Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (122 page)

She stared at him, and tried to think of something to say, and failed completely.

“You don’t think I mean it,” he said. “Or you don’t think I can do it. And the truth is, I don’t know either. I don’t know the first thing about being in love, and I’m sure I’ll stuff up all over the shop. But I know it’s there, I know it’s real, and I don’t want to let it go. I can’t let you go without a fight, because I think we’re worth taking a chance on, if you think…if you think you might be able to love me, too.”

“I don’t…” she said. “My suitcase is on the plane. I don’t have any clothes. And your mother hates me.”

He laughed a little at that. “Oh, baby. We can go shopping. And your mother hates me just as much. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got all the time in the world to change their minds. Just…stay. Please. Stay. Even though I’m not a billionaire, and I’ve never been the hero of anybody’s story. I’m nowhere close to perfect, and I know it. But I need you to believe in me all the same.”

She couldn’t help it, the tears had spilled over again, and she was crying. Because maybe, just maybe…it was true.

“Of course you’re a hero,” she told him. “You’re your family’s hero, and you’re mine. You’re such a good man, and you don’t even know it. And I love you, too. Of course I do. I think I’ve loved you since that night on the roof, when you opened your heart that little bit to me, because your heart is…it’s beautiful. There’s so much more in you than you show, and it’s so special. I don’t know why you don’t know that, but if you need me to believe in you, you don’t have to wish for that, because I already do. And why would I want a billionaire if I could have you? Why would I want a tortured soul? If I didn’t write you, it’s only because some things are too precious to share. Some things are just…mine. Some things are only for my heart to hold. I don’t want Hemi any more than I hope you want Hope. I want you.”

“Well, that’s good.” He was smiling a little now, even though his smile didn’t look very steady. “Because I don’t want Hope. Not that she isn’t awesome. But she’s not funny enough for me, and not curvy enough, and not saucy enough, either. I don’t want Hope. I want Faith. Because hope is…hope is wishing. But faith is believing.”

She really was crying now. Standing there on the other side of the barrier, and completely losing it, and behind her, they were calling her name.

“Please, baby.” His face was so sweet, and so urgent. Like this was all he wanted. Like it was everything. “Walk to me. Stay. I need you. Please. Stay.”

It was a choice, and it was no choice at all. She took the walk. Right through the barrier, and straight into his arms.

“Closing the door,” the female agent said.

“Yeh,” Will told her, his arms around Faith, holding her so close. Holding her so tight. Her face was buried in the damp cotton of his shirt, and she was crying, and she didn’t care. “You tell them to go on and close it. Faith’s suitcase can go all the way to Vegas. But she’s staying right here.”

Epilogue

Two months later

“What do you think?” Faith burst out as if she couldn’t help herself.

“Shh,” Will said. “Let me finish.”

He could feel the tense expectancy vibrating in her where she lay stretched out beside him on the deck of the sailboat. It made him smile a little, and touched him, too, that she cared about his opinion so much.

She’d refused to publish the final installment of her novel until the fuss had died down over what she called “my dirty stories,” and until she’d known that he was securely back in the New Zealand rugby fold. Today, though, two weeks into the Rugby Championship and with his starting position on the All Blacks secure, she had pushed the button, and Hope and Hemi’s final episode was live.

There had been a few rocky weeks in there, it was true, but nothing the two of them hadn’t been able to ride out together. And the delay, the publicity, the anticipation hadn’t hurt her sales one bit. Faith had become, in fact, almost the only person he loved who didn’t need his money, and wasn’t that something?

And yet, despite nearly two months of delay, she hadn’t allowed him to him to read this final episode until she’d published it.

“I can’t stand to,” she had tried to explain when he’d asked. “If you don’t like it, what do I do?”

“I’ll like it, though. I know I would. I liked it so far, didn’t I?”

“You
said
you did. But if you thought it was cheesy…” She’d hid her face in her hand. “Oh,” she’d groaned. “What if it
is
cheesy?”

“Well,” he’d said reasonably, “that could be why you’d want me to read it.”

“No. Not until it’s up.”

So he’d waited. Now, he held the tablet up against a backdrop of stars and read.

***

Hope was writing a note to her landlady when the buzzer rang.

“Would you get that?” she asked Karen, and her sister went to the door without a word. Karen hadn’t forgiven her, it seemed, for their abrupt departure from the hotel, or for the additional move Hope was forcing on her. Hope sighed and ran a hand over her forehead. She guessed it was a good thing that Karen was pushing back. Her sister had been too sick to be anything like a typical teenager for so long. But right now, Karen’s attitude felt like the last straw. It was hard enough to leave Hemi, to leave her job, to try to find someplace to hide from him. It was so hard, she could swear it was going to break her, except that as always, she couldn’t afford to break.

Karen had pushed the intercom button, had asked, “Hello? Hello?” Now, she shrugged and turned away. “Kids or something.”

She had barely taken the few steps back to the tiny kitchen table when they heard the pounding at the door. Not knuckles. A fist, and they both jumped and stared at each other.

“Hope!” It was a bellow. “HOPE!” The blows were crashing against the flimsy door again.

“No.” Hope breathed the word. “I…I can’t. I
can’t.
” She stood up hastily, pushed away from the table, and rushed to the bedroom, locking the door behind her.

Coward,
she raged, as she wrapped her arms around herself and huddled on the bed, rocking back and forth. But it was too much. Why had he come?
How
had he come? He was still in Milan. Except that he wasn’t. He was here.

She heard Karen’s voice, now, Hemi’s deep answering rumble. He was here. He was in her apartment. And she couldn’t stand it.

***

The door opened just as his fist was coming down on it again, and Hemi spun with the effort to pull the punch, not to hit Karen in her poor abused head.

Because it was Karen, not Hope. Karen, looking…looking well. And despite the adrenaline, the frustration, the fear and pain, he softened.

“Hi, sweetheart.” His hand went out to feel the fuzz that had begun to grow back to cover her naked scalp. She looked vulnerable and plucked as a baby robin, and he kissed her cheek gently and asked, “How’re you going?”

“I’m good. I mean, I’m
good.
I don’t hurt, and it’s…” She laughed. “It’s amazing, you know?”

“Yeh,” he said, smiling back at her. “I know. How about letting me in?”

She stepped back. “Oh! Sorry. What’s going on, though? I don’t get it. Did you break up with Hope? Is that why we had to leave?”

“No,” he said, and the grimness had come straight back again. “It wasn’t me. I’m here to find out what it was. Where is she?”

“In the bedroom.”

He was across to it in three strides, because that was how tiny this grotty apartment was, and the rage rose in him once again that she was still living here. He knocked on this door, too, but he didn’t pound this time, because he didn’t want to scare her. She was hiding from him? Why? That wasn’t like Hope. She had always faced him, no matter how forbidding he might have seemed, no matter how much a lesser woman would have quailed.

“Hope,” he called out. “Talk to me.”

“Please.” He heard the wavering voice from the other side. “Please go away. It’s all right. I understand. But please go. I can’t talk to you.”

What the hell? “You may understand,” he said, the frustration mounting at having to have this conversation through a bloody door, “but I don’t have a clue. Talk to me. You owe me that.”

“I know.” It was a sob. “I know how much I owe you. I’d pay you back, but I…I don’t think I can. Someday, though, I will. I promise.”

He’d had enough. He was aware of Karen hovering uncertainly behind him, but he didn’t care. “Open the door,” he tried one more time. “Now.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Then stand back.”

He stepped back himself, took two quick paces, raised his foot, and kicked the jamb hard. The flimsy fitting broke under his shoe with a mighty crack,
Karen had jumped and shrieked behind him, and he was through. Bursting straight upon Hope, her face pale as chalk and wet with tears, her eyes huge, her arms wrapped around herself.

“Right.” He put his own hands on his hips to keep from grabbing her. “Tell me what’s happened to make you leave me, and I’ll make it right. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it. Just tell me.”

“I…” She was shaking.

“Baby.” He couldn’t wait another minute. He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. “Please. Trust me to help. I can’t stand this.”

She had let go, was sobbing as he’d never seen her do, hauling in great lungsful of air, her shoulders heaving, and his hands were smoothing over her back, pulling her down to sit on the bed with him.

He waited until the sobs had turned to hiccups, then reached for the box of tissues and let her clean herself up. “Now,” he said again. “Please. Tell me what it is.”

“It was…” She still wasn’t looking at him. “Martine.”

“Martine?”
Of all the things he had expected to hear, that was the last.

“She came to see me this afternoon. She said…” She breathed in and looked him in the eye at last, her face tear-stained, her eyes swollen and red. “She said that you gave her that necklace, and that when the necklace came, it was the…” Her voice wobbled again. “The end. That that was goodbye. And I realized that you had had me working for your old mistress. I couldn’t believe you’d do that, but when the necklace came after all…” Her eyes were filling, and she took another deep breath and forced the words out. “I knew it was true. I knew that I had been so wrong. And I had to go. Because I couldn’t…I can’t say…goodbye.” Her voice had been dropping as she spoke, and the final word was a whisper.

“Oh, baby.” Fury and tenderness warred for pride of place, and tenderness won. For now. “No. That’s not what it was. And that’s not what Martine was, either. I gave her that necklace to say thank you after our first Milan show. She worked hard, and she did well, and that’s why she’s there, but after today, she won’t be. Because I never slept with her. Never. She wanted to, I know she did. And I guess she was…bitter about that. And so you know—” The fury was back. “Hard work or no, she’s gone. Today. But, no. Never. I wouldn’t have done that to you. I can’t believe you didn’t trust me, but then…” He stopped himself and laughed a little, although it wasn’t one bit funny. “I know why you didn’t. I haven’t exactly been trustworthy in the past. I haven’t been a man a woman could count on, and I may have given some women jewelry, too. Martine was right about that. But with you…it was different. This wasn’t goodbye. This was…this was ‘I love you.’”

He had never said the words before, and now, he couldn’t believe it. They didn’t feel scary. They felt right.

“Oh.” She was shaking again, but maybe for a different reason this time. “Oh. I’m so…Oh, Hemi. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t believe.”

“No, sweetheart.” The tenderness was doing its best to overpower him, his chest swelling with it as if his heart had grown. Because it had. Because she had made it happen. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that it’s taken me so long to say it. Sorry that it’s taken me all this time to let you know it, and to be the man you need.”

“You’ve always been the man I need.” Now, she wasn’t shaking. She’d pulled herself together, because that was Hope. So strong, and so gentle. Her eyes were steady, and her hand was on his face, smoothing over his hair, and everything he needed was in that hand, those eyes. “And I love you, too,” she whispered. “Of course I do.”

“Then…” He pulled the velvet case out of his pocket, the one he’d stopped by the shop to collect on the way here, because he’d been determined that he was going to put it around her neck, even if it was the last thing he did before she said goodbye to him forever. He opened the box and pulled out the delicate circlet of sapphires and diamonds, not even the humble surroundings able to diminish their flash. “Then, please. My Hope. Please let me put this on you. Please tell me that I get to keep you forever. Please let me love you.”

***

Will set the tablet down, barely knowing what he was doing, put a finger and thumb to his eyes, and sighed.

“What?” Faith asked, her voice anxious. “What? Bad?”

“Sweetheart.” He laughed a little. “No. You’ve made me…” He did a bit more repair work. “You’ve made me cry.”

“Really?”

“You don’t need to sound so pleased about it,” he said a little crossly. “Bloody hell.” He sniffed. “They’d better not make a film, or I’m going to lose it.”

She sighed gustily with relief. “Oh, good.”

“Yeh,” he said. “Just that good. How did you think of all that? All those…feelings?”

She turned her head to look at him. “How? From loving you, of course. From knowing how I felt about you. How scared I was that you could never feel the same way, and how hard I fought it, because I was so sure there was nothing but pain there for me. From thinking about what would make my own heart swell to hear, and what would make me cry.”