“All right.”
“I don’t care about money or possessions. Sometimes I’m broke, sometimes I’m rolling in cash. I have a gift for making money, and a gift for spending it I don’t worry about the future, I just take each day as it comes.”
“All right’”
“The only family I have left, the only family I care about is Aunt Louisa.”
“I drought you had twenty-seven brothers and sisters.”
“She told you that? I do. I call ’em the horde. We all get along well enough, though most of them are more settled than I am. When did you see Lou?”
“She told me to come after you.”
“Are you always so obedient?”
“When I want to be.”
“So what do you want from me?”
It was that simple, and that difficult She pushed her hair back from her face and took a deep breath.
“I want you to love me,” she said. “I want you to love me as much as I love you.”
He didn’t even blink. “Impossible.”
“Impossible?” she echoed, her heart collapsing.
“There’s no way you could possibly love me as much as I love you. I’m out of my mind for you. Demented, obsessed, crazed, and tempted to buy you that damned house in the suburbs and join a firm of stockbrokers. You could never even begin to understand how much I love you.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He looked shocked, as if he’d just realized the ramifications of it all. The ship was steaming down the Hudson River, and she was kneeling in his bed, looking up at him with her heart in her eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, wondering. “You’re here.”
She looked around her. “Where are we going?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. Not as long as I’m with you.”
He took a breath, and it was almost painful. “The ship’s headed for the coast of Spain then on to Africa. I was planning on leaving there and going across country.”
“Will you take me with you?”
He touched her then. Crossed the cabin and put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her up against his smooth, hot chest. “Yes,” he said. “And I’ll never leave you.”
She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him, her heart in her mouth. “Help me take off this damned wedding dress,” she whispered, “and I’ll never let you go.”
And he did.
Epilogue
Two years later
* * *
The palazzo in Venice had to be her favorite of the seven places they’d lived in their two years of married life together. The farmhouse in Spain ran a close second, and the cottage in the Hebrides had been wonderful, as well.
