HE WASN’T WORTH IT.
She’d given him the answer that he’d dreaded hearing since they had started this journey. Well, he didn’t know much about her experiences with men and relationships, but he knew that he’d had a lot of women over the years and not one of them had made him question the way he was living his life. And then he’d met her. He might not be worth fighting for, but she was—and he wasn’t giving up yet.
There was something special between them. Something rare and precious. There had to be. It was something he didn’t want to lose. And if she didn’t feel that way too she wouldn’t have gone to bed with him last night.
He took a couple of steps towards her, until he was standing close enough to touch her if she’d let him, one foot either side of hers. She didn’t move—not towards him or away—and he could read the indecision on her face. She wanted this. She wanted him. But she wasn’t going to let that be enough.
He placed a hand beside one of hers on the edge of the worktop and with the knuckles of his other hand gently stroked her cheek. He moved slowly, not wanting to spook her. Not wanting to push her to do anything she didn’t want to. He pulled her towards him, resting his forehead against hers.
‘This is different,’ he said, hoping above all that he was right about this one thing. Hoping that she felt something when they touched that she hadn’t felt before. He was betting everything on it. ‘Did it feel like this before?’ he asked, letting his body sink towards her, his stomach pressing on her bump, feeling their baby growing there between them. ‘With him? Or is this different? Am I different?’
Elspeth sighed. He felt the breath leave her body in a long, resigned wave, and for a moment he thought that was it. He was wrong. This wasn’t different for her. But then she turned her cheek into his hand—just a fraction. A movement so subtle he might have missed it if he hadn’t been desperately looking for any sign that she was still with him on this.
‘It’s not going to work, Fraser.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’ Fraser allowed himself a tiny glimmer of hope that this wasn’t a hard no, that she had evaded rather than answered his question. ‘I asked if I’m different.’
She paused again, and tensed slightly beneath him.
‘You are,’ she conceded, glancing up and briefly meeting his gaze.
‘And you feel different,’ Fraser prompted, building on her concession, moving her towards what he was sure was true. ‘You feel different from how you felt with Alex.’
She held her breath and he could practically hear her looking for the get-out. For a way of denying what they were both realising had to be true.
‘Yes.’
The word was barely more than a breath, but to Fraser it was everything. It was hope. It was life. It was all he needed to know to keep going. She had pushed him and pushed him to face up to his past, to address the problems with his father that he had carried into every adult relationship he had ever made. And now he was going to do the same for her. He was going to make her see that she could do this. She could be enough. She could be everything she needed to be to her family, and whatever was left for her to offer him he would take it.
‘Then we’re going to try.’ His voice rang with the certainty that he felt. ‘This isn’t the same. You don’t have to be the person you were when you were with Alex. I’m not asking you to tear yourself in different directions. All I’m asking—all I’m asking—is that you don’t write this off.’
He softened his hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb, trying with everything he had not to rush her. To give her time to think. To stop himself from breaching those last few centimetres between his lips and hers. To give her space to come to him when she was ready.
‘I can’t live at Ballanross,’ she said, and he pulled back, surprised.
Of all the responses he’d thought she might give, that one had never occurred to him.
‘I can’t even live in your new apartment.’
‘I never asked you to,’ he reminded her.
‘But I couldn’t. I won’t. And you would want to. Not now, perhaps. But eventually you’ll want to go back to Ballanross.’
How many hypotheticals was she going to run through? How many times was she going to assume the worst of him? This relationship was never going to move forward if she couldn’t see that this wasn’t her last relationship. That he wasn’t Alex.
‘I’d like to spend time there, yes. If that’s something that we can do,’ Fraser said, keeping his cool even as Elspeth was losing hers. ‘And there’s plenty of room for your mum and your sister, if we ever want to live there. If that’s what we all choose. But I don’t need to.’
He realised the truth of what he was saying as the words left his mouth. ‘I would choose you, Elspeth, if it came to it.’
The realisation that he meant it hit him like a truck. All these years he’d dreamed of going back to his home. All this time the castle had loomed large in his memory. But it had only been a symbol of what he had lost. Of what he was missing. It had never been about the castle. And he wasn’t going to choose a symbol over the woman he loved. He would be wherever she was. For ever. If she would let him.
‘I’m not asking—’ Elspeth started to say.
He cut her off, because she didn’t need to say it. ‘I know you’re not. Because you’re not the sort of idiot who gives ultimatums to the people you love. But it’s true anyway. I can live with never going back there. But I couldn’t live without you. Without our baby. I want us to be a family—together—and I’ll do that in the city if that’s what it takes to make you agree. To make you happy.’
What would make her happy?
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked herself that question. The last time she had made a free choice rather than weighing up all the opposing forces in her life and trying to pick the least bad option.
But Fraser was asking something different. He wasn’t asking what she didn’t want. He wasn’t asking her what the lesser of all the evils was. He was asking her, as no one had done for a really long time, what she wanted.
And there could only be one answer. She wanted him. She wanted him in her life, in her family, in her bed. She wanted him any way she could get him, and she wanted him now. But that didn’t mean she could have him.
‘Elspeth? I hope you’re not about to do something stupid!’ Sarah shouted from the other side of the kitchen door.
Elspeth shook her head in dismay. How long had she been there listening?
‘Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?’ Elspeth shouted back, leaning against the counter and letting out a sigh. She walked over and opened the door, stepping out of the way before Sarah could catch her toes with her powered wheelchair.
‘You must have forgotten to teach me that one. Now, is there a good reason why you’re not jumping on him?’ Sarah asked with a raised eyebrow. ‘I mean given how in love with him you are and everything.’ She turned to Fraser. ‘Don’t let her tell you that she needs to look after us. I’ve been telling her for years that she needs to get over it.’
‘In love with me, are you?’ Fraser asked, looking from Sarah to Elspeth, raising his eyebrows.
Elspeth bristled, and decided the safest thing to do was to ignore the question. Safer to stick to the practical considerations—they came with easy answers. Talking about moving out and it actually being a viable possibility were two very different things. Something her sister didn’t seem to grasp.
‘Getting over it is easier said than done.’ Elspeth busied herself filling the kettle and flicking the switch, needing something to do with her hands, somewhere to look other than at Fraser. ‘Especially as you do actually need me here, Sarah.’
‘Well, I’m going to move out when I finish college anyway,’ Sarah said. ‘You’ll have loads more free time then.’
Fraser drew his eyebrows together in surprise as he looked over at Sarah. ‘Sounds exciting,’ he said. ‘Elspeth didn’t mention that.’
But Elspeth was shaking her head. She had been through this with Sarah so many times before. It just wasn’t realistic for her to live alone. Sure, there were other people in Sarah’s position who managed, but she didn’t want her sister to just manage. She wanted her to have the best care. That meant Elspeth doing as much of it as possible herself. And that only worked if they were living together.
‘You can’t do that, Sarah. We’ve been through all this already.’
‘Don’t tell me I can’t. I can employ a team of assistants and carers. Plenty of people do it. I’m not having you martyr yourself for me.’
Elspeth poured hot water into the teapot and then slammed it down on the counter, harder than she’d intended. ‘I’m not martyring myself. I want to take care of you.’
‘But that’s not what Sarah wants,’ Fraser said, glancing from one sister to the other. ‘I think we need to talk about that. About why you’re trying to keep your sister dependent on you.’
‘You never stop,’ Sarah added. ‘Even when it’s making you miserable.’
‘Caring for you doesn’t make me miserable, Sarah. How could you think that?’
Tears prickled at the back of Elspeth’s eyes at the idea that Sarah could think that. She loved looking after her sister. And as for what Fraser had said—he couldn’t possibly understand the relationship between her and Sarah. This wasn’t his call to make, however much he might like to feel in control of the situation.
‘Maybe it’s not making you miserable,’ Fraser conceded, ‘but it’s stopping you from giving our relationship a chance.’
Sarah smiled at Fraser. ‘Did I mention that I really like this guy, Elspeth? He’s right. Being apart from Fraser is making you miserable. And you do know, don’t you, that if I move out I’m not going to suddenly drop dead?’
Fraser pulled up a chair and sat at the table. ‘Look, we don’t need to make any decisions about this now. If we all want to live together, we can make that happen. Sarah, if you want to live on your own I’m sure we will support you.’
Elspeth looked from one to the other, wondering when they had decided to gang up on her.
‘Are you telling me that I’m making it all up?’ Elspeth asked seriously. ‘That I’ve imagined that I’ve needed to do everything I have? Because you don’t remember, Sarah, what it was like when you were born. When I was terrified every day that you might die. When I had to remind Mum to eat because the only thing she could think about was getting you through the day.’
Elspeth brought the tea over to the table, and Sarah reached out to touch her hand.
‘Of course you haven’t made it up. You know Mum and I couldn’t have managed without you. But we want you to be happy. If we’d known that the way things are makes you think you can’t have your own life too we’d never have let it go on this long. Is this why you and Alex broke up?’
Sarah glanced at Fraser, obviously worried that she was oversharing in front of the new guy.
‘I know about Alex,’ Fraser said, his expression making it clear that he wasn’t a fan.
‘Well, that’s good.’ Sarah nodded approvingly. ‘But, Elspeth, if you think that you split up because you didn’t want to move out, then you’ve missed something important. You split up because he wasn’t prepared to have this conversation with you. Fraser’s not doing too badly so far...’
Elspeth could feel Fraser’s eyes on her, trying to judge her reaction.
‘Anyway,’ Sarah said at last, ‘if you put my tea in my bottle I’ll leave you two to it. Oh, and Mum and I have booked a carer for the morning. So don’t you dare use me as an excuse not to... Well... You get the idea.’
And with that parting shot Sarah left the room, leaving a heavy silence in her wake.
‘Your sister wants to move out?’ Fraser said, breaking the silence. ‘You never told me that.’
Elspeth shook her head. There was a good reason for that. ‘No, because it’s not happening.’
‘How does that work?’
Fraser came to stand in front of her and her whole body hummed with the awareness of knowing she could just reach out and touch him.
‘Surely if she’s an adult she gets to decide for herself.’
‘Or maybe she should listen to her doctor sister when she tells her it’s not a great idea.’
Fraser crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t want her to be independent?’
‘Of course I do! I bend over backwards helping her to be independent. I don’t want her to—’
She stopped herself, suddenly aware that the sentence had nearly got away from her.
‘Finish the sentence,’ Fraser prompted her gently. ‘Come on—we were getting somewhere. You don’t want her to...what?’
‘I don’t want her to die,’ Elspeth said, her voice breaking.
‘And is that likely to happen?’ Fraser asked gently. ‘If Sarah’s care comes from somewhere else—like she says she wants? Does that make it more likely? Because she said that’s not going to happen. Is she wrong?’
Her objective doctor brain provided the answer. ‘No, she isn’t.’
‘Then why is it so hard to let her go?’ he asked gently.
Elspeth thought about it for a second. Considered dodging the question. But she had been carrying this around for so long. Trying to make sense of her life. Trying to make the best of it. But it hadn’t made her happy. It wasn’t making Sarah happy. It wasn’t going to make Fraser happy either. Maybe it was time that she started telling the truth.
‘Because I’ve been scared that she might die for as long as I can remember. Since I was a little girl and she was born and there was nothing I could do except sit by her and hope that she wouldn’t. I studied hard and I went to uni and I became a doctor because I didn’t want to feel helpless. And now I can do something about it.’
The thought of living without her sister was unbearably painful. The thought of sitting and doing nothing was almost as bad.
‘And what do you think would happen if you stopped?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She had already voiced her darkest fear. And it didn’t lose any of its power just because her objective brain knew it was unlikely. ‘Do you think I’m completely irrational?’
Fraser shook his head and reached for her hand. ‘I think you love your sister and you’ve spent your whole life putting her first. But now she’s grown up I think she wants to take care of herself.’
‘I don’t know if I can just...stop caring. Stop being afraid.’
He squeezed her fingers, caught her eye and smiled. ‘Well, then, it’s a good job you don’t have to do it by yourself. We’ll work it out between us. All of us. In our own time.’
Elspeth brushed away a tear with the back of her hand.
‘I asked you earlier what you want. You never gave me an answer,’ he reminded her.
She reached up on her tiptoes, aware of her bump between them as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, finally breaching those millimetres between their lips that had been driving her insane, making it impossible for her to think straight.
He let her come to him, true to his word, letting her lead, not demanding more from her than she was giving. But there was a time and a place for being restrained, and right now she wanted the Fraser who had pinned her wrists and made her moan the night they had met. She pressed harder against him, letting her fingers tighten slightly in his hair.
‘God, Fraser,’ she said between kisses. ‘Of course I want you. You know I do.’
Another kiss and her hand was tangling in his hair. The other hand was exploring his shoulders. His back. Pulling at his shirt and diving for the skin beneath.
‘I don’t know how this is going to work...’ she said suddenly, feeling a shot of reality start a slow puncture in their bubble.
‘Stop thinking,’ Fraser demanded, angling his head to deepen their kiss.
The heat of his tongue in her mouth sent a shot of desire straight through her belly, and the feel of his hands exploring her waist, her breasts, her bottom, had her wishing she had somewhere to take him that didn’t share a flimsy plasterboard wall with her mother or her sister.
That thought acted like a pitcher of iced water to the back of the neck and she pushed Fraser away slightly, gasping for breath as she tried to collect her thoughts.
‘Rethinking the whole living together thing?’ Fraser asked with a wry smile, equally breathless, reading her thoughts faster than she could form them.
‘For tonight. Definitely. After that...’
‘After that we’ll figure it out. I can’t promise you easy answers, Elspeth. But I promise you that I’ll be here. I promise you that we will do this together. We’ll find something that works for all of us.’
She rested her head against his chest and smiled as his hands came round to her belly, rubbing, encouraging, until he was rewarded with a kick.
Fraser cupped her chin, tipped her face up to his for a light kiss on the lips.
‘I love you,’ Fraser said, his gaze locked on hers. ‘And I want you every day. I don’t care that this is the scariest thing I’ve ever done—I’m not going to run from it. I believe we can do this. I believe you can do this. And any time you doubt that, doubt us, I’m going to be here to remind you that we love each other enough to make this work.’
She didn’t doubt him for a second—she couldn’t when the truth of his words was written in every smiling line around his eyes. She stood with that feeling for a moment—the knowledge that they were in this together, the warm satisfaction of knowing that someone loved her as passionately as she knew Fraser did. That everything they would face, they would face together. Her heart was now part of something bigger than her. Something bigger than either of them.
She let the words settle into the quiet of the kitchen.
‘I love you too,’ she said at last. ‘And I’m not just saying that because you did. I’m saying it because I can’t live without you, Fraser. I want you in my life for ever. I want us to belong to each other for ever.’
Fraser pressed his lips against hers again and the kiss was sweet this time, rather than holding the fire they had shared before. Sealing the promises they had just made to each other. When he pulled away he was smiling, but she sensed a nervous anticipation in him as he reached for where he had left his jacket on the counter and pulled out a small leather box.
‘Well, then, I’d better give you this,’ Fraser said, lifting the lid to reveal a delicate platinum band with a channel of diamonds set smoothly into the metal.
Elspeth took the box from him, her mouth open in surprise as she looked from the ring up to Fraser’s face.
‘I was going to break up with you,’ she said, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
‘I know. And if you’d told me that you didn’t love me and you didn’t want to be with me you’d have never known that this existed.’
‘But you thought you might be able to talk me round?’
‘I hoped,’ he said, pulling her tight against him. ‘I hoped like I swear I have never hoped before that I wouldn’t have to. That I was right to trust in what I feel. That I was right to think that you love me, and that what we share will be strong enough to survive this.’
‘You have a lot of faith in me. In us.’
He nodded. ‘I have faith in you. And I have faith that I know how to make you happy.’
‘You know that I come as a package deal? Do you really want to move in here?’
He shrugged. ‘I would do it in a heartbeat if you asked. Are you asking?’
‘Are you asking?’ Elspeth said, her face breaking out into a grin. ‘Diamond rings usually come with a question.’
He laughed, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and taking the ring back from her.
‘You’re right. I’m doing this all wrong.’
Keeping hold of her hand, he dropped to one knee in front of her.
‘Elspeth, I have wanted you every day for the last six months, and I will love you every day for the rest of my life. Will you please put me out of my misery and agree to be my wife?’
She looked down into the face of the man she loved and saw all the possibilities for their future in his hopeful gaze. ‘I will, Fraser. I love you and I’ll be your wife tomorrow if I can.’
She pulled him up by the hands until he was standing in front of her, then wound her arms round his neck and pulled him in close.
Fraser laughed, the deep, rich timbre of his mirth muffled by her hair. ‘I’m more than tempted to take you up on that, but I trust that you’re not going to change your mind. Anyway, now this wee bairn is so close...’ he smoothed a gentle hand around her bump ‘... I’d quite like to share the day with him, or her. What do you think?’
‘I think that sounds perfect,’ Elspeth replied, her face buried in his neck. ‘I think that sounds like everything I’ve ever wanted.’