‘I know.’ He pressed her hands between his. ‘I’m to blame here. I was so convinced that you’d do what my mother did, and so desperate not to become my father, only I ended up creating the perfect conditions to make both those things happen.’
‘Not on your own, you didn’t!’
He almost smiled. ‘Now who’s being nice?’
She struggled free of his grip, clasping his arms tightly, stricken not just by the quiet, controlled pain in his voice but by what they had both pushed away four years ago.
‘I was lonely and unhappy but I didn’t address those problems—I didn’t confront you. I ran away just like when I was a teenager.’
‘I’d have run away from me too.’ His face creased. ‘I know I wasn’t a good husband, and that I worked too hard, but it was difficult for me to give it up because work’s been so important to me for so long. I didn’t understand what it was doing to you—to us—but I’ve changed. I understand now, and you’re what’s important to me, Teddie—you and George.’
She wanted to believe him, and it would be so much easier to do so now, for she could see how her panicky behaviour must have appeared to him.
Last time the spectre of her parents’ marriage—and his parents’—had always been there in the background. They’d both been too quick to judge the other. When the cracks had appeared he had overreacted and she had run away.
Her eyes were blurred with tears as she felt barriers she had built long before they’d even met starting to crumble.
Maybe they could make it work. Maybe the past was reversible. And if they both chose to behave differently then maybe the outcome would be different too.
Aristo reached out and drew her closer and she splayed her fingers across his chest, feeling his heartbeat slamming against the palm of her hand.
‘Please give me a second chance, Teddie. That’s all I’m asking. I just want to put the past behind us and start again.’
His gaze was unwavering, and the intensity and certainty in his eyes made her heart race.
‘I want that too,’ she said hoarsely. ‘But there’s so much at stake if we get it wrong again.’
She thought about her son, and the simple life they’d shared for three years.
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘But that’s why we won’t get it wrong.’
If he could just get her to say yes...
She hesitated, her green eyes flickering over his face. He felt a first faint glimmer of hope, and had to hold himself back from pulling her into his arms and kissing her until she agreed.
‘This time it will be good between us,’ he said softly. ‘I promise.’
Her head was spinning. It was what she wanted—what she’d always wanted. He was all she’d ever wanted, and she’d never stopped wanting him because she had never stopped loving him.
From the moment she’d chosen him to walk up onto that stage, his intense dark eyes and even darker suit teasing her wi
th a promise of both passion and purpose, the world had been his world and her heart had belonged to him.
Her pulse fluttered. Around her there was a stillness, as though the momentousness of her realisation had stopped the crickets, and even the motion of the sea.
She searched his face. Could it be possible that Aristo felt the same way?
Looking up into his rigid, beautiful face, she knew that right now she wasn’t ready to know the answer to that question, or even to ask it. She still hadn’t replied to his marriage proposal—and, really, why was she waiting? She knew what she wanted, for deep down it was what she’d never stopped wanting.
‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ she said slowly, and then he was sliding his fingers through her hair, pulling her closer, kissing her deeply.
And there was only Aristo, his lips, his hands, and a completeness like no other.
CHAPTER NINE
SHIFTING AGAINST THE MATTRESS, Teddie blinked, opening her eyes straight into Aristo’s steady gaze. It was the last morning of their holiday. Tomorrow they would be back in New York, and they would spend their first night as a family in what she thought of as the real world.
It was three days since she had agreed to become his wife—again—but even now just thinking about it made her breath swell in her throat.