“Don’t say those words out loud ever again.” I clasp the sides of her face in my hands. “I’m already hanging by a thread seeing that bandage on your arm and knowing I didn’t prevent it.”
“You couldn’t have. You can’t predict an accident.”
“Then I’ll learn.” The cords in my throat strain in my effort to make her understand I would stop the world from spinning for five minutes of her happiness. “I’ll learn whatever I need to know to make sure you never cry out my name in pain again. I can still hear it…it’s driving me madder than I already am—”
“I’m fine.” Her eyes are bright, reflecting the sky, as she presses a finger to my mouth. “You’re holding me in your arms after what I’ve done. How could I be anything other than fine?”
That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? We’re not out of the woods just yet. But no matter how she reacts to how I’ve spent my morning, I need her to know I forgive her. That I understand. “Veda, there are going to be people along the way that try to get to me through you. You’re my weakness, my strength, everything in between…and I suspect anyone who has seen me look at you knows it.” Even now, in the middle of this garden, I ache to devour her. There’s a pounding in my temples and my loins, urging me to find a place to lay her down flat and fill her cunt with my rigid flesh. It’s a need that never lessens, and it’s always only for Veda. “No more secrets between us. If you’re scared or cold or want something pretty or a man is making you uncomfortable…I’m the one who makes the bad go away. You only need to whisper it in my ear.”
“I know I should have told you Jack was pressuring me to steal.” Her voice is steady, but her hands tremble where they stroke down my chest. “But I was so worried you wouldn’t listen to an explanation. Or you wouldn’t believe that I’d tried to stop it after only one time.” She toys with the buttons of my shirt, and I know as soon as we’re finished in the gardens, I’m going to need her body. Badly. If for no other reason than to reassure myself she’s alive. “He told me I was already in too deep and he’d show you proof of what I’d done unless I continued. I didn’t know what else to do, but I want to find a way to pay you back. I need to. All those gifts…I’m going to return them and—”
“Like hell you will!” I roar, then immediately rein in my reaction with a deep breath. “You’ll do no such thing. If you do, I’ll only buy double of everything you return. Triple.”
“Ramsey…”
“Listen to me. I would have paid any price just to watch you run toward me on the path just now, through the flowers.” I press a hard kiss to her forehead. “And I don’t care if it makes me a sucker, angel, I would have allowed you to go on stealing from me until the end of time. As long as I had the privilege of waking up beside you every morning. You would have been my little thief, and I would have spent my days hoping you decided to stop, but never, on our worst day, would I have let you go.”
“I love you,” she breathes. “But I need you to know I would have found a way. Or told you. I just need you to know how much you mean to me.”
The man I was before would have hated the vulnerability that creeps along my neck, but in this moment, with my life standing in front of me, all I can do is embrace it. “On my worst day, will you let me go?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Never.”
I brace myself, pausing as a man in all black approaches to our right. A man I’ve been expecting. His arrival is an undeniable signal that I can’t put off the moment of truth any longer, however. “We won’t be visiting your father any more, Veda.” I feel the dirt beneath my fingertips, the roughened skin on my palms, courtesy of the shovel I used to help dig a shallow grave “It would be impossible to visit him ever again. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” She’s very still, but I watch understanding dawn in her gaze. Understanding, relief…and possibly a new awareness of the man into whose arms she so recently leapt. “I won’t tolerate people who come between us. Nod if you understand.”
The wind kicks up, blowing blonde hair across her cheeks and mouth, but she nods slowly. “I understand, Ramsey.”
Warmth melts like butter in my chest, a feeling of completion grabbing me by the neck. Thank God. She’s mine, despite the fact that I’m a madman. Thank God. “Then marry me, Veda. Leave this place as my wife and remain that way until my time on this earth is over.” Her head turns slightly, and I watch recognition of the moment float into her expression as she notices the minister. Tears coast down her face, and she laughs, the sound light and incredulous. And just like during our first few days together, I see that I’m not the only one with a touch of darkness inside them. A hint of storm that I’m going to make sure we celebrate instead of deny.
“Of course I’ll marry you,” Veda whispers with a flirtatious curve of her lips. “As long as you don’t mind picking your wife up from school.”
Without looking at the priest, I beckon him closer. “Angel, I prefer it.”
Epilogue
My fingers drum impatiently on the conference table.
The board meeting in which I’m sitting is running long, and Veda is due to arrive from school any moment. Normally, I wouldn’t mind if she waltzed in like she owned the place and perched her sweet backside right on my lap, that plaid skirt spreading across my thighs while everyone gawks. After all, that’s what she does most afternoons when my driver brings her into Manhattan, allowing her to complete the day distracting me or napping on one of my office couches.
She’s late, however. Only by two minutes, which could easily be accounted for by traffic, but I don’t want a rational explanation, I want my hands sliding up the insides of her thighs.