‘Oh, I think you do,’ he said softly. ‘I fell in love with you at first sight. I was driving past the vicarage garden, saw you and had to stop. When I approached you I was struck by your beauty, your innocence. I was so bewitched, I hadn’t the sense to ask your name.’ A bleak expression darkened his rugged features. ‘Then Charles arrived and claimed you. I couldn’t speak, I was so gutted, so I walked away.’
‘Oh, Conan.’ If only she had known, Josie thought.
‘I know; childish of me. And later I was incensed with rage and jealousy when I discovered Charles had...’ There was naked agony in his voice. ‘Anyway, when he died it was tragic. But I saw my chance and took it. I was prepared to have you any way I could get you.’
Josie believed him; it was there in the fierce determination in his dark glance. This proud, arrogant man loved her and she was humbled at the thought.
‘Oh, Conan if only I’d known,’ Josie whispered, placing her hand on his arm; the fact that he had been prepared to accept her unconditionally filled her with remorse. ‘I’ve been such a fool and I was so jealous of Angela.’
‘There was never anything between us, I swear.’
‘I believe you.’ She gazed into his dark eyes, her own deepening to purple, allowing all her love for him to show in their shimmering depths. ‘And I love you quite desperately.’
Conan bent his head and their mouths met and clung, draining from each other every last bit of pain and anger in a passionate, deeply loving kiss. His arms tightened around her, and he lowered her back against the sofa. Raining tiny kisses over her face, he declared huskily, ‘I love you, and baby Kathleen, more than life, and nothing else matters. I’ will never let you go again.’
Josie wrapped her arms around him, glorying in the length of his hard body pressing her down into the soft cushions, and buried her face against his neck. ‘You are my life,’ she whispered softly. ‘I think I—’
‘I’ve told you before.’ One strong hand swept a few stray curls from her brow, and his dark eyes glinted with love and desire as he recognised the sensual gleam in her own. ‘You think too much...’ And for a long time they did not think at all.
A week later the whole village of Beeches crowded the church as Kathleen Devine Zarcourt was christened, her proud parents looking on with love...