All the Pretty Poses (24 page)

“There’s nothing you can do, Reese. I won’t
be the other woman. I can’t do that. I worked too hard to find
something worthy in myself to let you destroy it for money. I
just…I just can’t do that.”

“And you shouldn’t have to. You should be
first. You
are
first. I just failed to see that I wasn’t
putting you first. But I do now. I see it and I need for you to
know that you’re the only thing that matters to me. I can’t let you
go. Not again. Not
ever
again. Not even if you tell me to
leave. Not even if you beg me to walk away. I can’t do it. You gave
me something real in the woods that summer. You made me
feel.

“I’ve made millions, I’ve dined with
diplomats, I’ve had the very best of everything in life, but I’ve
never felt happy,
really happy,
until you told me you’d work
on my boat. And every moment since then has been the best of my
existence. Until you walked away.”

He pauses, staring down at me with those
gorgeous blue-green eyes, turning my heart, my soul, my
world
upside down all over again.

“I’m
here
for
you,
Kennedy.
I’ve come for you. Without anything else…just me…I’m laying
me…all of me…
at your feet and begging you to take it. Give
me one more chance.”

“Reese, I can’t—”

He interrupts me before I can continue. “I
broke it off with Claire. No amount of money or business
connections or opportunities or investments or contracts are worth
losing you. I gave it all up. For you. I sold the boats and the
businesses, it’s all gone. I sold yesterday, tomorrow and forever
for you
,” he declares, no doubt referring to the names of
his boats, Ieri, Domani and Sempre. “The only forever I want is
with you. Nothing in my life means more to me than you. No money,
no power, no possessions. I don’t need any of that. I only need
you. I. Only. Need. You.”

“Wh-what?” I whisper, afraid I might’ve heard
what I want to hear rather than what Reese is really saying.

“I got rid of it all. From the time you left,
I spent thirty-one hours straight pouring over books and crunching
numbers, talking with attorneys and preparing proposals. Making
phone calls at all hours of the day and night. I couldn’t wait. I
couldn’t wait to get rid of every empty thing that might stand in
our way so that I could chase you down and prove that I’d do
anything for you. Anything. Just say it and it’s done. I don’t want
a life away from you.
You
are my life. I
want
you to
be my life. And I want to be yours.”

“But Reese, everything you’ve worked for
…”

“Is hollow. It’s just money. Worthless when
compared to you. I’ve still got more than I could spend in a
hundred lifetimes, but if that’s a problem, then I’ll throw it all
away for you. I’ll be destitute if that’s what it takes. I need you
to understand that there is nothing…
nothing…
in this world
that’s more important to me than you.”

“I never asked you to do this, Reese. I
didn’t want you to give up everything for me.”

“But can’t you see that I’d do it without
blinking an eye if I thought it would bring you back to me? I
did
do it. For you. I don’t need the boats or the women or
the distractions anymore. All that was filling a hole that only one
person could ever fill, only one person
did
ever fill. And I
wasn’t about to hold onto that shitty life and lose the only one
I’ve ever wanted—a life
with you
.”

“Reese, you shouldn’t have done that. Not for
me.”

“Fine, then I did it for me. I did it because
those things don’t make me a better person. You do. I did it
because those things don’t make me happy. You do. I did it because
I was afraid that words alone couldn’t show you that I’m in it for
real this time, Kennedy. I’ll chase you forever if I have to. I’ll
never give up on winning your heart. Just please tell me that it’s
not too broken to give away. Please tell me that I’m not too late.
I worked as fast as I could.”

“Reese, I don’t know. It’s all just…so…so…I
can’t think.”

“I don’t want you to think,” he says,
grasping my upper arms urgently. “I want you to feel. Feel how much
I love you. Feel how desperate I am, standing here in your doorway
in the middle of the night, jetlagged as hell, ready to drop to my
knees and beg you if that’s what it takes. Feel
me,
Kennedy,” he says, taking my left hand and pressing it to his chest
over his heart. “Feel
me.”

I
do
feel him. I feel his love and his
sincerity and the way his heart is racing under my palm. I know
it’s an echo of the frantic rhythm of my own.

“Please,” he whispers, leaning closer and
closer until his lips are pressed to my forehead, my hand still
pressed to his chest. “Please, Kennedy.”

I feel the sting behind my eyes again and I
know I can’t stop the tears that well there then spill over to run
down my cheeks.

“Okay,” I say in a small, trembling
voice.

Reese’s chest falls under my fingertips, as
though he was holding his breath. “Say it again,” he croaks.

“Okay.”

And then I’m crushed, crushed inside arms of
steel, crushed beneath tender lips, crushed with a love that feels
as steadfast and true as my own.

Reese leans back just enough to let me catch
my breath. He cups my face, his thumbs stroking the tears from
under my eyes.

“Please don’t cry anymore, baby. Not for
me.”

“These are happy tears,” I admit with a shaky
smile.

“Then cry yourself to sleep on me,” he says
softly, bending to pick me up. “Let me hold you until there are no
more tears.”

Reese pulls me in tight against him and I
wrap my arms around his neck, turning my face into the curve of his
throat. I taste the salt of my happiness as it pours down my cheeks
and wets his skin.

Reese carries me to the sofa. Minutes or
hours or days later, I wake to find that I’m still curled in his
arms. He’s fallen asleep beneath me, upright on the couch, his
fingers laced at my waist so that he won’t accidentally let me
go.

CHAPTER THRITY-NINE- Reese

Each time I wake up, I glance down to make
sure Kennedy is still with me. And she is. Curled up in my arms,
sleeping like she hasn’t slept in days. Which, if her last few days
were anything like mine, she probably hasn’t.

Maybe this means things are getting better.
Maybe we can finally have what we should’ve had all those years
ago.

As I close my eyes and drift back to sleep,
my last thought is to wonder when she’s going to tell me about the
baby.

CHAPTER FORTY- Kennedy

My mind wakes not to the ultimate peace and
happiness that it should. No, it wakes to the knowledge that now
the only person who hasn’t come clean is
me
.

There’s something I have to tell Reese,
something that he has a right to know. My intentions were good in
keeping it to myself all this time—I thought only of Reese and how
it would affect him—but now I wonder if I made a huge mistake.

There’s only one way to know for sure…

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE- Reese

I decided days ago that I’d wait for Kennedy
to tell me about the baby. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t have
told me already, but I have to give her the benefit of the doubt.
So I’m going to give her time. Well, at least as long as I can
before others start to find out.

I asked Bingham to keep the information to
himself until I was back in the states. I probably have until
tomorrow before he tells my father who Mary Elizabeth is. But I’m
going to tell him first. I want him to hear it from me. And I want
him to know that there’s no reason for him to address it any
further. Legally or otherwise. I
want
Kennedy to have half
of Bellano. I would’ve wanted our daughter to have it
all.

I tried to reach my father earlier, but he
wouldn’t take my call. So here I am, driving out under the guise of
getting lunch to try again, but with no luck. It’s when I pull up
outside Kennedy’s townhouse that I realize why he wouldn’t take my
call. He had plans of his own. His car is parked directly beside
where mine was earlier.

I grab the bags of food from the passenger
seat and I make my way to the door, cautioning myself to remain
calm. That’s hard to do when it comes to Kennedy, though. The
thought of anyone…
anyone…
giving her grief makes my blood
boil.

When I walk in the door, they’re facing each
other right inside the entryway. Kennedy is holding a manila
envelope and her face is unnaturally pale.

Her eyes dart to me and I see them fill with
a mixture of regret and fear and so much sadness that it makes my
gut clench and my temper rise. Toward my father.

“What’s going on? What the hell are you doing
here?” I ask Henslow Spencer.

“Reese,” he says, surprise evident in his
tone and expression. “I was just…I was…we were…” My anger escalates
as my father fumbles for some plausible explanation as to why he’s
here, as he fumbles for a lie. “I was just catching up with
Kennedy.” I see him glare at her as if daring her not to go along
with his fabrication.

Kennedy casts her eyes down and squeezes them
shut before she speaks. “No, you weren’t. I’m not keeping this from
him any longer,” she says quietly.

My heart is pounding as Kennedy walks slowly
to stand before me, her head bowed, her chin trembling. I know what
she’s going to tell me. I already know what is weighing so heavily
on her right now. But
knowing
it and
hearing
it from
her, listening to her say the words, finding out the truth from her
lips…those are totally different things.

“What is it, beautiful?” I prompt her,
setting down the bags of food, to lift her chin.

She swallows hard and it kills me a little to
imagine what she must be going through right now, what she must be
feeling.

“Reese, that time in the woods…all those
years ago…I know you used protection, but something must’ve
happened.” She looks up into my face, her heart in her eyes, tears
shivering on the edge of her bottom lids. “I got pregnant.”

I don’t have to feign the surge of emotion
that rushes through me or the way my breath catches in my lungs.
But it’s for that reason, for the pain that I feel watching her
relive it to tell me, that I admit to her that I already knew. I
can’t watch her do this. Not for me. Not when I can help ease her
agony. “I know.”

Confusion enters her eyes. “You know?
How?”

“A few days ago, I got a call from Malcolm’s
lawyer telling me who Mary Elizabeth Spencer was. She was named in
the will, so he was trying to find her.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Guilt, not
anger floods her expression.

“I knew you’d tell me when you were
ready.”

“Oh, God, Reese!” she cries, burying her face
in her hands. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and pull her to
me, wishing there was something I could do to help her, to take
away her torment.

“Shhh, it’s okay, baby. Please don’t
cry.”

“I wish I’d told you sooner,” she moans,
sniffing back more tears.

“I knew you’d tell me when the time was
right.”

“Reese, I’m so sorry,” she says, lifting her
head to look into my eyes.

“Don’t be. I just wish I’d been there for
you. To see your belly grow with our baby. To hold her before she
died,” I confess, my own bitter remorse choking my throat.

“I wanted to tell you, but they wouldn’t let
me.”

My pulse thunders to a stop before it starts
back up twice as fast. “Who is ‘they’? Kennedy, who wouldn’t let
you tell me?”

She turns to look at my father. “Your father
and Hank made some kind of a deal for money. He agreed to pay Hank
if Hank could keep the pregnancy quiet. That’s why Hank pulled me
out of school and kept me locked up in the groundskeeper’s cottage.
He wouldn’t let me leave. He turned off the phones and hid the car
keys at night. He was furious, I guess because someone else had
gotten me pregnant and he couldn’t play his games anymore. I think
he wanted the baby to die right from the beginning. He barely let
me eat and I got really sick. The two times that I tried to leave
when I thought he was gone, he caught me and hit me until I
couldn’t stand up. After the second time, he wouldn’t let me out of
my room unless he was there. He kept me like that until I went in
to labor, but it was too early.

“By the time we got to the hospital, they
couldn’t stop it. She was too tiny to make it, too weak to breathe
on her own. She died two days after she was born.” Kennedy bursts
into sobs so deep, they sound like they’re coming from somewhere in
her soul rather than her physical body. “Your dad came to visit me.
He told me that it would ruin your life to know about her, that if
I loved you I would never tell a soul. So I didn’t. I never told
anyone. Because I loved you.”

Over Kennedy’s head, I glare at my father.
I’ve never felt more hatred for another human being in my entire
life. It burns in me like a hellish fire.

“How could you?” I growl.

“I did what I had to do for you, son. For
your future. You wouldn’t be where you are today if you’d stayed
with her. She was tarnished goods.”

Tarnished goods?

Ice. My heart pumps one sudden burst of icy
cold blood through my veins before it bursts into flames. An
inferno traveling through my body.

“What did you say?”

“You think I didn’t keep an eye on you? You
think I didn’t know what you were doing? And who you were doing it
with? I knew all about her. Her perverted father, too. I saw the
way he looked at her, touched her when he thought no one was
around. He couldn’t stay away from her. That’s how he found out
about you. He was following her and saw you two in the woods. He
was filth. I would never let something like that touch you, touch
our family.”