Authors: Meredith Webber,Alison Roberts
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (44 page)
But nothing followed so he took her hands in his and nodded, then as tension gripped so hard it hurt, he rushed into speech again.
‘I know you don’t feel the same way but you did love me once, so maybe that love is only hidden, not completely gone.’
‘Loved you once?’ she said, and this time the repetition was stronger, and now her blue eyes were fixed on his. ‘What makes you think I’d ever stop loving you, Harry?’
He stared at her, trying to work out what this question meant—trying to equate it with the ‘go away, Harry’ scenarios.
Couldn’t do it, so he had to ask.
‘You sent me away,’ he reminded her. ‘At the hospital, you said to go away and that you didn’t want me there.’
‘Oh, Harry,’ she whispered, and rested her head against his chest. ‘You silly man, thinking I’d stopped loving you. As soon stop the sun from rising as me stop loving you.’
This definitely made him happy, happy enough to press a kiss to her soft curls, but he was still confused. Maybe more confused than ever.
‘But you sent me away when all I wanted was to be with you.’
She turned towards him and lifted one hand to rest it on his cheek.
‘I didn’t want you sitting by my bedside—not at that hospital—not again. I didn’t want you remembering all that pain and anguish, and suffering for things
that happened in the past through no real fault of yours.’
She pressed her lips to his, a present of a kiss.
‘The fact that you talked about Nikki and your marriage suggested you were ready to move on, so I didn’t want you being pulled back into the past because of me.’
‘You’d have liked me there?’ Harry asked, unable to believe that, sick as she had been, she’d still found this one way of the thousand to say ‘I love you’.
‘Of course,’ she whispered, nestling her head on his chest. ‘Loving you the way I do, I always want you near.’
She smiled up at him, then added, ‘Look how pathetic I am—look at this.’
She lifted the black rag from her knee and it took a moment for him to recognise it as his dinner jacket.
‘I brushed off most of the mud and when Gina said I had to keep something over my knees when I sit out in the breeze, it seemed the best knee cover any woman could have. Gina wanted to have it dry-cleaned but it would have come back smelling of dry-cleaning fluid, not Harry, so there you are.’
Her smile mocked her sentimentality but it went straight to Harry’s heart, because it wobbled a bit as if she felt she’d made a fool of herself.
‘Snap!’ he said softly, and reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out a very tattered blue ribbon he’d kept with him since that fateful night.
Then he closed his arms around her and pulled her close, pressing kisses on her head and telling her
things he hadn’t realised he knew, about how much he loved her, but more, that he admired her and thought her wonderful, and how soon would she be his wife?
They’d reached the kissing stage when a voice interrupted them, a voice filled with the disgust that only a five-year-old could muster when faced with demonstrations of love.
‘You’re kissing, Grace,’ CJ said, coming close enough for them to see he held a squirming puppy in his hands. ‘I didn’t think policemen did that kind of thing.’
‘Well, now you know they do,’ Harry said, tucking Grace tightly against his body, never wanting to let her go.
CJ sighed.
‘Then I guess I’ll have to be a fireman instead,’ he said, passing the puppy to Harry. ‘Mum said you were here, and this is the one Lily and I decided should be yours because it looks more like Sport than all the others, although it’s got four legs.’
Harry took the squirming bundle of fur and peered into its face. He failed to see any resemblance at all to Sport, but knew once CJ and Lily had decided something, it was futile to argue.
‘Do you mind if we have two dogs?’ he asked Grace, who smiled at him so lovingly he had to kiss her again, further disgusting CJ, who rescued the pup and departed, making fire-siren noises as he raced away.
‘Two dogs and lots of kids,’ Grace said, returning his kisses with enthusiasm. ‘Is that OK with you?’
Harry thought of all he now knew about Grace’s
background. Loving without being loved must have been so hard for someone with her warm and caring nature.
‘Of course we’ll have lots of kids,’ he promised, and was about to suggest they start on the project right now when he remembered she was just out of hospital and very frail.
But not too frail to kiss him as she whispered, ‘Thank you.’ Then added, ‘I love you, Harry Blake,’ and made his day complete.
ISBN: 978-1-472-04508-9
THE AUSTRALIAN’S PROPOSAL
The Doctor’s Marriage Wish
© 2006 Meredith Webber
The Playboy Doctor’s Proposal
© 2007 Alison Roberts
The Nurse He’s Been Waiting For
© 2007 Meredith Webber
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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