‘I can’t let you be on your own tonight. You’re coming with me.’
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked as he linked her arm through his.
‘To my bed. But not for sex,’ he added when she shot him one of her direct looks.
‘Not for sex?’ she repeated. ‘What do you plan instead? A bedtime story?’
The return to the humour they’d always shared was the greatest relief. Cupping Rose’s face in his hands, he asked her, ‘Do you remember what I said to you that night at the wedding?’
‘Every word,’ she assured him. ‘It isn’t every day I’m invited to have sex with a man just to relieve his boredom.’
‘Well, now I’m asking you to come to bed with me because I’m madly in love with you, Rose Kelly. I can’t live without you. I don’t want to try. Give me the chance to hold you in my arms and keep you safe.’
A smile started slowly on her mouth until finally it lit up Rose’s eyes. ‘And in the morning?’ she prompted.
He shrugged and smiled. ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ROSEWOKESLOWLY, unsure for a moment where she was. She only knew as she stretched and rubbed her eyes that she’d enjoyed the best and deepest sleep she could remember.
In Raffa’s bed?
She shot up to find him slumbering beside her, spread across every spare inch of the bed. She’d never seen him so relaxed. Running inventory on her sleep-warm body proved they’d slept and nothing more. They’d lifted a huge burden before they’d settled down to sleep together last night. Grief wasn’t easily dismissed, but they’d found ways to deal with it. Everything was easier together.
How her mother would have rejoiced at the news of this baby, Rose reflected as she reached for her phone. She’d downloaded an app that showed a child in various stages of development in the womb. Theirs was the size of a blueberry, soon to become a plum, with a lemon and a grapefruit to follow. A fruit salad of joy, she reflected happily as she rested back on the plump bank of pillows.
‘What are you doing?’ Raffa grunted sleepily.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘What’s so urgent you had to use your phone? Do you have a problem, Rose? Is it something I can help with?’
‘No. Here. Take a look.’ She passed the phone.
‘What am I looking at?’ Raffa asked, perplexed.
‘That’s the size of our child,’ Rose explained.
‘Are you giving birth to a blueberry?’
She laughed with sheer happiness. ‘No, to a beautiful child.’
Leaning over to share the moment, she felt a tear on her hand. ‘Raffa... So, you have no feelings?’ she said gently.
No feelings? Raffa was drowning in them. That it had taken the graphic of a blueberry, showing the approximate size of a baby at around six weeks old, was ridiculous—but true. Wherever his feelings had been hiding, Rose had released them. Having started the process last night, she’d delivered the coup de grâce on the small screen of her phone.
‘What have you done?’ he whispered, accepting and welcoming the emotion overwhelming him.
‘I don’t know,’ Rose responded in the same gentle tone. ‘What have I done?’
A wave of regret hit him. ‘I wish my parents were alive to see this.’
‘And my mother,’ Rose agreed softly.
‘Life can be cruel.’
‘No,’ she argued with a firm shake of her head. ‘Life is wonderful. Just when you think you’ve lost everything, you stumble across something new that lifts you to the sky and makes you see the possibilities.’
