'You probably wouldn’t show yet anyway,' he said, gently tucking the sweater down, his grey eyes as clear as the rain outside the window.
‘I tell you, I'm not pregnant!' she insisted, blushing as she caught the eye of a customer hove
ring around the counter behind him. Jack glanced over his shoulder and one brutal look sent the man scuttling for the door. 'Now look what you've done. He might have been going to buy something!'
'Stop trying to change the subject, Beth—'
‘I've told you, I'm not pregnant. How many times do I have to say it before you believe me?'
‘I don’t think I ever will.'
She gaped at him.
His grey eyes were steady, his hand not quite, as he smoothed it over his damp head in the first gesture of nervousness she had seen him make. 'So I suppose the only way I can be sure is to hang around...'
'For how long?' Elizabeth sneered to cover the searing delight that flared through her veins. 'Until next month? Until the end of the year when that stupid myth is finally revealed for the superstition it is?'
'Oh, I couldn’t let that happen,' he said, his eyes darkening. ‘I couldn’t let the legend of the St Clairs be proved a fraud. I shouldn’t have mocked you with it, but, as you know, I was angry for what I saw as your lack of faith—'
'My lack of faith?' she interrupted.
'—and it got out of hand. I didn’t mean to hurt you, only teach you a lesson. As it was I was the one who learnt a painful truth. As Grandpère pointed out when I turned my surly temper on him, it was a matter of personal priorities and I had failed to accept yours as being as important to you as mine are to me. You make me drunk with a sense of my own power, chérie. My emotions tend to get out of hand around you—you make me vulnerable as I have not been in five years, and I don’t always like it. I react badly sometimes. I joke. I am cynical. I experience inappropriately aggressive male behaviour.'
His eyes gleamed with a spark of humour at her astounded reaction to his humble litany, making her realise how bleak and lifeless they had been before. 'We strike sparks, we two, and because of that rare quality between us we bite and scratch when we know that in reality we want to love and kiss,' he went on. ‘I liked provoking you only because I knew what sweet reconciliations would follow. So to demonstrate my good faith I have brought it with me...'
'Brought what?' Elizabeth asked.
He put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a handful of glitter.
'You've been walking around with it in your pocket?' she spat incredulously, trying to push the necklace back. 'You could have been mugged!' The thought of him lying bleeding in some dark alley made her blanch. 'Haven’t you got any sense? I thought you were supposed to be security-conscious—'
'Without you I have no reason for security. Here. It's for you.' He turned over her hand and placed it across her palm, folding his on top. 'Next time you wear it for me I'll know that you have forgiven me.'
'Next time?' she said faintly, feeling the heat of his hand go all the way up her arm to explode in the pulse at her throat.
'Oh, there will always be a next time for us, chérie, if you want there to be...' he said softly. 'You were too uncertain and I was too certain. I demanded your trust before you were free to give it. I was sure I wanted to spend my life, have my children with you, and like a child myself I decided to take what I wanted. I was greedy. This time we will take it slow.'
'Slow?' Elizabeth stared at the object between their hands, realising what it had taken for a proud man to come to her and admit his faults. She too had let her pride come between them, and that stupid lack of self-confidence that had assured her that such a man could not possibly want her for herself alone... She looked at him, at the thin, controlled line of his mouth and the narrowed silver eyes which masked his inner thoughts and she smiled suddenly, ruefully, as she realised that she didn’t have to try and read him; she could guess what was going on inside that handsome head. She knew him better than she had thought.
This, too, was a gamble for him, and one in which he clearly thought he had stacked the odds. If he had come this far, it was not on the off-chance of success. For all his appearance of humbleness he was enjoying the delicate battle, silently anticipating victory. For Jack Hawkwood was never one to underestimate his opponent. He had calmed down. He had thought. He had weighed and assessed the nuances of her behaviour. He had known, thank God, since he had walked through the door of the shop and seen her haunted violet eyes explode with pain and joy. 'How slow is slow?'
A lambent flame licked across the silver eyes. 'As slow as you like, chérie,' he said with a purring promise that made her breathless.
'Liar.'
‘I love you and I have brought you my betrothal gift. If you love me you will wear it...'
'And?' Her eyes were vivid with promise.
'And marry me.' The shining violet eyes dimmed the tiniest fraction and he continued smoothly, 'And make mad, passionate love to me all night in my hotel room until I have made you pregnant and your uncles force me with their shotgun to marry you, and my family honour is not tainted by rumours that the necklace has lost its devastating efficaciousness.' He watched with amusement the smug look of satisfaction that curved her small, kissable mouth. His Beth was definitely going to be a challenge.
‘If I'm not home tonight my uncles will worry,' she said, peeping at him through her lashes.
'Just a quick one, then,' he agreed blandly.
'Jack!' He laughed and swung her round and she allowed him to kiss her, letting thousands of dollars drip carelessly through her fingers until he caught them and thrust them back into his pocket.
‘I love you more than all the diamonds in the world,' she confided needlessly, when she resurfaced, prompting another submersion in the pleasure of a loving embrace.