Mega-wealth could buy everything beautiful, he thought cynically, but it can’t buy the heart of a woman. At least he knew Erin hadn’t married him for his billions.
“I wanted it to be a fairy-tale wedding for you, Erin,” he said with a dash of irony, aware that love should have been at the centre of it. “Fit for the princess in the park,” he added, remembering how taken he had been with her on that first day of meeting.
She stopped walking. He halted beside her, seeing the angst on her face as she shook her head, tensing, not knowing what it meant. Then she looked up at him, her beautiful green eyes filled with a vulnerability that squeezed his heart.
“You were my prince that day, Peter. I wish we could go there again. I regret, very much, deciding not to tell you I was the author. I just didn’t want to spoil the fantasy. But I ended up spoiling everything. And I’m sorry…sorry…”
A wild hope soared through his mind. “I thought it meant you’d planned only a brief fling with me,” he said, trying to explain his reaction to the deception.
“I did.”
It was like a punch in the gut.
“I didn’t believe that with you being who you are, and me being who I am, the attraction we had could lead to any real future together,” she rushed on. “But I wanted so much to have you want me…”
“What about now, Erin?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking, his desire for her racing hot through his veins, kicked into uncontrollable acceleration by the admission of the desire she had once felt so strongly for him. “Do you believe in a future for us now?” he pressed.
“You’ve made it so different to what I had imagined…expected…”
“Good different?”
“Oh, yes! Yes!” she cried so fervently, hope soared again, gathering a sense of triumph in the tactics he’d used to wipe out her fears and doubts.
“I want our marriage to work, Erin.”
“So do I,” she said with no lessening of fervour.
“Then it will,” he said confidently.
He wanted to crush her to him. Only the fact that Jack might have woken up and be yelling with hunger held him back. He hugged her arm, bringing her closer to him as they walked on, their bodies touching, and he burned with the need to have her to himself all the way to the nursery.
The nanny had Jack cradled against her shoulder, patting his back. Erin whipped off her veil, draped it over the cot-rail, unzipped the wedding dress, lifted her arms out of the cap sleeves, let the bodice hang from her waist, unclipped a white lacy bra, removed it, slung it over the veil, moved quickly to the rocking chair—all this with her back turned to him. She picked up a towel which had been laid on the armrest of the chair, arranged it over one shoulder, then sat down, holding out her arms for their son.
The nanny gave him to her and Jack instantly latched onto one bared breast, sucking as though his life depended on it. Which it did, Peter thought, wishing that the bond between him and Erin were so simple. Her face was flushed. Was she embarrassed by his watching her breast-feed their child? He hadn’t done it before, careful not to impinge on space and time which she might consider very personal and private.
He dismissed the nanny, saying they’d call her when they were ready to leave, and settled in another chair. Of course, there’d been another reason for staying out of the nursery at feeding time. As he had suspected it would be, he found watching Erin suckling their son almost unbearably erotic, tiny hands kneading her milk-laden breast, the absorption in the physical link between them. It was weird to feel jealous of his son, but he did, probably because it had been so long since he had known such an intimate connection with Erin.
“Is he always this hungry?” he asked, his voice gruff with too many raw emotions.
“Yes.” She flicked him a look that seemed oddly desperate.
It disturbed him too much to let it pass. “Is my being here worrying you?”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently.
She kept too much to herself. He realised now that it was habitual, ingrained from her childhood, her defence against the emotional upheaval of her parents’ broken marriage—her road to self-survival, self-sufficiency—but understanding why it was so did not ease his frustration with it.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he demanded.
She slowly lifted her gaze from Jack, her eyes a dark green tumultuous sea of uncertainty. She took a deep breath, as though gathering up courage, then blurted out, “Tell me you still want me, Peter. Not because I’m Jack’s mother. Me…the person I am. Everything you now know about me.”