Angel shook his arrogant dark head in wonderment. ‘I’ve got to admit that right now I’m having to work at being married to you because you are so stubbornly determined to think the worst of me.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You don’t trust me. You’re always waiting for the roof to fall in! I used to think that was cute but now I’m beginning to wonder if you’ll ever recognise that, even though I’ve made a hell of a lot of mistakes along the way, I do love you,’ he completed almost defiantly.
Merry stared at him in astonishment. ‘You don’t.’
‘Even when you’re wearing the bunny pyjamas you were wearing the night I got you pregnant,’ Angel assured her with confidence. ‘I didn’t recognise it as love until after we were married. Even though I’m always worrying about you, I’m incredibly happy being with you. I wake up in the morning and everything feels good because you’re there beside me. When you’re not there, everything feels off and I feel weirdly lonely…’
Merry’s lower lip parted company with her upper and she stared at him in wide-eyed consternation.
‘And the most extraordinary thing of all is that I thought you loved me too until you walked out and accused me of cheating on you,’ Angel admitted ruefully. ‘I thought that for the first time in my life I was loved for who I was, not for what I can do or buy or provide. You know I’m flawed and you accept it. You know I’m still finding my way in this family set-up.’
‘You’re not the only one. Yesterday I discovered that Sybil is not my aunt but my grandmother,’ Merry told him in a sudden surge. ‘That’s another reason why I was so upset and over the top with you yesterday. I was already all shaken up. My mother was adopted by Sybil’s parents and only learned the truth when she was eighteen. Oh, never mind, I’ll explain it all to you later, but finding out that Sybil and Natalie had been keeping all that from me all my life made me feel deceived…and you’re right, I do love you,’ she completed almost apologetically. ‘I have almost from the start. Don’t know why, don’t know how, just got attached regardless of common sense.’
Angel rested his hands down on her taut shoulders. ‘We had an electric connection from the first day. Somehow, we match. I just wish I hadn’t wasted so much time staying away from you when I wanted to be with you. I was existing in a sort of fog of denial that everything had changed and that I wanted the sort of relationship that I had never trusted or experienced with a woman.’
‘And I let you down,’ she whispered guiltily. ‘I did think the worst at the first sign of trouble. I wasn’t strong and sensible the way I should have been.’
‘It’s sort of comforting that your common sense leaves you when you’re upset. When I arrived and saw you’d been crying, obviously upset, it gave me hope that you did care.’
‘I’ll always care,’ she muttered softly, turning her cheek into the caress of his long fingers.
‘I’ve never trusted love. I know my father cares about me but my mother lost interest the minute I grew beyond the cute baby stage,’ he confided. ‘What you said about Sybil and your mother? Take it back to basics, agape mou. You may not have known the whole story but you were always loved. That’s a blessing. It’s much harder to love without that experience and the confidence it gives you.’
Merry stretched up to him and buried her face in his shoulder, drinking in the musky familiar aroma of his skin like a restorative drug. He caught her chin in his fingers and tipped up her mouth to taste her with hungry urgency.
‘You taste so good,’ he ground out, walking her back towards the bed with single-minded intent. ‘Tell me you love me again… I like hearing it.’
‘How did you guess how I felt?’ Merry pressed. ‘I thought I was hiding it.’
‘You put up with all my unreasonable demands and still smiled at me. I didn’t deserve it so there had to be some other reason why you were being so tolerant and sometimes I couldn’t help testing you to see if you’d crack.’