“I’m sorry.” She took a step toward him but saw she wasn’t yet welcome. “I was afraid I’d hurt you more if I tried to give you what you wanted. Mikhail, listen, please. Peter was the only person who cared for me. For me. My parents…” She could only shake her head. “They’re not like yours. They wanted what was best for me, I’m sure, but their way of giving it was to hire nannies and buy me pretty clothes, send me to the best boarding school. You don’t know how lonely it was.” Impatient, she rubbed her fingers over her eyes to dry them. “I only had Peter, and then I lost him. What I feel for you is so much bigger, so much more, that I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

He was softening. She could do that to him, as well. No matter how he tried to harden his heart, she could melt it. “You left me, Sydney. I’m not lost.”

“I had to see him. I hurt him terribly, Mikhail. I was convinced that I’d ruined the marriage, the friendship, the love. What if I’d done the same with us?” With a little sigh, she walked to the window. “The funny thing was, he was carrying around the same guilt, the same remorse, the same fears. Talking with him, being friends again, made all the difference.”

“I’m not angry that you talked to him, but that you went away. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

She turned from the window. “I’m finished with running. I only went away because I’d hoped I could come back to you. Really come back.”

He stared into her eyes, trying to see inside. “Have you?”

“Yes.” She let out a shaky breath. “All the answers are yes. We walked through this building once, and I could hear the voices, all the sounds behind the doors. The smells, the laughing. I envied you belonging here. I need to belong. I want to have the chance to belong. To have that family you said was inside us.”

She reached up, drawing a chain from around her neck. At the end, the little ruby flashed its flame.

Shaken, he crossed the room to cup the ring in his hand. “You wear it,” he murmured.

“I was afraid to keep it on my finger. That I’d lose it. I need you to tell me if you still want me to have it.”

His eyes came back to hers and locked. Even as he touched his lips to hers gently, he watched her. “I didn’t ask you right the first time.”

“I didn’t answer right the first time.” She took his face in her hands to kiss him again, to feel again. “You were perfect.”

“I was clumsy. Angry that the banker had asked you before me.”