‘And Xander? Was his accident last weekend really an accident?’
Darius drew his breath in sharply. ‘He says it was.’
‘And do you believe him?’
‘Yes, up to a point I do believe him.’ He nodded. ‘The truth of the matter is that I’ve been worried about Xander for a while now, without knowing why. He’s been playing even harder than he works, recklessly so, and he works ten-hour days.’
‘Like you do.’
‘Yes, like I do.’ He smiled slightly. ‘You know, I thought Xander and I were close, but I had no idea of the torment going on inside his head all these years. This fear that he might one day turn into a monster like our father.’ He gave a pained grimace.
‘He needs someone to believe in him. Not just you and your mother; that’s a given, because you both already love him unconditionally.’ She smiled. ‘Xander needs someone outside your family, a woman maybe, to love and believe in him.’
Darius eyed her curiously. ‘How did you get to be so wise?’
Andy wasn’t wise at all; she was talking from personal experience!
Her sister Kim and brother-in-law Colin had been nothing but supportive of her over the past four years, but it was because of Darius, because of his expressed belief in her, that she had found the courage to dare to dance in public again. She would never be as good a dancer as she had once been, and it was going to take the next few weeks of serious training before the gala for her to achieve even an acceptable level for her to appear on a public stage again. But she would never have found the courage to do even that without Darius’s belief in her.
A small glimmer of hope had begun to burn inside Andy as Darius talked to her of his parents’ marriage, his father’s violence, his traumatic childhood, the reason for the emotional breach between himself and his mother all these years and his brother’s emotional turmoil now.
A glimmer of hope that Darius, a man she knew never shared his emotions with anyone, had to have told her those things, shared those things with her, for a reason...
‘YOU MUST BE wondering why the hell I’m bothering to burden you with all of this unpleasant family history,’ Darius said.
Andy was more than wondering—deep inside, where her hopes and dreams had long been buried, a rainbow of possibilities, which had begun to blossom with her decision to dance again, was now bursting into an array of colours!
‘Actually, I was a little concerned initially that you might be going to confess that those rumours about your exotic tastes for whips and paddles in the bedroom were true after all.’
‘What?’ Darius eyed her incredulously.
She eyed him innocently. ‘You mean they aren’t true?’
‘Of course they aren’t tr— You’re messing with me, right?’ he realised as she grinned at him. ‘You do know that it isn’t true, but just a load of rubbish printed by the gutter press?’
She nodded, relieved that some of the tension seemed to have left his expression. ‘What I was actually wondering—’ she held Darius’s gaze steadily with hers as she slowly stood up ‘—is if you’re now interested in going back downstairs and bringing your fantasy of making love to me in my dance studio to life.’
‘What?’ Darius’s second gasp was a cross between surprise and laughter.
Miranda’s eyes glowed warmly as she slowly crossed the room, hips swaying gently, until she stood just in front of him. ‘I did say that it sounds intriguing,’ she reminded throatily.
‘So you did.’ Darius found himself constantly amazed by this woman.
He had just told Miranda all of his awful family history, and instead of being horrified by it, or running as fast as she could in the opposite direction, as she very well might have done, she was instead reminding him of his fantasy with more than a glint of interest in those amazing green eyes.
He closed his own eyes briefly before opening them again. ‘Have I told you yet how wonderful I think you are?’
A delicate blush warmed her cheeks as she answered him huskily. ‘Not yet, no.’
Darius’s arms moved about the slenderness of her waist as he pulled her gently into him. ‘Possibly because wonderful doesn’t even begin to cover what I think or feel for you. It’s because of how I feel about you that I’ve been able to face the demons of the past. That I’m sure I’ll eventually be able to completely heal this breach with my mother. And that’s because I—’ He broke off, the words proving more difficult to say than he had even imagined they would be.
Except Miranda deserved to hear the words. As heartfelt and as often as she would allow him to say them.
He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I know we haven’t known each other for very long. That it’s far too soon for you. That I definitely need to stop being so emotionally closed off, before I can even begin to hope that you’ll ever feel the same way about me. That...’
‘Darius, will you stop waffling and get to the point?’ She groaned her frustration.
He nodded abruptly. ‘The point is that I’ve fallen in love with you. Deeply. Completely. For always,’ he added with certainty. ‘I may be new to this, but what I feel for you is all encompassing. To the point that you now own me. And you know what? I don’t mind.’ He sounded surprised by the admission himself. ‘For the first time in my life I actually feel complete. I know exactly what I want and who I want to be with. For the rest of my life. But...’
‘Darius?’
‘I knew I had to tell you about my family before I said any of this—my father in particular. Because I never want you to think that I’ve held anything back from you. I want to share all of myself with you, Miranda.’
‘Darius...’
‘Even the bad bits.’
‘Darius, please.’
‘Because I do truly love you—more than I ever believed it was possible to love anyone. More than I believed it was possible for me to love anyone. And—’
‘Darius...!’ Andy’s exasperation at not being listened to came out as a cross between a protest and a choked laugh. Of happiness. Pure, unadulterated happiness.
Darius loved her.
He genuinely loved her!
And she had no doubts that when Darius loved he loved wholeheartedly, with every part of him.
Andy had begun to hope these past few minutes as he talked to her of his family—her heart had more than hoped!—but to hear Darius actually say that he loved her was beyond anything she might ever have imagined.
‘I love you too, Darius!’ she exclaimed joyfully. ‘And if you think your family is a little crazy, then you need to spend some time with my sister and Colin. For starters, they collect antique mirrors, they have a house full of them, and they spend most weekends going to markets and car-boot sales looking for more. My sister is the worst cook in the world. And Colin—’
‘You love me?’ Darius looked down at her with glowing, hesitant eyes.
It was a hesitancy, an uncertainty that Andy couldn’t bear to see in this innately strong and wonderful man whom she loved with every fibre of her being.
‘I love you so much, Darius. So, so much,’ she repeated huskily even as