“I couldn’t say it before.”

“Why now?”

“Because you brought me carnations. Because I don’t have to smooth out every ripple with you. Because when I hear you coming up to my door everything inside me lifts and sighs. And because love is the most vital magic. I want to give mine to you.”

He set the wine and corkscrew aside carefully, stepped over to her. Gently, he stroked his hands across her cheeks, into her hair. “I’ve waited my whole life for you.” Tenderly, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks. “I want to spend the rest of it with you.”

She ignored the clutch in her belly and concentrated on the joy. “Let’s give each other the now. Every minute’s precious.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Every minute counts.”

Fifteen

Evan Remington wandered the palatial rooms of his Monterey home. Bored, restless, he studied his possessions. Each one had been selected with care, either by him personally or by a decorator following explicit instructions.

He had always known precisely what he preferred, and precisely what he wanted. He’d always made certain to obtain it. Whatever the cost, whatever the effort.

Everything that surrounded him reflected his taste, a taste admired by associates, peers, and those whose goal it was to fall into either category.

And everything dissatisfied him.

He considered an auction. He could find some currently trendy charity and generate some nice press while he disposed of items he no longer wanted. He could let it leak that he was disposing of those items because they held too many painful memories of his dead wife.

The lovely, lost Helen.

He even considered selling the house. The fact was, it did remind him of her. It wasn’t a problem in Los Angeles. She hadn’t died in Los Angeles.

Since her accident, he had seldom come to Monterey. It was rare for him to stay more than a few days, and he always came alone. He didn’t consider the servants. They fell along the same lines as the furnishings to him. Necessary and efficient.

The first time he’d come back, he’d been raw with grief. He’d wept like a madman while lying across the bed he’d last shared with her, clinging to the nightgown she’d worn. Breathing in the scent of her.

His love was consuming, and his pain threatened to eat him alive.

She had belonged to him.

When the torrent had passed, he’d wandered the house like a ghost, touching what she had touched, hearing her voice echo in his ears, catching a whiff of her scent everywhere. As if it was inside him.

He’d spent an hour in her closet, caressing her clothes. And forgetting the night he had locked her in there when she’d been late coming home.