It was a word he used so rarely that for a moment she hesitated. ‘Why are you here? To laugh at me?’
‘Zara. Zara. My sweet Zara—’
‘No!’ she interrupted furiously. ‘I don’t want to hear your lying words!’
‘But I’ve never lied to you, Zara. You know that.’
A sob erupted from the back of her throat as he pulled her closer. ‘Just leave me be, Nikolai,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Don’t make it worse than it already is.’
‘I’m going to make it better.’
‘You can’t. You can’t make it better.’
He took hold of both her shoulders then—so that she couldn’t look anywhere except at his face. ‘Not even if I tell you that I love you?’ he demanded quietly. ‘Or that I’ve been a fool? That I was dumbfounded when you walked into that room—your beautiful face alight with love and excitement? And that I didn’t realise how much courage it must have taken for you to come right out and tell me how you felt.’
‘Nikolai—’
‘No.’ Shaking his head, he moved his face a little closer, so that their eyes were on a collision course—hers tear-filled and wary and the brightest green he could ever remember seeing. ‘Hear me out. Let me say what I should have said back there. That I didn’t realise the value of what I had until I almost lost it.’ Might still lose it, he realised bitterly as he saw the tremble of her lips. Because mightn’t Zara—his sweet and sexy Zara—have decided that she could no longer tolerate a man who was made of such emotional ice? Could he honestly blame her if that was the way she felt and found herself unable to forgive him—especially as he had failed so spectacularly to even acknowledge her outpouring of love?
‘It was a shock,’ he said simply, in as honest an admission of his true feelings as he had ever given. ‘To have you declare your love in front of all those people. After a lifetime of keeping my private life private and of hiding the way I felt, it was—as you once said to me—a bit of a bombshell. But my reaction was something which was bone-deep—the lessons I learned in childhood don’t just suddenly disappear—even if you want them to. Early on, I discovered pretty quickly that it was necessary to block out high emotion. Not to react when a longed-for letter failed to appear. Nor to show fear when you were left alone for days without a word.’
‘Nikolai—’
‘No,’ he said again. ‘I have to tell you this. After you’d gone, people began to cluster round me—with looks of sympathy on their faces, as if something terrible had just happened. And that’s when I realised that something terrible would happen, if I didn’t find you and admit what’s been building in my heart and in my mind for so long. Only I had to come close to losing it before I could find the courage to express it.’
He sucked in a deep breath, wanting to do his love justice. To honour the woman who stood before him, after all she had done for him. All she had given him.
Yet when he fished around his extensive vocabulary he found that the most simple words were the most profound. Maybe that was why they could be the most difficult of all to say.
‘I love you,’ he said and then sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘I was lost and lonely as a little boy and I never really learnt how to love because nobody had ever shown me how. And no one did…until I met you.’
She stared at him and she knew that everything he said was true. He had never lied to her and neither would he squander words he had once thought himself incapable of saying. Mutely, she swallowed down the great lump in her throat.
‘I love you so very much, Zara Evans,’ he whispered. ‘A whole lifetime wouldn’t be enough to tell you just how much, and that’s why I was wondering—’ he lifted her fingertips to his lips and his blue eyes blazed ice-fire at her as he kissed each one in turn ‘—if you would do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
The emotion of the moment was so great—the shock of his declaration so moving—that words were still stubbornly refusing to come. Again Zara nodded her head, blinking back tears and realising that this great burning feeling in her chest was her heart on fire with love for her darling Nikolai.
But Nikolai didn’t need words. Tenderly, he gathered her close and bent his mouth to hers—and her kiss gave him the only answer he really wanted.
EPILOGUE
NIKOLAI and Zara were married in the Russian church in London—with Zara repeating some of her vows in the language she had vowed to learn, even though her new husband warned her that the Cyrillic alphabet wasn’t easy.
‘Ah, but I like a challenge,’ she’d answered, raising her lips to be kissed.
‘Do you?’ he murmured back.
‘I agreed to marry you, didn’t I? ‘
He laughed. ‘You certainly did.’
For the ceremony, she wore a simple, silk-satin dress designed by Emma, who had finally managed to persuade her mother that the Gourmet International staff needed a brand new uniform. Consequently, the waitresses now looked chic as well as professional and bookings had soared—though, as Emma’s mother sighed, she seemed to have lost some of her best girls to their millionaire clients because of it!
But none of her friends were working on the day the newly-weds took over the famous mirrored ballroom of the Granchester Hotel for their wedding reception. Zara had been too dazed with love to really care about table plans and favours, or whether she wanted chocolate wedding cake, or a traditional fruit version. Her only specification had been that the flowers should be country blooms—as if they’d just been picked from a cottage garden. Which was why the vast room was scented with masses of blowsy roses, which were far more fragrant than the hothouse variety.
Security was tight because the best man happened to be a US Senator—and Sergei arrived with a new—and younger—blonde on his arm. The day went without a glitch and hearing the excited chatter of the guests was strangely gratifying. It was, Zara realised, the first real party they had thrown.
But for the new Mrs Komarov, the best bit of all was when Nikolai stood up to make his speech—looking unbelievably gorgeous in his morning suit with his dark gold hair gleaming beneath the spangled light of the chandeliers.