The Unwilling Bride (13 page)

As if she’d bathed in roses, her skin carried that feminine, fragile scent. She tasted warm and yearning, far softer than the silk-nothing she was wearing, far sweeter than spring. She was shivering from head to foot—no doubt from wearing that catch-her-death-of-cold outfit in the drafty hall—yet beneath that silk, her body was warm. Impossibly, vibrantly warm. The source of her trembling seemed to be vulnerability alone, and her kisses were perilously rich with the same emotion. His
lyubeesh
would seem to be offering him all the vulnerability of love, as freely as the wind and a thousand times more wild.

He kissed her back until their lungs both ran out of oxygen. Then he kissed her again, because he wanted to be very sure he was tasting hope instead of despair, and when he’d walked in that door, he’d never, never believed this huge a hope was even possible.

Eventually he pulled his mouth free. His hands, he discovered, had magically slid up all that wicked silk and tangled in her hair. They both just practiced breathing for a second, their lips only separated by inches, and her eyes, as liquid as dark sweet tea, locked on his.

“I’m getting the craziest feeling that there’s a slight, remote chance you missed me,” he murmured.

He hoped to coax a smile, but she was in no mood for humor just then. There was an ocean of anxiety in her eyes. “I missed you,” she said fiercely. “I missed you for the past three days. And I missed you for the two weeks before that, when damn you, Stefan, you cooled down and made out like you were perfectly happy with us just being friends.”

His shaggy eyebrows arched in question. “This was not what you wanted? To be just friends? You told me and told me—”

“I
know
what I told you. That we were wrong for each other. That your life was in too much upheaval and change to possibly be sure of how you felt about me. And dammit, you acted like you agreed…and you were a real
rat
for putting those citizenship papers in front of me. What did you think? That I’d fall for that horseradish about your using me to have a convenient American wife?”

“Horseradish?”

“Horseradish. As in bologna. As in ridiculous nonsense. You would
never
use a woman like that, Stefan.”

She sounded sure—furiously sure—sure enough to insult him and loyally defend his honor at the same time. If she wasn’t careful, his heart was going to take off and soar. “Da. This is true. But if I had to explain this—if it were a question in your mind—I had to believe you did not know me at all.”

“I know you plenty, buster. Well enough to figure out that you put my sister up to having a talk with me. A big, hairy talk so she could raise every doubt and worry I’d ever had about you, about us.”

“I liked your sister.” He cleared his throat. “And possibly it occurred to us both that a little push was required to force your hand. You were swimming in doubts, my cookie. You were swimming in fears. To heap a little more on your head seemed the only way to make you confront these things. You are the only one who knew the truth of your heart.”

She loosened the clasp on his neck. “You were never confused about your feelings for me.”

“Da. This is also true. I beat to my own rhythm, which I admit is not always good. But I know what I feel for you. My life being in upheaval is a nuisance, but I am old friends with chaos. There is no relationship to my being unsure. I know my own heart.”

“Well, I didn’t know mine so easily.” She swallowed, hard. “I wanted you to think well of me, Stefan. I wanted you to think I was…good. A woman worth respecting, worth caring for. I spent a ton of years feeling ashamed of the girl I’d been. It was so important to me to be in control of my feelings, my
life, and especially my hormones. I haven’t been in control of a hormone since I met you,
lyubeesh.”

She’d called him lover in the Russian way, although he wasn’t sure if she realized it. All he knew was that her lips were starting to curve in a smile. A soft promise of a smile, not a full-fledged one yet.

“You know what?” she asked him.

“What?”

“I don’t have to be in control when I’m with you.”

“You are just now coming to this conclusion?” He bent down, picked up the velvet sack and wrapped her fingers around it. She wasn’t paying any attention. She was still looking straight into his eyes, even as he lifted her, hiking her long slim legs around his waist, and started climbing the stairs. He had no idea where her bedroom was, but he’d bet dollar for ruble he’d find it.

“I’m not ashamed when I’m with you.” She didn’t seem to notice or care where they were going. Or even that they were traveling at all. Her eyes were still talking to him. He might just fall into those liquid, dark beautiful eyes and never come out. “I was trying to be ruthlessly honest with myself, and somehow missed the truth. I love you, Stefan. I never felt ashamed of anything when I was with you. I love you so much my heart takes wings when we’re together. So much that I feel like I’m more when I’m with you. I’m more than the woman I was, more of the woman I could and want to be.”

He paused at the top of the stairs, and used an elbow to switch off the glaring hall light. Two other lights still spilled a yellow glow, one emanating from a bathroom. The other had to be her bedroom. It took him three seconds to figure that out. And four solid
minutes to kiss her, right there, while her arms were laced around his neck and he was holding her, breathing her in as deeply as his own heartbeat. “Could I hear that part again about your loving me?”

“No. I have to warn you first what a bad bargain you’re getting. I don’t express my feelings as well as you, Stefan. That’s nothing I can change overnight. I’ve been a stuffed shirt straight arrow too long. I’ll have to work on the inhibitions—”

“I haven’t noticed any particular problem with inhibitions when we are together, lambchop. But I wouldn’t worry this too much. We could have an awful lot of fun working on this if any of them show up.”

“I’m also a little on the absentminded side—”

“No kidding?”

“I can’t balance a checkbook. Can’t talk physics with you.”

“More fatal flaws.” He kissed her for each of them. And she exuberantly kissed him back, her eyes full of star shine now, and her skin flushed. Yet she pulled back—almost dislocating his spine—and her expression was suddenly serious again.

“I have a ton of real flaws, Stefan. But I also believe in loyalty the same way you do. There has to be something, someone, you can count on when the lights are out and life gets tough. I’ll be there for you, love. We may not make a life by anyone else’s rules, but we’ll make a good life by our own. It just took me a while to figure out I had the right—the right to love you, the right to say it. The power to know I was strong enough to fight for you, with you, for a life together.”

“Ah, Paige, you always had that power. It was always in you. You just had to believe in yourself.” He
sank back onto the four poster bed, with her collapsing intimately on top of him. Yet she frowned suddenly—as if just then realizing there was something hard and obtrusive between them. It wasn’t him. She really hadn’t seemed to notice until that moment that she’d been holding that velvet pouch. Now she looked questioningly at him. “Open it,” he coaxed her.

The scarlet nightgown gaped enticingly when she raised up to get enough leverage to untie the silken cords. Her face mirrored a quizzical expression as her fingers connected with something smooth and cool—and familiar. She pulled out the jade cameo, stared at it for a long moment…and then at him.
“This
is where you were for the past three days? You went after my cameo?”

“Yes. I drove to New York. I went to find Harry. A nice guy, your Harry, maybe a brilliant market man for you in the art world—but not too life-smart. He’d sold it. I came close to killing him, but not to worry. We parted friends—as soon as he tracked down the new owners so I could buy it back.”

Stefan took a long breath. “I wanted it for you. To show you…this is always how I’ve seen you, my lambchop. Strong. Beautiful. An innocence in all the wonder you discover in life. A woman who delights and takes pride in her sensuality, who has love that shines from her, inside, outside, all over. When you carved away all the doubts and fears…this is you. This has always been you. You’re the only one who didn’t see it.”

Her voice softened to a butter whisper.
“Ya tebya lyublu,
Stefan.”

“And I love you back. For now. For tomorrow. For the birth of our children and the years we are in rocking chairs. I give you my love, my loyalty, my heart.”

She set the cameo on the bedside table. And forgot it. Just then, she thought her Russian badly needed seducing. He had some hopelessly romantic ideals about her. She planned to live up to every one of them.

She knew this man she loved. Knew him well. He was stubborn and unpredictable and emotional, a man incapable of backing down from his values and ideals, the most vulnerable of loners. The only thing ever standing between him and loneliness was love.

It would take a strong, gutsy woman to protect such a man. It would take a powerful and enduring love.

She was that woman. She had that love. And starting this moment, this night, she was beginning a life-time sharing the loyalty of that loving bond with the man of her heart.

* * * * *

Look for BACHELOR MOTHER
the next book of Jennifer Greene’s
The Stanford Sisters series coming to you
later in 1996 from Silhouette Desire.

eISBN 978-14592-7875-2

THE UNWILLING BRIDE

Copyright © 1996 by Jennifer Greene

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