Page 31 of Fairy Tale Marriage

CHAPTERFIVE

To MyLong-Lost Bride,

Another year has passed without you in my arms. How many has it been? Four? Four long, impossible years. How I miss you, my Forever Love. Are you still waiting for me? Or have you found another? That thought haunts me, twists me into knots so I can’t think straight.

Was it only my imagination that made me believe we were joined that night, that we’re two parts of one whole? Can you still picture me, see my face in misty dreams, as I see yours? Do you hear me, Shayne, as clearly as I hear you—your voice whispering on the night wind, calling with every birdsong at day’s break, murmuring in the streams as spring breaks through winter’s icy hold? Or am I nothing but a faded memory?

I’m losing you, my sweet, Ican feel it. And I know if that happens, I’ll also lose the part of me you kept alive.

Come back to me! Ineedyou.

It took every ounce of self-possession for Chaz to remain in his seat. He wanted to leap across the desk, gather Shayne in his arms and carry her off to his bedroom. To explain about his daughter in private, with a gentleness that might have helped ease the hurt somewhat.

But Doña Isabella had forced the issue, had taken the timing out of his hands. And instead his newlywed wife sat as rigidly as the Doña, her chin set at a desperately proud angle, her eyes two huge, dark pools of anguish, her wide, lush mouth compressed to hide the slightest of quivers.

“What’s her name?” she finally asked, her voice ripe with pain. “Your daughter, Imean.”

“Sarita.”

“It’s a lovely name.” She said it with a generous sincerity that left him helpless to respond. “How... how old is she?”

“Three last August.”

“The same age as my nephew, Donato. And Sarita’s mother?”

If this didn’t end soon, Shayne would end up in tears. He refused to let that happen, refused to give the old woman the satisfaction of knowing how badly he’d hurt his wife with his silence. He stood and came around the desk. “We’ll discuss that later. Well, Doña? Are you satisfied now?”

The woman recognized the double-edged question and inclined her head. “Lo siento,Señor McIntyre. My timing was unfortunate. Ishould have allowed you the opportunity to explain in your own way.”

“Yes, you should have.” He offered his hand. “I’ll see you out.”

“What about Sarita?” Shayne asked.

The Doña rose to her feet with Chaz’s assistance, leaning heavily on her cane. “I’ll bring her by at the end of the month for a visit.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “You said—”

“You have done all I’ve asked, so far,” the Doña interrupted tartly. “I do not expect the rest of my requests to cause you any great hardship.”

“Requests? Or demands?”

She shrugged. “I try always to be polite.” Her cane shot out and she used it to maneuver him clear of her path, showing remarkable agility for someone so crippled up with arthritis. “You often make common courtesy a most difficult task.”

“I aim to please,” he sniped right back, though for Shayne’s sake, he probably should attempt to curb his annoyance. “I don’t suppose you’d care to list the rest of your demands so I know there’s an actual end in sight. Or do you make them up as you go along?”

She didn’t like that. Her remarkable eyes flashed with dark warning. “Use care, McIntyre. Sarita is not yet in your possession.”

“She will be.”

Doña Isabella paused in front of Shayne. “And what about you, Señora? Are you willing to accept Sarita as your own?”

Shayne didn’t hesitate. “She will be my own.”

Her words shook Chaz to the core. They implied a permanence he couldn’t handle if he hoped to maintain a safe distance. It was his daughter he wanted, not a wife. Especially not a wife with a heart as soft as Shayne’s. Only Sarita mattered. But even as he made the silent assertion, it echoed through his mind, sounding rife with desperation rather than ripe with certainty, mocking his conviction.

He fought to remind himself of the man he’d become. Once upon a time he might have had something to offer a woman like Shayne, when he was young and foolish and believed that love was a solution instead of a tribulation. But he no longer believed in such an emotion. Not in its purity, not in its goodness, and sure as hell not in its durability.

Nine long, lonely years had cured him of that particular fantasy. What he knew of love was dark and painful, the emotion nothing more than a shadow that stole across a man's heart and snuffed his soul. If he kept Shayne for his wife, she'd discover that darkness, too, and he'd end up hurting her again—just as Rafe had warned.

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