‘You’re agreeing with me. Why?’
‘Because you’re right. I’ve always kept everything locked up inside. It’s why no one has ever known what Annalise really meant to me.’
And he was about to tell her. Yet the details so far weren’t adding up to the love of his life and she fought to subdue the tendril of hope unfurling inside her that there might be another side of the story. Ever since she had met him, her placid life had become a roller coaster ride, hope alternating with despair before rising again to the surface like a terrible virus over which she had no control. Did she want to get back on that ride? Did she want to nurture that tendril of hope until it began growing into something uncontrollable? She could feel tears of frustration and dismay prick the back of her eyes. She curled her fingers in her lap and was shocked when he reached out and slowly uncurled them so that he could abstractedly play with them.
It was just the lightest of touches but it was enough to send her body into wild shock.
‘Annalise turned me down because she couldn’t cope with the prospect of being saddled, at some point in time, with a disabled brother-in-law.’
‘What?’ This was not what she had been expecting to hear and she leaned forward to catch what he was saying.
‘She met Dominic and I knew instantly that she couldn’t cope with his condition. For Annalise, everything was about perfection. Dominic was not perfect. She knew that at some point I would be responsible for him. She had visions of him living with us, her having to incorporate him into the perfect world she was desperate to have.’
‘That’s...that’s awful...’ Violet reached out and rested her hand on his arm and felt him shudder.
‘From that moment onwards, I knew that never again would I put myself in a position of vulnerability. I enjoyed women but they had their place and I made damn sure that they never overstepped it. And just in case I was ever tempted to forget, I made sure that Annalise was never completely eliminated from my life.’
‘And yet she was there tonight. In your...in your house...’
‘You turned me down. I asked you to marry me and you turned me down.’
Because you couldn’t love me! Despite everything he had said, he still didn’t love her. He was just explaining why he couldn’t. She would do well to remember that and not get swept away by this strange mood he was in and his haltering confidences.
‘When Annalise showed up on my doorstep, I let her in because I was...not myself. No, that doesn’t really explain it either. I was going out of my mind. Had been ever since we broke up. I told myself that it was for the best, that you could damn well go your own way and find out first-hand that there was no such thing as the perfect soulmate, but I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t function... I resented the fact that even when you were no longer around, you were still managing to control my behaviour.’
Violet was finding it impossible to filter the things he was telling her.
‘I am ashamed to say that I briefly considered Annalise a known quantity and that maybe the devil you know... Of course, it was just a passing aberration. I got rid of her as fast as I could and then I waited...for normality to return. It didn’t.’
‘So you came here...to tell me what? Exactly?’ She pinned her mouth into a stubborn line but she had broken out in a fine film of nervous perspiration. She tried to ignore the way he was still toying distractedly with her fingers and the way their bodies were leaning urgently towards each other, radiating a fevered heat that made her want to swoon. His familiar scent filled her nostrils. Once, she had found him devastatingly attractive. Having slept with him, knowing the contours of his lean, hard body, the body along which she had run her hands and her mouth so many times, made him horribly, painfully irresistible. Familiarity hadn’t bred contempt. The opposite. It had ratcheted up the level of his sexual pull to the extent that she could barely think of anything else as she continued to stare at him, pupils dilated, dreading the way her body was reacting in ways her brain was telling it not to.
‘That I proposed to you because...it made sense. I didn’t realise...’ He withdrew his hand to tousle his dark hair. ‘I didn’t think that I might have needed you in my life for reasons that didn’t make any sense. That you’d climbed under my skin and it wasn’t just to do with the good sex.’
‘What was it to do with?’
‘I’m in love with you. I don’t know when that happened or how, but...’
‘Say that again?’
‘Which bit?’
‘The bit about being in love with me.’ A feeling of being on top of the world, of pure joy, filled her like life-saving oxygen. She felt heady and giddy and euphoric all at the same time. ‘You didn’t say,’ she told him accusingly, but she was half laughing, half wanting to cry. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I didn’t know...until you left...’
She flung herself into his arms and sighed with pure contentment when he wrapped his arms around her and held her close, so close that she could hear the beating of his heart. ‘You were so arrogant,’ she told him. ‘You forced me into an arrangement I hated. You broke all the rules when it came to the sort of guy I could ever be interested in. You didn’t want any kind of long-term relationship and I’ve never approved of men who move from woman to woman. And, as well, I was convinced that you were still wrapped up with Annalise, that you’d never let the memory go, that she was the ex no one had ever been able to live up to. On all fronts you were taboo, and then I met your family and I got sucked in to you...to all of you...and it was like being in quicksand. When you proposed, when you listed all the reasons why marrying me would make sense, I finally woke up to the fact that the one reason why anyone should get married was missing. You didn’t love me. I thought you didn’t know how and you never would and I couldn’t accept your offer, knowing that the power balance would be so uneven. I would forever be the helpless, dependent one, madly in love with you and waiting for the time when you got tired of me physically and the axe fell.’
‘And now?’
‘And now I’m the happiest person in the world!’
‘So if I ask you again to marry me...this time for all the right reasons...’
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
Damien shuddered with relief. He felt as if he’d been holding his breath ever since he’d walked into the house. His arms tightened around her and he breathed in the fresh floral smell of her hair. ‘You’ve made me the happiest person in the world as well...’ Then he gave a low rumble of laughter. ‘And I don’t think my mother or Dominic will mind too much either...’
THEY DIDN’T MIND. Not when Damien and Violet showed up, surprising both Dominic and Eleanor, the following day.
‘Of course,’ Eleanor said smugly, ‘I knew it was just a case of getting you two together so that you could sort out your silly differences. Damien, darling, I love you but you can be stubborn and there was no way that I was going to allow the best thing that ever happened to you to slip through your fingers. Now, let’s discuss the wedding plans... Something big and fancy? Or small and cosy...?’
‘Fast,’
