She clung to his strong frame, weakened, and he gathered her more tightly in to him, worshipping her mouth with his. There was barely enough oxygen to go around for one, let alone keep two hearts pumping. They fell apart, panting.
‘I am good enough for you,’ she gasped. It felt important to make that clear.
He blinked, confused. ‘I agree.’
‘I mean that I’m through with doubting myself. Believing myself unworthy. I want a strong, equal relationship.’
‘Princess, you’re preaching to the choir …’
‘And I want you to admit that this wasn’t strategic. Neither one of us made the other love us.’
His eyes softened. ‘Everything about you made me love you, Shirley.’
She glared at him.
‘You want the lightning bolt?’
‘I want you to admit that something special happened here. Something bigger than both of us.’
‘How about I tell you when it happened, instead?’
She stared.
‘I first bought in to loving you when you stood on my porch and called me an ass that day. No one had challenged me like that, ever.’ He stepped closer. ‘Then when your ridiculous stockings at the beach forced such lightness into the darkness inside me.’ His hand twisted up into her hair. ‘Then when you gave up your seats at the symphony for some strangers way up the back and you revealed your soul.’
Her eyes brimmed over again.
‘But I still wavered. Then you were so natural and good with the boys at Tim’s party and all I could think about was what a spectacular mother you would make.’
A tear wobbled free.
‘But if you want the thunderbolt. The moment I knew I was screwed?’
Only from Hayden would she take screwed as a compliment. She nodded and shook another tear loose.
‘The giraffe. That moment surrounded by sea containers and diesel fumes when you held your hand out to me, your eyes filled with such magic and mystery and drew me into your fantasy. No-one had ever given me the gift of joy before. Unconditional generosity.’
And there was the magic word.
Unconditional.
‘I don’t ever want to have to earn your love,’ she whispered.
He stepped back and regarded her gravely. Then he sank to one knee, on the rocks and shale underfoot, just as he had inside the tent. It wasn’t a proposal. It was older and more classic than that. It was a Spartan honour pledge.
‘I give it to you. As a gift. Whether you want to keep it or not, it doesn’t change how I feel. My love is yours, unconditionally.’
She sank down onto her knees to join him. The stones cut into her skin. She ignored it. ‘I accept. And I love you. Every part of you.’
They fell forward into each other’s lips, kissed as if it were their first time. Then they pulled back and stared at each other, lost. Panting.
‘I caught up to you on the list,’ he got out between breaths.
She leaned against him. ‘In just a few weeks? How?’
‘I cheated.’ He laughed. ‘We’re neck and neck now that we’re both here.’
She smiled. ‘You know what? That list doesn’t seem so important now.’
He curled his arms around her. ‘Typical. Just as defeat is on the horizon.’
She chuckled. ‘We have something much more impressive on the horizon.’
They stared up at the Himalayan peaks together. Awed.
‘This really hurts,’ Shirley finally admitted.
‘You’re not kidding.’ He pushed to his feet and then pulled her carefully up with him off the sharp rocks.
‘You know you’re hiking down off the mountain with me, right? I won’t be seen in your chopper.’
‘And miss all those nights in a tent with you?’ He kissed her again. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way. You still owe me from the dinosaur dig.’
‘We can’t do anything.’ She giggled. ‘We’ll have a guide sleeping just feet away.’
He pushed back and stared at her. ‘Did you Just … giggle?’
Truly unmasked now. Exactly how she wanted to stay. ‘That’s just one of a range of ordinary-person sounds I make when I’m not on guard,’ she joked. ‘And you’re going to get to discover them all.’
He swooped down to kiss the side of her throat. ‘That’s not going any way to preserving the modesty of your guide. Now all I can think about is getting you in a tent and eliciting all those sounds.’
‘Truly,’ she said, curling her head and seeking out his lips for more oxygen deprivation. ‘They can’t be any worse than the sound of the yak on the way up.’
Two years later
EXACTLY as Hayden had promised her all those adventures ago at Everest, it was so much less terrifying when there was someone there, stepping out into the nothingness with you.
He hadn’t left her side, not for one overwhelming moment of the birth.
She lay curled around their tiny baby boy, throbbing with love for this precious, precious gift. She’d thought it impossible to feel more love than she already did for her complex, brave Hayden but this little bundle had come out with masses more all ready to go.
She stroked his tiny cheek and glanced at her sleeping husband.
Hayden had pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and leaned forward to watch his son nurse with all the pride and amazement and trepidation of a first-time dad. Then he’d fallen asleep there, totally destroyed by the past forty hours, with one hand on her and one on his new son, draped on the side of her bed. Even the visiting nurses worked quietly around him so that he could sleep.
Then again, he had charmed every one of them. They would have done anything for him. She bundled Leo up more tightly in her hold and looked up and around her, too shattered—too happy—to sleep.
‘Mum,’ she whispered to the night. ‘This is your grandson, Leonidas. I’m sorry you can’t hold him yourself but Hayden and I will hold him for ever for you and keep him safe.’
She stroked his flushed little cheek with her index finger. ‘I get it now, Mum. How unprepared we all are at this moment. How much we want to be the perfect parent for our babies. But it doesn’t change us. It can’t make us perfect, or even better. We can only do our best.’
She gently extracted the sleeping baby from under Hayden’s touch, bundled him more securely and curled him into a hold close to her body.
And then she rocked him and told him all about his grandma.
Tick.
AMY