cut the engine in the same moment and then turned and took her into his arms, ignoring her struggles as he swooped on her mouth in a kiss that seemed to draw her very soul.
'No, no, Hawk…' When she came back into the land of the living from the world of colour and light he had taken her into, she forced herself to try and escape his arms.
'Yes, yes, Joanne.' His tone wasn't mocking; in fact it was painful in its sincerity, his hands moving to cup her face as he stared down at her with the piercing blue gaze that was mesmerising. 'Please, darling, don't fight me.'
Darling? She stared at him, her honey-brown eyes huge. She couldn't be hearing right. 'I…I can't do this, I've told you.'
'Joanne, I love you; I've loved you from the moment I set eyes on you, and I shall die loving you,' he said huskily. 'I don't deserve you, I can never expect you to forgive me for the mess I've made of everything, but believe me when I say I love you.'
'You don't…you can't,' she murmured unsteadily, her ears buzzing as her senses swam again.
'I do, I can.' She hadn't realised she was crying until he caught a teardrop with his fingertip, his hands brushing her cheeks with a tenderness that took her breath away. 'I'm a stubborn man, my love, arrogant, foolish, but when I came home last night to ask you to marry me and you'd gone I got the next plane here.'
'You went to dinner with Victoria Sanderson,' she said shakily, unable to believe what was happening was real.
'No. I refused that invitation days ago, knowing it would be your last night in my home, but I forgot to tell Conchita and when I left so abruptly she just assumed I had gone there,' he said quietly. 'I drove for hours, trying to come to terms with all you had said and my own…my own personal demons. I realised I had been fooling myself, that I had been lying to myself for weeks-months-since the day we met. I didn't want an affair with you, Joanne, I wanted more, much more, than that, but I couldn't bring myself to accept it was love. It made me too vulnerable, too exposed, too much like the next man.'
'If…if that's true, then what made you change your mind?' she asked tremulously, not daring to believe it.
'You.' One word but his heart was in it.
'Oh, Hawk.' As her arms went round his neck their lips fused together in an embrace that brought flames of desire coursing hot and fierce, the world outside the car disappearing as reality became touch and taste and sensation.
'You forgive me, Joanne?' he groaned against the softness of her skin. 'I have no right to ask-'
'Yes, yes, I forgive you.'
'And you'll marry me? As soon as it can be arranged?' he murmured with desperate, hungry lips on her face, her throat. 'I want to care for you, my sweet love, cherish you, protect you. When I saw that gorilla holding you I wanted to tear him limb from limb.'
'I think he got the message.' Joanne smiled shakily through her tears, and then said, 'Hawk, are you sure?' She reached up and took his dark face in her small hands. 'Really, really sure?'
'I have never been so sure about anything in my life,' he said brokenly. 'You are everything I have ever dreamed of, everything I have ever desired. All that rubbish I spoke about love-damn it, Joanne, I was fighting myself, tearing myself apart inside. When you spoke about your childhood, the things you went through, it was like a knife tearing at my guts; I couldn't bear it. And still I continued to fight-'
'Hush.' She kissed the searing self-contempt and pain from his face, covering his skin in soft, burning little kisses. 'I don't care about the past; it's the future that matters.'
'And I promise you it will be a glorious one,' he said softly, his hands stroking her hair as his eyes devoured her face. 'A lifetime will be too short to tell you how much I love you. I didn't love my fiancee, Joanne; you were right about that and I knew the moment you spoke it out loud. It wasn't real love. Perhaps a desperation to belong to someone again, a need for reassurance after all that had happened with my parents, perhaps even the cry of a child in the dark-it was all those things, but not the lasting love of two people who are committed to sharing their lives together. It was never that I have never loved any other woman before; I know that now. You have my word,' he finished seriously.
'And you never lie,' she said teasingly, her smile tremulous but full of joy.
'Only to myself,' he said soberly, clasping her close again, his arms so tight she could scarcely breathe.
'When you told me how you felt in the car, your beautiful face so white and haunted and your shoulders bowed beneath a burden that never should have been, the disgust I felt for myself was too much to bear. After all the torture of your early years, the pain you endured day after day in a loveless environment, you still had the strength to forgive and go on. It made me feel…contemptible, worthless. You had far more reason than me to shun love, to be afraid to reach out again, but you had done so-bravely and with such courage. Whereas I…'
'Don't punish yourself any more,' Joanne said shakily, distressed to see the pain and anguish in his eyes. 'We've both learnt from life, things we can pass on to our children and their children-'
'But first a time where I have you all to myself,' he said fiercely. 'I am a jealous man, my love; I cannot share you yet. I love you; I need to make you feel that, and I shall tell you every day of your life and beyond. You are mine as I am yours; I will always be everything you need. And our children will be brought up in the light of that love where the smallest shadow will not be allowed.'
Later, much later, when they had loved and touched and tasted and talked and the morning was gone, she moved drowsily in his arms as they continued to gaze out across the park, neither of them wanting to move back into the real world. 'What happened to your theory of women being good for one thing only?' she asked him mischievously, stroking the tanned skin of his chin where a dark stubble was already beginning to show.
'Did I say that?' The sapphire-blue eyes narrowed on her flushed, happy face. 'Well, in your case it is true- to love, worship and adore.'
'That's three things,' she protested weakly, the dark, sensual glitter in the devastating gaze making her shiver with anticipation.
'I'll just settle for love, then,' he said softly, his hands beginning to coax passionate warmth into every nerve and sinew. 'True love is the greatest thing of all.'
HELEN BROOKS
HELEN BROOKS lives in Northamptonshire, England, and is married with three children. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife and mother, her spare time is at a premium, but her hobbies include reading and walking her two energetic and very endearing young dogs. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty, and sent the result off to Harlequin.
