'But you had told me you would never love me,' she said softly as her heart began to beat so fast that she thought she would faint. 'You said all you could ever offer was a brief affair—'
'I lied.' He laughed harshly—a dry, raw sound that made her flinch. 'To myself as much as you. You'd turned my world upside down and I was desperately trying to right it in the only way I knew how.'
Oh, Reece, Reece, Reece, Reece… She gazed at him in the swiftly enveloping dusk. At his dear, precious face, haunted by a hundred doubts and fears born of a desperately lonely childhood and miserable youth, an adulthood searching for something that had always eluded him until he turned his back on it and made a life on his own terms and conditions.
'And then I found out you'd been in love before…' he said in a strained, harsh voice as a muscle jerked in his jaw. 'I was crazy with jealousy that you'd loved someone—'
'For the whole of the time since we met,' she agreed softly, watching him with loving, passionate eyes as his head came up to search her face desperately, an incredulous hope beginning to burn in
the silver depths of his eyes. 'Never before…' She stood up and reached up to him, winding her arms round his neck as his body froze at her touch. 'And I'll never love again if I can't have you. In that, if nothing else, I'm a true Vance—'
As his mouth came down on hers he crushed her into him in such an agony of love and relief that she could barely breathe, his need so great that it consumed them both as they swayed together in the soft, dusky air, touching and kissing and tasting.
'You'll marry me?' He moved his mouth from hers long enough to ask her and she nodded mistily, unaware of the tears streaming down her face. 'Oh, my love…' He enfolded her into his hardness with a husky groan. 'I could eat you alive.'
And then Wednesday set out to prove that he meant exactly what he said—much to Sunday's delight and undying satisfaction.