Five Dates with the Billionaire - Alyssa J. Montgomery Page 0,73

I probably should’ve told you when we first made love in Venice, but I didn’t realise I loved you back then. I didn’t recognise my feelings for you until I was back in England without you. Worrying about you. Aching for you. Wanting the right to do everything in my power to protect you, and wanting the world to know how I feel about you.’

He watched as her shock morphed to concern, then to anger. ‘You can’t love me.’ She wrung her hands together. ‘Damn it all, Connor. I don’t want this.’

No. She didn’t mean it. She couldn’t have kissed him so uninhibitedly if she didn’t love him back.

‘Be honest, Mia.’ His words were urgent. ‘You’ve said you can’t build a future based on lies, but now you’re lying to me and to yourself. There’s no reason we can’t be together.’

She paced away from him then spun on her heel and held out her hands in a gesture of entreaty. ‘Connor, if I leave the building and walk down the street, there’s every chance I could be dead within a couple of blocks.’

‘Sully will be found before he does you any harm.’

He hadn’t planned on doing it in this setting. Hell, he hadn’t really planned it out properly at all. And, although there were a million more romantic ways of doing this, he had to do it now because he wasn’t going to let her walk away again. So, he took a couple of steps towards her, took one of her hands in his and dropped down on one knee. ‘Mia, will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?’

Her response wasn’t the one he’d hoped for, but it was probably the one he should’ve expected.

She reefed her hand out of his and hugged her arms over her chest.

‘No.’ The word seemed to force its way out of a throat that sounded thick with tears.

‘No. No. No.’

He got back onto his feet. ‘Mia—’

‘Damn you, Connor!’ The anguish in her eyes made his heart heavy. ‘Damn you for loving me when I’m not someone who can ever be loved!’

Oh hell!

Connor reached out and drew Mia against him as her whole body racked with sobs.

‘Mia, sweetheart. I’m sorry. The last thing I want is for you to be upset.’ He ran one hand over her hair and barely resisted unpinning the wound-up bun. ‘I love you, darling. I can’t help it. It sounds crazy to say it when we’ve known each other for such a short time but you’re in my heart—in my very blood—and more important to me now than my next breath.’

‘Why?’ she sobbed. ‘You can’t possibly know how hard it is for me to be shown a glimpse of heaven knowing it can never truly be mine.’

‘I’m yours. I want you to be my wife, Mia. We’ll figure the rest out along the way and get through this together.’

She lifted her tear-stained face away from his now damp shirt and looked up at him. ‘You don’t even want to get married. You told Violet—you told me—you’d never marry again. Why would you change your mind?’

He wanted to make her happy and instead her eyes were awash with grief. ‘Come and sit down,’ he urged gently. ‘Let me explain a few things.’

The fight must’ve drained out of her because she allowed him to lead her to the couch along the back of the room and was unresisting when he sat so close to her that their thighs touched.

He steeled himself to speak of his marriage failure because Mia needed to understand what had happened. ‘Everyone assumes I was heartbroken when I was divorced.’

‘Weren’t you?’ She reached for a tissue from the box that was on the coffee table and wiped her nose.

‘I didn’t even have a chance to feel hurt before I discovered that the woman I thought I’d loved had been an illusion.’ His lips twisted as he relived Rachel’s betrayal.

Mia sat perfectly still.

‘I was a gullible fool. Right from the start, she’d set out to marry me. She’d done her research to find out what I liked, what I didn’t like, who I’d dated and why it hadn’t lasted. She was like a chameleon, moulding herself into the exact sort of woman she thought would interest me.’

‘Obviously she was successful.’

‘Oh, yeah. She caught me hook, line and sinker. And then I came home early one day and found her with her bags packed, ready to walk out on me.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘The guy she