Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

He drew her to him. “There is no reason for you to blame yourself for any of it. It is over, long over. It is just that you had to know.”

They lay quietly for a time, and then she said, “Alex?”

“Hum?”

“Why do you love me?”

He smiled into the darkness. “Because you fake passion for me so well?”

He felt her fingers close over the hair on his c

hest and tug. He smiled grimly. She had wanted to know why he loved her, and he, agilely enough, had evaded her. How could he explain why when it was simply a feeling, a need that seemed to overshadow everything in his life?

“There is something I would like to hear from you, Giana. I would like you to look me straight in the face and tell me that you want to be my wife and spend your life with me, and damn the unfair laws and damn any men who are unfaithful and harsh with their women.”

He heard her draw in her breath sharply. “It is still a matter of trust, isn’t it?”

“You must give me time,” she whispered at last. She knew she didn’t want to lose him, but she could not help her fright. She saw herself at seventeen, so very young, so very trusting, so very foolish. And Rome, a specter that still haunted her, though less now, she realized, so much less since Alex had come into her life.

As she sought for words to explain to him, she heard him say calmly, “There will always be men like Randall Bennett to take advantage of innocence. You were lucky, Giana. I agree with your mother—Rome was preferable to the unhappiness you would have known with him.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

“If you hadn’t been in Rome,” he continued, “I never would have fallen in love with the coy little virgin I bought.”

“Perhaps you would have loved the girl you met four years later in London.”

“That cold woman?”

“I wasn’t cold.”

“You were buried under a foot of snow. I never would have been able to dig my way to you if I hadn’t met you in Rome.”

“You really believe that, Alex?”

“Yes, I really do.”

Giana drew a deep breath. “I know that above all I want to stay with you, Alex. Can I stay, even after the baby is born?”

He was silent for a long moment, knowing that it wasn’t enough, but that it wasn’t the time to say so. There is still time, he thought, his jaw tightening, there is always time. He slowly nodded and drew her to him.

“Yes,” he said. “I want you to stay.” He kissed her temple and listened to her breathing until it slowed and she was asleep on his shoulder.

Chapter 27

It was a glorious day in early April. Delaney, just returned from Washington, strolled beside Giana on the green at Washington Square, matching his stride to hers. She told him about Randall Bennett as they walked, omitting what she thought she must, and dwelling on what Alex had done to him.

Delaney laughed. “You know, Giana, Alex was always beating up whoever dared rub his little brother’s nose in the dirt. Thank God he hasn’t had to do it since I was ten years old. An honorable man, my brother,” he added, squeezing Giana’s arm.

“Yes,” she said, pulling her eyes from the brightly uniformed regiment practicing on the green. “In all his dealings with me, he has certainly been that.”

“I knew once Alex fell in love, he would fall like a mighty oak,” Delaney said.

“He loved Laura.”

“He was fond of Laura,” he said, almost sadly. “Poor girl. He did love her father, dearly. He would have done anything for him. That was really why he kept Laura’s suicide from the Nielson family. It was an awful time for him. I am glad he told you about it. But now, I have never seen him so content. Never would I have imagined that a pert, mouthy English girl would have gotten under his hide.”

“Well, something got under somebody’s hide,” Giana said.