There was a note of derision and scorn in her voice.
“As if you’d ever hurt me,” she seethed. “I told him that you do a good enough job on your own of protecting me. And then I told him to get out of my way and to leave me alone. I knew I had to come here and warn you. So after lunch, I pleaded illness and told the others I wasn’t feeling up to shopping, and then I asked Zander to walk me up to the apartment, but as soon as the others left, I asked Zander to bring me here. To you.”
She looked anxiously at him as if worried he would denounce her, call her a liar or worse. But all he could do was sit there, absolutely flabbergasted by everything she’d told him. An alien warmth filled his chest. He didn’t at all know what to make of her declaration. And he had to know why she’d done it. Why had she warned him?
Shame filled him as he remembered his anger, rage and sense of betrayal just minutes before her arrival. Here he’d been doubting her and her loyalty to him when the entire time she’d been tying herself in knots because she was worried about him.
“Why did you warn me, Angel?” he asked in a choked whisper. “I know you have your suspicions. And no, I’m not a good man. So why would you warn me instead of helping them put me away?”
He knew he’d made a serious error in his judgment of her when he saw her reaction to his question. Shock and hurt entered her eyes, and her mouth fell open as she continued to stare wordlessly at him. As though she couldn’t believe he would even ask such a question. And God, how he wished he hadn’t now.
“I would never betray you, Drake,” she said, her words nearly inaudible as she worked to get each one out. “Ever. I am yours. I belong to you. And that means you have everything that is me and mine. My loyalty. My trust. My love.”
She abruptly stood and turned away from him and a sense of panic crawled over his skin like a hundred spiders. At the moment, he’d take the actual spiders over the feeling of panic. Would he lose her because of his lack of faith in her?
Then she whirled around, anger and determination in her eyes. “You’re wrong, Drake. You are a good man. I don’t care what you or anyone else says or thinks. They don’t know you. I do. And you are very much a good man.”
She threw up one hand, her fingers delicately fluttering through the air.
“Can you be ruthless, arrogant and demanding? Absolutely. You’re driven and relentless. But those aren’t bad traits. Those traits are what made you into the man you are today and I very much love the man you are. I still wake up every morning wondering if it’s all just been a dream because this beautiful man who could have any woman in the world he wanted chose me.”
Tears glittered harshly in her eyes once more, and it was all he could do to continue sitting there while she flayed her heart open to bare it—to give it—to him. He’d never felt so humbled in his life than by this sweet, generous and loving woman who stood there fiercely defending him when he’d jumped to nasty conclusions without even asking her about the meeting first.
“And you’ve been so patient with me,” she continued, her voice choked with emotion and the mounting tears she was trying so hard not to shed. “You always take the time to teach me what pleases you, and you please me ten times more in return. I just hope . . .”
She turned away in a valiant effort to compose herself before finally turning back to face him.
“I just hope that you never wake up one day and look at me and say to yourself, What in the world was I thinking?”
She closed the distance between them and slipped to her knees between his, reaching for his hands, gripping them tightly between hers.
“I have only one thing to ask, Drake,” she whispered. “If that ever does happen, if you ever get tired of me and no longer want me, all I ask is for you not to regret the time we spent together. Because I won’t. I’ll cherish every single memory I made with you, every single minute, and I’ll never regret a single second. All I ask is that you do the same and remember me fondly.”
Drake felt as though he’d just been flattened. Like a tank had run over him. He was in absolute awe over the woman kneeling before him. His throat contracted painfully as he realized it was he who should be on his knees in front of her.