EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
The light was different this high up, Eden thought as she shifted her cheek against the pillow. In Harris’ New York triplex, two hundred metres above the city, it was soft and miraculous. Like the way Harris was touching her.
He was beside her, his muscular body propped up on his forearm, his fingers travelling over her body as they always did with that same mix of reverence and compulsion. Tracing the swell of her breast. Caressing the curve of her hip and then moving to the slick heat between her thighs as she wanted him to.
The breath squeezed out of her body as his finger stilled against the pulse beating there. Always beating there, matching the pulse of her heart. Because he was here with her. The man she loved and who loved her, she thought, her stomach swooping as he pulled her towards him and kissed her greedily.
‘Do we have time?’ he mumbled against her mouth.
‘Yes…’
It was just one word but it was loaded with longing and intent and as she watched his pupils widen, her need for him made it impossible to be still. She arched closer, the air punching out of her lungs as the blunt tip of his erection slid inside her and then he was pushing deeper until there was nowhere left to go, his hands shaping her to fit her around him as his breathing grew ragged. Just like the first time it was astonishing and incomparable and right, so very right, and she was nothing but heat and a shuddering, flickering pleasure that pulsed through her in wave after shattering wave.
Afterwards, he kissed her everywhere that he had touched, before pulling her close enough that she could feel his heartbeat overlapping hers.
He was hers now. Not just physically and emotionally but legally.
They had married a month after getting back from St Barth’s. It was a small, quiet ceremony, because it suited them both. It was perfect in every detail from her simple white silk dress to the emotion in his voice as he’d made his vows in the presence of their parents. All four of them. In a room together. Plus her grandma, of course.
They had, all of them, looked a little stunned to be there. But happy too, and, as far as his parents went, grateful.
As they should be. Her fingers tightened around his shoulders, and she felt a fiercely protective rush of love and pride, remembering the shock of his beauty as he’d stood waiting for her at the front of the room.
He had looked as a bridegroom should. Tall, blond and so swooningly handsome in his dark suit that the registrar had kept getting distracted. It had felt like a dream as he’d taken her hand and squeezed it as if he, too, had needed to reassure himself that this was real, that she was real.
‘What are you thinking about?’
She glanced up. Harris was gazing down at her, his eyes fixed on her face, but his hand was moving again, following the contours of her belly.
‘I was thinking about our wedding day. About how handsome you looked and how lucky I felt. How lucky I feel.’ She could do this now. Speak without being afraid that she was giving too much away because nothing was held back. Letting him see how much she wanted and needed him was still terrifying but also intoxicating and necessary.
Reaching out, he cupped her cheek. ‘I’m the lucky one.’
She felt his words, the truth of them, resonating through her and suddenly it was hard to do anything more than nod because she had thought this was something that happened to other people, other women. That for her it would always stay as some unattainable goal dancing just out of reach.
But there was an honesty and a straightforwardness to how they spoke to one another that she knew was as rare as it was beautiful.
‘I love you,’ she said softly.
His eyes held hers for a long beat. ‘I know.’ He did, but it was still new to him, and he liked to hear it and she liked to say it. Liked to watch his eyes soften—
A cry. Tiny but imperative.
Harris turned, they both did, their eyes arrowing onto the state-of-the-art baby monitor on the bedside table.
On the screen, the baby was moving, kicking up her feet and reaching her hands over her head, wispy golden curls framing her face, her green eyes bright in the soft morning light. She made another experimental cry like a kitten mewing, testing the sound, flexing her power and then, as if she was pleased with the results, her face split into a gummy smile that matched the one pulling at the corners of Eden’s mouth.
Carina.
The look on Harris’s face, so fierce and paternal, almost undid her.
Their daughter had been born nearly three weeks ago. The birth had been a long and exhausting process made worse by the panic that had risen unbidden and unwelcome when her water had suddenly broken. Her birth plan had been scrapped. The scented candles were left unlit. Her favourite songs stayed un-played. Nothing on her list made it to the hospital.
Except Harris, and that was all that mattered. He was all she’d needed.
And he had been there the entire time. Taking the baby from the midwife and laying her on Eden’s stomach so that she could feel her daughter’s heart beating, his tears mingling with hers as he’d murmured garbled words of love and joy into her ear.
A lot had happened in the run-up to their daughter’s birth.
Aside from getting married, Harris had reached out to Tiger McIntyre and after talking on the phone they had met up with him and his wife, Sydney. It had been a nerve-racking encounter. Tiger was as toned and taut with nervous energy as Harris and for a moment, as they’d stared at each other warily, it had felt like a mistake. But then Sydney had grabbed Eden’s hand and told her that they were going to be friends whatever happened between their husbands, and they had left them to it.
She had half expected to come back and find them lying bloodied and spent on the floor of Tiger’s open-plan living area that matched Harris’s in scale and style. But when the two women had returned from a morning of mocktails and massage, both men had been sprawled on the sofas drinking beer and playing a first-person shooter as if they were back at college.
As for the drill bit: it turned out that there was no IP theft. As had happened so many times in the past, they had simply had the same inspiration.
‘You know we talked about Tiger and Sydney being Carina’s godparents?’ she said, shifting closer to touch the marvel of his jaw. ‘How do you feel about asking them today at lunch?’
Harris turned away from the monitor to look at his wife.
Eden. Having her in his life was like being in an earthly paradise. The tension that had hummed inside him for so long had vanished. His mind was mellow with pleasure right now but this, the two of them, was about so much more than sex. There was a quiet there now and yet he knew that he was heard and seen by Eden. He knew too that even when they were apart she was thinking about him. Thinking about when she would see him again, and the things she would ask him and tell him.
For each of them, that knowledge was a comfort and a necessity, a magnetic North that centred them. A pole star that combined the pull of the moon and the warmth of the sun.
But that was just the beginning. Eden had given him so much more. She had helped him start to create something approximating a relationship with his parents. And then there was Tiger.
In that moment of reconciliation, he’d felt both relief and gratitude to Eden and Sydney. Tiger had felt the same way, and now their friendship was a full-on bromance, much to the amusement of their wives.
He had no idea how Eden had made that happen. Just thinking about the man he’d been, the man he would have remained if they had never met, made him pull her close and hold her tight. Because he was lucky to have found her and he knew that she could not be replicated.
She was his equal. A partner and a muse because being with her seemed to stimulate his brain as much as his body so that his business was accelerating like a solar probe.
And then there was Carina.
His beautiful daughter. He had seen her every day of her life. She was a miracle. A blessing. And he loved being a hands-on father.
‘I was thinking that might be a good time to ask them too.’
Eden kissed him lightly on the lips and he felt her smile ripple through him. ‘We might even let them do a little bit of babysitting. Give Tiger some practice before Sydney has the baby. You can give him some tips.’
‘I’m still learning.’
‘You are. But you’re a natural.’
Surprisingly, he was. But he got a kick out of hearing her say it. From knowing that she said it because she cared, because she knew that he still needed that reassurance sometimes.
Eden rolled onto him then, her eyes moving to check the monitor. But this time his gaze stayed put because she was straddling him now, and her breasts were there, fuller from the milk, and he felt his body stir.
‘Hi, Carina.’ The monitor again. This time, a child’s voice with an Australian twang, then a giggle.
Eden leaned forward, laughing, and he groaned softly then grinned, a big, stupid grin. Because that was something else that he had to thank his wife for.
Jasmine was in his life too, now.
Reaching out to her mother had been a big step, but Eden had been by his side. Jessie had been cautious at first, understandably, but on Eden’s advice he had let her set the pace and five months ago, Jasmine had come to visit him in New York with Jessie and her husband, Eric.
It had burned at first, hearing his daughter calling Eric Dad.
But now she called him Dad too. Which was fine because, as Eden had reminded him, two things could be true at once. And each time he saw his eldest daughter, he felt the connection deepen, not just with him but with Eden too, so that by the time Carina was born it was Jasmine who had chosen her baby sister’s name, picking her favourite constellation in the night sky.
‘Can I bring Carina in to you? Please. I’ll be careful.’ Jasmine was squinting hopefully up at the camera.
‘Yes, just remember to support her head.’
‘I know, Daddy.’
Watching Harris’s face soften, Eden felt a deep, almost painful tug of happiness. Her love for him was so sharp, so compelling.
‘I better put some clothes on,’ she said softly, reaching for her robe.
‘I guess you should.’ He touched her cheek. ‘I love you. I love this.’
‘I love it too.’ She pulled him closer and kissed him fiercely and for a moment there was just the warm touch of their lips and the press of their bodies and then Jasmine came into the room, carrying her baby sister, and just like that they were the family they had both longed to be for so long.
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