One Night to Risk It All

“I can...see where that would be terrifying.”

“Right?”

“And I know what it’s like to marry a man knowing he doesn’t love you. To have him look at you and know...and know it’s not you he wants.”

“Oh, Leah...”

Her sister paused for a moment. “If you don’t want to marry him just come home.”

“I think I do. Want to, I mean. I think I need to.”

“Because of the baby? You don’t, Rachel. We would all support you. You know that.”

“I know,” she looked down at her hands. Except she didn’t know that. One more step out of line and she was finished. She was very likely finished already. “I do know that. I need to for me. Because as much as sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing with him, I know I wouldn’t be happy without him.”

“That’s the worst. I totally know how you feel.”

“Ajax?”

“It’s all good now,” Leah said, sighing, “but at first...yeah. I had to make a choice. Did I want to be with him, even knowing that it wasn’t going to be ideal, or did I want to be without him.”

“And obviously you chose to be with him.”

“Yes, and it worked out. But it doesn’t always.”

“I know that.”

It was weird taking advice from her younger sister, but she badly needed it in a lot of ways. Because Leah was the authority on it, after all.

“I know you know, but someone has to say it. Just in case it got knocked out of your head by Alex’s sweet, sweet loving, which, I’m assuming, is what drew you to him in the first place.”

Rachel couldn’t hold in the borderline hysterical giggle that bubbled up into her throat. “There is that. But you know...there was something else. From that first moment, there was something else.”

She wasn’t sure exactly what the something else was. And she was very sure she didn’t want to know. Though she had a suspicion.

And like almost everything else involving Alex, it was the most exhilarating, terrifying thing she’d ever experienced.

“You love him,” Leah said, in the knowing tone of someone who had been afflicted by the same thing.

Her heart sank, and a burst of joy popped inside of her at the same time. It was terrifying. And wonderful. And horrible. Suddenly it was like the walls had come down, and there was no New Rachel or Old Rachel or Rachel With the Walls of Steel Behind her Heart. There was just Rachel.

Rachel Holt, who loved Alexios Christofides more than anything. No matter what.

“Yes. I do. I love him.”

* * *

“Hello, darling.”

Alex walked into his bedroom, well, the bedroom he usually shared with Rachel, and stopped. She was standing there in nothing but a short lace nightgown, her expression nothing short of seductive.