His eyes rose from her mouth to connect with hers. The breath he took was deep and long. ‘I was clearing out the house and I found something you left behind.’ He reached down near his feet and laid her sketchpad on the table.
She stared at it, drowning beneath the weight of her despair. ‘Oh, thank you.’ She paused a second before the words were torn out of her. ‘So you’re leaving Rio?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s nothing left for me here.’
Tears burned her eyes as her heart shredded into a million useless pieces. ‘I…I wish you well.’
He made a rough sound under his breath. ‘Do you?’ he asked sarcastically. She glanced up sharply but he wasn’t done. ‘Problem is, I’d believe those blithe words from the woman sitting across from me. But the woman who drew these…’ he flicked over the pages of the sketchpad a few times before he stopped and pointed ‘…this woman has guts. She was brave enough to draw what was in her heart; what cried out from her soul. Look at her.’
She kept her eyes on his face, her whole body trembling wildly as she gave a jerky shake of her head.
‘Look at her, dammit!’
She sucked in a breath. And looked down. The first sketch was the one she’d made of him after they’d made love that first time on the boat. The ones that followed were variations of that first sketch. She’d captured Theo in various poses, each one progressively more lovingly detailed until the final one of him with his brothers, laughing together at the wedding. She’d drawn that from memory on their final night in Bermuda. Staring at the finished picture had cemented her feelings for him.
He turned the page and the image of Brianna and Sakis’s baby stared back at her. Dimitri already bore the strong, captivating mark of the Pantelides family. It was that template that she’d used in the following sketches, when capturing her own secret yearning of what her and Theo’s baby would look like on paper had been too strong to resist.
‘You must think I’m some sort of crazy stalker.’
‘There is no stalking involved when the subject is just as crazy about the stalker,’ he rasped in a raw undertone.
Her heart flipped into her belly and her whole body trembled. ‘You can’t be. Theo, I’ll ruin your life.’
‘I thought my life was ruined before I met you. I was consumed by rage and a thirst for revenge. I let the need for revenge swallow me whole, blinding me to what was important. Family. Love. I thought there was nothing else worth fighting for. But I was wrong. There was you. My life will be ruined. But only if you’re not in it.’
The tears she’d tried to hold back brimmed and fell down her cheeks. Theo cursed and looked around. ‘What’s through there?’ he asked.
‘It’s a room, for private parties.’
‘Is there a party tonight?’
Before she’d finished shaking her head he was standing and tugging her after him. He kicked the door shut and turned to her.
‘Listen to me. You told me I would never see you as anything but the child of a monster. But you forget you’re also the child of a loving mother who celebrated every day the special person you are. How do you think she would feel to see you buried here, punishing yourself for what your father did?’
She shut her eyes but the tears squeezed through anyway.
‘Open your eyes, Inez.’
She sniffed and complied, staring up at him with blurred vision. ‘Now, truly open your eyes and see the wonderful person you are. See the person I see. The brave, talented person who drew those pictures.’
‘Oh, Theo,’ she cried.
‘You have a dream. A dream I want to be a part of.’ His hands shook as they traced her face.
‘I want that dream to become reality so badly.’
‘Then please forgive me for blackmailing you and give us that chance.’
She pulled back. ‘Forgive you? There is nothing to forgive. If anything, I should be thanking you for shaking me out of my bleak existence. Even before I truly knew you, you empowered me to fight for what I wanted.’
‘So will you fight for us? Will you give me the chance to prove to you that I’m worthy of your love and let me show you how much you mean to me?’