Chapter Eleven #3
‘Yes, well, my grandfather would call it obsession , but I believe they did genuinely love each other. I never saw them argue, and they were big on affection towards each other, embarrassingly so on occasion.’ There was a hint of a wry smile in his voice.
Mollie traced her finger over the photo behind a plastic shield. ‘You look like your father. So do your brothers.’
‘The Wilde blue eyes, although Jack’s are a lighter shade.’
Mollie turned to the next page and saw Jago’s mother cuddling a newborn baby, with his proud father beaming down at his wife and child.
She had light brown hair that was similar to her own, and it made her wonder if she would ever get the chance to hold a baby of her own—Jago’s baby.
The possibility had been there two years ago, but this was now, and their engagement was a charade, not the real deal.
She turned another page or two until she got to a photo of his parents and Jago as a baby, this time being held by his father; his mother had a scowling Jack sitting on her knee.
Mollie studied Jago’s tiny features and his head with its sprinkling of black hair, cradled so gently by his father. ‘You were a cute baby.’
Jago grunted. ‘Apparently, I wasn’t a great sleeper, and Jack was as jealous as hell when I came along. I often wonder why they had a third child, given what a handful we were. But they had a nanny, so I guess that helped.’
Mollie turned through some more pages of the family interacting: welcoming their third son, Jonas, then birthday parties, Christmas, holidays in exotic locations, everyone looking happy and blissfully unaware of what the future held.
The last photo in the album was of Jago’s parents smiling at each other with a vivid sunset behind them.
‘That was the last photo taken of them,’ Jago said in a sombre tone.
Mollie closed the album and pushed it back across the desk towards him. ‘Why don’t you get some of these framed and have them around the house?’
Jago’s expression tightened as if invisible strings were tugging at his facial muscles. ‘I don’t need daily reminders of what I lost.’
‘Then, why did you keep the cake and my dress where you can’t help but see them all the time?’
A shutter came down over his features. ‘I don’t use that room. It’s mostly locked.’
Mollie couldn’t help thinking that was how he dealt with most things he didn’t want to face: he locked them away, his emotions, his grief, his pain.
But hadn’t she done the same? Reinventing a version of herself, one that didn’t contain the distressing baggage of her childhood.
All those traumatic memories were locked away, never to be examined, pored over, analysed.
‘Do you think it’s healthy to lock your strongest emotions away? ’
Jago put the album back in the drawer, shoved it closed and turned the key with a sharp click. ‘I don’t know any other way.’
‘You could learn.’
‘I’d need to be motivated, and I’m not.’ There was a stubborn quality to his voice that was reflected in his gaze.
‘Why did you ask me to marry you back then?’
Jago came around from behind the desk and stood next to her. ‘I thought we were a good fit.’
‘In bed?’
His mouth twisted, and a dark gleam shone in his eyes.
‘No one came close to you in that regard.’ He reached out and touched her cheek with a faint touch that sent a frisson down her spine.
Longing ignited in her core, a deep pulsing ache that begged to be assuaged.
‘They still don’t.’ His voice lowered to a deep burr, and his eyes dipped to her mouth.
Mollie drew in a wobbly breath, caught in the spell of his mesmerising gaze. Her need for him overrode her rational brain, and right now she needed to be rational, not led astray by her emotions as she was last time. ‘What are you saying? That you want us to continue our pretend engagement?’
A flicker of something passed through his gaze. ‘We both want each other. It makes sense to try again. Marry me, Mollie, and we can do it properly this time. No one is standing between us, no one is blackmailing you out of my life. We can be together now.’
Mollie wanted to say yes , but what sort of marriage was he offering? ‘Are you asking me as some sort of payback to your grandfather? To thwart his plan to break us up for good?’
A frown drove a trench between his eyes. ‘I’m asking you because I want you to be my wife.’
‘But you haven’t told me you love me. Surely that is a prerequisite for marriage?’
‘Love is a fleeting emotion no one can really rely on,’ Jago said. ‘What you can rely on from me is financial security. That’s something you craved all your life, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but I also want to be loved. I don’t want to be used as some sort of revenge plot against someone.’
‘My grandfather has nothing to do with my proposal,’ he insisted, still frowning.
‘You and I make a good team. We understand each other, we have good chemistry, and this is the most practical and sensible option. To start again, to undo the damage of the last two years. I owe that to you, at the very least.’
Mollie’s chest was tight with pain instead of joy. He had proposed marriage, but it wasn’t the marriage she wanted. It was no different from his previous proposal. She had changed, but he hadn’t. His emotions were still locked away like the photo album.
‘Has anything ever been real between us?’ Mollie asked, her voice cracking over the words. ‘It sounds to me like you want a plus one, not a soulmate.’
‘What we have is as real as that ring on your finger.’
Mollie looked down at her left hand in shock. She brought her gaze back up to his. ‘It’s…real?’
‘I got a jewellery dealer friend of mine to track it down. He found it in a pawn shop.’
‘Why did you make me think it was fake?’
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘Like when you believed me to be a gold-digger, you mean?’
Jago thinned his lips. ‘I apologised for that. I know you’re not after my money.’
‘And yet you just proposed to me using financial security as one of the benefits of marrying you,’ Mollie pointed out bitterly.
‘It is a huge benefit. I can give anything you want. I can provide for you and your brother. You won’t have to do without a thing.’
‘Except the one thing I want the most.’
Jago released a jagged sigh of frustration. ‘You’re asking too much.’
‘And you’re offering too little.’
His frown deepened, his eyes flinty. ‘So you’re not accepting my proposal?’
Mollie stepped back from him in case he touched her. His touch could unravel her willpower in a heartbeat. ‘I don’t want to end up like your grandmother, married for years to a man who doesn’t see her for who she is. Who doesn’t love her the way she deserves to be loved and honoured and treasured.’
Anger ignited his gaze like the strike of a match. ‘Don’t compare me to my grandfather. I’m nothing like him.’
‘Has he ever told you he loves you?’
‘No.’
‘Did your parents?’
His throat moved up and down in a tight swallow. ‘Yes.’ The word seemed to be forced out of him, and a shadow passed through his gaze like a cloud drifting past the moon.
‘Did you say it to them?’
Jago swung away from her and went back behind the desk, one of his hands raking through his hair. ‘If you’re not going to accept my proposal, then at least consider continuing our relationship as it stands. My grandmother is still not well enough to accept the truth.’
Mollie knew this was her chance, her only chance, of finally being true to herself.
True to what she wanted, needed, deserved.
Accepting his proposal would desecrate what she believed a marriage should be, one full of mutual love and respect and loyalty.
That was the security she longed for, not financial comfort but emotional safety and surety.
‘I can’t do that, Jago.’
His expression showed no sign of disappointment. It was as if she had told him she couldn’t pick up his dry-cleaning or something equally banal. ‘It’s your decision. I can’t force your hand.’
Mollie pulled the engagement ring off her finger and held it out to him. ‘You should have told me it was real. I could have lost it as it’s a little big for me now.’
He ignored her outstretched hand. ‘So you’re running away from me a second time?’
Mollie stepped forward and laid the ring on the desk that separated them.
She took off the pendant and earrings and put them beside the ring.
‘This is nothing like the last time. Back then, I was running scared, terrified those images would hurt not only me but you and my brother. This time, I’m going with my head held high.
I don’t deserve to live the rest of my life without true love.
I spent my childhood like that, and I will not settle for it in my adult life. ’
His jaw worked for a moment, and he thrust his hands in his pockets as if he was trying to control the urge to reach for her. ‘You’re making a mistake, Mollie. I’ve never asked anyone else to marry me, only you.’
‘So I should be honoured? Grateful?’ Mollie said with an incredulous look.
‘I lived in abject poverty. I was raised in filth and neglect. I was found with my half-brother beside my dead mother and stepfather three days after they overdosed. I’ve waited my whole life for someone to say they loved me, and you can’t or won’t do it, even though you claim to want to spend the rest of your life with me.
Well, I’m not grateful or honoured to be your choice of bride.
The job description doesn’t reflect who I am now.
’ She turned for the door but only got three steps when his voice stopped her.
‘Where will you go?’
She turned back to face him. ‘I have enough money left over to find myself a place to live. I don’t need or want your help.’
All I want is your love.
‘At least let me find you somewhere for tonight so you can think things over,’ Jago said.
‘I’m a fully grown adult, Jago. I can book myself a hotel room.’
His eyes moved between each of hers as if searching for something. ‘You’re really saying no , aren’t you?’ His tone contained a note of disbelief as if he had never factored in her refusing him. The notorious Wilde arrogance on display once more.
‘I’m really saying no .’ And then she walked out of the study without a backward glance, although her heart cracked like the fondant on her abandoned wedding cake.