He took a deep, deep breath. ‘Well, mainly because I’ve promised Milo that he’s going to come and live with me one day, but also because I love you,’ he said simply. ‘I love you. That’s all.’
That’s all? But that was all she had ever wanted to hear him say! And at last he had said it! He did love her! She looked up at him adoringly. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say that,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t think you were…’
‘What? You didn’t think I was capable of loving? Thought that my only obsession was chasing the material world?’ He smiled a tight, grim smile. ‘My ex-wife obviously thought that, too,’ he said. ‘That’s why, very soon after our marriage, she insisted on separate bedrooms—and a separate credit card account—which I readily agreed to. Until I discovered what she wanted a disproportionate amount of my money for.’ He paused, his lingering resentment still obvious. ‘She insisted that she wanted cosmetic surgery and breast enhancements…as if nature hadn’t already endowed her with more than her fair share! Just to keep up with her empty-headed friends. That’s when I put a stop to it all. And she never wanted children—something she told me after our wedding day. Because she’d never recover her figure, so she said.’
Hearing him tell her all this made Cryssie hold him even more tightly. He had been so deeply hurt, so let down, she thought. No wonder he sometimes showed a hard, unfeeling edge.
Gently, she took him by the hand and led him upstairs to her bedroom, shutting the door behind them quietly. Totally unselfconsciously, he stepped out of his clothes, dropping them carelessly to the floor, and they lay down on the bed together, Jed cradling her in his arms.
Dreamily, she said, ‘I hereby formally agree to stay with you, in your bed, at your side, satisfying your every whim, until my final breath. Will that do?’
Raising himself on one elbow, he looked down at her for a long, heart-throbbing moment, then slowly he began to undress her, until she, too, was completely naked. His strong, warm hands caressing her body made her gasp in anticipation and sexual excitement, his eyes—those dark pools of passionate promise—mesmerising her as they always did. Then his mouth came down on hers greedily, and the moist meeting of their parted lips was a mere prelude to the ecstasy that was to come. There was no sense of urgency as they lay there, locked together, and Cryssie knew instinctively that he would take time to bring her to that indescribable point of fulfilled desire.
‘There is one more thing I need,’ he said softly, gazing down at her, drinking in the soft contours of her body, the smoothness of her flat stomach and rounded thighs. ‘Will you promise that we’ll give Milo at least four cousins to ruin the grass at Shepherd’s Keep?’
‘Only four?’ she teased.
‘Well, for starters,’ he said. ‘But, given that I’ll always be needing your business acumen, it might mean we’ll have to employ a couple of nannies!’
‘Then I shall consider my part in it a formal obligation,’ Cryssie said, ‘so that the Hunter dynasty will continue to thrive for many years to come!’
She nestled into him, loving the musky, manly smell of him, the pulsating strength of his chest against the softness of her bare breasts. Then a little smile played across her lips for a second, and he murmured, ‘What’s funny?’
‘I was just thinking that everything that’s happened to us—to Polly and to Milo and to me—is all because of television’s Runaway Rascals! Isn’t that bizarre?’ She traced Jed’s lips and jaw with her forefinger, which he quickly took in his mouth and held between his teeth. ‘If I hadn’t bumped into you on Christmas Eve—when I was trying to buy one of them—you’d never have noticed me at all. I’d have been just one of the insignificant members of staff at Hydebound you’d have ditched, along with everyone else, without another thought.’
‘I suppose that is possible,’ he admitted. ‘Though something tells me that Crystal Rowe wouldn’t have remained anonymous for long!’
She smiled again, smugly. ‘And even though you selfishly insisted on taking the last four of those dolls—I called you a few names, I can tell you, one of your shop assistants actually found one after all! And brought it to me—here!’
‘Of course she did,’ he said smoothly.
Cryssie frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’
He smiled that slow, superior, heart-stopping smile. ‘Oh…it’s just that yours was one of the four I’d bought, but found I didn’t need after all. So the assistant and I hatched a plan for you—for Milo—not to be disappointed.’