Diana chuckled. “Seal trainer?”
He grinned, his heart tripping over itself at the sight of the soft smile on her face.
Keep that there.
“That only lasted one summer, though. Thankfully.”
“So, you grew up with wonderful parents and knew you wanted to be a parent yourself.”
David nodded. “So, when Dr. Branchard told me that the one thing I wanted had been stripped from me because of my own stupid arrogance, I felt pieces of my soul burn and die. Thousands of pieces, ripped away, lit ablaze, and then tossed into darkness. I lost myself in work after that, determined to push aside the pain, the loss of a dream. The result of that blind ambition became a multi-billion-dollar company.”
“You worked to forget the pain,” Diana remarked, dropping her hand from his face to his chest. Her fingers resting just over his heart. “I can understand that, David. I can. When my father died, I buried myself in my studies, ignoring my friends, my family, until it all fell down around my ears. It took a single phone call from my sister to tell me that my mother was basically working herself to death. I went home, saw the shadow that was left of her, and then dropped out of school the next week. I had allowed my own pain to blind me to the pain of others. Yes, I was mourning my father, but I was also placing a burden on my mother. She’d essentially lost her husband and her daughter in the same month.”
David pulled her into his chest, pressing her head down and kissing her forehead. God, it felt so good to have her there, in his embrace. In his care.
“You do understand, then,” David acknowledged, taking a chance, reaching out to place his trembling hand on her cheek. Would she let him offer her comfort as well? He wanted to, Lord how he wanted to. She didn’t pull away.
Baby steps.
“What about Rinna?” she prodded, her lips twisting into a sneer at the woman’s name.
Here goes.
“Rinna was the greatest mistake I ever made. I offered her a place in my life, an unguarded place, and it left me vulnerable. Weak. She used that to get whatever she wanted out of me. I was so desperate for the family I could never have that I settled for her, for the façade of domesticity. She was beautiful, cunning, elegant—the perfect wife for a billionaire businessman who globetrotted around the world. I was so determined to have the picture of a family that I ignored the warning signs; the trips on her own, the hotel bills with two meals and champagne, the designer clothes and jewelry I didn’t buy her… It took me finding her in our bed with another man for me to realize that I had been hurting myself by refusing to see the truth. I could never have the family I wanted—even without the children—with a woman like Rinna.
Once I’d cut her off, she pulled out her most vicious weapon.”
“The baby,” Diana murmured, her face turning green.
David grunted, sick rising into his throat. “Yes, the baby. She didn’t know about the accident, about the sterility diagnosis.
“But you aren’t sterile,” Diana remarked, her hand dropping to her belly. His gaze followed, widening. His children were nestled there. His future. His heart and soul.
“I didn’t know that then. So, when she dropped the bomb that she was pregnant with my baby, I want to say that I was immediately angry at her lie.”
“You weren’t?”
Wanting to touch her, to feel her, he dropped his hand from her face and brushed his thumb over her knee, sliding his hand onto her thigh. She still didn’t pull away.
Relief assailed him, and he continued.
“No. For a fraction of a second I…I felt innumerable joy. I was going to be a father. I was going to be the best damn father—but then reality set in. That single moment of bliss was destroyed by the ugliness of truth. She didn’t know it, but Rinna had broken me, utterly. That feeling, that joy, in that millisecond, was the best feeling I had ever experienced. But she tainted it. Ruined it.”
David sucked in a breath, gripping Diana’s thigh to anchor himself.
“I knew then that I never wanted to know the loss of that kind of joy again, to be robbed of something so pure and bright…”
Diana dropped her hand from his chest and he immediately felt the loss of her heat. Her grace. But then, she grasped his hand, squeezing it, pressing it into her thigh as if knowing he needed the weight of her hand to keep him grounded.
“What about now?” Diana asked, her voice…hopeful?
His heart pounding, he met her gaze, scouring her expression for any hint of regret or guilt or disgust.
There was none.
“Now…you’ve given me a reason for joy again, Diana.”
Chapter 22
Over the next month, David was at the suite nightly. They ate dinner together, discussing everything from his work, to memories about his travels, to her years in school. She learned a lot about David as he’d been as a child, a trouble-making teenager, and then a college heartbreaker. There was little they didn’t talk about. Except their babies. She was both relieved and nervous about their lack of discussion on the most pressing topic. What was going to happen once the babies were born? Would they have joint custody? David had already spoken with her about the nursery he was setting up in his penthouse, but there was no mention of her being there as well. Did he expect the babies to stay with him and she would pop in whenever?
That thought made everything within her scream in terror and anguish. She couldn’t imagine her life without her babies in it and…she couldn’t
