Living in Secret: Living In..., Book 3 (19 page)

“Give you a divorce? I know. But like I said, I’ve been thinking since you left. Make no mistake, Victoria. I meant what I said when I told you I would fight for you. For us. I want you. I want this and I’m going to do my damnedest to make you see that too. But I’m not going to do that by denying you what’s important to you.” He nodded toward the papers she held. “I’ve signed them like you wanted and it’s up to you whether you send them. However, you’re on notice right now I fully intend to seduce the hell out of you and get you to remarry me at the first opportunity.”

Her throat felt thick. Her chest tight. She turned and put the papers on the meeting table, not wanting to look at them anymore. Keeping her back to him. “Thank you,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “But you only have two weeks for all of that because I’ll be leaving for England.”

“Oh, I’ll have more than two weeks. I’ve decided to join you in London.”

Another shock, like cold water down her back.

Victoria turned sharply. “What?”

His gaze was unflinching. “I have a lot of leave I need to use up anyway. It shouldn’t be too difficult to organize.”

“So you’re going to hand over all your cases just like that? To follow me to London?”

“You were so certain about me, Victoria. Now it’s my turn to show you how certain I am about you.”

The heaviness inside her shifted, making her shiver inexplicably. “But…why?”

He pushed himself away from the desk and before she could move, he’d crossed the space between them. She found herself backed up against the table, the hard heat of him in front of her, the ferocity she’d seen so often in his eyes burning once more. But not this time from anger, but another, far more potent emotion. “Don’t you think you’re worth it? Don’t you think you’re worth fighting for?”

Something was breaking inside of her and she didn’t know what it was. It frightened her. “You can’t do that,” she said hoarsely. “You can’t give up everything for me.”

“And you’re avoiding the question.” His voice was gentle, horribly so. “Why shouldn’t I give up everything for you?” He lifted a hand, his fingers brushing her cheekbone.

And at the touch, the thing that had started to break, that was so very, very fragile after all, began to shatter, to crumble and she didn’t know how to stop it.

“Connor,” she whispered instead. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t fight for you? Don’t love you?”

Her vision blurred. “You don’t understand. I don’t want you to love me. I don’t need it.”

“I thought I didn’t need it either.” His fingers trailed down the side of her cheek, along her jawline. Tender. Forgiving. “Turns out I do. And I think you do too.”

She closed her eyes against the sudden, hot rush of tears, coming from a place in her heart she tried to tell herself wasn’t there. “No. Please, no.”

But he ignored that. “I think you do want it, Victoria. I think you’re desperate for it. But I also think you’re too afraid to take it.”

She kept her eyes closed. Because it was too hard to look at him. Too hard to accept what he seemed to be offering. “I can’t, Connor. I don’t want to feel like nothing I do is good enough. I don’t want to feel like I’m being measured and found wanting. Like there’s this goal I have to reach to finally be worthy. I’ve been there, done that.” Finally she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “I gave up a piece of myself for love. I gave up Jessica. And it nearly killed me. I can’t do it again.”

“But I’m not asking you to give up anything, Victoria. I just want you, exactly as you are. I want the intellectual, intelligent, brilliant woman I married. And the passionate, sexy, dirty girl I’ve only just discovered. All those different parts of you, I want them. I want to discover and explore them. You don’t have to be anything else, anyone else, but who you already are.”

A lone tear escaped one corner of her eye, trailing in a hot line down her cheek. And she opened her eyes. “Connor…” Her voice failed. It felt like she’d been hungry for so long, her needs grown so vast and complex, she couldn’t even give names to them. “It’s just… My parents…wanted big things from me. And they worked so hard to give me opportunities and I…” She let out a shaken breath. “I never felt equal to all the sacrifices they made. I never asked for them. I never wanted them. I just wanted… I just wanted them to love me, not give up their whole lives for me.” She swallowed, hating the needy sound in her voice. “But they did and then I got pregnant. And I wanted that baby so much. So goddamn much.” A deep, visceral pain twisted inside her, a pain she’d never been able to outrun no matter how hard she tried.

Connor didn’t speak. He only reached to brush away the tear, his touch gentle against her skin.

“They wouldn’t help me,” she whispered, the touch breaking her a little more. “They said I wouldn’t be able to take care of her, that she’d be better off with people who could give her the life she deserved. And they’d worked too hard to see me throw away the opportunities they’d given me.” The pain twisted again, harder. “So I gave her up. And I’ve been telling myself over and over that was the right choice. The only one. But I always knew the choice I was making wasn’t for her. It was for me.” The words cracked, the pain inside leaking out.

“Victoria,” he murmured. “Don’t—”

But she didn’t let him finish. “
I
could have fought.
I
could have said no.
I
could have kept her. But I didn’t.” Another tear fell down her cheek. “I was too afraid of losing what I had.”

The look in his eyes was so full of understanding she could hardly bear it. “You
were only sixteen, sweetheart,” he said softly. “And that’s not the kind of choice any sixteen-year-old should have to make, let alone punish herself over for so many years.”

“But it was the wrong one.” She couldn’t stop the tears now; they were coming fast. Too many to blink away. Too many to pretend she wasn’t crying. That her heart wasn’t breaking. “I made the wrong choice. And I lost her, Connor. I lost her.” The admission felt torn from her, a splinter of glass taking out what felt like the last piece of her soul. And she was breaking. Falling apart right in front of him.

Yet his arms came around her, taking her in a grip so strong, so certain it was as if he’d never let her go. Holding her together as she broke. Keeping her safe.

And she cried. All the pain she’d never let herself feel. All the anguish she’d been fighting for so many years. And the aching, aching regret that never went away.

After a long time, when all the tears she’d never let herself cry had finally ceased and she felt empty and cleaned out, light and fragile as a blown egg, she rested her head against his chest, listening to the deep, slow beat of his heart. “It’s why I wanted to go to London,” she said at last, her voice thick. “It’s why I pushed myself in my career. That was my crusade. I had to make that choice mean something.”

“I understand that, but you can’t keep punishing yourself for a decision you made when you were sixteen, Victoria.” His voice was a deep rumble in her ear. “If you want a crusade, if you want to make giving her up mean something, then it’s not career success you should be pursuing.”

She lifted her head at that and looked up at him. “Then what?”

He touched her hair, his palm sliding around to the back of her head, cradling her. “Passion. Happiness. Love. Even all of the above.” He smiled, slow and brilliant. A smile she’d never seen before. “We’re not our parents and their expectations. We’re ourselves. We can make our own rules, set our own expectations. We can decide who we want to be.” His smile deepened. “And who I want to be is your husband.”

Damn lawyers and their excellent arguments. “Connor…”

“What about you? Who do you want to be, Victoria? What do
you
want?”

She’d thought she’d come to the end of her tears. She was wrong. Her eyes felt hot and prickly, her throat aching. He’d always been a brilliant man. She just hadn’t ever imagined quite how brilliant. “I want to be worthy.”

“It’s not about worthiness. It’s about acceptance.” His fingers caught her chin, holding her firmly. “Do you love me?”

For a second she wished she could lie. But there was no lying about the feeling that curled around her bones, twining around her soul. That had grown too big now for denial. “Yes.” The word came out as a croak.

“Then love me. And let me love you in return.”

Eleanor was right. It was simple. He was here. And she wanted him. Just him, nothing more, nothing less.

“When we first got married, I thought you were the safe option,” she said shakily. “You were intellectual and ambitious and that was very attractive to me. But then, two years ago, I saw you in court and you were… God, I’d never seen anything like it. All this passion seemed to come out of you, all this intensity. You seduced the jury into a guilty verdict and me right along with them. I wanted you so badly after that.” She leaned into him, into the heat of his body. “It terrified me because I didn’t want to feel like that, not for you, not for anyone. I thought if I ignored it I’d get over it and it would fade. But it never did.” She swallowed. “I still feel it and I’m still afraid.”

There was understanding in his eyes. “So am I. But we can do this, Victoria. I believe it and so should you.”

Slowly, she let out a long breath and the last of her resistance along with it. “In that case…” Rising up on her toes, she pressed her mouth to his. “I love you,” she whispered against his lips. “And I’ll let you love me.”

His arms tightened and he gave her his answer in a kiss that stole her breath and the last remains of her poor, battered heart.

And afterwards, when they were both breathless and aching, she said, “I can’t go to London.” She paused, knowing the truth of it like an incontrovertible fact. “I can’t leave her again.”

Connor didn’t let her go. He only looked down at her with a tenderness that made her feel close to tears for the third time that day. “Then don’t,” he said softly.

So she didn’t.

Turned out they both had a new crusade: happiness.

Epilogue

Victoria smoothed her dress for what was probably the fourth time in as many minutes. Her palms were sweaty and her stomach was in knots, and she wanted to go to the bathroom yet again.

Connor’s warm hand settled over one of hers and instantly the nerves calmed. She turned to find his understanding blue gaze on hers. “It’ll be okay,” he said.

They were sitting in the car outside the restaurant Jessica had specified, the street already busy with the lunchtime crowds.

“What if she doesn’t turn up?” Victoria couldn’t help asking. “What if she changed her mind? What if—”

“It’ll be okay,” he repeated and she could hear the conviction in his voice. “She’ll be there.”

It had taken her a good couple of weeks after her decision to stay in New Zealand to finally contact Jessica. And over the past three months the two of them had exchanged emails and a couple of awkward, fraught phone calls. But it had been Jessica who’d suggested they meet, and even though Victoria had been ecstatic at the time, she was sick with nerves now.

She turned her hand beneath Connor’s, laced her fingers with his, letting the warmth of his touch work its steadying magic.

Three months they’d been together. She’d moved back in a couple of months ago and now they were starting to explore and rebuild a different kind of relationship. A different kind of marriage from the one they’d had before. It was exciting, challenging. Terrifying.

A bit like her decision to finally meet her daughter, the last piece in her new crusade to accept the past and move on. To accept herself and the decision she’d made.

“Okay,” she said. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“But what if she doesn’t like me?”

“She will like you.”

“But—”

Her words were cut off as Connor leaned over from the driver’s seat and kissed her. “Stop,” he murmured. “You’re perfect. You’re amazing. You’re my sexy, dirty girl and I love you.” He kissed her again. “Now get out of the car and go meet your daughter.”

Victoria let the sweetness of his kiss wash away the nervousness. And when she drew back, she was calmer. “Okay,” she said firmly, decisively. “I’ll text you when I’m ready to go.”

She put a hand on the door handle and got out, shutting the door behind her.

The sidewalk was full of people, the bustling hive of the city all around her.

Then someone said, “Victoria?”

She turned and met the uncertain dark eyes of the young woman coming toward her. Olive skin, black hair. Beautiful. So heartbreakingly beautiful.

The uncertainty vanished from the young woman’s features, a tentative smile taking their place. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Jessica.”

About the Author

Jackie has been writing fiction since she was eleven years old. Mild mannered fantasy/SF/pseudo-literary writer by day, obsessive romance writer by night, she used to balance her writing with the more serious job of librarianship until a chance meeting with another romance writer prompted her to throw off the shackles of her day job and devote herself to the true love of her heart–writing romance. She particularly likes to write dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines.

She lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her husband, the inimitable Dr Jax, two kids, two cats and a couple of curious rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on Twitter, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband.

You can find Jackie here:

www.jackieashenden.com

@JackieAshenden

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