‘Then I saw you at the equestrian centre and I knew I’d got it wrong.’
She waited.
‘All my life people have put my success down to natural gifts, and, yeah, I’ve got some talent. But I’ve worked damn hard to get where I am. When you told me about your accident I knew we were alike. I understood you’d worked hard at your sport. I assumed you’d given it up. But when I saw you’d turned your dream into something better—something outward, for other people—I recognised what I already knew. You’re a special woman, Lorelei St James. Then I did some phoning around. Why in the hell didn’t you tell me those debts were your father’s legal fees?’
Lorelei swallowed. ‘I didn’t tell anyone. I was ashamed.’
‘You should be bloody proud. Your father is a lucky man. I kept telling myself you were like Jack—I’d overwhelm you, wreck your life—but the truth is you’re strong. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. Stronger than me. You overwhelm me.’
Stunned by this outpouring, Lorelei didn’t know what to say. Nash, who never said more than he had to, hadn’t stopped talking, and he was calling her special and strong and all the things she’d always wanted to be to someone but somehow never had been.
But all of this praise, all of this putting her on a pedestal, frightened her.
‘Please don’t turn me into a trophy. I’m flesh and blood—prone to mistakes, to overreacting...’
‘No.’ He shook his head vigorously, taking hold of her. ‘No, I’ve never seen you as a trophy, Lorelei. I only said that because I didn’t want it to be any different than what I’d known before. But it already was. From the moment we met. And that passion of yours—I never want you to lose it.’
‘You broke our date!’ She knew it was a small thing, but suddenly it assumed the huge dimensions it had always held inside her head and heart. Because she hadn’t completely trusted him after that, and when he’d let her down she’d been half expecting it.
She needed to know why.
‘Call it a last-ditch attempt to throw myself across the track. I knew even then I would love you to distraction. That night when I was coming out of that bar, and you were going in, I was on my way to see you.’
He loved her to distraction?
‘You were?’ Lorelei felt a rush of warmth dispelling the last of the coldness that had been dwelling within her these last two days. ‘I wish you’d told me. I wish this had all been different....’
‘It is different. God, Lorelei, I can’t lose you. Nothing matters to me if you’re not there to share it with me. It was never so clear to me as it was today. That race—I was numb. And then I saw you, and suddenly it was clear as light.’
Her heart thrummed and started beating to a slower, truer beat.
‘You were right—what you said that night in Mauritius. The racing was never the point, I was empty, and I found you, and the emptiness went away. I knew I loved you. Deep down I knew it. Every which way I tried to figure it, I kept coming back to this selfish need I had to keep you with me. I kept telling myself you wouldn’t cope, but it was me.’
He lowered his voice. ‘I was so afraid of building a life around you and you walking away. I wasn’t prepared to risk it.’
Lorelei laid her hand over his heart.
‘All I want is to love you,’ she said softly, sincerely. ‘If you’ll let me.’
He caught her up fiercely in his arms and for a long time just held on to her. Lorelei thought about the little boy who had craved love, the man he had grown into who had avoided it and its painful associations, and the man standing before her now, holding her so tightly, as if she were as vital to him as the blood in his veins, the air he breathed.
As he was to her.
He loved her for who she was, not who he wanted her to be.
It was a miracle.
Suddenly sobbing for breath, she framed his face tightly with her hands. ‘Wherever you go, wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be. I won’t leave you, I won’t betray you and I won’t stop loving you.’
Nash wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. She could feel him shaking slightly, feel the groundswell of feeling behind the sensual motion of his mouth against hers.