Page 93 of The Gambler Wagers Her Baron

“You still want to kiss me?”

“With ever-increasing fervor,” he confessed. Damon lowered his head until his lips were a mere inch from hers. He knew if he closed his eyes, he could imagine with vivid detail how her lips would feel against his. Yet, that was no longer enough for him. Dreaming of her—them—together was no longer enough. Had never been enough he realized. “But…”

“But you cannot?” She glanced away, her chin lowering in defeat.

“Not until I’ve said everything I need to say,” he replied. “And then, only then, it is you who will need to decide if you want to kiss me.”

She took a step back, and his hand slipped from her shoulder.

His confidence fell with her retreat.

It could not stop him from speaking. He needed, they needed, his honesty before they moved forward, and she fled, no matter the outcome. Acceptance or rejection. This moment was worth a thousand years of sorrow and despair.

Payton was worth Damon risking everything. He had to know if she cared for him, too. “When I settled your debt with Catherton, it wasn’t because of any scheme to have you beholden to me. The duke was determined to find you, and his methods of punishment are rumored to be vile. I could not allow him to learn your name. Not because you worked in my household. It had nothing, and yet everything to do with your place here.

“I saw the way you treated my children, interacted with them, and knew you were what’s best for them,” he confessed. “I couldn’t stand to lose you because of some wager you’d lost. It didn’t matter why you were here that night. It only mattered that you remained here, at Ashford Hall, with my children. You have given them more than I was able to in years. To be honest, I was jealous and captivated by your relationship with Joy and Abram all at the same time.”

“They want the same connection with you,” she said. “They want—need—your love and attention.”

“Until you came into our lives, I didn’t know if I had any love to give them.” As he spoke, the pieces—all the fragments of his being—started to come together. “With you here, giving them the love I couldn’t, it was enough. It was more than I’d ever hoped for until I realized I longed to be a part of it, too.”

Payton turned, walking slowing to the lounge by the hearth. As she pivoted back toward him and sat, her cream skirts flared around her legs. It was difficult to ever envision her in the simple, everyday attire of a governess again. She was every inch the lady: poised, graceful, and stunning.

“I envied your connection with my children.” Damon sat in the chair across from her, knowing he should give her space—the opportunity to listen without having him so near. “After—after—” He couldn’t repeat the words. Sarah and her memory shouldn’t be a part of his attraction to Payton, yet they were unequivocally intertwined. There was no future for him—or for them—without his past. “After I lost Sarah, I was resigned to exist as the lost soul I’ve been all these years. Eating, sleeping, breathing…but not living. I feared she’d taken the best part of me with her.”

Payton’s stare moved from her clenched hands back to his face. Damon expected to see hesitation, discomfort, or possibly irritation in her eyes, but what shone back at him was something akin to compassion. Could this woman understand all he was struggling to grasp?

“The best part of you, the two best parts of you are sleeping upstairs,” she whispered. “The best parts of you came in search of me long after they should have been safely in bed.”

“Mayhap they know me better than I can ever hope to know myself.” Damon massaged the back of his neck. “What I am attempting to explain, though I’m making little progress, is that it wasn’t your relationship with my children I coveted. It was the way they embraced you. And you, them. It was as if the three of you were a family. A family I wasn’t part of…and I’ve greatly missed being part of such a unit.”

“Family is very important, Damon.” She leaned forward toward him. “When all is gone, family is left. I am uncertain what I would’ve done without my siblings after my mother passed away. I can only imagine the pain of losing your wife.”

“Family?” he muttered, an unmistakable question in his tone. “After Sarah, I had my children and my sister. Joy and Abram were young, I should have been there to comfort them, but I could think of nothing comforting to offer. My sister thought that moving on, marrying again, and returning to societal life would make me whole again. Was she right?”

He held Payton’s pitying stare. He hadn’t anyone but himself to blame for being reduced to needing someone so much he accepted their pity.

“Partly, I think yes, and in so many ways, no.”

“Have I failed everyone?” Damon asked. He couldn’t move past the fact that he’d failed his children, displeased his sister, and betrayed Sarah’s memory. The determination to push everyone who depended on him away had been overpowering for so many years, he wasn’t sure how to let it go, to even begin to allow his children back into his life. They were his children, yet they’d attached themselves so readily to Payton, a stranger, not many weeks before.

Could he blame them? He longed for Payton to remain in his life, as well.

Would he go to the lengths Joy and Abram had to keep her?

Chapter 30

Payton watched as uncertainty, despair, remorse, and hope battled within Damon, and she wasn’t certain which would win out. However, she did know it was a victory better achieved if won by his own volition. It would do no one any good if she made the decision for him, if she dissuaded his misguided thinking, or attempted to soothe his conscience.

It would be easy to tell him how she felt, what she would do; though what if he came to resent his decision later?

His choice, and the risks involved had to be his own—and unwavering.

It couldn’t be decided during a moment of weakness or out of guilt or remorse for her present circumstances or his past hardships.

Payton wanted to believe she was worth more than her position as a governess—to both Damon and his children. That their brief times of privacy had been more than a man still in mourning for the loss of his wife and only in need of an ear to listen and a woman to care for his offspring. She needed to be sure that he saw her, not her value as his children’s caregiver, but noticed and valued her as a woman. She couldn’t replace the wife he’d lost, nor the mother Joy and Abram barely remembered. Payton hadn’t the first idea how to even begin to be either of those people.

“Do you feel you’ve failed?” she asked. “Your children are healthy, your servants and their families respect you, and your home is one to be admired. Perhaps it is not everyone else you fear disappointing but yourself.”