Page 44 of Stranded with My Forbidden Billionaire

This was wrong. I couldn’t just leave. Not yet. I hadn’t turned over every stone. Not by a long shot. What if Nick was just trying to protect himself the way he had done for years? Wasn’t throwing up a shield of aloofness and detachment and keeping me at arm’s length what he did? Could that be behind his stubborn resistance now?

I had to know the truth and, as the fearlessness that I’d lamented losing suddenly stormed back, I burned with a need that was fiery and unstoppable. So I dropped the phone back into my bag, spun on my heel and leapt back up the stairs, adrenalin powering along my veins while my heart thumped with hope and anticipation, only to come to an abrupt halt when he burst onto the landing and strode towards me.

‘Just so as you know,’ I said, needing to get the words out before he said or did something to prevent me, ‘wherever you go, I will follow you. I will lay siege to you. I will not stop until you let me prove to you that I love you. I will fight for you ceaselessly and however long it takes, I will win.’

‘Is that so?’ he said, his eyes blazing with something that put a rocket beneath my pulse.

‘It’s a promise. I am gritty and determined, remember? You won’t stand a chance. Your armour will be obliterated. Your weaponry will be demolished. You might as well give in now.’

‘Too late,’ he said, taking a step in my direction and scrambling my head with his proximity and his scent. ‘I already have.’

I went still. My breath stuck in my lungs while my head spun. ‘What?’

‘I have no defences against you, Millie. Not any more. That feeble attempt at it upstairs proves it. I can’t let you go again. I’ve been utterly miserable without you. I’ve been drinking too much in an attempt to forget you but it doesn’t work. Nothing works. You’re everywhere. In the house, in my head, in my heart. I’ve been so tormented I’ve taken to sleeping with your dress. My apology on the quayside was pathetically inadequate but the sentiment was right. You are not worthless. You mean everything to me. I will spend every day for the rest of my life proving it to you, if you’ll let me.’ He stopped and frowned. ‘Are you about to start crying?’

‘Yes,’ I said with a sniff, my heart swelling with love and relief and joy. ‘Sorry. I know how much you hate tears.’

He reached out and gently wiped my cheeks with his thumbs. ‘This is the last time I make you cry, I promise. I love you.’

‘And I love you.’

He drew me into his arms and kissed me then, long and slow and deep, and I knew in that moment, without the shadow of a doubt, that wherever in the world we might be, whatever we might be doing, together was where we belonged.

EPILOGUE

Five years later...

HAVINGLEFTTHEsix research students in charge of the lab, I wandered down to the white sandy beach to where Nick was frolicking about in the warm turquoise water of the Indian Ocean.

He’d found me the island six months after we got married and it was everything I’d ever dreamed of. A coral cay of around six hectares, it was, amazingly and conveniently, only a hop, skip and a jump from Suza.

The lab had been built fifty years earlier and could accommodate up to thirty. When I’d taken over, it had been dilapidated, overwhelmed by vegetation, and unfit for human habitation at least, but in the intervening four years I’d made considerable progress. While working on my degree in marine biology, which I’d finished, I’d sought advice and recruited the best. The station was now on the list of all the major universities, Zurich included, the reef was bustling with life and the hawksbill turtle breeding programme was going from strength to strength.

Numerous charities had benefited from my lottery money over the years, and even my mother and brother had eventually been persuaded to accept some of it. But no one was more grateful for everything that had happened than me. I’d won things that money could never buy. Happiness. Contentment. Confidence. The love of my life and the family we’d created.

‘Remember I once asked you where you saw yourself in five years’ time?’ I said, smiling as Nick emerged from the shallows, our four-year-old daughter hanging from one leg and our two-year-old son clinging to the other while my heart turned over as it did a dozen times a day.

‘I remember,’ he said, depositing our offspring on the sand and striding over to take me loosely in his arms. ‘I think I said that I saw myself with you and our one or two children.’

‘What’s the verdict?’

‘That the reality surpasses my wildest dreams, and you know how wild those can be.’

‘I do.’ Even after five years, the passion burned hotter than ever, the wicked glint that I could see beginning to light the depths of his eyes never very far away. ‘So. I was thinking...’

His gaze dipped to my mouth and his eyes darkened, his expression filling with the intent that without fail made my heart skip a beat. ‘You must have read my mind.’

‘Not that,’ I said with a grin. ‘The children...’

‘What about them?’

I gave my abdomen a light pat, then wound my arms around his neck, lifted my mouth to his ear and murmured, ‘How would you feel about a third?’