‘You’re quiet and sensible and grounded,’ he said, ‘which is all good. But there’s more to you than that. There’s also a part of you that shines. The woman I danced with on the bank of the Seine, and who was brave enough to order lunch in Paris in schoolgirl French. The woman who likes to plan everything but who put herself out of her comfort zone for a few weeks. The woman who makes my world so much brighter just by being there. And I want you in my life for good, Grace. As my wife.’
But he’d been there before and it had all gone wrong. She couldn’t just sweep that under the carpet. ‘What about children?’ she asked.
‘Yet more proof that you’re brave,’ he said wryly, ‘since you’re not scared of dealing with a subject that would make most people shy away. Especially because you’re the only other person in the world who knows the whole truth about Lyn and me.’ He looked at her. ‘I admit, part of me is scared to death about it. I’ve had one marriage go sour on me—and it’s something I can’t really talk about, because Lyn can’t speak up for herself now and I don’t want people to think badly of her.’
‘Absolutely,’ she agreed. ‘And, just so you know, I don’t think badly of her either.’
‘Thank you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m not confusing you with Lyn. I’m not seeing you as her replacement—I’m seeing you as you. But, even though I want to be with you, it scares me that I might end up repeating the same pattern.’
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to see you get hurt and bogged down,’ he said. ‘When I asked you in the museum if you wanted children, you said there were no guarantees.’
‘Because there aren’t,’ she said.
‘I don’t know if the problem was with Lyn or with me,’ he said. ‘If it was with me, then you and I might not be able to conceive. I hate the idea of going through all that again, knowing month after month that I’ve let you down. But,’ he said, ‘if having children is really important to you, I’ll take that risk. I just need to know that...’ He stopped. ‘I’m making a mess of this.’
‘You need to know that our relationship is about more than just having children,’ Grace said. ‘I get it.’ She paused. ‘Do you want children, Roland?’
He nodded. ‘But not at the cost of my marriage. I love you, Grace, and I want to marry you. But wanting everything is greedy.’
‘You taught me something,’ she said. ‘You taught me that it’s OK not to settle for things, not to stick rigidly to my fall-back position of being sensible. It’s OK to dream. But you need to balance it with real life and you need to keep it in perspective. If having children naturally doesn’t work for us, we can look at other options. Being a biological parent is no guarantee of being a good one. Ed isn’t related to me by blood, but he’s the best dad I could ever have asked for.’
‘I agree with you. OK. So what happened to me and Lyn—that won’t happen to us,’ he said.
‘Definitely not,’ she confirmed. ‘We won’t let it.’
‘You know when we touched that heart-shaped brick in Venice?’
She nodded.
‘What did you wish for?’
‘You asked me that before—and if you tell a wish it doesn’t come true,’ she reminded him.
‘Actually, I got the legend wrong. Apparently, the real one is that if you touch the brick, you fall in love. If you touch the brick at the same time as someone else, you’ll be devoted to each other for the rest of your days.’ He paused. ‘We touched the brick at the same time, Grace. I remember that very clearly.’
She felt the colour heating her cheeks. ‘Yes.’
‘And I fell in love with you. I think I fell in love with you before then, but that was when it hit me.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you want to know what I wished?’
‘What did you wish?’ Her words were a whisper.
‘I wished that our arrangement was more than that. That it could be real. And carry on for the rest of our lives.’
Exactly the same as her own wish.
‘So will you marry me, Grace?’ he asked. ‘Will you make my dreams come true?’
Every nerve in her body was urging her to say yes. To go for her dream. But her common sense still held her back. ‘We’ve known each other only a few weeks, and you really think we can make a go of it?’ She shook her head. ‘But I’d known Howard for eighteen months before he proposed—six months as a colleague and a year as my boyfriend.’