Page 47 of His Best Mistake

“For a little while.”

“God, I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “Who else? Tell me and I’ll hunt them down and string them up.”

“You’d really do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Just give me names and a couple of weeks.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

Jack shook his head. “Not good enough?” he echoed in disbelief. “Not good enough? You are everything, my darling. You’re the moon and the bloody stars and if people can’t see that then that’s their loss. You’re brave and wonderful and you have no idea how much I admire absolutely everything about you. You’re astonishing, and I badly want us to make a go of this. It’s not going to be easy, I know that. You and I both carry enough baggage to sink a ship and it’s all happened rather fast, but I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.” He took a step towards her, his heart thundering, a cold sweat breaking out all over his body, and he went dizzy at the realisation of how much he wanted her to feel the same way about him as he did about her, how much he feared she might not. “Let me be there for you, Stella. And our baby. And be there for me. Let’s do this. Together. Take a gamble on us. What do you think?”

*

“What do I think?” said Stella, her throat tight and her eyes prickling. She thought it was just about the loveliest speech she’d ever heard in her entire life. Jack loved her and he wanted her, and she ached with the force of her response to it. It was everything she’d ever dreamed of and had come from a man she was potty about, a man she thought she’d lost but who had trekked across the country to find her, who was still wearing his suit, which meant he’d presumably come straight from the office, and oh, now a lump was lodging in her throat.

“Well, yes,” he said and he gave her a smile that did nothing to distract from the hint of nervousness and vulnerability she saw flicker in the depths of his eyes. “What do you think? I’m laying my heart and everything else on the line here,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “If you’re going to steamroller it, please be gentle.”

“I wouldn’t dream of steamrollering it,” she said, her heart swelling to bursting point. “I love you too much to do that. I’ve been falling for you from practically the first moment we met too and I’ve missed you so much. I thought I was going to have to do this all on my own, and while that would have been fine and I’d have done it, it would be so much better to do it with you. And I’m more than ready to take a gamble on us, only it wouldn’t that much of a gamble when the odds are so firmly stacked in our favour. I love you, Jack, and no, you’re right, it may not be easy at first, but I reckon we can handle it. I think together we can handle pretty much anything.”

She stopped and held her breath and then Jack was tugging her off the wall and into his arms. “Oh, thank God for that,” he muttered, gathering her into an embrace so tight she could feel the thunder of his heart against her cheek. “I thought I’d blown it. I’m sorry I’ve been such a fool.”

“I understand.”

He pulled back and looked down at her, his eyes blazing with emotion. “You do, don’t you? You’re quite, quite magnificent.”

Stella grinned and wound her arms round his neck, every cell of her body filled with such happiness she could scarcely believe it. “Magnificent,” she said with a shaky smile, her throat tight. “I think I like that.”

“I intend to spend the rest of my life reminding you of just how magnificent you are.”

“So what happens now?” she said, pressing closer and feeling the heat begin to build as desire rose inside her.

Jack’s eyes darkened and his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Since it’s been way too long,” he said, taking her face in his hands and lowering his head so achingly slowly she thought she might pass out with longing. “This.”

As their mouths met and they kissed, softly at first, then more greedily, more frantically, Stella closed her eyes and gave in to it, her brain frying and her heart thundering. This was what she’d been looking for and waiting for her whole life. Him. Jack. The man who would always be at her side and on her team. The man who was now sliding his hands down to the buttons of her jeans and brushing aside her protests that if they went any further they’d scare the sheep with the very reasonable argument that given what the sheep had done to him all those weeks ago it seemed only fair. The man she loved and wanted so wholly she was never him letting go.

Epilogue

Six months later

Lying propped up on the bed in the private room at London’s top maternity hospital, Stella grinned as Jack, who held the two-day-old seven-pound bundle of baby that was their daughter in the crook of one arm, tapped the bottle of champagne with the spoon he was holding in the hand of the other.

“Everyone,” he said over the chatter that swiftly hushed, “meet Grace Isobel Maclean. Gracie, sweetheart, these are your grandparents, Edward and Joanna Maclean. And this is your Auntie Cora and your soon-to-be Uncle Lucas. Say hello.”

In response Gracie wrinkled up her tiny perfect nose, while Stella just watched as her in-laws cooed around Jack and the baby. The emotion that blasted through her made her heart turn over and her throat tighten.

How had she ever got so lucky? she wondered, her eyes stinging as she welled up for the third time in as many minutes. She had a husband she adored and who seemed to adore her back, and now with a baby, the family she’d always dreamed of.

It hadn’t been an entirely bump-free journey to get here, though. Her parents hadn’t changed. Despite their continued lack of interest in her – and God only knew where they were at the moment, somewhere in the Azores, quite possibly – she’d kept them up to date with the progress of the pregnancy, mainly because she felt she owed it to her baby to keep the lines of communication open; but she genuinely no longer cared what they did. Why would she when she had Jack and had been embraced so warmly by his family?

That had taken a while. When he’d told his parents about her and the baby they’d initially been stunned. Confused. And understandably appalled for Cora. But in time they’d reached acceptance and then delight, and when Jack and Stella had married three months ago it had been his mother who’d helped her organise the small but intimate ceremony. Cora, who’d returned from Spain in a totally different frame of mind to when she’d gone, had been her maid of honour.

Shortly after the honeymoon, she and Jack had moved into a house with enough bedrooms to accommodate Gracie’s future siblings, apparently, and a garden that boasted a swimming pool and a tennis court. And soon after that she’d had a call to say that her coffee table book would be published the following year.

It had been quite a twelve months, and looking back Stella could hardly believe everything that had happened. Last Christmas she’d spent lost and alone. This Christmas she’d be with Jack and Gracie and surrounded by so much love she sometimes thought she’d explod

e with it. She’d come so far. Achieved so much. And it was all down to Jack and his rock-solid belief in her. Jack, who always had her back, and who was now handing their daughter to his sister and walking over to her, so gorgeous it made her catch her breath every single time.

“Happy?” he murmured, smiling as he bent down to brush her lips with his in a way that never failed to make her heart beat faster.

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