After Hours

Somewhat awkwardly Rhys held out a paper bag he’d been clutching in one hand since he’d entered the room. “I did find this,” he said quietly. “It was the only thing I spotted that hadn’t sustained too much damage to be salvaged,”

Hampered by having one arm still immobilized by the IV, she motioned for him to open the bag for her. He did, drawing out a silver rectangle and extending it, solemnly toward her.

The glass was shattered, the silver blackened and dented, but by some miracle the photograph of her. grandparents that had sat for so long on the delicate piecrust table was undamaged. Their lined, loving faces smiled up at her as she tired to focus through a mist of tears. “Oh, Rhys.”

He groaned softly and sat beside her, stroking her head with one unsteady hand. “I’m sorry, Angelique. I know it’s not much. All your things—”

She shook her head forcefully, the tears dislodged by the movement to trickle down her cheek. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not disappointed. This is the one thing I would have saved if given the choice. Thank you, Rhys.”

His thumb made a gentle swipe at one wet tear path. “I know most of your stuff was irreplaceable for sentimental purposes, but we’ll contact your insurance company first thing tomorrow. Your friends have offered to do some shopping for you until you’re on your feet, and you’ll stay with me, of course. You don’t have to worry about anything having to do with finances, you understand? I’ll take care of you.”

“I know you will, Rhys.” She didn’t point out that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself—had, in fact, done so quite adequately when faced with similar circumstances earlier that year. Rhys needed to feel needed by her. Having felt exactly the same way about him, she understood. “And I don’t want you feeling sorry for me, you hear? The legs will mend. I’ll be back on my feet in no time. The doctor promised tha

t there would be very little scarring, though I wasn’t particularly worried about that.”

“He probably assumed you would be. Most incredibly beautiful women tend to be a bit vain. You’re the exception.”

She caught his hand and kissed it. “You sweet talker, you.” She knew exactly how she looked at the moment—bruised, battered, tangled and pale. Only someone who loved her could refer to her as an incredibly beautiful woman just then.

“What I’m trying to say, Rhys, is that I consider myself a very lucky person. When my world crashed down before, it left me with nothing—no family, no friends, no self-respect, very few possessions. I was devastated. This time I have no possessions left, except this—” she hugged the photograph to her chest”—and it doesn’t matter. The friends I’ve made know about my father and don’t seem to care at all, I’ve earned my own way long enough to know that I can continue to do so and, most importantly, I have you. How could I possibly complain?”

“I want you to marry me. Immediately. Now that the press is keeping an eye on us, I don’t want them reporting that we’re living together without benefit of marriage.”

She chuckled. “Rhys, that’s so old-fashioned. No one will care if we live together before the wedding.”

“I care,” he corrected her implacably, jaw squared. “I’m sorry if you were hoping for a big church wedding with all the trimmings—”

“I wasn’t,” she interrupted quickly.

“Good. Then we’ll be married here, before you leave the hospital, as quickly as I can arrange it.”

“Here?” she repeated weakly, looking around the hospital room. It was true that she hadn’t envisioned a lavish church ceremony, but she hadn’t really pictured a hospital room as her wedding chapel, either. Nor had she thought she’d be flat on her back in bed with two broken legs.

“Here.” His tone brooked no argument.

Rhys would protect her from anything within his power, she thought ruefully—fire, engineers bearing deceptively innocent-looking drinks, gossip from people they’d never even met. She would have to talk to him about this tendency of his to be a bit overprotective. Later.

“All right,” she agreed quietly. “If that’s what you want.” And then she smiled. “I’m really glad you’d already asked me to marry you before this happened. I’d hate to have you wondering if I was only marrying you for your money, now that I’ve nothing of my own.”

His head lifted arrogantly. “If I’d thought you were the kind of woman who’d marry for money, I never would have asked you,” he informed her with a trace of the steel-edged self-assurance that made him so intimidating to those who didn’t know him as well as she did. And she believed him. Rhys wasn’t a man who’d be fooled by anyone, including a woman he wanted.

He threaded her fingers through his, looking down at their linked hands to avoid her eyes. “I’ve never had a family, Angelique,” he said with no trace of arrogance in his voice now. “I’ve always wanted one very badly. I promise I’ll be a good husband to you, and a good father to our children, despite my lack of experience in either area.”

“I know you will, darling,” she assured him tenderly, her chest tightening almost painfully. His eyes shot up at the endearment, smoldering hotly as they met hers. “I love you.”

“I have loved you from the moment you walked into my office,” he told her, unfamiliar emotions making his words stiff. “You looked so cool and so self-confident, your chin stuck out as if daring me to reject you—and yet I could tell that you’d been hurt badly, that you were still hurting despite your brave attempt to hide your feelings behind a wall of icy professionalism.”

His high, lean cheeks tinged with a touch of pink as he shifted restlessly on the bed beside her. Angie stared at that betraying color in fascination as he murmured, “You teased me about reading Yeats. Every time I looked at you during those first few months, when I wanted you so badly and thought I’d never have you, I kept remembering something he wrote.”

“What?” Her question was only a breath of sound.

The color deepening in his face, he grimaced. “I’ve never been the type to quote poetry to a woman, but…How many loved your moments of glad grace, and loved your beauty with love false or true, but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.’”

She blinked back the tears she knew would make him even more uncomfortable. “That’s lovely. Thank you.” She managed a smile. “I have a quote from Yeats of my own that seems appropriate.”

He lifted an eyebrow in question.

“’But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’”