Page 72 of Iron Cross

“Ididthat for you!” he yelled, and our son squirmed in my arms. “I did that so that no one would think to come after what I love. And I love you, Muse. I love you with every fucking fiber of my being. I love you and that boy more than I care for my fucking life, so I did that for you. I have no regrets bar one.”

He stepped closer, his arm reaching out to grab the nape of my neck, as he pulled me in. He put his lips against my forehead.

“I’m sorry that I frightened you.”

It was the only thing he could have said to melt the walls I tried to put between us.

“Forgive me, Kira,” he said, as he brought his palms to my cheeks, placing a kiss over each eye. “Forgive me for scaring you away. Forgive me for not taming the monster inside me. Forgive me.”

I swallowed, unable to speak. I shut my eyes against the tears that were coming.

“What will you do to me now?” I whispered.

For all his kind words, Iknewmen in power. I knew what they did to those who defied them.

Now would he do the same to me?

“That’s up to you,” he said, kissing my nose. “Sweet Muse.”

Then he stepped away, walking up the large staircase to the upper floors.

With him out of my immediate vicinity, my eyes were able to focus again on my surroundings. Other than the walls changing and the new painting, there were other changes. On every possible surface was a vase, and in each one were long, elegant stems, with simple white blooms.

White orchids.

Hundreds of them in this room alone, and more on small end tables lined the hallway. They were all new too.

“The… the orchids…” I began to say. “Are they from…”

“Your office,” Eoghan called down from the top of the stairs, looking down at me, his hand in the flannel jacket. “The very same ones.”

From when I made you love me…

The thousands of orchids he had given me were still alive. A stark reminder of what he had been, before everything.

“You saved them.” I hadn’t thought about those blooms in years. But they had lived in my absence.

I looked up at him, at the top of the stairs, wearing clothes that did not suit him. Even in his disguise, how had I not recognized him for what he was? How had I missed the signs? How had I not realized that the only person who had made my heart flutter had been the same one I had been bound to all along.

He loved me. I did not doubt that. That was never the problem.

But I was also a fool, and I knew it. I had been blinded before.

How could a woman think clearly, when a man’s eyes looked at her the way his looked at me? With complete tender admiration and care? As though the world existed because I was in it?

How could any woman resist such a thing as that?

Chapter twenty-two

Too Keen

Eoghan

There were so many things I wanted to do now. I wanted to make love to my wife. I wanted to kiss my boy and get to know him. I wanted to show him the nursery and his new room. I wanted to show her the master suite, and tell her a thousand things.

I wanted to spill my guts and tell her why the house had changed. But I couldn’t.

Not yet.

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