Chapter Ten #3
‘It’s the truth. You make me lose sleep.
’ He groaned, impatient with the way he suddenly couldn’t find the right words to express what he wanted to say.
‘When you rejected me I thought that it was something I would be able to shrug off without too much difficulty. I had never let my emotions get in the way of my private life. I had always known where my priorities were. My father had set me a good example when it came to being wary of the pitfalls of acting on impulse and flinging yourself into situations because you were being guided by your heart and not your head. The truth is that I’ve been thinking about you every day.
And every day I managed to convince myself that common sense would reassert itself and I would actually be able to get on with my work and with my life. ..’
Sammy fought down a wave of disappointment because he was simply confirming what she had already concluded for herself. He had been driven to show up because he hadn’t been able to accept the reality of being turned down, especially when it had involved something as serious as a marriage proposal.
‘I’m not going to fall into bed with you because...because you miss me,’ she said on a hitched breath and Leo flushed. Yes, he missed her. Another weakness of which he was not proud but a weakness, he now realised, he had never had a hope in hell of combating.
He found that he was hesitant to ask her whether she missed him. What if her answer was no? Never before had Leo felt himself treading carefully on such uncertain ground.
Lush lashes shielded his gaze as he lowered his eyes. Sammy itched to reach out to him and she knew that it was just the effect he had on her. He made her want to touch.
‘It’s not just about missing you.’ He recognised what was at the very heart of the restless turmoil that had been undermining his usual single-minded focus for the past few months. ‘It’s more than that. I feel things for you.’
‘You feel things for me? What sort of things?’ Sammy refused to be drawn into feeling hopeful because she had been down that road once and wasn’t going to be lured down it again.
‘I need you in my life, Sammy.’
‘You think you need me because of Adele.’
‘This has nothing to do with Adele. My relationship with her is improving by the day. I—no, this is to do with how I feel about you. You came into my life for reasons I could never have predicted and you changed my life and all my priorities. You’re warm and funny and smart and all those things should have alerted me to the real reason why I proposed to you. ’
‘What real reason?’ Sammy drew in an expectant breath and held it.
‘I love you, Sammy. I fell in love with you out there in Melbourne but I didn’t wake up to that because I had always associated falling in love with the kind of excesses I had witnessed, not just in my father and my stepbrother, but in friends, as well.’
‘You love me?’
‘I love you with all my heart.’ His dark eyes were intense with emotion.
‘I’d locked away the simple truth that my father adored my mother.
I’d sidelined it because the impact of my father’s second marriage occurred when I was older and perhaps that’s why it was the example I processed more easily.
He lost a fortune to that woman who used him ruthlessly and took advantage of his emotional nature.
Indeed, he only went into that marriage because he hadn’t been able to cope with my mother’s death.
All in all, I’d resolved from an early age to approach life a lot more phlegmatically than my father had always been prone to do.
So when I started loving you it was easy for me to write it off as lust. Lust was something I could deal with.
I should have known the minute I proposed to you that I should sit up and take notice. ’
‘I turned you down because I needed you to love me,’ Sammy said, heart full.
She reached across the table and they linked fingers.
‘I knew that I had fallen for you and I knew that if all you wanted was a suitable mother figure for Adele then it would just be a matter of time before you got fed up having me around and started regretting the fact that you were stuck with me if we married. You don’t know how many times I asked myself whether I made the right decision to turn you down.
’ She grimaced. ‘I had to keep reminding myself that you didn’t love me and that I would end up getting terribly hurt because you didn’t.
When you showed up here tonight...’ She looked at him with love in her eyes.
‘I actually thought that you might have come to try to seduce me. And, if you had, I knew I would have been so tempted to have just caved in.’
‘Will you marry me, Sammy? Because I can’t live without you. Because you give my life shape and meaning.’
Tears glimmering in her eyes, Sammy smiled and moved round the table to sit on his lap and entwine her hands tightly round his neck. ‘I will.’
* * *
The following day they announced their engagement—their real engagement—to Adele and their parents. They had expected surprise and had anticipated a few seconds of shock. Instead, Sammy’s mother exchanged a smug smile with Leo’s father.
‘I told you,’ she said comfortably.
‘You win.’ Harold chuckled. ‘Remind me,’ he told his son, beaming, ‘never to make a bet with a woman again. This lady never doubted that you’d end up together.’
Adele, sitting pressed between the adults, looked at them for a few seconds and then said tentatively, her little face alive with pleasure, ‘When you get married, can I wear pink?’
* * * * *