AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His aquiline nose scrunched. “Walk?”
She snorted a laugh. For a man who spent countless hours in boxing gyms and ran marathons, it was hilarious how scandalized he was by the idea of a short walk down the street.
“Yes, walk.” She tugged his hand. “Come on.”
Emmie dropped his hand as soon as they turned and started walking. It was too hard to touch him. It did strange things to her. Not just her body but her heart.
The kiss he’d given her was still burning through her, from her fingertips to her hair to her toes. That kiss had been so shocking, so overwhelming, it had given her strength to say something the powerful Theo Katrakis almost never heard.
No.
She’d been scared to marry him, scared that he’d end up seducing her body and pillaging her soul, leaving her nothing but an empty husk for the rest of her life.
But when Emmie had gone back alone into the church, something made her change her mind and decide to marry Theo after all.
She’d found her father alone. He’d already told the guests no wedding would happen today so they might as well leave. He’d told his sons they’d already done what they could for Emmie, and they should leave and let the two lovebirds sort themselves out.
But Karl himself had lingered, just in case his daughter needed support. So when Emmie returned, she’d found him alone. They had spoken quietly in a half-shadowed, empty chapel.
“I can’t marry him, Dad,” she said bleakly. “He’ll never love me.”
“But you think you could love him?”
She felt a lump in her throat. “Yes.”
Her father looked down at the patterns of red and blue and yellow light from the stained glass, pooling against the cool flagstones. Then he lifted his head.
“Your mother was pregnant with you when I married her. You knew that.”
She bit her lip. They’d never talked about it. She nodded reluctantly. “I was born six months after your wedding date, so it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
Karl gave a crooked smile. “Margie didn’t love me, either. Not then. She said no the first three times I proposed to her.” He ducked his head to surreptitiously wipe his eyes. “When she finally saidyes, I vowed to make her happy. And I think I did.”
“Of course you did.” It was startling to think of her romantic, idealistic mother ever not wanting to marry her father. Emmie put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Mom loved you with all her heart.”
“It took a while.” He gave her a watery smile, then sobered. “If she hadn’t saidyes, your brothers would never have been born. We would never have been a family.”
The thought of that had been so awful, imagining her family disappearing, that Emmie caught her breath.
Her father tilted his head. “If you think you could love Katrakis, well, that’s a start, isn’t it? And as for him loving you...” His voice trailed off as he gave her a warm smile, his eyes gleaming suspiciously in the dim light. “How could he not? Just give him time.”
Time.Emmie didn’t think any amount of time could ever make Theo Katrakis love anyone. But in the time it took for her to say farewell to her father and walk back through the side door into the reception hall, Emmie changed her mind.
She would marry Theo. She couldn’t imagine not giving her own baby what she’d had: a happy childhood, in spite of all their money worries and the agony of her mother fighting cancer for ten years. How could she possibly justify sayingno? Her baby’s happiness mattered more to Emmie than her own.
And as for her fear of loving Theo—
Why, it was simple, she thought suddenly as she followed him down the street now. Their marriage just needed a few conditions.
One of those conditions would be that their baby would never have siblings, which was a shame. But it would protect her from inevitable heartbreak—especially because she knew she’d never be enough for Theo and he’d soon grow bored with her anyway. So instead of a romantic, passionate partnership, what if, from the beginning, they strove instead for a deep friendship, based on mutual respect? And trust. Trust most of all.
It was the only way to make their marriage endure.
And yet...
Emmie’s memory lingered on that kiss of pure fire he’d given her at the altar. She touched her bruised lips. Her condition would mean there’d be no more kisses, luring her into being reckless, luring her into danger. For the rest of her life.
“Look out.”
