, I can only love one man at a time, and you’re the only man I’ve ever loved like this, with . . . with a sort of desperate desire.’
‘Then you’ll marry me and give me the right to come home to you when my assignment is through?’
‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ she whispered. ‘But you’ll have to promise to be careful and not to get killed or hurt.’
‘I promise,’ Adam murmured, gathering her against him. ‘Knowing you’re here for me to come home to is going to make all the difference to my way of living; all the difference in the world,’ he whispered.
They were married three days before he left for El Salvador. Blythe and Josh were present at the ceremony and so were Albert and Bertha. Most of the music group were there too, and Ella Parini, Lenore’s and Blythe’s mother, newly arrived from Scotland and a little critical of Lenore’s decision to marry Adam.
‘He seems most unsuitable to be a husband,’ she complained to Lenore at the reception that was held at the Inn.
‘I love him,’ said Lenore simply, as if that explained everything.
‘But he’s going away so soon, going to leave you for three whole months. That’s hardly the way to start a marriage,’ said Mrs Parini. ‘He should stay with you, change his job so that he can live with you all the time. You know, Lenore, you’re very like your father—impulsive. It must be the Italian blood showing.’ Her glance slid away from Adam who was talking to Isaac and drifted on to Blythe who was standing nearby with Josh. ‘Now, Blythe is much more like me,’ she went on, her eyes softening with affection as they lingered on her elder daughter. ‘And I much prefer her choice of husband. I expect she’ll give up this place when she’s married and will settle down to have children.’
‘Oh, I doubt it,’ retorted Lenore. ‘I mean, I doubt she’ll give up the Inn when she marries Josh. She enjoys managing it too much, and she’ll fit the babies in somehow when they come.’ She glanced across at Adam again. ‘And so will I, one day,’ she added softly.
And feeling the intense sense-arousing shock of Adam’s intense blue stare, she left her mother’s side and walked across to him, lifting her face to his as if inviting him to kiss her.
‘We don’t have much time left,’ he murmured. ‘Shall we leave them all now and go home?’
A few minutes later they were driving to the old house on the point. Against grey sky and grey sea it loomed a darker grey, in one of its mysterious moods. They went in and closed the door, to enter their own secret world, a world of light and harmony that they had created themselves from their desperate desire for each other; a world in which and of which they were and to which they would always return whenever they were together.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight