Yes, it would be as easy as breathing to take her, but where would that leave them? Hadn’t he used the power of his sexual expertise to shield him from life for too long, seeking the heady power of sex as a substitute for emotion, time after time? And didn’t he owe this woman the truth, no matter how hard it was for him to admit it?
Turning her over, he stared down into her face—at the dark dilation of her blue eyes and the flare of colour which washed across her cheekbones—and felt a strange rush of something like pain in his heart. He had faced death and danger many times during his life, but he had never known such a feeling of trepidation. How was it possible to face the mighty wrath of a thirteen-hundred-pound animal in the bullring with a degree of steadfastness and resolve…and yet be rendered weak by the blaze in a woman’s beautiful blue eyes?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.
Kat frowned. What was he saying—that he’d changed his mind about making love to her when it had obviously been on his mind only seconds ago? ‘Sorry?’ she echoed. ‘What for?’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘How long have you got? For doubting you. For being a victim of my own prejudice. For not realising that the woman I saw on my boat was the real you, not the poor little rich girl I was determined to see. That once you’d peeled away the layers you’d used to protect yourself from the tough blows that life had dealt you, I caught a glimpse of the woman you really were. The real Kat. That beneath all the finery was something much more precious.’ For a moment his voice sounded shaken. ‘And that something was you.’
Kat stared at him, confusion tempered with the frantic clamour of her mind telling
her not to raise her hopes. Not to let him hurt her. Not any more. ‘Are you saying all this because I’m having a baby?’ she whispered.
He shook his head. ‘I’m saying it because I mean it. Because I’ve been a fool, Kat. A stupid fool.’ Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to admit why. ‘Resenting you for the fact that, for the first time in my life, I lost control when I was around you. Without realising that sometimes a man needs to lose control, because that is what makes him human. What enables him to grab at the things which make life worth living.’
Suddenly, Kat could see how Carlos’s steely self-will had protected him in exactly the same way as the armoury of her clothes and rebellious attitude had protected her. The two of them had a lot more in common than she’d ever realised. They’d both witnessed violence and pain. Had both deployed their own methods of coping with them.
And now?
They could, she realised, put all their demons in the past—but only if he wanted to. Because she realised something else too. That time after time she had given herself to Carlos, only to have him push her away. She understood why he had done it—but she couldn’t keep on doing it. Giving was a two-way street—or there could be no true equality. No real relationship. Her voice was gentle. ‘Carlos, what exactly are you saying?’
He was intelligent enough to know that this was one of life’s big questions, the sort that your entire future would depend on. And even as she asked it, the answer came to him instantly, with a kind of blinding certainty he’d never before realised he was capable of.
He stared straight into her face. ‘That I love you,’ he said simply.
They were words she never thought she’d hear—never from Carlos—but it didn’t occur to Kat to doubt them. Not for a minute. Perhaps because she sensed how much it had taken for him to say them—and because although his words could sometimes wound, they were always truthful. And perhaps because she knew that he had missed out on love for so much of his life, it didn’t occur to her to hesitate. Nor to hold back in any way. In fact, she couldn’t have done—for the joy in her heart was too insistent to be silenced.
‘Oh, Carlos. My sweet, darling Carlos. I love you too,’ she whispered. ‘So much.’
He took her face in his hands, cupping its heart shape between both palms. ‘I want to marry you, Kat,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I want us to make a life for ourselves together. A new life. A proper life.’
And now she did hesitate. For Kat hadn’t grown up with the best role models in the world where marriage was concerned. Her family was littered with divorces and their complicated consequences.
‘And I want to be a good father,’ he continued fiercely, before she had spoken. ‘The best father in the world to our child. He—or she—will have their own destiny and never will I try to live my life through them.’
She heard the resolve which had deepened his voice and knew that Carlos was determined never to replicate the cruelty practised by his father. And that determination of his spurred her on. Because wasn’t marriage a leap of faith for everyone? In a way, she and Carlos were lucky. They had witnessed the mistakes that other people could make with their lives—and they could do their best to ensure they didn’t repeat them.’
She drew back a little as she looked up into his face. ‘Oh, Carlos—of course I’ll marry you. I want to marry you more than anything else on earth.’
He nodded, and for a moment there was a lump in his throat so big that he had difficulty in speaking. ‘Then seal it with a kiss, Princesa,’ he commanded at last.
Something in his eyes made her tremble and something in the sweet restorative power of his lips made her tremble even more. She sighed when he lifted her off the sunbed and carried her to the nearby cabana, where he peeled off her little lemon bikini with a quiet and urgent hunger which was underpinned with an unmistakable sense of awe.
A shaft of pure love shot through her as he positioned his powerful naked body over hers and when he filled her with one slick, long thrust, she cried out her pleasure. As sunlight and birdsong drifted in to mingle with the sound of their muffled moans of pleasure, Kat thought she had never known happiness like it.
Please make it last, she prayed silently, as she held him, both still shuddering from the sweet onslaught of their passion. But somehow she knew that they would make it last. The two of them—and then, one day in the coming months, three. They would do everything in their power to ensure that life would be good.
Snuggling against him, Kat felt the slowing of his heart and she nuzzled against his neck, wanting to shower him with tiny kisses which demonstrated all the love she was bursting to give him.
Funny, really—her father had sent her away to learn commitment and she had found it. It had been a tough lesson but she knuckled down to it—and Carlos had helped show her how. So really, it made sense for him to reap the benefits.
For wasn’t marriage the biggest and most wonderful commitment of all?
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Sharon Kendrick for her contribution to The Balfour Brides miniseries.