To Make a Marriage(32)

'After all that had happened, she came to you and asked for money?' Andie gasped disbelievingly.

He still clearly remembered that first meeting with Glenda after twenty  years of inwardly denying she had ever existed. She had looked exactly  the same, still beautiful-and still the same selfishly grasping woman  she had always been.                       
       
           



       

He nodded. 'That was when I talked to your mother about her. I had to  tell someone.' He had hated Glenda. But at the same time, she was his  mother, his only living relative, and those two emotions had been at war  inside him.

'Adam-'

'Andie, I don't understand this problem with your mother?' he protested.  'She's the one who helped me to see the past objectively, helped me to  understand that no one is all black, just as no one is all white. My  mother had been barely twenty when we were born, abandoned by her  husband, left alone with two babies to bring up as best she could.  Barbara never tried to excuse Glenda's behaviour, but she did at least  succeed in helping me to pity her,' he recalled heavily.

'You loved my mother!' Andie burst out forcefully.

'Well, of course I loved her,' he confirmed. Barbara had helped him  retain his sanity fifteen years ago when Glenda, recently divorced from  her second husband, had suddenly appeared back in his life. Without  Barbara's gentle guidance his reaction to Glenda might have been  completely different! 'How could I help but love her?' He shook his  head. 'Barbara was everything a mother should be: loving, caring,  giving. Everything my own mother wasn't, and never could be!'

Andie was very pale now, eyes hugely green against that paleness. 'She was also another man's wife!'

'Well, of course she-' Adam broke off his exclamation, suddenly still as  he looked searchingly down at Andie. She returned that gaze  unflinchingly, but once again there were tears glistening in her eyes.  'Andie, I loved Barbara like the mother I had never had, the mother I  never would have.' He firmly grasped the tops of her arms. 'And Barbara  being the woman she was, she took me in as if I were one of her own  children.'

'How could she possibly seem like a mother to you?" Andie scorned in a pained voice. 'She was only twelve years older than you!'

'Andie-' He paused disbelievingly. 'Tell me if I'm understanding this  correctly; do you believe I was in love with your mother … ?'

She raised her chin proudly. 'And weren't you?'

'Good God, no,' he answered unhesitantly, shaking his head dazedly. 'I  told you, she was like a mother to me, gave me the gentleness and love,  the acceptance for who and what I am, that had been missing from my life  for so long. Rome instinctively understood that. I always thought you  girls did, too,' he said. 'Obviously I was wrong … '

Very, very wrong, if Andie had believed all this time that he was in love with her mother!

But if Andie believed that, had always believed that, why had she agreed  to marry him? He couldn't believe it was just the pregnancy.

Hope began to burn deep inside him as he looked at Andie's palely  intense face. Hope that perhaps Rome had been right about Andie's  feelings towards him, after all … ?

He knew that he was about to take the biggest risk of his life, bigger  even than telling Andie the truth about his mother. But if he and Andie  were ever to know any happiness together, it was a risk he had to take.

'Andie,' he began shakily, 'there's a very good reason why I was never  in love with your mother … ' He paused, clenching his hands at his sides  so that she shouldn't see the way they were trembling. 'And that reason  is because I'm very much in love with someone else. And have been for  more years than I care to think about.'

Andie's throat moved convulsively. 'Do you really think I want to hear  this?' she cried emotionally. 'We're supposed to be marrying each other  in two weeks' time!'

'Do you still want to go ahead with that? Now that I've told you about  my own childhood? My mother,' he asked hardly. 'You won't be seeing her  again, by the way,' he continued grimly. 'That last meeting with her was  exactly that.' He had told Glenda in no uncertain terms exactly what he  thought of her, what he had always thought of her. As Barbara had told  him he would feel strong enough to do one day. He did not want Glenda  anywhere near Andie or their two children.

'You aren't your mother, Adam-'

'Her blood runs in my veins!' he bit out.

Andie gave a shake of her head. 'You were practically a baby the last  time you lived with her. And I've known you most of my life, Adam, don't  believe there is a single part of her in you. You're good, and kind,  and-'

'So much in love with you it hurts!' he groaned, giving a self-deprecating laugh as her eyes widened disbelievingly.                       
       
           



       

'I decided years ago that I would never love anyone again, never need  anyone again; Harry had died, my mother had never done a single thing to  deserve that title-' He broke off, nervous at going on with this.

But he had started now, he had to go on!

'Over the years, as I worked to build up my company, I convinced myself  that was what I was doing, why there was never anyone permanent in my  life. It wasn't until your eighteenth birthday that I realised I had  only been deluding myself, that there was a much simpler explanation as  to why I had never been seriously involved with anyone. Do you remember  your eighteenth birthday, Andie?' He looked at her intently.

Andie was still staring up at him, but it was impossible to tell by her  dazed expression whether she was merely still disbelieving or just  reluctant to hear what he had to say.

'You didn't like the red dress I was wearing,' she finally answered.

He gave a snort. 'I loved the red dress you were wearing!' he corrected.  'It was the thought of any other man seeing you in that dress that made  me so damned insulting to you that night. I suddenly realised you were  no longer a child but a beautiful woman-and that other men would think  so too. I also realised,' he continued, 'that I was in love with you.  Completely, head over heels, for ever, in love with you.'

Andie blinked. 'You were so horrible to me that night … '

He gave a grimace. 'You would have been horrible too if you had just  seen all your carefully laid plans for a carefree bachelor life  disappear at the sight of you in a red dress!'

'But I-you-you never said anything! Adam, in all these years you have never given any indication-'

'Andie, you're fourteen years younger than me.' He sighed. 'You had the  perfect childhood, a wonderful family, a university degree, a successful  career; what did I ever have to offer you-?'

'Yourself!' she cut in emotionally. 'My childhood was perfect,' she  acknowledged. 'My family is wonderful. The degree was Rome's idea. My  career-for the last five years my career has taken the place of what I  really wanted in life!'

Adam tensed. 'And that is?' He held his breath, almost afraid of her answer.

Andie moved towards him, putting her arms about his waist, resting her  head against his chest. 'What I have now,' she told him gruffly. 'You.  Children. Marriage. Slightly out of the normal order of things,' she  acknowledged with a small laugh. 'But I would have settled for just  you!'

It was incredible that Andie loved him, too.

Amazing.

But as he gathered her possessively close to him, held her tightly  against him, he knew that he accepted that love with open arms, that he  worshipped this woman, with every particle of his being.

That he always would.





EPILOGUE




'DO YOU think we will ever get them back?'

Andie followed Adam's amused gaze to watch her family as they oohed and  aahed the two babies they held, one in Harrie's arms, the other in  Danie's, their two husbands standing beside them smiling indulgently,  Rome and Audrey already protesting the two sisters had already held the  babies long enough, that as the doting grandparents it was their turn  now.

'Eventually.' Andie chuckled, stretching with satisfaction as she turned back to look at Adam.

Her husband.

The love of her life.

As she was his.

She still had to pinch herself occasionally to make sure that she wasn't  dreaming, that all the misunderstandings were really over, that she and  Adam loved each other.

Even more so since the twins had been born yesterday. She hadn't  believed they could possibly be any happier than they already were,  their marriage turning out to be everything, and more, that she could  ever have hoped for. But as they had shared the experience of their  children's birth, held their two tiny sons in their arms, she knew she  had been wrong. This was total bliss.

'Although I'm afraid Harry and Peter are going to end up being very spoilt,' she murmured unworriedly.

The names, two boys' and two girls', had been chosen long before the  birth. But Andie was inwardly ecstatic that Adam now had another Harry  in his life. It could never make up for the loss of the first one,  nothing could ever do that, but it was a fitting tribute to the brother  Adam had loved so much.