Force of Feeling

‘When we got back from Wales, you walked away from me without a word,’ she challenged bitterly. ‘All that week I was away, I kept hoping you’d ring me.’

‘I did better than that. I went to see you. I’d driven all evening to get there. God, I’d missed you so much! I couldn’t stay away any longer. I had to tell you how I felt, whether you were ready to hear it or not. I got the number of your room from reception.

‘I suppose I was pretty arrogant. I was sure you’d welcome me with open arms, so sure that I didn’t say a word to you about my plans to visit you on tour. I simply turned up, because I wanted to surprise you…wanted to see pleasure in your eyes when you looked at me. Only it didn’t work out that way, did it?’

She stared at him, stunned by the bitterness in his voice.

‘I went upstairs…you were just going inside your room. There was a man with you—’

‘A man?’ Suddenly, she remembered. ‘It was you,’ she said huskily. ‘The man we thought had got the wrong floor. I wasn’t well—Antony was helping me to my room. I barely knew him!’

His jaw tensed. ‘At Christmas, when I tried to talk to you, you told me there was someone else.’

‘I lied. I’d just heard…’

‘Yes, I know what you’d just heard,’ he interrupted tersely. ‘Meg and Alison have been filling me in. It seemed that they didn’t want to lose you any more than I did. God, I could shake you until your teeth rattle! How could you think…?’ He shook his head suddenly, looking suddenly unutterably weary and vulnerable. Campion caught hold of his sleeve.

‘I was so insecure, Guy. What we had was so new, so precious, I couldn’t…’

‘Trust me?’ he asked bitterly.

‘No. Trust myself, my judgement. I’d been wrong once—’

‘Yes, when you were nineteen…a child.’ He took hold of her face, and she saw the muscle clench in his jaw as he looked at her. ‘I knew from the first I loved you, but what I didn’t bargain for was how much that love was going to disrupt my life. I thought I could pretend that my work was still important when I couldn’t see you each day. I thought I had the strength to go away and stay away when I realised you didn’t want me. I even thought I had the strength to let you make your own choices instead of putting pressure on you, but here I am…ready to beg.

‘I’ve spent weeks in Hollywood, just wanting to get on the next plane home and take you in my arms. Have you any idea what I’ve been through these last few months, or how I felt when my sister blurted out that you were carrying my child…children?’ he amended huskily. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I was frightened,’ she told him simply. ‘I didn’t see how someone like you could possibly want me, and I was afraid of being hurt again.’

He didn’t answer her in words, but the expression in his eyes made her look away.

‘Tait says you haven’t been well.’ He was searching her face as he spoke. ‘You fainted.’

‘It wasn’t important,’ she reassured him. ‘I’m all right now.’

‘How all right? Well enough to get married?’

‘Married?’ She felt her pulse jerk under his fingers where they circled her wrist.

‘We’re a little old-fashioned about these things in my family,’ he told her drily. ‘Meg tells me she’s never going to speak to me again if I do her out of her nieces.’

‘Nieces?’ Campion’s eyebrows rose.

‘Oh, Meg has a thing about little girls. She’s convinced me that she and Tait will only produce boys, and she seems to be right. She’s equally convinced that you and I are going to produce girls, this time round, at least…’

‘And is that why you want to marry me? Because Meg doesn’t want to be deprived of her nieces?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ he told her softly. ‘It’s because I don’t want to be deprived of the woman I love, or the children she’s going to give me,’ he added, putting his hand on her stomach.

Pleasure quivered through her, and as though she had spoken it out aloud he muttered thickly, ‘Campion! God, how I’ve missed you.’

And then he was kissing her, fiercely, hungrily, letting her see how wrong she had been, and how much, how very much he did need her.

It was a long time before he released her.

‘I’ve come straight here from the airport,’ he told her as they walked into the house. ‘Do you suppose I could beg a bed for the night?’