Page 448 of Manhattan Bossholes

I wet my lips. It would have been easy to let him take control of the situation. But I needed to say this before I lost my nerve.

“Me first.” I took his hand and dragged him into a dimly-lit side alley, away from the curious stares of pretty much everyone in town. I took a moment to drink in his gorgeous, familiar face. “Declan…” I started. “Even though it’s over between us, I need you to know how amazing you are. You changed my life for the better. You gave me the courage to pursue a dream I’d almost forgotten I had.”

He cupped my cheek with one hand. “Olivia,” he breathed.

“But most importantly, you reminded me how much I want a family. Even though it didn’t work out between us in the way that I hoped, I want you to know that I love you, Declan,” I confessed. “I’m never going to regret the time we spent together.”

His eyes were almost frighteningly intense. Did he think I was ridiculous, blurting all this out? Too little too late?

“It’s just, your message made it sound like you thought I didn’t return your feelings. And I do,” I babbled. “I need you to know that I do. You were the best choice I ever made.”

Declan’s eyes searched mine. “And you’re saying all this even though I told you I couldn’t change? Even though I swore I’d demolish that mansion?”

I swallowed. “But you didn’t do it, did you?”

“You had no way of knowing what I was going to do, Olivia.”

“No,” I admitted. “But I just… I just needed you to know that…I see you. And you’re magnificent.”

Declan closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine. “God, I don’t deserve you.”

You do, my heart whispered.

He pulled back just far enough to see my face, but he didn’t let go of me. His hands slid down my arms, until he found my hands, and took them.

“I’ve been working on a speech, if you can believe it. I wanted to get it perfect before I got to the States, but I guess that’s not happening now.” He laughed, rough and uncertain.

He’s nervous, I realized. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him nervous. Not even when he’d been chasing me to an airport and declaring he loved me.

He took a breath. “You were right, Oliva. I was holding onto the past too tightly. I was obsessed with a revenge plan made by a grieving teenager. You reminded me that I could change my plans. And you gave me something worth changing my plans for.”

My heart was racing.

“Seamus told me of what you did,” I said.

He smiled. “You were right all along. Seamus is different from his father. So I leveraged the threat of destroying the mansion to get Mark to sign over his whole business to Seamus, permanently. Sinead’s going to help me to turn the mansion into a community center. We’ll still host the festival,” Declan assured me.

My breath felt uneven. I’d seen the crowd and heard the party, and both Seamus and Molly had told me about it…but to hear it coming from Declan was different. Seeing him so at peace with this decision made it mean so much more. Was I crying? I felt like I was on the verge of crying. He was giving me the thing I hadn’t dared hope for.

“I’m also trying to help Seamus learn how to run a fair, ethical, financially solvent business,” Declan said. “He’s texting me all the time. I swear, he’s dumb as an ox when it comes to numbers.”

That startled a laugh out of me.

“It’s up to Sinead whether she wants Seamus to be part of Catie’s life,” Declan added. “But I’m not going to stand in the way anymore.”

I nodded, my throat tight.

I’d asked him to consider not destroying a building. And he’d come up with a whole host of solutions, all of them so much better than anything I could have imagined.

I squeezed his hands fiercely. “I told you. You’re marvelous, Declan Byrne.”

He shook his head, stubborn, and in that instinctual obstinance I saw the grumpy, aggravating man I’d fallen for. And I loved that side of him just as much as the newer, more vulnerable one he’d flown across an ocean to show me.

“I only did any of this because of you. Not for you, but because of you. You changed my life too, Olivia. Over and over again,” he said, affection and exasperation warring in his eyes, before settling into something that looked a lot like wonder. “You make me better. I was a mess, but now…it’s different. I feel different. I…” he hesitated, looked straight into my eyes, and smiled. “I love you so fucking much.”

“Poetic,” I teased.

“You should see my office. There’s a rubbish bin full of crumpled up pages, all covered in terrible metaphors for what I feel for you. But the thing is, you’re beyond words, Olivia.”