Christine Rimmer - A Bravo Christmas Reunion

He was her love. He was the one she had been waiting for, dreaming of, through all her lonely years until that moment.

Marriage to Marcus. Oh, yeah. It was what she’d longed for, what she’d hoped against hope might happen someday.

Because she loved him. She’d known from the first that she would. And within weeks of going to work for him, she was his. Completely, without reservation, though he refused to touch her for months.

She waited. She schemed.

And then his divorce became final. She went to his house wearing a yellow raincoat, high heels, a few wisps of lingerie and nothing else.

At last, they were lovers. No, he didn’t love her. Oh, but she loved him.

God help her, she sometimes feared that she would always love him. And her love…it was like Christmas to her. It was magic. And bright colored lights. It was that one present with her name on it under a new foster mother’s tree.

“Hayley?” His voice came to her. The voice of her beloved. Dreamed of. Yearned after—and yet, in the end, no more hers than all the foster families she’d grown up with.

She pressed her lips together, shook her head, stared bleakly past him, at the shining lights of her tree.

“Damn it, Hayley. What do you want from me? You want me to beg you? I’m willing. Anything. Just marry me and let me take care of you. And our baby. Let me—”

“Stop.” The sound scraped itself free of her throat.

He swore. A word harsh and graphic. But at least after that, he fell silent.

She met his eyes. “What if there was no baby, if I wasn’t pregnant…?”

“But you are.”

“Work with me here. If I wasn’t. Would you be asking me to marry you now?”

A muscle danced in his jaw. “I would, yes. I love you.”

The lie was so huge, she almost smiled. And the knot that was her stomach had eased a little. She felt better now. She knew she could hold out against him, against her impossible dream that he would someday find his way to her, that at last he would see she was the only one for him.

But he hadn’t found his way to her, not in his secret heart. And he never would.

“Marcus. Come on. You’re lying.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Please. This is not going to work.”

“The hell it won’t. I came here to see you, didn’t I, showed up at your door last night? And I had no damn clue about the baby then.”

Okay. Point for him. But hardly a winning one.

She challenged, “You’re telling me you came here because you realized you couldn’t live without me?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t want to go another day without me at your side? You came here intending to ask me to marry you, after all, to beg me to give our love another chance and be your bride at last, to make you the happiest man on earth, make all your dreams come true?”

He looked at her steadily. It was not a pleasant look. “Damn you, Hayley. I want to marry you now . Why does it matter what I would have done if you hadn’t been pregnant?”

“Is that a real question?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you really want to know why it matters?”

“Yes. I do.”

“All right. It matters because in all my life, except for the sister and brother I found in June at my mother’s deathbed, I’ve never had anyone to really call my own. I’ve worn other people’s hand-me-downs, lived in other people’s houses, been the extra kid, the one who didn’t really belong. The one who never had a home of her own.”

“I’m offering you—”

“Wait. I’m not finished. What I’m trying to say is that I had no choice, about the way I grew up. But I do have a choice now. When I get married, I’m going to finally belong to someone. Completely. Lovingly. Openly. And the man I marry will belong to me .”

“I will belong to you. I’ll be true to you, I’ll never betray you.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t. You’re not the kind to cheat. Except in your secret heart.”

“That’s not so.”

“It is. You know it is. You’ll never belong to me, Marcus. You belong to Adriana. You always have and you always will.”

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