She couldn’t lie. Deception wasn’t ever easy for her and right now, with him standing so close and looking at her like she meant something to him, she couldn’t be anything but completely honest.
“I do,” she whispered, and reinforced her agreement with a shaky nod.
His breath came out in a light caress on her knuckles and he smiled with arrogant satisfaction, but what looked like relief, too. Like she’d made him happy.
His touch as he threaded the ring onto her finger and kissed her knuckle sent a thrill of joy through her. Maybe he was right. Maybe they could make it work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ZAFIR WASN’T USED to feeling anything less than wholly confident. He wanted to take heart from Fern’s willingness to accept his ring, but the way she’d talked about not having any defenses, especially physically... Did she think he would force her? Not in a million years! He hadn’t pressed his first wife—
But then, he hadn’t felt a need for her like he did for Fern. Was he above seducing her? Clearly not.
Her balking at agreeing to sleep with him bothered him. Not in an arrogant, entitled way. In a deeply disturbing way. Even before he’d found her and confirmed her pregnancy, he’d been unable to shake the near irresistible urge to fetch her back into his life. Sleep together. Make love to her one more time.
A storm he’d barely acknowledged had been crashing inside him for months as he fought those urges, only settling when he’d had her in the car beside him. Now a fresh turbulence kicked up, despite the flash of his grandmother’s ring from the hand that gripped his arm as she steadied herself on the shiny oak floor.
She had reservations about resuming intimacy with him and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. He’d promised he wouldn’t cause her to lose her job or get pregnant and that vow had been thoroughly shattered. If she’d rather have a platonic marriage while she learned to trust him again, he should be prepared to accept it, but he found it wasn’t something he could face easily.
Glancing pensively at her, he saw only a bundle of cascading red curls held in a blue ribbon.
“Chin up,” he said, refusing to let her hang her head before his family. “Neither of us will be apologists for making a baby out of wedlock.”
“More like poster children,” she commented under her breath, surprising him with her levity. “I was looking at the pattern in the parquet. This house is beyond words.”
It was a country cottage compared to the palace in Q’Amara, not that he said so aloud. The staff would put rat poison in his dinner if they overheard such a remark. But she did make him see things with new eyes.
“I think you’ll be good for me, Fern,” he told her as they arrived at the music room door. “You remind me not to take things that I value for granted.” He held her gaze with a significant look.
Whether that reassured her at all, he wasn’t given an opportunity to judge. Peabody opened the door to exit the room with an empty tray and stepped back as he saw them, allowing Zafir to enter with Fern.
Her grip on him tightened, betraying her nerves. Soft greens and old gold leaped at him. He took in antique furniture and silk area rugs that he did take for granted, along with the cheery fire beneath the white mantel and the green-and-gold drapes that closed out the blustery night. This was, in many ways, the happiest place of his childhood since it was where his family had been whole.