His fingers tightened around hers. ‘I’ll make it work, Dora,’ he said softly. ‘I can take care of you and Archie. I can give you everything your heart desires.’
She felt her chest tighten and burn. Not everything.
But, then again, what was there left in England for her? No family—or none that cared—a house filled with memories, a job she hated.
Now Charlie was offering her a new future. Financial security, a lifestyle most women could only dream of having and the best sex she’d ever had—probably would ever have.
Sex and security. Was that enough to make a marriage work? What about love?
She felt her heart start to thud against her ribs.
What about it?
No one but Della, and now Archie, had ever loved her, and she loved Archie so much—more than enough to see past the craziness of Charlie’s suggestion to the truth in his words.
And, anyway, maybe love was a bad idea in marriage. It certainly hadn’t made her parents or Della and Lao Dan stick together.
Her heart squeezed.
It was a big decision. She should think about it—sleep on it, even. But she knew that until she’d made up her mind she would never be able to sleep again. And thinking that made it suddenly easy to say, ‘Okay, then. I’ll marry you.’
His eyes were dark, steady, unblinking. ‘We can talk it through...make sure we’re on the same page,’ he began.
But she didn’t want to talk. Instead she sat up straight and let the sheet fall away from her body, knowing how he would react, needing to see him react.
And as he reached out to pull her closer she surrendered to his touch, breathing in the warmth and the scent of him, letting the desire ripping through her body blank her mind to the fear that it was not Archie’s happiness but her hope of being wanted that had made up her mind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS ANOTHER beautiful day. The perfect day, in fact, for the perfect first birthday party.
Shading her eyes, Dora glanced up at the cloudless denim-blue sky. She could hear the steady murmur of bees, and beneath the drowsy insect hum it was just possible to hear the distant soft swell of the ocean.
If only she could swallow the serenity of her surroundings, she thought, staring across the lush garden at a huge fig tree. Buddha had supposedly found enlightenment sitting beneath the branches of just such a tree, but she doubted it would do much to soothe her panicky thoughts.
She sighed. It was her own fault she was feeling like this. Less than a week ago Charlie had been her enemy, then her lover, and now here she was—not just having sex with him, but accepting his proposal of marriage.
Her heart gave a loud thump.
At the time, saying yes had felt like the right thing to do. Right for Archie. And of course that was what mattered here. But she felt so unprepared.
The little she knew about real-life marriage was second-hand—mostly from David, about the unsatisfactory nature of his brief but disastrous liaison with her mother.
Her shoulders stiffened, her body tensing as it always did when she thought about her parents. Had it been their scant, imperfect love that had led her along this path to a marriage of convenience?
But today she wasn’t going to let herself think about them, and why they’d always made her wish she was someone else.
She felt her heartbeat accelerate, and all thoughts of her parents were forgotten as Charlie walked out into the sunlight.
‘Is everything okay?’
He stopped beside her, his dark hair falling silkily over his forehead, and she nodded, her mouth suddenly dry.
In the past she had wanted things—clothes, mostly—and when she was a teenager she had wanted boys in the sense of having a crush on them. And, briefly, whatever and whoever she had wanted had seemed extraordinary.
But once she had worn the dress, or kissed the boy at some party, that feeling of nervous anticipation had melted away like frost on a spring morning, so she had supposed that the same was going to be true with Charlie. That she would get used to him—to the devastating impact of his beauty.
Now she wasn’t sure that would ever happen.