But it did matter. “Tell me.”
“I sold Trace. Someone had already bought the land from the city before I could get to it. Someone who wasn’t willing to bargain, so…Trace will be absorbed by Sinclair Hotels. I’ll step down and—”
“But…why? You love Trace. It’s everything—”
“No.” He caught her face in his hands. “I love you. You’re what I need, Hannah. You’re what I think about. Not a building. Not a company. I’m alive again because of you.”
Her eyes filled and she wasn’t at all sure she was breathing as she stared up at him.
“I can do something else, something more. You showed me that. I can design. Build spaces that matter. Starting here if you let me.”
His hands skimmed down her arms as he lowered himself to one knee and her breath caught. Then caught again when he pulled a ring out of his pocket. A single twinkling diamond set in platinum.
“Stephen.” Her voice was shaky. She was shaky. This man so strong and powerful and on his knees, for her. Because he loved her.
He took her hand and squeezed. “Hannah, I want to start and end every day with you. I want us to have a family, any kind of family we’re lucky enough to have. And mostly, I just want to love you, every day, for the rest of my life.”
She bit her bottom lip to stop the trembling, but she couldn’t stop the flood of tears.
“It’s all yours no matter what, and I know I have a lot to make up for but—”
“I love you.” She said it quickly and the words kind of stuck in her throat so she said it again. “I love you. I already did. I still do.”
Stephen smiled and she thought she saw tears welling in his brown eyes. It was hard to tell through her own blur. He slipped the ring onto her finger, stood, and covered her mouth with his. It was everything she wanted. He was everything she wanted.
After several minutes, Stephen eased back and smoothed his palms over her wet cheeks. He combed his fingers into her hair at either side of her face and held there a second, just looking at her. Then he frowned as he brushed his thumbs over the dark circles under her eyes.
Her hands slid from his neck and down his chest and she smiled a real smile for the first time in days. “I sleep better when you’re there.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” She touched her lips to his. “Yes.”
He kissed her again and she felt it all the way to her heart. He loved her. She saw it in his eyes, knew it in his kiss. It was real and she wasn’t wrong.
Arms still wrapped tightly around her, he turned his head at the sound of a trailer bumping over the hill.
“Who’s that?”
She looked over at her horse, chuffing at the grass along the bottom of the fence. “They’re coming for Winnie.”
He turned back to face her, one side of his mouth pulling up in that boyish smile she loved so much. “Not anymore.”
—
Some time later, Stephen lay wrapped around Hannah. A sheet was twisted around their tangled legs. The pillows had been knocked to the floor. He kissed his way across her chest, loving her slowly, taking his time. They had a lot of time.
When he reached her lips he kissed her long and slow, loving the way she always responded even after he’d exhausted her. Her fingers ran slowly through his hair. Now. Now he would tell her. The fear of it wasn’t as great as it had been, but still, he didn’t want a lie between them. Or an omission.
He rested on one forearm so he could see her face, linking the fingers of his other hand with hers. He looked at her a long minute before he spoke and she looked back at him, waiting. “I should have told you before, but…” But honestly, he’d said all he could before nearly coming apart at her feet.
“So, tell me now.”
“That day you came to my office, there was something I thought Dave had told you. Something I didn’t want you to know.”
Her expression never changed, her fingers continued their soft, slow motion.
“The men who killed Tracy…I said I wanted them dead but it was more than that. I wanted to kill them.”
He didn’t let himself look away. If there was fear in her eyes, he wanted to see it, and then he’d fight it.
“I didn’t just want to kill them, I wanted to torture them. I wanted to make them suffer, watch them suffer. Everything that was done to you…” He shook his head. “I went too far, I know I did, and…I couldn’t find my way back.”
“Stephen.” She said his name gently and her fingers tightened around his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The love in her voice nearly undid him and he dropped his gaze to the side of the bed. “I didn’t think you would ever want that. Could ever accept that.”
“But I understand more than anyone. I can accept that more than anyone.”