to have a serious relationship with me.’
‘Is that really what you believe, Kit?’ His brow furrowing in concern, Hal reached out a hand and curled it round her wrist. Then he pulled her towards him.
For a few moments she teetered, anxiously trying to regain her balance and not fall against him. But he was already winding his arms round her waist to steady her, and gazing up into her eyes as though he would never willingly tear his gaze away to look at anything else. At once the scent of his warm, virile body enveloped her and she knew that even if she could muster the most powerful will in the world she wouldn’t be able to deny him anything that he desired if it gave him pleasure and made him happy.
‘What am I to believe, if not that?’
‘How about that I honestly want to have a serious relationship with you? That I’ll go crazy if I can’t have the one woman in the world who means more to me than anybody else?’
Every other thought in her head was obliterated at that heartfelt assertion. Sorrow seemed a million light years away when Hal looked at her the way he was looking at her now. As if she was something infinitely precious and he would willingly sacrifice everything he owned to keep her safe.
‘I CAN HARDLY believe it,’ Kit admitted softly.
‘Well, you must—because it’s the truth.’
Her handsome companion’s voice was gravelly with emotion.
‘You might travel to the ends of the earth, Kit Blessington, but wherever you go I swear I’ll come and find you and bring you home.’
A warm surge of tears swam into her eyes. ‘You mean it? You’re not just saying that?’
Hal’s handsome face was immediately perturbed. ‘I might not always agree with everything you say or do when we’re together, and I’m sure sometimes sparks will fly when I feel the need to hold my ground and you protest, but one thing I promise you: I will never lie to you about my feelings. You have my word on that.’
‘What feelings are we talking about, Hal?’ Right then it wouldn’t have been difficult to convince Kit that she was dreaming. Having her wishes fulfilled had never happened very often, and more often than not she expected to be disappointed.
‘Don’t you know? Can’t you guess? I thought I’d made it perfectly clear.’
It was hard to hear him over the sonorous thumping of her heart, let alone give herself permission to speculate. ‘If it was so clear then I wouldn’t need to ask, would I?’
Shaking his head, Hal bemusedly acceded to her tremulous suggestion. ‘All right, then. I’ll tell you.’ His tawny, long-lashed eyes visibly darkened. ‘I’m mad about you, Kit. To make it even clearer, so there’s no possibility of confusion, I’m head-over-heels in love with you, and I’ll happily spend the rest of my days showing you how much I mean that—mean it with all my heart.’
Kit stared at him in shock even as her heart leapt joyfully. ‘You really love me? I mean—I know I’m not the type of girl you normally go for. I’m very ordinary. And I’m not just saying that because I’m fishing for compliments. I’m...I’m being realistic.’
‘Well, maybe it’s time you woke up to a new reality, Kit. One in which you start to realise how beautiful, sexy and desirable you truly are.’
She could still hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘You know what? Not only do you have a worrying predilection for dangerous sports, Henry Treverne, but I’ve come to realise that you’re a very dangerous man too.’
‘Hmm...why do you say that, I wonder?’ His lips quirking in a gentle grin, he tenderly pushed away some coiled Titian strands from the side of her face and let his palm linger there, intermittently stroking the pad of his thumb down over her cheek.
Inside the sprigged cotton of her pretty pyjamas, the tips of Kit’s breasts—already so acutely sensitive whenever he was near—tingled and hardened. They surged against the lightweight material, desperately seeking his touch.
‘I say it because it’s true—and the reason I find you dangerous is because I love you too. And when you love someone it inevitably makes you vulnerable. That’s something I vowed I’d never allow myself to be when I left home, because life with my mother—the one person I loved more than anybody else—was such an emotional rollercoaster ride it was frightening. I longed for some stability for us both when I was young—a place that we could call our own. But it didn’t happen. Because whenever my mum met someone and started to trust them they usually ended up breaking her heart and fleecing her of every penny. Then we’d have to move on again. I constantly lived in fear that something would happen to her when she was down and upset about a man because I saw how vulnerable it made her. So I decided not to risk the same thing happening to me. The last thing I expected to happen when I came to work for you was that I’d come to love you, Hal.’
The sense of wonder at his revelation that he reciprocated her feelings couldn’t prevent her still being anxious about the pain she’d suffer if anything ever happened to him—or, worse still, if he should ever leave her. But realising that was just old programming kicking in, because she’d grown up fearing that if she got involved with a man he would behave in the same destructive way as her mother’s various unreliable boyfriends, Kit knew she had to trust that her own path was more hopeful. But she still wanted to come clean about her fears to Hal.
‘I’ve guarded my heart against falling in love for so long because I’ve had no good example of a man being sincere or keeping his word, and I witnessed the devastation that caused my mum. I was determined not to repeat it. But nothing could have prepared me for a man like you, Hal.’ She smiled. ‘Or the effect that you would have on me. I found myself dangerously fascinated by you almost straight away, and that feeling has grown stronger. So much so that I can’t be remotely sensible about what’s the best course of action for me any more.’
‘What kind of action does your heart want you to take?’ Hal prompted, his tawny eyes turning to a deeply hypnotic liquid gold that silently and irrefutably conveyed how aroused he was.
Unable to deny her need to touch him intimately any longer, Kit slid her hand round the back of his neck and slowly brought his face towards hers.
‘My heart tells me to kiss you until I’m drunk with the taste and flavour of you. Until it beats in tandem with yours. God knows I’ve tried, but I just can’t seem to resist you. But I’m sure you know that already, don’t you?’
‘I don’t take anything for granted where you’re concerned, baby, but I was hoping you’d say that. And I want you to know that I’m so sorry you had such a rough time of it growing up. But that time is past. And if it’s a place of your own that you want, then I’ll get it for you. I’m no psychic, sweetheart, but I can tell you right now that your future is looking much brighter.’
Even though his loving words thrilled her, and reassured her that he understood her need for a place that she could call her own, Kit couldn’t totally dispense with her anxiety about it. ‘I—I don’t just want a place of my own any more, Hal,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t care where I live so long as I can be with you. Is that—is that possible, do you think?’
‘Is it possible? Surely you know by now that’s what I want too?’
