‘What? No, of course not, there’s no one.’ The tears threatened again. ‘There never will be anyone. No!’ She took a step backwards to evade him, knowing full well that if he touched her her resolve would dissolve.
‘I can’t marry you because I love you.’
She waited but his expression gave little clue as to what he was thinking or even if he believed her.
‘Sorry, but you can see now that the marriage of convenience thing won’t work for me.’
‘Fine.’
Lily swallowed. She had hoped he’d take it well, but not this well!
She turned, struggling to match his casual manner. It wasn’t as if she enjoyed dramatic scenes or anything. ‘I should ring Mum to let her know Lara is all right. She rang last night to say she’d had an odd call from her.’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘Not now.’ He grabbed her arm and swung her towards him. ‘Say it again.’
She shook her head. ‘Say what?’ Their eyes connected and the eloquent glow she saw in his made her suck in a taut gasp. ‘We’ve drifted apart over the last few years—’
‘We have drifted together over the last few weeks.’
‘I’m not talking about us, I’m talking about Lara and me.’
He swore under his breath. ‘I don’t want to talk about Lara.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to hear you say it again, the reason why you can’t marry me.’
‘I love you.’ She lifted her chin; she’d thrown her pride away and it no longer mattered.
‘There’s no chance this is something temporary?’
She shook her head unhappily.
‘You didn’t want it to happen, but it did?’
Her eyes fluttered wide. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because it happened to me too. I always thought I wasn’t capable of loving anyone...and I was glad of it. I was an idiot but you taught me, Lily, you taught me what love is... You made me whole. I love you, Lily, with all my heart.’
The simple sincerity of his words, the emotional throb in his deep voice, made her eyes fill with tears of joy. She shook her head, still unable to quite believe this was happening. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Ben? I’ve been so miserable, pretending.’
‘I was waiting...’
‘For what?’
‘I wanted to prove to you that I was genuine, that I was worthy of you, committed.’
‘You made me think that all you cared about was being a father to Emmy.’
‘I was trying not to rush you...’ A shade of indignation slid into his voice. ‘How the hell was I to know you loved me?’ Before she could respond he bent his head, putting all the pent-up frustration of the last two weeks in the deep, hard, penetrating kiss.
She surfaced with a dreamy smile. ‘If you’d done that I might have told you,’ she admitted.
‘I had this plan in my head. I wanted to get everything right. I had this idea that the work at Warren Court would be finished, though obviously if I’d known you loved me I’d have thrown the plan out the window.’
She tugged at his shirt to get his attention and received more of it than she had anticipated as he claimed her mouth again in a series of hard, hungry kisses that merged into one and left her feeling drained and incredibly happy.
‘Work on Warren...?’ she mumbled against his mouth.
‘Yes, this place is a bit small and my grandfather is getting too old to live there alone. We thought that a ground-floor apartment would give him privacy—’
‘We? A conspiracy...?’ Before he could respond to the teasing she pressed her hand to his mouth. ‘What is this with you and houses? I don’t give that—’ she clicked her fingers with an expressive snap ‘—about houses. It’s people that I care about, you and Emmy. I love you so much, Ben—’
The rest was lost in his mouth as he kissed her until her head spun. When he placed her back on her feet she needed his support to stop her falling over.
She might have said he had kissed her senseless, but actually she realised she had only just come to her senses.
He stroked her face with a loving hand. ‘I don’t care about where I live either. My home is anywhere you are. I just wanted to prove to you that I was sincere, that I could be a good father and husband, that I am totally into this.’
Heart singing with joy she had never imagined ever feeling, she slipped her arms around his waist, tilted her head back to look up into his face. ‘Are you totally into me too?’