by Naima Simone
Darius nodded, studying her face as if he, too, were cataloging any changes that had taken place in the last week. “You look tired,” he observed in a gentle tone.
She hardened her heart against his concern, shielding herself against the tenderness that immediately sprang to life. “What are you doing here, Darius?” she repeated her question.
“To see Aiden. And you,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “I’ve missed you both. I just needed to lay eyes on you.” Then he loosed a short bark of laughter that fell somewhere between self-deprecating and rueful. “That’s not quite the truth. I came to find you and beg you to come back home. To give me—give us—a second chance.”
Beg you to come back home.
The words echoed in her head and her chest, and swirled in her belly. A yearning swelled so high, so strong, that it nearly drowned out the steely resolve to not give in. She wanted to—God, she wanted to just walk into his arms and have him hold her.
But she couldn’t live a life without love, acceptance, trust and loyalty.
She refused to settle anymore.
“Darius, we can’t,” she murmured, but he clasped her hand, and the goodness of his touch cut her off. But just as quickly as he’d reached for her, he released her.
“Please, sweetheart. I know I don’t have the right—don’t deserve the right—to ask you to hear me out. But I am.” He paused, as if gathering his thoughts, then continued. “Everything you said to me was true. I betrayed your trust. I betrayed you. Our family. And I do mean our family, Isobel. Because that’s who you and Aiden are to me. You two are who I look forward to coming home to when I leave the office. And that’s who you are for me, Isobel—home. All these years I believed the memories of my time there with my parents made it that. But I forgot the reason I love the house so much is because it means family. It means love. And I didn’t realize what was missing until you and Aiden came to live with me. The moment you left, it was empty, a shell. And I need you to come back, to return it to my haven, my sanctuary.”
Her heart thudded against her chest, her pulse deafening in her ears. Hope—that stubborn, foolish hope—tried to grow. But she shut it down. Only more pain led down any road hope traveled.
“I can’t...” She shook her head. “Darius, I know you love Aiden. And we...we...” God, she couldn’t get it out.
“We burned together, Isobel,” he supplied, and her breath snagged in her throat. “But that’s not all that was between us. Is still between us. Before I knew who you were, I trusted you with things I hadn’t spoken to another living soul in years. I didn’t need to see your face to tell you were special, loving, kind and compassionate. You didn’t change, Isobel. I did. I turned on you. I allowed the past with Faith and Gage to warp what my heart acknowledged all along.”
He shifted closer, but still didn’t reach for her. But his gaze... It roamed her face, and she shivered as if his fingertips had brushed her skin.
And inside...oh, inside she couldn’t battle hope anymore. It broke through her shields and flowed into her chest, filling her.
“I love you, Isobel.” He raised his arms, and after a moment’s hesitation, he cupped her face between his palms. “I love you,” he whispered. “Remember when I told you about my fear of the dark and falling asleep in our burning building?” She nodded, his tender clasp, his soft words rendering her speechless. “I didn’t tell you everything. I believe I heard my mother and father shout my name, and that’s what woke me up. I know how insane it sounds, but even from where they were, they saved me. And now I think it’s not just because they loved me, but because they knew what waited for me. You and Aiden.
“I’ve waited for you. And I hate that I almost threw away our future, us. Sweetheart,” he murmured, sweeping his thumb over her cheekbone. “I promise I’ll never place anyone else above you and our son and any more children we have together. But if I’ve hurt you too badly and you can’t give me your heart and trust right now, I understand. Know this—I’ll still provide for you and Aiden until I can convince you to forgive me. Because, sweetheart, my heart is yours. And I refuse to give up on us ever again. I’ll love you perfectly.”
He’d gifted her with her own words. She blinked, trying to hold back the tears, but they slipped free. And he pressed his lips to her cheek, kissing them away.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. I need to hear your beautiful voice. You’re the only thing keeping me sane,” he whispered, his voice carrying her back to that dark hallway where they’d first connected. Where she’d started to fall for him.
Where they’d begun.
“I love you.” She circled his wrists and held on to him. “I love you so much.”
He crushed his mouth to hers, taking and giving. Savoring and feasting. Loving and worshipping. And she surrendered it all to him, while claiming him.
“Sweetheart,” he said against her lips, scattering kisses to her mouth, her jaw, her chin. “Tell me again. Please.”
“I love you.” Throwing her arms around his neck, she jumped, and he caught her, his hands cradling her thighs. Laughing, she tipped her head back, happiness a bird catching the wind and soaring free. “Now take us home.”
Epilogue
Six months later
Isobel groaned through a smile. “This is your fault. And you’re going to deal with the fallout.”
Beside her, Darius snorted, laughter gathering in his chest and rolling up his throat. “Do you want to go over there and tell him to leave the bouncy castle?”
She scoffed. “And face World War Three and Four? God, no.” She elbowed him in the side. “I thought we had a conversation about this party, though. Low-key. Nothing too big or grand.”
Darius scanned their backyard, where they were holding Aiden’s third birthday party. The aforementioned bouncy castle claimed a place of honor right in the middle of the lawn, surrounded by a petting farm, a huge slide, games, face painting, clowns... Their place could double for a carnival.
He shrugged. What could he say? Having missed Aiden’s previous two birthdays, he’d really wanted to handle this one. So, he might have gone a little...overboard. Still, as Aiden’s high-pitched laughter reached Darius, he had zero regrets.
“Well, he is having a blast,” Darius noted, watching their son slide down the “drawbridge” of the castle. “And look on the bright side. At least the party is out here, so in case of a blackout, no one can get trapped inside. With all these animals.”
She laughed. “True.” Smiling, she slid an arm around his waist and leaned her head against his shoulder. “He’ll never forget this. All of his family here to celebrate him.” Including Isobel’s mother and brothers. They mingled with the children and parents with ease, laughing and talking.
Well, not with Darius’s family. Since Baron had confessed the truth to Helena and Gabriella, they’d dropped the custody suit. Discovering Gage’s faults hadn’t been easy on them, and even now, months later, they still struggled with the magnitude of his lies. And his death. Though he knew Isobel held sympathy for them, relations between her and the Wellses had been put on hold. It would take a while to heal years’ worth of pain, and Darius refused to push that reconciliation. Isobel had to move forward when she was ready, and until then Darius had her back. At least she’d allowed Aiden to see them, but only if Darius was there to supervise. And he would never betray her trust again.
It’d been six months since he’d gone to Isobel to plead for her forgiveness and love. Six months since she’d given him both, plus her trust, her heart and her body. She’d given him his family back. That had been the happiest day of his life. And the days that followed were just as wonderful, filled with laughter and joy.
She’d been accepted into the University of Illinois and was majoring in psychology to become a domestic-violence counselor. He wholeheartedly supported her. Isobel was living proof that a person could emerge from a d
estructive situation stronger, whole, and with the ability to find happiness and peace.
“And just think,” Darius said, sliding behind her and settling his hands over the small bump under her tank top. “In another five months, we’ll have another one to spoil. A girl. Just imagine the princesses and unicorns that will be prancing around here in another two years.”
Isobel groaned, but it ended on a full-out laugh. The joy in it flowed over him.
“Thank you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss under her ear. And when she tipped her head back, he placed another kiss on her generous, lovely mouth. “Thank you for filling my life with love and family. I love you.”
Her grin softened, and she lifted an arm, cupping the back of his neck. “I love you, too. Always and forever.”
“Always and forever.”
* * *
The Chicago blackout trapped more than one couple in the mansion! What happens when the formidable Gideon Knight finds pleasure with a mysterious woman in the dark and then loses her in the morning?
Find out in the next Blackout Billionaires novel,
available September 2019!
Only from Naima Simone and Harlequin Desire!
Keep reading for an excerpt from From Mistake to Millions by Andrea Laurence.
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From Mistake to Millions
by Andrea Laurence
Prologue
This couldn’t be right.
Jade Nolan studied the genetic test report she’d just received in the mail. The DNA kit had been a Christmas gift from her younger brother, Dean. He’d gotten it for everyone in the family this year. He thought it would be fun to see what parts of the world they’d come from. They were fairly certain of the family’s Irish and German heritage, so there weren’t going to be many surprises.
But the words Jade was looking at were a surprise and then some. They were actually a shock.
“Jade? Are you okay?”
She looked up from the paper in her hand and stared blankly at her best friend, Sophie Kane. They were hanging out drinking wine and watching their favorite show together just like they did every Tuesday. But the minute Jade looked at the report, the evening had taken a sharp, unexpected turn.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m not okay.”
How could she be okay? According to the report, she wasn’t closely related to any other users in the company’s database. Considering that she’d been the last of her family to mail in her DNA sample, that wasn’t possible. Both her parents and her brother had submitted their DNA weeks before she had. They should be showing under the family section of her report. And yet they weren’t.
Never mind the fact that her DNA showed she wasn’t Irish and German. She was coming up English, Swedish and Dutch. She’d seen her brother’s report and they didn’t align at all.
“What does it say?” Sophie pressed. She set down her wine and leaned in to lay a comforting hand on Jade’s shoulder. “Tell me, honey.”
Jade swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. She couldn’t speak. In an instant, a lifetime of unfounded doubts had rushed into her mind. Years of being the family misfit. Insecurity about her physical differences. Jokes about being the milkman’s daughter, since she was blonde with dark brown eyes, and the rest of her family had dark, almost black hair and green eyes. The jokes were all too real now.
No matter how many times her mother had assured her that her grandmother was a blonde, no matter how many grainy old pictures were hauled out to prove that her willow-thin frame came from her father’s family, it didn’t help. Her grandmother’s hair had been a dishwater blond in her youth, not Jade’s pale, almost platinum color. The family in the old pictures were poor and undernourished, not naturally slim like Jade, with her ballerina’s body.
Jade had always felt like the odd one out. Now she had the cold, hard evidence to prove what she’d known all along. She was not a Nolan.
She stood up suddenly and the report slipped from her fingers, falling to the floor. Jade didn’t notice.
“I think I’m...adopted.” She was finally able to say the words aloud, but they sounded foreign to her ears.
Adopted. The reality of it was like a fist to the gut. Why had her parents kept this from her? She was almost thirty years old. She had married and divorced. When she and her ex-husband, Lance, were discussing children, her mother had even told her stories about her pregnancy with Jade. About how her father had fainted in the delivery room. Now Jade realized it was all a lie. An elaborate, complicated lie.
But why?
She didn’t understand what was going on. But she would get to the bottom of it one way or another.
Copyright © 2019 by Andrea Laurence
ISBN-13: 9781488046612
The Billionaire’s Bargain
Copyright © 2019 by Naima Simone
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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. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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