The Highlander's Lost Lady (The Lairds Most Likely 3)

“So happy. I never thought I could be so happy.” A stray tear trickled down her cheek, as she seized his hand. “You saved me, Diarmid.”

Damn it all to hell.

Like that, his optimistic expectations shriveled to nothing, and he snatched his hand back from hers. What a fool he was. Would he never learn?

“Havenae we passed beyond gratitude yet, Fiona?”

She frowned. “But I am grateful.”

“I ken that,” he said with grim finality. He heaved to his feet and wondered at how quickly a perfect afternoon could turn sour. “Do ye still want to go on to the beach?”

She didn’t take the hand he held out to her. “I’ve made you angry.”

He sighed. “I’m no’ angry.”

She accepted his hand and rose. “You always hate it when I try to thank you.”

“I do.”

“But gratitude can be part of…love.”

He went as still as the tree trunks ranged around him, and his hand tightened on hers. “What did ye say?”

He didn’t mean to bark out the question, but hearing her speak that one word “love” left him floundering.

She stared at him with a trace of her old uncertainty. “I said love.” Before he could respond, she rushed on. “I feel like we share one soul. What else can that mean but that I love you?”

“Fiona…”

She still wouldn’t let him interrupt her. “You said you loved me once. Perhaps you don’t anymore. I can hardly blame you. I’ve been so unforgivably slow to understand my heart. I’ve felt like this for months. I loved you when I married you, but I didn’t know enough of love to recognize that. Even then, you’d become the center of my thoughts. When Allan shot you and I feared you were dead, God forgive me, I wanted to die, too. Despite knowing Christina needed me.”

He reached out and caught her arms in shaking hands. “Fiona, sweetheart, for pity’s sake…stop.”

“I shouldn’t be saying all this, should I? Now I know how you felt when I told you I didn’t love you.” The tears came faster. So did the words. “How could I have done that to you?”

Diarmid silenced her in the only way he knew. He swept her into his arms and kissed her.

On her lips, he tasted the salt of her tears. She moaned into his mouth, before she kissed him back with a desperation that heated his blood and fed his hungry soul.

When at last he drew away, they were both breathing in great gusts. Her expression was dazed as she stared up at him.

“You do still love me.” It wasn’t a question.

He laughed with sheer elation and kissed her quickly, because he couldn’t resist. And because it seemed that all was well in his world after all.

He loved Fiona, and Fiona loved him. That truth, so profound yet so simple, sank deeper into him with each second.

“Of course I do, ye daft lassie. I told ye long ago that I’ll love ye to the day I die.”

With wondering tenderness, she reached up to caress his jaw. Her eyes sparkled like the stars he’d promised to show her. “And I’ll love you all my life, Diarmid. Our child will be born of love.”

Diarmid had imagined he was immune to shocks, now his wife had done the unbelievable and fallen in love with him. He was wrong. “Our…child?”

In an age-old gesture of maternal protection, Fiona placed one hand over her midriff. “Yes. Sometime in February, Mags says.” She sent him a searching look. “Are you pleased?”

A bairn? The woman he loved was telling him that she carried his baby?

Shaking he caught her up against him, while he struggled to come to terms with an announcement as overwhelming in its way as her declaration of love. “Och, I’m reeling.”