Anne Winston - Heart of a Hero

He scrubbed his hands over his face and looked down at the table, unable to stand seeing the pity and regret he knew he would see in her eyes.

A letter lay on the table and his name caught his eye. His first name, anyway. As he scanned it, he realized what it was. The foundation to which he’d made the donation in memory of Melanie had sent a thank-you note.

“I opened it by accident.” Phoebe’s tone was flat.

“I thought it would be a meaningful wedding gift.”

“A wedding gift?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know there’s nothing I can say to ever make it up to you—”

“You don’t have to—”

“—and if it helps any, I will never forgive myself for letting Melanie die. If I’d been quicker, I’d have caught her. I’ve relived that night a thousand times and I know why you blame me.” He halted for a moment. “I blame myself, so why shouldn’t I expect you to?”

“Wade—”

“Don’t.” His shoulders slumped. “Just tell me what you want me to do now. Do you want me to leave?” His voice broke. “I will. I hope that you’ll let me see Bridget sometimes, but I won’t push—”

“Wade!”

At the volume and pitch of her voice, he finally stopped talking abruptly for the first time since she’d shoved away from his embrace.

Looking at the anguished set of his features, hearing the pain in his voice, she suddenly realized what he was thinking. It had nothing to do with lost love. He was blaming himself for Melanie’s death! A tidal wave of shock, confusion and compassion crashed over her head and she forgot about her own pain.

“Wade,” she said. He didn’t look at her and she said it again, crossing to the table and touching his arm. “Wade, look at me.”

Slowly, he lifted his gaze to hers and she was astounded by the pleading look in his eyes.

“I don’t blame you,” she whispered. She knelt on the floor beside his chair. “I’ve never blamed you. Melanie was impulsive. She had an ornery streak a mile wide. Her heart was that big, too, most of the time. She had been drinking. Neither one of us is responsible for what happened that night.” She paused and put a hand to his face. “I don’t blame you,” she said again, urgently, as the look on his face eased fractionally.

“Then why?” He swallowed. “Why won’t you marry me? God, Phoebe, I know I was a slow learner, but I realized that night at the dance that you were what had been missing from my life.” He averted his eyes. “I took advantage of you after the funeral. I have no excuse, except that I had finally figured out that I loved you and I couldn’t have walked away from you then any more than I could have stopped breathing.”

He stopped speaking again then, and the only sound in the room was his harsh breathing and the hitching breaths she still took in the aftermath of her storm of tears.

Phoebe was frozen, his words hammering at her brain but not making sense. At least, not making sense in her current framework of reality.

“Phoebe?”

She sank down onto her heels and he looked alarmed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“You love me?”

He stopped. Searched her eyes, his own incredulous. “You didn’t know?” He snorted. “I thought the whole damned world could see it.”

“I didn’t know,” she confirmed. “I thought—believed that you still…”

“Melanie?”

She nodded. “When I saw the letter, I thought you’d done it because you still missed her, and that it was an accident that it came to this address.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no.” He put his hands beneath her elbows and stood, lifting her to her feet. “It was supposed to make you happy. I wanted to do something special to commemorate our marriage.” He paused, looking down at her and she could see him choosing his words with care. “My feelings for your sister were only a crush. Infatuation. Mel and I weren’t well suited. You surely could see that. We were over long before that reunion and I never regretted it.”

As their eyes met again, she saw the beginnings of hope creeping into his expression. “You love me?” she said again. Stupid, she knew, but she wasn’t quite sure she’d really heard it the first time.

His taut expression eased and the hope blossomed into a look that warmed her heart. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since the night you asked me to dance and I realized I’d been chasing the wrong sister for a long time.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you, too,” she said. “Oh, Wade, so much…” She smiled tremulously. “Pinch me. I must be dreaming.”

“No way,” he said. “Either the pinch or the dreaming. This is real, sweetheart. As real as that little girl sleeping upstairs.” He gathered her against his body and pressed his forehead against hers. “Marry me, please, Phoebe?”

She tried to nod. “Yes. I would love to be your wife.”

“Mother of my children,” he prompted.

“Children? As in more than our one?” She slid her arms up around his neck and toyed with the collar of his shirt.

“Definitely more. Bridget would be spoiled stinking rotten if she was an only.” He paused. “When did you realize…?”

“That I loved you?” She laughed. “At the risk of inflating your ego to an unforgivable level, I’ll tell you. I can’t remember when I didn’t love you. I worshipped you when I was eight, nine, ten. I idolized you at eleven and twelve. By thirteen I was hopelessly infatuated. It tore me to pieces when you dated Mel.”

“I never knew.” His tone was wondering. “How could I not have known?”

“I wasn’t exactly the most outgoing kid,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but you were always comfortable with me. You were—in love with me,” he said ruefully. His expression changed. “God, I could really have blown it, couldn’t I?”

She shrugged. “Doubt it.”

Within ten minutes, he had her flat on her back in the big bed in her room. Their room, she amended silently. Soon she’d be giving herself and everything she had into his care.

Her attention abruptly veered back to the present as one warm, hairy leg pressed between her own legs and Wade’s weight pressed her into the bed. She wriggled beneath him and he growled. “Wait.”

“For what?” she teased, slipping her hands between them and rubbing his small, flat nipples into hard points.

“Tell me,” he demanded, holding himself above her on his forearms, “that you felt it, too, that night we danced. Tell me it wasn’t just me.”

She slipped her hands down his back and he shuddered when he felt them moving lower, trying to pull him closer. Drawing back, he pushed slowly into the welcoming heat of her body, already soft and slick.

She murmured a sound of pleasure as she shifted her hips to accommodate him. “It wasn’t just you.” Then he lowered his head and claimed her mouth and she lost track of anything she’d intended to say as he began to move against her.

A short while later, she lay cuddled against his side. Wade was on his back, his arm around her idly caressing the ball of her shoulder, as another thought struck her. “Holy cow. I forgot all about your interview. How did it go?”

His hand stilled for a moment, then resumed its hypnotic rhythm. “Great!” She tilted her head back to see his face and he grinned at her. “I was offered the job.”

“And you said yes.” It was rhetorical and she was shocked when he shook his head in the negative.

“I said maybe,” he said. His expression sobered, a sheepish quality creeping across his face. “I might have fibbed to you a little bit.”

“Fibbed?” She was flabbergasted. “You made up the job?”