The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(92)

He chuckled. “No scaling involved. Your brother allowed me to see you.”

Broderick had? Trying to make sense of that incongruity, Cleopatra struggled up onto her elbows. “Why are you here?” she asked quietly.

Quirking his lips in the corner, he perched himself at the edge of her mattress. “And where should I be, Miss Killoran?” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek in that familiar, tender caress.

Then the horror of the past twenty-four hours slashed into the stolen moment of joy in seeing him again. “Your club.” As soon as the words slipped out, she flinched. “I didn’t mean . . . what I’d intended to say . . .” She looked at him squarely. “I am so sorry about your club, Adair.” How inadequate that apology was when he’d lost what mattered most. “All the hours you toiled over that building, and my b-brother destroyed it a-all.” Her voice cracked again.

Adair let his hand fall to the bed. “Do you know the interesting thing about my club, Cleopatra?”

His ruined club. She shook her head.

“All these years, my siblings and I placed the Hell and Sin above all else. Nothing and no one superseded the club in importance.” He smiled wryly. “Then my sister married, and then Ryker, and Niall, and eventually Calum. I resented them,” he admitted. His gaze traveled over to the wide windows across the room. “I could not understand how they could forget all the effort and struggle and strife that went into building it . . . for a person.”

Cleopatra bit down hard on her lower lip. Unable to meet his eyes, she studied her coverlet.

“Until you.”

That husky murmur brought her head shooting up. She touched a hand to her chest.

He nodded. “The Hell and Sin can be replaced.” Adair shifted closer until their thighs brushed. He paused, lingering his stare on her bandaged lower leg. His face contorted in a paroxysm of agony. “But you, Cleopatra, cannot.” Emotion hoarsened his voice. “When I learned you were there, in that building, I didn’t think about the money I’d stolen as a boy to purchase it. I didn’t think about the first patrons who’d stepped through the doors or the money lost.” He cupped her face in his hands, and she struggled to see him through the tears clouding her vision. Those drops fell fast and furiously down her cheeks, and he brushed each drop away. Another only replaced it. “I thought about you. I thought about marrying you, and having children with you. I love you, Cleopatra.”

She ached to take the gift he stretched out before her. It was all she’d never known she wanted, and now the only thing she desperately needed. Still, reality held her back. “What will you do now—”

“What will we do now?” he amended, and her heart quickened.

We. A marriage where he’d never seek to change her into someone she was not, or would ever be. A union that was a true partnership.

Adair drew himself closer and dropped his brow against hers. “You were correct. I’ve been straddling two worlds, committing to neither . . . and part of that has been fear to leave the only streets I’ve ever known.” He spoke with an animation that stirred an equal excitement within her. “I thought of a club, the way you described, in the fashionable end of London, safe streets where our children will know greater security than either of us did.”

A tantalizing image stirred—of a future with him . . . and babes: a gift she’d not allowed herself even to dream of. Now she let the possibilities sweep through her, filling every corner of her being with a healing warmth. “Babies,” she repeated, her voice hoarse. Not children forced to murder, steal, and beg, but cherished ones who’d be nurtured and loved by her and Adair.

He caressed her cheek. “Brave, clever, beautiful girls like their mama.”

Tears pricked behind her lashes. At one time, she would have viewed those as tokens of weakness. No more. Adair had shown her there was no shame to be found in feeling. “And boys. Honorable, good, and handsome like their da.”

“A compromise?” Adair pressed his brow to hers, an easy smile on his lips. “We’ll have both.”

A half laugh, half sob escaped her. “Agreed.”

He caught a lone teardrop with the pad of his thumb.

His grin dipped as a somberness settled within his rugged features.

“What is it?” she asked hesitantly, not wanting anything to intrude on the future he’d so beautifully painted of their lives together.

“I’ll not have them live as we did. Not in St. Giles or the Dials, but a place where we might have apartments within or a townhouse nearby if you want that, because whatever you want is yours.”

Cleopatra cupped him about his nape and angled her lips up toward his. “You still don’t know?” she whispered against his mouth. How could he not know?

He shook his head once.

“I love you, Adair Thorne. You are all I ever want, Adair Thorne. You are all I want.”

And as he kissed her, Cleopatra smiled, eager for their future—together.





Acknowledgments

Writing a book is just the first part of the publishing journey. There is so, so much more that goes into a story, from its inception to the final product that lands in readers’ hands. From the multiple rounds of developmental edits and then copyedits to the cover creation and marketing plan, it requires a team.