Sold for the Greek's Heir(28)

‘I came because...’ he began.

Jax looking gorgeous as usual, Lucy was noting, striving to be cool and composed after Ellie had advised her to play hard to get. But she couldn’t play hard to get with Jax, which was the crux of her problem where he was concerned: she loved him. She had always loved him and what had been rather insta-love in Spain when she barely knew him had turned into something much deeper and more binding the second time around. Jax might be hopeless at some things, like talking about feelings and paying compliments, but he was very, very good at other things.

‘Yes...you were saying?’ Lucy prompted, striving to take control of their meeting.

Jax raked a deeply frustrated hand through his tousled black hair, green eyes glinting from below black lashes, and her heart jumped. ‘I don’t know what I was going to say. I had it all planned out but now it’s gone. This is all new to me,’ he muttered in a sudden surge. ‘But the only really important thing I have to say is that I love you and I need you and I want you to come home with me...’

And just like that and with the unexpectedness of an explosion, Jax stole the wind from Lucy’s sails. She didn’t have time to try and work out how to play hard to get. He took the breath from her lungs and the arguments from her brain because what he had just said was what she felt as if she had been waiting all her life to hear.

‘I’ve never said those words to anyone else,’ Jax admitted gruffly as the silence dragged. ‘I married you, not because of your father’s blackmail, but because somewhere deep down inside me I wanted to be married to you. My head was telling me I didn’t want to get married but my instincts were pushing me in a very different direction. Is that weird?’

‘No...’ Lucy almost whispered the word, scared to move, scared to speak lest she interrupt him and stop him speaking.

‘My father reminded me that over one two-week period I flew back to Spain five times to see you. My attachment was obsessional,’ he conceded grudgingly. ‘I loved you then but I was afraid to accept that. Possibly when you said it suited me to believe that file and...the other stuff there was a shred of truth in that. Love has always been something that hurt and damaged me. I loved my mother, my father, my little sister, my half-brother and years before I met you I fell for a woman, who turned out to be a very troubled alcoholic, whom I had to place in rehab for recovery. I was determined not to get hurt again.’

Lucy nodded like a vigorous little marionette, wanting so badly to reach out to him and hug him and cover him in kisses but knowing it was wiser to let him say what he needed to say to explain the past and the present. ‘I can understand that—’

Jax released his breath on a hiss. ‘How can you? You keep on caring about people even when they hurt or disappoint you. That’s brave—’

‘Or plain stupid,’ Lucy slotted in wryly. ‘That’s just me. I tend to look for saving graces in people and stay optimistic but you’re a giant pessimist, who always sees the worst possible conclusions.’

‘Pretty much,’ Jax conceded.

‘And thinks the worst,’ Lucy added with spirit, thinking about the alley. ‘Even if there’s no justification for it.’

Carefully avoiding the word Rio had advised him to avoid, Jax straightened his shoulders. ‘The alcoholic that I fell for was repeatedly unfaithful to me. She couldn’t help herself—she was a mess until rehab. But like my mother before her she conditioned me to distrust women. I’d seen that file. I saw a woman I thought was you and it seemed to fit, it seemed to be exactly the sort of thing that happened to me—I had got in too deep and you weren’t who I thought you were—’

‘Like with this alcoholic lady? That would be...er... Franca?’ Lucy checked. ‘Rio told Ellie about her and Ellie told me.’

Jax took on board the second of Rio’s warnings. ‘Yes, it was Franca. After her I was very wary and cynical with women. I didn’t have faith in my own ability to read a woman, to really know her and, life being life,’ he groaned, ‘that meant I screwed up very badly with you. I ran when I should’ve stayed. I thought I was protecting myself but you had already burned me.’

‘Burned you?’

‘I never got over you. I kept on thinking about you at random times and reminding myself how bad you were...you know the—?’

‘Alley stuff?’ Lucy enunciated with precision, bright blue eyes gleaming.

‘Yes, that,’ Jax muttered, desperately keen to move on. ‘Obviously I was wrong and I am very sorry that I believed that was you. I just saw the dress and the blonde hair and—’

Lucy moved closer and closed both arms around him. ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured softly because his voice was ragged and too troubled for her to bear without touching him. ‘It’s all right. I forgive you. You made a mistake. It’s over, done and dusted—’

Jax stared down at her with suspiciously bright green eyes. ‘I don’t deserve you. You probably don’t even believe that I love you and that I loved you right from the start and I don’t know how to prove it to you.’

But Lucy didn’t need any more proof. Jax had wanted to stay married to her even though he believed she had once been unfaithful to him and that spoke volumes on its own. He had loved her warts and all, carefully schooling himself to overlook what any man would have seen as a monumental flaw and betrayal and predictably keeping his thoughts to himself. And then he had come clean and what he had been keeping secret had shocked and distressed her but at the same time it had set both of them free.

‘I love you too,’ Lucy whispered, planting a flyaway kiss on his freshly shaven jaw line, which was as high as she could reach even on tiptoes. ‘So much that when you’re not there it hurts.’

Jax carried her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it in the most un-Jax-like tender manner. ‘You didn’t even leave me a note. I felt sick. I didn’t know what to do. I experienced pure panic—’

‘I would’ve phoned eventually,’ she confided. ‘I was so upset but you were right to tell me. It all needed to come out for us to deal with it and then put it away again.’

‘Your departure in a royal private jet was fairly straightforward when it came to tracking you,’ Jax admitted ruefully, and then he gathered her up into his arms with the attitude of a male who couldn’t keep his hands off her any longer.

‘The bedroom’s next door,’ Lucy told him helpfully.

‘I even told myself I was only marrying you for Bella’s benefit,’ Jax confessed. ‘I lied to myself all the way down the line.’

‘I persuaded myself I was only marrying you for our daughter’s benefit as well, so you’re not the only one.’

‘How’s Bella reacting to being here?’ Jax queried.

‘She’s got six cousins to watch and loads of toys to steal. She’s having a whale of a time.’ Lucy laughed, blue eyes sparkling, and Jax looked down at her with his heart in his own eyes and adoration there, a brilliant smile on his lean, darkly handsome features.

‘You are a very special woman, Tinker Bell,’ Jax declared, settling her down on the bed with that same heartbreaking smile dazzling her. ‘And the saddest element of all this is that my father is now going to be battering down our doors for invites.’

Lucy studied him in bewilderment. ‘How? Why?’

‘Heracles is the son of a pig farmer,’ Jax told her with a chuckle. ‘Yes, he keeps that little fact well under wraps because he is an enormous snob. When he discovers that your sister is a queen, he will be horribly friendly. He’s very easily impressed in that line.’

Lucy shifted an unconcerned shoulder. ‘I can live with that. It’s not as though either of us can change our fathers. They are what they are but neither of them is going to get the chance to spoil our happiness again.’

‘Can you be happy with me?’ Jax pressed with touching anxiety. ‘You do know I’ll screw up again. I won’t mean to but I will because I won’t always get it right—’

‘Neither will I,’ Lucy pointed out equably as she struggled to get him out of his jacket and tie and then, when he got helpful, embarked on his shirt, spreading her fingers lasciviously across his muscular torso. ‘Love is all about making allowances and compromises. We’ll get there. Nobody has to be perfect.’

‘I think you are. You have a heart as big as any country, khriso mou,’ Jax told her with a blissful sigh as she knelt over him, cheerfully stripping him.

‘And so have you,’ Lucy countered, much amused. ‘The difference between us is that you put your heart in a cage to keep it safe—’

‘And you still worked your way through the bars of my cage,’ Jax reminded her appreciatively. ‘You’ve got more power than you realise.’

Lucy let a small hand stray and he arched up against her as if she had pressed a switch and she laughed as he sat up, wound both hands punitively into her hair and kissed her into breathless, leaping excitement. There was no more conversation then. They were both much too involved in sharing their bodies as they had shared their love.