Page 46 of His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice
‘Violet...’ His voice roughened and he looked away, his body language awkward but intensely appealing in its sincerity. ‘The flowers...’
‘The flowers.’
‘For you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The flowers were for you. It took me a while, because I was so bloody slow on the uptake, but I finally slotted all the pieces of the jigsaw together and saw what had been staring me in the face from that very first moment we slept together. I love you, Violet. You, your smile, your quick wit, the way you have of standing your ground and not giving an inch. I love the way you stand up to me. I love the way you make me feel.’
‘Youloveme?’
‘I didn’t recognise the symptoms.’ He smiled a hesitant smile and reached forward to link her fingers loosely with his. ‘Even though I knew I had a virus.’
‘Are you really being honest with me?’
‘I would never lie about something like this. I always thought that my heart was firmly locked away, but you managed to get hold of the key...and I think it happened long before we slept together. You have the whole package, Violet, and I was an idiot not to see that sooner.’
Violet’s heart was soaring and there was a drumbeat in her ears. ‘I love you too, Matt.’ It felt a dangerous crossing of lines to utter those words, because she’d spent so long making sure they never left her lips. She almost expected him to pull back, despite everything he had just said, but he didn’t. He smiled. She tentatively held her hand against his face and he caught it in his and kissed her palm.
‘I was so attracted to you before I left for Melbourne, but I knew that it would never come to anything because we were just so different. The last sort of guy I wanted was someone who played the field, and there was no way you could ever be attracted to me, anyway. I’d seen way too much of the women you went for to ever think that you could go for someone like me.
‘Then you came to Melbourne and you were there for me when my father was rushed into hospital. Sleeping with you...felt so incredibly good, but I just looked at it as stolen happiness. It wasn’t going to last, but I would hold on to it for as long as I could. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was so confused. I knew I had to tell you, but the thought of seeing you again...scared me. I’m not sure when I realised that I loved you. Maybe I always knew, just as I knew that love was the last thing you would ever want from me.’
She paused. ‘Why didn’t you send the flowers?’
‘I chickened out. I suspected you had feelings for me, but I couldn’t be sure. I loved you, but what was that about? How had that happened? I placed the order for forty-eight red roses and then I panicked. Had second thoughts. I told myself that I’d get back to it, make my mind up, take the bull by the horns, but I needed a couple of days to think it through. It never occurred to me that the woman at the flower shop would get in touch with you, but she did, and here we are.
‘My darling, darling Violet. We love one another and I have never been happier in my entire life. So, please, will you marry me? Not because we’re having a baby, but because we want to share the rest of our lives together.’
‘How could I possibly say no to that?’
She smiled at him, then leant forward and pulled him towards her, and the feel of his mouth on hers sent her heart into a crazy tailspin. Oh, how used to that feeling she was—but, oh, how wonderful that this time the feeling was mutual.
They were married less than a month later, plenty of time to have got her father over. Every single employee attended, along with friends from every walk of life, including many of her father’s friends, most of whom she remembered well. It was a rowdy and memorable affair. Her father was in his element and, at the end of a brilliant evening, he and some of his former band members formed an impromptu group to play for the newlyweds.
Matt’s parents, as stiff-lipped as she had expected, unbent a little by the end of the evening. This time, when his mother politely repeated her invitation to lunch, Violet nodded and conceded that it might not be quite as bad as she had reckoned the first time the invitation had been extended.
Who knew? Maybe a baby would change the dynamics.
They should have had a honeymoon of her choosing, Matt had said, but with his usual overprotective gene in full flow, he had put his foot down at any destination that involved a plane. She was far too pregnant to travel, he had determined, even if the duration of the flight was ten seconds.
So they had a romantic week in deepest Cornwall, where the weather pretty much did what they wanted it to. They had lovely walks and a roaring fire in the evening.
And then, in the blink of an eye, Matilda was there. Eight pounds six ounces of curly black hair, navy-blue eyes, a rosebud mouth and little chubby hands punching the air.
Now, six months later, Violet could smile at the memory of just how panicked Matt had been when she had gone into labour.
Her cool, collected and self-assured husband had been at his most flustered.
‘Just remember to breathe,’ she had told him, amused and indulgent in between contractions, ‘and you’ll be okay.’
She heard the sound of the front door opening, but this time it wasn’t the door to his apartment, but the door to the house on Richmond Hill where they now lived. They had finally opted for somewhere close enough for Matt to return home in the evenings in time to see Matilda before she went to bed. Original plans to move farther out had been put on the back burner.
He strode in and was as mesmerising as he always was, walking towards her with that slow smile that still made her toes curl and her skin prickle with love and desire.
‘An early Friday,’ he drawled, kissing her on the mouth and then kissing her again before pulling back. ‘As instructed by my darling wife.’ He glanced past her from hallway to open-plan kitchen. ‘And I see the table is set for...’ He frowned. ‘For five people?’
‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ Violet said, pulling him towards the kitchen. Matilda was sound asleep in her cot and she could sense that he was itching to go in and have a look at his sleeping daughter. ‘My dad’s coming over for dinner...and your parents.’
