‘You’d get over me—’
‘As you would me?’ That thought had never occurred to her and she stared at him horror-stricken. ‘Well, would you, could you?’
‘No,’ she whispered faintly.
‘But I am supposed to recover?’ There was a faint touch of anger in his voice that he was trying to control. ‘Why? Because I’m a man? Or because you don’t think I really love you?’
‘I know you love me,’ she said weakly, her chest aching as though she had been punched hard time and time again. ‘But to ask you to face this when you don’t have to—’
‘The hell I don’t.’ He stared at her as though she were mad. ‘Where are you coming from, sweetheart? From the first day I met you you became my life. You are me, Amy, don’t you see? A part of me. We aren’t two people any more. I can’t separate myself from the tiniest thing that concerns you. I breathe you, sleep you …’ His voice was a groan now, and she felt the blood racing through her veins as the tears ran unheeded down her face. ‘You’re my other half, the female part of me. You know how I think, what I feel—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Or I thought you did. Maybe I went too fast too soon. I hadn’t allowed for just how deep all the old insecurities had bitten. And what the hell have flowers to do with any of this?’ he asked suddenly.
‘At home,’ she whispered, her lip trembling helplessly. ‘You had to have them perfect, without blemish. You didn’t like decay, you told me so,’ she finished desperately as all the old dread reared its head again. ‘New ones all the time—’
‘Amy, those are flowers.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘What on earth had my idiosyncrasy about the damn flowers got to do with anything?’
‘But I thought—’ she couldn’t bear to look at him and shut her eyes tightly ‘—I thought you would find it too hard to cope with seeing me slowly get ill. Sandra said—’
‘Sandra?’ He eyed her darkly as he forced her chin up, her eyes opening to meet his. ‘I might have known. What has your damn sister got to do with this?’
‘She’s …’ She took a deep breath and started again. ‘You don’t understand, Blade. She’s ill. Terribly ill. As I’ll be in a few years’ time when I reach her age. She said I’ll be a millstone round your neck and she’s right. You have your own life to live—’
‘I’ve never heard such callous rubbish in my life,’ he said furiously, his voice low and tight. ‘I can’t believe you really accepted that line of reasoning. What the hell happened to our relationship, the trust, the promise to love in sickness and in health? You think I value you like the damn flowers? Is that it? That I’d simply replace you with a fresh substitute and carry on as normal? Is that really all you think of me?’
She stared at him blindly. Had she thought that? No, not really, not at the very bottom of her, she realised now.
‘I love you, Amy.’ He took her in his arms again and stood silently as they swayed slowly back and forth in an agony of grief. ‘I’ll always love you whether we’re together or apart. When you’re not with me the world is grey, empty. Damn it!’ His arms closed tighter until she could hardly breathe. ‘Of course I think you’re beautiful because you are, but that’s only a tiny part of it. I love you, the person under the skin and hair and bones. I love your strength of mind, your honesty, your sense of humour, all the things that make you you. If you had an accident tomorrow and were horribly disfigured or hurt, of course I’d care, I’d care like hell, but not in the way you seem to think. It would hurt me because it hurt you, but we’d face it together. Now you are going to sit down and tell me it all, from the beginning, starting with the day I left on that France trip.’
‘Are you sure you really want to know?’ she asked tremulously as he pulled her down on to his lap as he sat in the chair. ‘Everything is cut and dried; there’s no chance of a reprieve or that it’s curable. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave—’
‘Well, I’d sure blame you,’ he said grimly. ‘You’re mine, Amy, and I’m yours. I have the right to expect everything from you that I wouldn’t even want from anyone else, love, fidelity, the whole caboodle—’
‘And there’ll be no family, no children,’ she said quietly, as she felt something begin to rise in her, a flood of pain and joy and anguish that constricted her chest in a tight band. ‘It’s hereditary, you see, in baby girls. I couldn’t risk—’