Ask Adam (27 page)

“It’s okay that you don’t love me,” she said between sobs, struggling to focus through her tears. “That you can’t love me back. I’m just happy that you’re willing to give your own life a second chance. I’m happy that you’re ready to move on.” She was happy for him. It didn’t mean her heart wasn’t shattering in her chest at the same time.

She was a mess. Her nose ran, her mascara left smudges on her hand when she swiped uselessly at her tears, and her skin had turned all blotchy. It always did when she cried. She didn’t give a damn. She loved him and she wanted him to know.

“I know I should be sorry I pushed you so hard, made you confront Timmy’s death. I’m not, because look at you. You’re…you’re getting better. You’re happier. I can’t be sorry for that. I won’t be.” She sniffed loudly. “Because I love you, and I want you to be happy.” She sniffed again and then again, and then she ran out of steam. “Because I love you.”

She had to give herself credit. When she let go, she really had her say. No holding back for Lexi Tanner. Maybe one day she’d learn to think before she spoke but today wasn’t that day.

Adam probably thought she was a stark raving lunatic.
She
thought she was a bit of a lunatic. She grabbed some tissues from her pocket and blew her nose noisily. Then she blotted her eyes, took a deep breath and drew her shoulders straight.

“So.” She looked at Adam, saw his bemused face properly for the first time since she’d started crying. “As I said before, I’m not pregnant. You’re free of any responsibility. Thank you for buying the pregnancy test. As you can see, it’s not necessary.” She stood and headed for the door. “Perhaps I’ll see you at the press conference tomorrow?”

He stood up too and caught her wrist as she walked past him. With a single tug, he spun her around and pulled her in, and before she knew what had happened she was in his arms.

Then he kissed her.

They’d shared some incredible moments before. This went beyond anything Lexi ever imagined. His mouth took possession of hers and proceeded to short-circuit every nerve synapse in her body. He held himself flush against her and usurped her senses. Sounds no longer made sense. Colors blurred together and massed behind her eyelids in a dazzling explosion of light. She was weightless, held down only by the intensity of his kiss and the emotion pouring through him.

This moment wasn’t about passion. It wasn’t about need or lust or sex. It was about love, pure and simple. Adam loved her. He told her in the most effective way he knew how.

She kissed him forever. She kissed him until the sweet joy of love mingled with the salty tang of tears and she realized she was crying again.

She pulled away, wiped at her eyes and was stunned to find them dry.

“They’re mine,” Adam whispered hoarsely, and she stared at the wet tracks running down his cheeks.

“Oh, jeez, Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

He smiled at her through his tears, flashed her the traffic stopper. “I would have asked you to marry me, you know.”

“What?” Her mind was on mental overload. She was processing too much information at once. She thought he’d just said he would have married her.

“If you were pregnant. I planned on proposing.”

He
had
said it. “Why?” she asked stupidly. “You don’t want to have more children.” She tried not to think about the cruel joke fate played on her. Dangling
forever with Adam
before her eyes and then snatching it away, all because she wasn’t pregnant. How fucked up was that?

“Didn’t,” he corrected. “I didn’t want more, until I was confronted with the possibility that you might be pregnant.”

“I don’t understand.” Her brain still malfunctioned from his kiss. She couldn’t think straight.

He took her hand. “You screwed with my perceptions of reality, sweetheart. You changed me.”

“Are you telling me you want to be a father again?” Lexi would never use the word incredulous in everyday conversation. Right now that was the only word that could adequately describe her state of mind.

“Thinking you might be pregnant changed me. It made me sit up and seriously consider what it might be like to become a dad again. That’s when I knew I had to go to Perth, had to put my past to rest.” He lifted her arm, pressed a kiss on the inside of her wrist. “I’m not living in the past anymore. I’m living here, in the present, with you. In this reality, the biggest loss would be if I didn’t have more children.”

She gaped at him.

“In answer to your question, yes, Lexi, I want to be a father again, and more than that, I want to be a father to your children.”

“Mine?” Damn, there went her ability to construct full sentences.

“Yes, yours.” He frowned, clenched his jaw. “There’s something you should know. Something I’ve spent three weeks coming to terms with.” Guilt and remorse clouded his face. “That night, when we fought? I didn’t just forget to use condoms. I think that subconsciously I chose not to.”

She gawked in disbelief. “Pardon me?” He’d put her through hell, blamed her for their joint mistake, charged her with trapping him with an unwanted pregnancy—when all along he’d
chosen
not to use condoms?

His eyes filled with shame. “I’ll understand if you hate me, my accusations against you were cruel and unfounded. If it makes you feel better, I didn’t sleep for days afterwards. I lay in bed at night thinking about what happened and wondering why I’d claimed you tried to trap me, when I clearly knew it was untrue.”

Oh, she didn’t hate him. Not by a long shot. She loved him so much she thought she might burst from it. Still, his acknowledgement of her innocence went a long way to soothe her previous wrath.

He took her hand, held it in his. “It took a while to see things clearly. For so long I’ve looked at the world and at my life with jaundiced eyes. After ten years of convincing myself I never wanted to marry again, suddenly there you were. Suddenly, against my will and my beliefs, I wanted a future with you. Longed for a future with you.”

He took a deep breath. “But I equated that need with betrayal. I believed that in order to be with you, I had to give up my past, give up Timmy.” His voice caught. “I couldn’t do it, Lexi. I couldn’t betray him like that. He’s my son.” Tears shone in his eyes. “I wanted it. So damn much.” He paused, swallowed. “I think in the end, my need for you overrode my common sense, overrode my distorted loyalty to Timmy. I think I must have subconsciously concluded that if I made you pregnant by mistake, I wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. I’d have to marry you.”

In a warped kind of a way, she was flattered. Working within his own emotional limitations, he’d devised a plan to be with her. A pretty screwed-up plan, but an effective one nevertheless. Without giving up his guilt, he’d tried to work her into his future. He’d almost destroyed their relationship in the process but at least he’d tried.

“You’re saying you tried to trap me by getting me pregnant?”

He gave her a half-smile. “Ironic, isn’t it.”

Heartbreakingly.

She didn’t want him on those terms. She didn’t want him to marry her because he had no choice. If she and Adam were ever to be together, it had to be because he loved her unconditionally—the same way she loved him. “It doesn’t matter where your future leads you, Adam. Timmy will always be a part of it. He’s a part of you.”

“I know that now. I also know that I don’t need to make excuses to be with you anymore. We can have a future because I want it, not because I don’t have a choice.”

Her chest constricted. Dare she hope? “Do…do you…want a future with me?”

“Christ, sweetheart, can’t you see? I want it more than anything.”

She released a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Oh, thank God.”

“You…you don’t hate me for what I did to you?” The fear in his face touched her heart.

“I tried to,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t. I love you too much.”

The sound he made as he crushed her in his arms was something between a cry of pain and a gasp of relief. “I love you, Lexi,” he rasped in her ear. “I have since the night I saw you at Daniel’s exhibition. It’s just taken a little time for me to realize it.”

“Adam…” Her heart filled with a joy she hadn’t believed possible.

“Marry me, Lexi.”

She pulled back from his grasp and stared at him, amazed. An hour ago she didn’t know where he was. She’d feared she might never see him again. Now he’d just proposed. “But I’m not pregnant,” she said stupidly.

He laughed unsteadily. “We can change that, when you’re ready. In the meantime, we can enjoy practicing.”

He kissed her again then, soundly, and she lost herself in the dizzying array of emotion washing through her. He loved her. Enough to marry her and start a family.

The world spun, leaving her light-headed and giddy.

He loved her.

She smiled against his lips. Adam loved her and he wanted her to have his children. AJ Riley, who never wanted to have another child, wanted to have a family with her.

She’d done it. She’d broken through his barriers and reached his heart and, well, he loved her. Adam Riley loved her and she loved him too. Could the world be a better place?

“So will you?” he asked when he pulled away.

“Will I what?”

“Marry me?”

Lexi threw her head back and gave a loud whoop. “You just try and stop me, mate. You just try and stop me.”

Chapter Seventeen

Lexi raced across the lobby of the building and pushed the button. Her patience ran low as she waited, her foot tapping an anxious beat. She was late. They’d arranged to meet five minutes ago and this wasn’t exactly the kind of place she could keep him hanging around.

At last there was a ding and the lift arrived. The doors opened and she stepped inside.

It was full. People must have gotten on in the car park. She didn’t care. She pushed the appropriate button and stared blindly at the numbers as the carriage made its way slowly up.

How she realized he was in the lift, she didn’t know. She felt his presence as vividly as if he’d touched her. The hair on her neck stood on end and a slow tremor took over her body. Pivoting around, she looked past the faceless people behind her and found him at the back of the elevator.

Their eyes caught and held. The air was sucked out of the lift. He was there, so close and so unreachable, another face in a sea of people. Yet it seemed as though they were the only two in the confined space.

The bell dinged several times and their fellow travelers got out one by one or in small groups. Lexi gave no thought to them leaving. Her total conscious mind was focused on him.

Then there were two of them, two adults and the audible hum of awareness buzzing between them.

Lexi dragged her gaze away from his to focus on the control panel. She reached out, pressed
Emergency Stop
, and the lift ground to a halt.

“You’re late,” he accused.

“Sorry, couldn’t be helped. I had to do something first.” Her hands were already working on the buttons of her shirt.

“Do you have any idea how many trips I’ve had to take in this lift?”

“Do you have any idea how arbitrary they’ll seem compared to the trip you’re about to take?” She opened her blouse and her breasts spilled out, unobstructed.

He swallowed. “You’re not wearing a bra.”

“I’m not wearing panties, either. Told you I had to do something first. I slipped them off in the Ladies.”

His voice fell a notch “So, if I were to run my hand up your leg, beneath your skirt…” He stepped closer, backing her up until her shoulders touched the wall.

“You’d find my thigh a little wet.”

He dropped to his knees. “And if I ran my tongue along your wet thigh?” He pushed her skirt up, trailed his fingers up her leg.

“You’d find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

He touched her slick folds. “Liquid gold,” he murmured before burying his face between her legs. It took less than a minute and Lexi was convulsing around his tongue. Streams of juice poured from her, coating Adam’s mouth.