“I never…” Jason was surprised at how the memory could hurt after all these years. “I never made peace with him. He died thinking I hated him.”
Finally she understood the burden of guilt he had carried for so long. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to him. She curved her arm around his neck and laid her palm against his damp cheek. “No, Jason,” she whispered. “That isn’t true. He knew you loved him. And he was proud of you. Ask Kate and she’ll tell you how much.” She saw his fingers tighten on the silver frame, and she put her hands over his.
Jason stared at the photograph while the grief and guilt that had weighed on him for years began to ease. It would take time to let go completely, but he knew that Laura was right. The fault was not his—there was no one to blame.
Laura studied the picture along with him. “I want us to keep this on the mantel,” she murmured, “for everyone to see. I want it to remind you of the past, and remind you that there is no shame in what he was and what you are.”
“Perhaps not to you,” he conceded gruffly, “but—”
“It doesn’t matter what shallow-minded people think. I fell in love with you because of the man you are. And when we have children, I intend for them to know your family as well as mine. They’re going to be proud of their Irish heritage.” She smiled unsteadily. “And if you think I can’t match your stubbornness, Jason Moran, then you have a thing or two to learn.”
He was quiet, his brooding gaze fastened on the photograph, and then he set it aside. “Then we’ll keep this damned thing wherever you want it,” he muttered. “Hang it on the front door if you like.”
A smile of pure gladness broke out over her face, and she knew then that everything would be all right. “Perhaps I will.”
Jason pulled Laura into his arms, crushing her to his chest until she could hardly breathe. “I love you,” he said hoarsely, burying his face against her hair. “I’ve always loved you.”
“You had a fine way of showing it,” she murmured, nuzzling underneath his jaw. “Impatient, sarcastic—”
“Sassy little devil.” He let out a long sigh. “I thought if you knew how I felt you’d throw it back in my face. It was safer to let you and everyone else think I wanted you merely as an ornament, a trophy—”
“While I pretended that I married you out of a sense of duty to my family.” She laughed softly. “We should have been honest with each other from the beginning.”
He rubbed his cheek against her hair, holding her as if he would never let her go. He had never felt such peace. All his life had been directed toward this moment, this woman. The silence was unbroken by anything except the crackle of the fire. Its golden light glinted off the ornaments on the Christmas tree, the glass wings of the angel, the beads on Laura’s satin dress.
Laura was suffused with a glow of happiness. She had always loved Christmas, but now more than ever because it was on this night that their marriage was finally beginning, and no greater gift could be given to her. How many holidays he had spent with the Prescotts, always an outsider. But she and Jason would spend a lifetime together and have their own family. And they would make every Christmas as magical as this one. She held him tightly.
“Mo stoir,” he whispered, and dragged his mouth from her chin to the valley between her breasts.
Laura recognized the words he had said before. “Tell me what it means,” she said, her eyes half-closing as his hand slipped inside her bodice.
“My treasure.”
She caressed the back of his neck. “And the other thing you call me—”
“Gradh mo chroidhe… love of my heart.”
She smiled in pleasure. “Is that what I am?”
“That’s what you’ve always been,” he said, and lowered his mouth to hers.
LISA KLEYPAS is the author of twenty-two historical romance novels that have been published in twelve languages. In 1985, she was named Miss Massachusetts and competed in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. After graduating from Wellesley College with a political science degree, she published her first novel at age twenty-one. Her books have appeared on bestseller lists such as the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and WaldenBooks. Lisa is married and has two children.
By Lisa Kleypas
SCANDAL IN SPRING
DEVIL IN WINTER • IT HAPPENED ONE AUTUMN
SECRETS OF A SUMMER NIGHT
AGAIN THE MAGIC • WORTH ANY PRICE
LADY SOPHIA’S LOVER • ONLY IN YOUR ARMS ONLY WITH YOUR LOVE • WHEN STRANGERS MARRY
SUDDENLY YOU • WHERE DREAMS BEGIN
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
STRANGER IN MY ARMS • BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE
SOMEWHERE I’LL FIND YOU
PRINCE OF DREAMS • MIDNIGHT ANGEL
DREAMING OF YOU • THEN CAME YOU
And the Anthologies
WHERE’S MY HERO?
THREE WEDDINGS AND A KISS
Copyright
This is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Holiday Spirit” copyright © 1991 by Kay Hooper; “Surrender” copyright © 1991 by Lisa Kleypas. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition January 2007 ISBN 9780061744211
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Lisa Kleypas, Gifts of Love
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