Forbidden

Raychel shook her head. “Thank you so much, Anthony. This is a wonderful gift.”

“You’re welcome, my love.” He checked his watch. “I’d better get going. My men will be waiting at the harbor for me.”

Raychel reached up as best she could and hugged me tight. “Have a good day.”

“I will. Don’t tire yourself out!”

Raychel rolled her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

I patted her bottom familiarly as I left. “That’s more like it.”

I left with Raychel’s heartfelt snort ringing in my ears.

Chapter Eighteen

Raychel

I wandered down to the mailbox after spending the morning painting. It was a wonderful indulgence, and I felt better than I had in a long time doing it. I sorted through the mail, stacking the envelopes into his and hers piles, until I came upon a bill from the hospital.

Although I really didn’t want to open it, I did. Here it was, the enormous bill I wasn’t ever going to be able to begin to pay. But when I looked at it, it listed everything they had done for me—on about ten pages, but where the total was, it said in big red letters ‘paid in full.’

How could it possibly have been—

Anthony.

Anthony paid my hospital bill.

I knew it as surely as I knew my name. At first, I was flooded with a raging anger such as I had never felt before. How dare he? He’d gotten so damned high-handed with me, just because we had slept together that one time… I had been so banged up that even lately, though I’d been getting rapidly better, he hadn’t touched me that way. Probably for fear that he’d hurt me.

But he had paid my bill and moved me out of my apartment, proposed to me, and set me up in his house, with a studio and everything, as if I belonged there, but I wasn’t so sure I did.

I hoped I did, but my memories of my father and a life in the mafia that killed him pervaded this place, and I wasn’t sure there was anything either of us could do to change that. And I didn’t want to make too much of a fuss, or he was likely to go and sell the estate, put us in witness protection or something crazy along those lines, just so I would feel more comfortable and agree to be his wife.

Yes, Anthony would do anything for me. He loved me, and I desperately loved him. So why? Why did I fight the love so much? Was it just because of my father, or was I using his memory as an excuse? Could it be that my father was a convenient pretext to protect me, to protect my heart?

I took a deep breath. I was scared. I was scared of being happy. Scared of allowing the pain, the fear, and my misery to go away. It was all I knew. It had been my only companion for so long. But now… happiness stood in the distance, and all I had to do was have the courage to reach for it.

* * *

Anthony

When I got home that night, she was up in my room, in bed. I raced upstairs because she wasn’t there to greet me once I got in the door, terrified that something had happened. I burst into the room as if the devil himself was after me.

“Raychel! Are you okay? Are you all right? Did you fall?”

She threw back the covers and came to me, not as fluidly as she could have in the past, but she made it. And, except for the casts and my ring, she was stark naked. Raychel reached up to my neck as best she could with her broken arm, then showed me the ring deliberately, before wrapping that arm around my neck.

“I got the mail today.”

My eyebrow went up as my interest piqued. What did that have to do with anything? “Uh, that’s good.” I started to carefully guide the both of us to the bed. I had become instantly aroused as soon as I saw her rise from the bed in all her gloriousness, but I wanted her someplace safe where I could examine her. Maybe she’d had too many pain pills…

“There was a bill—or rather, not a bill—from the hospital.”

I went rigid in her arms, and not in a good way. “Oh.” I had a fairly good idea what that bill had said.

“Yes. You paid my bill, didn’t you?”

We had made it to the edge of the bed, where I laid her down gently then joined her on my own side, sidling up close to her and drawing her back into my arms. There was no sense in denying it. She didn’t seem to be too mad about it anyway. She obviously knew.

“Yes, I did.”

Raychel swallowed, barely choking out, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I hugged her tight, having learned how to do it without hurting her, but touching her like this, when she was naked and vulnerable, was just about killing me. I literally throbbed with the need to be inside her, but I didn’t want to hurt her.