"Not before then."
"I was slow, but what I lack in speed to the mark I make up for in longitude." He pulled her into his arms. "I will love you forever."
She buried her nose in his chest, breathing in the beautiful scent she associated only with him. "I thought a man loved me once, but I was wrong," she whispered against him.
"Your other lover?"
She tilted her head back to see his face. "You're so sure there has only been one?"
"Yes. Your heart is connected to sexual intimacy for you. You would not allow a man you did not love into your body and if you had loved another after him, you would have married."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. Only a fool would let you go if you loved him."
"You are so sure another man would have loved me back?"
"I am positive it is a foregone conclusion." He kissed the tip of her nose. "You are irresistibly lovable."
"He didn't think so."
"The first lover?"
"Yes."
"He was an idiot."
She nodded, having come to the same conclusion but for different reasons. "I was nineteen. He was my bodyguard. I mistook sexual pleasure for the love of a lifetime until I overheard him talking about what a score he was going to make marrying me. He wanted a piece of my mom's empire and wasn't above using me to get it. He had it all planned. He wasn't even normally a bodyguard. He was trained in business, but took the job to get close to me. Apparently everyone knew how my mom ignored me and he thought I'd be lonely and easy to seduce. He was right. He even had sex with me without protection in hopes of getting me pregnant. Thankfully it didn't happen."
Nikos' arms tightened and anger radiated off of him with palpable force. "That bastard."
"Yes, he was. He taught me a valuable lesson, though,sex is not love." Would he understand what she was asking without her actually asking anything?
"No, it is not." This time he kissed her temple and then her lips, oh so softly. "Sex is something a person can live without, but if you take your love from me, I will wither and die."
"You did not just say that," she choked.
"I did."
She shook her head.
He nodded. "Oh, yes. What happened to the bodyguard?"
"I told my mom I thought he was sexually attracted to me. That he'd made advances. She fired him. She never knew it had already gone way beyond mere attraction to final follow-through."
Nikos pulled her to bed and tumbled them both down onto it without letting her go. They remained facing each other, lying on their sides. "I am sexually attracted to you, Ash. More than is comfortable in any sort of clothing." He illustrated by pressing an unmistakable hardness against her. "But I love you, too,agape mou ."
"What does that mean?"
"My love."
"Oh." He'd called her that before.
"Is it my crazy man behavior before you realized you had a sister? You forgave your mother for worse, can you not forgive me for accusing you of being with another man?" He really seemed agitated about it.
She cupped his cheek. "I know the pictures were damaging. If I'd argued with you, I would have convinced you it wasn't me and to help me find out who she was. I knew that. I was much angrier about your deal with my mom."
"You use the past tense. You are no longer angry?"
She shook her head with a sigh. "What would be the point? Holding onto anger just leads to bitterness and that twists a person's soul."
He didn't look appreciably comforted by that statement. "But you still do not wish to marry me?"
"I can forgive, but I don't know if I can trust and I need to trust you to marry you."
"I did not tell you about the deal because I knew it would upset you."
"You were right."
"But I would have wanted you even if your mother had not made her offer. From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you. Your mother noticed my interest. It was only after doing so that she made her offer."
"She told me that. She said she thought I was interested, too."
"You were."
"I was," she agreed.
"Ash, I need you to be mine for a lifetime. You can trust me. I will never hide anything from you again."
"Because you love me?"
"Yes."
"Like with your mom?"
"Exactly."
"I'm scared, Nikos. I realized tonight that I don't know how to be part of a family. I don't know how to believe in the goodness going on around me…how to believe that you can love me." The admission hurt.
But he shook his head decisively. "You are fooling yourself to think that. Belief is something you are very good at. You had faith in your mother for years when anyone else would have given up on her. You had faith in me, or you never would have come back from Spain prepared to marry me. You're a woman full of faith and I'm the man prepared to prove to you that it's grounded in something real."
"You think you can do that?"
"Give me a try."
She stared at him. It couldn't be that easy. "Is this the happily ever after from the fairy tales?"
"I am no knight, but I think, agape mou , that this is the happy beginning of two people so much in love they cannot live apart."
"You won't leave me?"
"Never."
"I won't have to be alone ever again."
"I will be your anchor and you will be my sea, surrounding me, washing over me, keeping me always with you."
"And you will stay steadily always with me."
"Yes."
"I do love you, Nikos."
"Mama said you did."
"She did?"
"Uh-huh."
"When?"
"When I cried in my coffee over losing you."
"You did not."
"I most certainly did. You can call and ask her, but later…right now I have something else in mind to do with your mouth."
She'd opened it to ask him what when he kissed her.
She'd been isolated for so long, and now she had a family. A whole family. Warmth and gratitude filled her as her brain lost contact with reality under Nikos' loving and provoking kiss.
Ash went back to visit her sister the next day as promised and this time, found that she could not keep quiet. They talked and talked until once again Nikos was declaring it time to return to the hotel. They stayed in Southern California for three days, returning to Boston with Heather and Emma's promise to come to visit very soon.
When Ash and Nikos were married a month later, Emma stood up for Ash while Rachel Hemsworth, Heather Grant and Zoe Petronides looked on in teary-eyed bliss. There was another man there. He looked familiar, but Ash was sure she'd never met him. When he put his arm around Zoe Petronides and smiled down at her, Ash almost fainted.
She turned to Nikos right in the middle of their wedding vows and blurted, "You found your father."
"More precisely, Blade did."
"He wasn't married."
"Never had been. Apparently when a man in our family loves, it is for a lifetime."
Joyous tears washed into Ash's eyes as she turned back to the minister to finish repeating her vows.
But Nikos squeezed her hand before she spoke. "I also destroyed the merger contract your mother and I signed."
Her knees did buckle this time and Nikos swept her up against his chest, her voluminous skirts cascading over his arms.
"You did what?" she demanded.
"Took away your last reason for doubt."
He had and she felt light-headed because of it. "But what about Mom's company?"
"I've got a lot of good years in me yet. Heather is coming to work for me as a close advisor. She's a savvy business-woman. And one day I'll have grandchildren."
Ash looked around her from the grinning minister who didn't seem to mind the odd ceremony to the small group of people all of whom were now her family. Finally she met Nikos' possessive and adoring gaze.
She was loved and she loved in return.
She was finally part of the family she'd longed for her entire life. And it felt so very good.
She finished speaking her vows without ever looking away from the man who had in his way made all of this possible.
He was her knight in shining armor, no matter what he said and their future looked so bright she would need a new pair of sunglasses to handle it.
THE END