‘I can’t let you go.’
She looked up. ‘What?’
She felt rather than saw him shrug. His eyes bored down into hers. ‘I can’t let you go. I’m afraid that if I do…I’ll wake up and have dreamt all this and that I’ll never see you again.’
A taut, pregnant stillness seemed to surround them.
‘But…you can go now. Leave. You don’t want to see me again.’
‘No. You don’t want to see me.’
Maggie’s brow creased as she took in a vulnerable light in the depths of Caleb’s eyes. It couldn’t be. She shook her head. ‘Caleb, stop confusing me. Let me go.’ She tried to pull away again, a little desperately. There was no give.
‘Just tell me one thing, Maggie…Was it really just a crush?’
She felt him stop breathing. Nodded her head slowly. And inexplicably, started to drown in his eyes. She just…couldn’t do it. Couldn’t lie. Feeling the last vestiges of her defence and fight fall away, leaving her limp and defeated, she stopped nodding and slowly shook her head.
A surge of mounting hope moved through him. ‘So…if it wasn’t just a crush…was it something more?’
She was feeling boneless. All that existed were those mesmerising eyes. She nodded again, barely aware of what she was saying yes to, only aware that she wanted Caleb to keep holding her. For ever.
Caleb tried to contain himself but could feel the tremor building all the way upwards from his feet. ‘For the past two months…and now…is it still there?’
She broke out of the seductive trance. She could feel the tears well again. ‘Please Caleb…don’t tease…don’t make me say it.’
He lifted his hands and framed her face and she could feel them trembling. ‘You don’t have to…I will. Maggie Holland, I love you. I love you so much that if you can’t tell me you love me too then I’m going to walk straight into the Atlantic and never come back because my life would not be worth living.’
A hard shell seemed to crack open around her. She clung on to his eyes, searching, seeking…and could see nothing but pure love shining back. Could she trust?
She had to trust.
With a very shaky voice she said huskily, ‘That’d be an awful waste because I love you too…I’ve loved you since the moment I set eyes on you.’
‘Oh, Maggie…’ He groaned and lowered his lips to hers, taking her mouth in a sweet kiss, hunger barely checked, but there. He stopped and pulled back. ‘When I saw you that first time…I fell so hard and then when I overheard Holland talking about using you…I cynically assumed you were in on it too. It was easier to see you as an accomplice than face up to my true feelings…I’m so, so sorry; when you tried to stop and tell me—’
Maggie just shook her head, putting a finger to his lips. ‘It was pretty damning and we’d only just met. You had no idea who I was…’
She wound her arms tightly around his neck and, stretching up, pressed her mouth to his and urged him to kiss her deeper, harder. They pulled apart after a few seconds, breathing harshly. She touched his face wonderingly.
‘Are you here? Is this real?’
He laughed shakily. ‘I hope so because I’m about to get down on one knee and propose.’
‘Caleb…’ She watched, open-mouthed, as he knelt down before her. Tears blurred her vision again. They just wouldn’t stop.
He took her hand. ‘Margaret Holland. Will you please become my wife? So that I can spend my life loving you, minding you, protecting you…’
‘But…but you never stay in one place for long…your work…’
His voice was raw and husky, pulling at her heart. ‘Maggie, I’m so tired. I’m tired of living under the shadow of my parents’ disastrous marriage. I’m tired of working so hard. It’s time I delegated. I want to settle down, have babies…with you. Wherever you are, or want to be…this house…we could buy this, live here, anywhere, just as long as I’m with you. I never believed this could happen to me, but…’ he shrugged with endearing vulnerability ‘…you’re my home…and I want to come home, so much.’
She shook her head, her lip wobbling, tears still streaming, and got down on her knees to meet him. ‘Oh, Caleb…you’re my home too. I love you so much it scares me…’
They looked at each other for an intense moment and he cradled her head before kissing her again. Her eyes were closed and she was breathless when he pulled away finally, both blissfully unaware of the hard floor under their knees. Then Caleb stood and pulled her with him. ‘I have something for you.’
She was incapable of speech, touching her lips, feeling them tingle from the kiss, wanting to pinch herself to see if she was really awake. She wiped at her cheeks as he led her out to the front door and there, parked in front of the house, was her battered Mini. Exactly as it always had been.
She clapped a shocked hand to her mouth. Wide-eyed, she looked at Caleb, shaking her head. ‘But…how…I mean, it was a tin can…’
He grimaced. ‘Just seconds away from it. I started tracking it down after that day your mother spilled the beans, even though you professed not to care, somehow, I knew.’
‘But that was…weeks ago.’
He shrugged. ‘I was fighting a losing battle even then, trying to keep you in the little box I’d built around you, but more and more I was beginning to suspect things weren’t as they seemed, but it was still easier to mistrust you than look at my real feelings…’
She looked away reluctantly from the intense emotion blazing from his eyes.
‘Is that how you came down here? That’s at least five hours…in a car that doesn’t go over forty miles an hour…’
He rolled his shoulders. ‘Don’t I know it and it was more like eight hours.’
He brought her round to the back of the car. ‘This was Plan B in case you weren’t going to listen to me.’
There at the back of the car were tin cans tied on pieces of string hanging off the bumper, trailing on the ground, and a huge sign, which read:
I love you, Maggie. Please marry me?
‘Believe me,’ he said dryly, ‘it’s the only thing that convinced your mother to tell me where you were.’
The laughter bubbled up out of her and she gripped his hand. He brought her round in front of him and she could feel the slight tremor still evident in his hands as they smoothed back her hair. The awe on his face, as if he couldn’t really believe he’d found her. It made her heart soar and flip over.
She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. ‘The answer is yes, yes, yes…’
She gave him a shyly coy look. ‘About those knots in your shoulders…’
He relaxed visibly and Maggie exulted in the gift he was giving her, that she was giving him. After so much heartache. Perhaps now, she could finally be safe…and happy.
He bent low to whisper in her ear with husky promise, ‘We have so much to talk about, catch up on…but first let’s see about making those babies…’
With one graceful movement, he lifted his most treasured possession and carried her over the threshold of the tiny cottage that clung to the edge of a beautiful beach, with the waves pounding just metres away, and into their new lives.