She stopped dead. “Why what?”
“Why do you accept? And why should I believe you? The last time I saw you, you told me you loved me and then left so fast you forgot your panties.”
“I do love you, Kevin.”
He shrugged. There was no need to make this easy on her, after all. “You loved me last week, but you still ran away as fast as humanly possible.”
Fury began to simmer in her eyes and part of him wanted to back down, to take what she was offering. But he was fighting for the rest of their lives and she had to know it. Their future was too important to leave things unsaid.
“I was frightened. I wanted to do what was best for you.”
“Best for me?” he asked incredulously. “Making incredible love to me and then sneaking out while I was asleep was best for me? Not answering my calls and driving me half out of my mind with worry was best for me? Making me love you and then leaving—how exactly was that best for me, Serena?”
“Kevin, I’m so sorry. I—”
“I don’t want an apology. I want to know what happened. I want to know why you left and I want to know why you came back! You can’t just come in here and tell me that suddenly you’ll deign to marry me and expect me to just say ‘okay.’ Or can you? Is that how you thought this would go?”
She shrugged. “A girl can hope.” Her smile was more sad than sardonic.
“Well, hope springs eternal.” He slammed out of the studio, his pain so great that the massive room couldn’t contain it. He went down the steps, dragged huge gulps of air into his burning lungs.
Serena followed him and there were tears in her voice when she said “I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want your apology!” He grabbed her arms, had to fight the urge to shake her.
“Then what do you want? Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
“I want you, Serena. All of you. Not just the parts you’re not afraid to let me see. I want to know when you’re scared. I want to know when you’re happy, when you’re sad, when you’re hurt or angry or all of the above. You can’t run away every time things get out of your control.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I’m done with being fair. You asked what I wanted. I want you in my bed every night and in my arms every morning. I want you to love me and marry me and have children with me. But most of all I want you to trust me. The way I trust you. With everything that I have and everything that I am. If you can’t do that, then this will never work.”
“I want to, but—”
His hands dropped away and he turned his back on her. “There can’t be any buts, Serena. I can’t compromise, not on this.” He thrust one hand into his hair while the other rubbed his aching chest. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. Really, I can’t.
“I love you so much that I want to forget about everything, carry you into the house and make love to you until neither of us can walk. But I can’t do that, because this is too important to let it go and just hope it comes in time. I know I’m pushing you. I know that it’s too soon and too hard for you. I know that I should compromise. Hell, before you got here, I told myself I was an idiot because I hadn’t compromised.
“But it turns out I can’t. I can’t marry you and always wonder if you’re going to leave me when things get too hard. I can’t build a life with you and then worry every morning when I wake up if today will be the day it all comes crumbling down. I love you with everything I am, but I can’t do that.”
He turned back then, saw the tears running unchecked down her cheeks. “Bebe, mon coeur, don’t cry. Please don’t cry. It’s okay. Really, cher, I understand.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t. You don’t understand anything, you big, stupid idiot. I didn’t leave because I didn’t trust you. I left because I didn’t trust myself not to hurt you, not to screw this up.”
“Serena—”
She held up her hand. “No, you had your chance to talk. Now it’s my turn. I love you. I love everything about you. You’re the strongest, kindest, most irritating and most gentle man that I know and I almost threw it all away because I didn’t think that I deserved you, didn’t think that I could really make you happy. Not with all my fears and my baggage and my incredibly boring blandness. I look at you and see every color of the spectrum and I’m nothing but shades of gray.
He started to protest, to tell her how much he loved her subtleness and her strength, how there was nothing bland about her. But she talked over him, determined to say what she’d come to say.
“But then I went through the pictures that I took while I was here, all of the pictures—from the first day to the last. And I figured something out.” She wiped carelessly at the tears that continued to fall. “I make you happy. Despite the fact that I’m a basket case half the time, despite the fact that I seem to come with every sociopath in Louisiana attached, I really make you happy.”
He pulled her into his arms, buried his face in her neck and breathed in her spicy, familiar scent. “You make me deliriously happy.”
She pressed herself against him and rained kisses over his beautiful hair. “I know I do. It was in every look you ever gave me. Even when you were angry or exasperated or just plain exhausted.” She cupped his face in her hands, pulled his mouth to hers for a slow, sweet kiss that rapidly got out of hand. When they finally pulled apart, she was breathless but the tears were gone and her eyes sparkled with happiness. “Almost from the first I knew that you were good for me. I just didn’t know that you were crazy enough to think that I was good for you.”
“I don’t just think, mon amour. I know.” He tenderly stroked her hair back from her face. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I can’t give you up.”
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear that.” She grinned as her hands reached down and cupped his ass, pulling his erection firmly against her.
He looked over her head. “I do have one question, though.”
She rubbed herself suggestively against him and he almost forgot everything but Serena and the amazing way she made him feel. “What’s that?” she asked.
He glanced over her shoulder. “What’s with the car?”
She smiled. “I wanted a little color in my life.”
His eyebrows rose inquisitively. “I thought you liked gray?”
She shook her head. “You like gray. I’m finding that I like all the wild, wonderful colors that life can throw at me.”
She’d been threatened while she was with him and she hadn’t told him. Hadn’t let him protect her. Hadn’t cared enough about what was developing between them to trust him. No wonder she hadn’t called him when she found her car. Like Deb, any feelings she had for him were only superficial.