Payment In Love Part 13

'You try to end your own life and almost succeed, and you call that a mistake? For G.o.d's sake, Heather, have you any idea how I felt that night When I came back and found you; when I realised that if I hadn't... Have you any idea of what it did to me to know that I was the one who had driven you to that state?' He shook his head, as though trying to ward off bad memories.

'And now I'm doing it again,' he said savagely. 'G.o.d, when will I learn that I can't make you love me, that just because you gave yourself to me physically it doesn't mean...' He shook his head again.

'It was because of what I said about the child, wasn't it?' he demanded quietly. 'You couldn't bear the thought of being married to me, of bearing my child, and so instead...'

'I did what, Kyle? Took half a bottle of sleeping tablets?' She shook her head vehemently. 'No way! Do you think I haven't learned from my mistakes, too? Do you think I don't have the intelligence to realise how stupid I was? You say you love me.' Her voice shook over the words she had still not fully allowed herself to believe. 'Maybe you do, but you don't seem to know me very well. You're confusing me with a seventeen-year-old spoilt child.'

'What are you trying to tell me?'

He seemed to have recovered some of his familiar self-control; his face was still white and strained, but that blazing look of agony was gone from his eyes.

'I'm trying to tell you that I have too much respect for myself as a person to do anything so foolish.'

'But you hated the thought of being tied to me,' he challenged. 'Don't deny it, I saw it in your eyes.'

'Yes,' she said gravely. 'I hated the thought of being tied to you for the sake of a child I suspect I haven't even conceived.'

He frowned, started to speak and then checked himself. 'What is it you're telling me, Heather?'

'You say you love me. Hasn't it occurred to you that if you'd told me that the night we made love that... that it might have made it easier for me to admit my feelings for you, instead of having to try so desperately to conceal them?'

'Your feelings for me?' He seemed almost stupefied. 'But you hate me! That's why I never told you...'

'Told me what?' she asked sharply, as he broke off with a muttered curse, dark colour tinging his cheeks.

'That your father's operation could have been performed as an emergency case by the National Health Service. That you could have managed after a fashion without my help. Your mother had begun to make the arrangements before I came on the scene, but she agreed to let me.. .take over. I wanted to do more than pay for the operation, you see; I wanted*to give your parents the security they once gave me. And, incidentally, to have an excellent reason to see you every day. And it didn't work, did it? I compromised with my conscience to make you grateful to me, but nothing could change the fact that you hate me.'

'Do I?' she said wryly. 'Is that why I go up in flames every time you come anywhere near me? Is that why I've never wanted any other man to make love to me? Is that why I almost wish I was having your child? Oh, Kyle,' she protested, torn between tears and laughter as he grabbed hold of her, running his hands over her body as though he couldn't believe she was real.

'Six years,' he breathed shakily at last. 'For six years I've dreamed of hearing you say something like this, and now that you are I don't think I can believe it. I thought you hated me.'

'So did I until quite recently, but I knew even before we made love that I was wrong. Kyle!'

'Don't talk,' he muttered thickly against her mouth. 'Kiss me instead.'

It was a long time before he released her.

'I would have helped your parents anyway, you know,' he told her rawly, still holding on to her. 'I love them, Heather, but I kept away for...'

'For my sake... yes, I know,' she agreed quietly. 'It hurt me very badly to have to admit that to myself, Kyle, and to have to admit that it was because of me that my parents deprived themselves of sharing their lives with you.'

'I don't want to talk about the past. Let's talk about the future. Our future. You will marry me?'

'If that's what you want.'

'What I want right now,' he groaned, 'is to pick you up, and lie you down right here in front of the fire, and make love to you until you can't think of anything or anyone but me. Twice now I've thought I've lost you, Heather,' he told her huskily. 'There isn't going to be a third time. I'm never going to let you go, so don't ask me to. So tell me now if you don't want me.'

Wrapping her arms around him, and pressing her mouth against his, her body moulding itself to his in an eager caress, she teased against his lips, 'I don't want you.'

But he couldn't have heard her, because he was already picking her up, and she could feel her blood heating in excited antic.i.p.ation of the pleasure to come. The tablets, still scattered on the floor, were forgotten. The firelight warmed the pale silkiness of her skin and darkened the tanned hardness of Kyle's body. He made love to her with urgency and compulsion, drowning them both in a tidal wave of ecstasy. She slept in his arms and woke to find herself alone. He had tucked his robe around her and propped up beside her a large white envelope with her name on it.

She was just reading the contents when he walked in, wearing another robe and carrying a bottle of champagne and two gla.s.ses.

'Your Christmas present,' he told her, getting down beside her as she stared at the two plane tickets inside the Christmas card.

'Did you really think I wouldn't know how much you'd want to spend this Christmas with your parents'? I was going to give it to you in the morning. A special Christmas morning surprise, but this way 1 don't have to wait until tomorrow to see the pleasure in your eyes.' He poured two gla.s.ses of champagne and handed her one.

'To us and the future,' he toasted, and as Heather sipped the dancing bubbles happiness fizzed up inside her.

'Make love to me again, Kyle,' she whispered, leaning towards him. 'Make love to me so that I can believe all this is real.'

Later, when their son asked why he was called Noel when he was born in September, she would smile at Kyle and he would smile back at her, both of them knowing that the other was remembering the Christmas Eve they had consummated their love and, or so Heather suspected, she had conceived their first child.

end.