A Christmas Night to Remember(55)
Zeke? Patient? He had many attributes, but patience wasn’t one of them. And he did have her heart. He always had.
Something of what she was thinking must have shown in her face, because he smiled again, his voice soft when he qualified, ‘Semi-patient at least—for you, that is.’ He bent and pressed a kiss on her mouth, pressed another to the tip of her nose and onto her forehead, before settling back and surveying her with ebony eyes. ‘So, tell me why you banned me from visiting you in hospital, and why your solicitor told my solicitor you want a divorce,’ he said levelly, no inflection in his voice. ‘And why, after we made love—twice—you still felt the need to escape and put some distance between us.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE arrival of the coffee and croissants a moment or two after Zeke had demanded she talk to him delayed the inevitable by a few minutes. Melody didn’t want to eat or drink, but she did both to gain a few precious get-your-facts-straight moments. The coffee was too strong, and the croissant she forced down didn’t sit well with Mabel’s bacon sandwich, and when she had finished Zeke’s eyes were still waiting for her to begin.
Her heart was thumping in her chest, staccato-beating in her ears, because she knew she had to get this right. She had to make him understand why everything she had done since the accident was wrong. All her past had come together when she’d woken up in that hospital bed, and from that moment she had been in a vacuum of fear and confusion, sucked into a dark and terrifying merry-go-round of hopelessness.
She cleared her throat. ‘I haven’t been thinking clearly over the last weeks.’ To give him his due, he didn’t raise his eyebrows in the quirky, sarky way he did sometimes. Neither did he make any of the hundred and one responses he could have made in the circumstances. He simply sat looking at her. She didn’t know if that made it easier or harder.
‘I’ve realised this—my freaking out in the hospital and asking you for a divorce and everything—is because…’ She paused and swallowed hard. ‘I was frightened you wouldn’t want me any more now I’m— I’m disfigured.’ She rushed on quickly before he could speak. ‘Not that you have ever done or said anything to make me think that way. I know it’s me. Mabel—the lady I met today—said I was letting fear rule me, and she’s right. It’s just that I know you appreciate grace and beauty more than most. Partly due to your—your beginnings and everything, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But—but I’ll never dance again. I’m…different now.’
‘Sweetheart, your legs were messed up. I know that’s one hell of a big deal for you, because dancing is your life, but I can help you through it. This doesn’t have to be the end of using the fantastic gift you’ve been given, just rechannelling it. I’ve got a couple of ideas about that, but they can wait. The main thing I have to convince you of right now is that your grace and beauty has never depended on your dancing. You are grace and beauty. Those qualities are in every word you speak, the way you are, every look and movement you make. The lorry couldn’t take them away from you, don’t you see? You’re my sweet, generous, incomparable baby—my darling, my love.’
She was falling apart, her eyes blinded by her tears, and when he took her in his arms again she fell against him, needing his strength and security as never before as she sobbed against his broad chest.
‘What?’ He bent his head to her, her incoherent words punctuated by convulsive shudders. ‘What did you say?’
‘I—I—’ Melody made a huge effort and sat up, taking the handkerchief he gave her. ‘I don’t see how you can think of me in that way. It’s like you’re talking about someone else.’
‘Then you’ll just have to take it on trust until I can convince you,’ he said softly. ‘And if it takes a lifetime I’ll do it. You’re mine, Dee, every bit as much as I am yours. You are the only person I could have possibly ended up with, and if we hadn’t met—if we’d missed each other somehow—I’d have gone on as I was. Happy in a way, fairly okay with myself, but with a huge reservoir inside me which would have remained untapped. I’ve heard it said that there are several people in the world that someone can love if they meet them, but it’s not that way with me. You saved me. That’s the only way I can put it.’
He had never told her this before—not in so many words—and yet now when she thought about it she realised his whole way with her had demonstrated it from the beginning. She smiled tremulously and blew her nose, shaking back her hair from her damp face, and then lifted one trembling hand to his face. ‘I love you,’ she said very quietly. ‘I always have and I always will. There will never be anyone but you for me.’