her again.”
“I’m sorry.” Niall was all sympathy.
Blake grinned. His swell of emotion could best be described as bizarre, but of all people, Niall would understand how comforting sympathy was where that particular subject was concerned.
He shifted slightly to stare out the window past Niall’s bed. “After Alan was born, I used to imagine what life would be like if Annamarie left me and went back to America.”
“You did?”
Blake nodded, smiling at his old daydreams. “I imagined that the children and I would live a quiet life together in the country, maybe traveling to London on special occasions to see your shows in the West End. We’d travel abroad every summer, tour Italy, Germany, maybe so far as the Orient.” He sighed. “We could go away and not ever have to come back.”
“You just said you stayed away from London to avoid me, and now you’re saying you daydreamed of bringing your children to see my shows?”
Blake pulled his gaze away from the window to study Niall. He looked utterly perfect and handsome, lying on his side in bed, his head propped on his arm, which rested on his pillow. Even the wary confusion in his eyes couldn’t dent the blossom of tender feelings stirring in Blake’s soul.
“It’s a paradox, I know,” he said. “In my fantasies, Annamarie was gone. In reality, she wasn’t.” He shrugged.
“But now she is,” Niall said. Blake couldn’t interpret the emotion behind his words. It couldn’t be hope, could it?
“She’s gone,” Blake sighed, shifting anxiously to his back before remembering why he was trying to avoid that position. He was still as hard as iron, and the friction of his movements did nothing to help his state. “So are the children,” he added, hoping that would be the antidote to the desire he couldn’t shake.
“You’ll get them back,” Niall said, sounding confident, though when Blake twisted his head to look at him, he was troubled by Niall’s frown.
A strange and prickly thought hit him. “Niall, are you jealous of my children?”
The flush that splashed across Niall’s face was a dead-giveaway that he was, even though Niall answered, “No. Why would you say that?” He, too, rolled to his back and stared up at the ceiling. Blake could tell by the contour of the bedclothes over Niall’s body that he too was hard.
The combination of jealousy and arousal had Blake grinning as if Niall had cracked a joke. “I’m flattered,” he said, letting a laugh escape before he could stop it.
“About what?” Niall asked in a flat voice that only betrayed his feelings more.
“You don’t have anything to be jealous of where the children are concerned,” he said, grinning wider. “I love them with an entirely separate kind of love from how I love you.”
His heart skipped a beat as he realized his admission, but as soon as it was out, he relaxed into it. He did love Niall. He’d always loved Niall. He hadn’t stopped loving him for a single second in ten years. And for the first time in those ten years, he felt perfectly comfortable with the emotion, even if everything else in his world was a wreck.
After a long, heavy silence, Niall said, “I should hope you don’t love us the same way.” He was trying to be cavalier about the comment, but Blake sensed so much more.
“Do you know what would be perfectly lovely?” Blake asked, his smile growing along with his confidence.
“What?” Niall asked. The frisson in the air between them was palpable.
“If Annamarie willingly gives the children back, we should all move to London.” The beautiful daydream was suddenly so real that it stopped the air in Blake’s lungs. “We’ll divorce, of course, Annamarie and I, and she’ll be free to return to New York and take Ian with her. They’ll be happy together, and we’ll be happy in London.”
“We?” Niall’s single syllable was quiet and rife with emotion.
“You and me and the children.” Blake stretched his arms and folded them contentedly behind his head. He smiled up at the ceiling as he went on. “My family owns a massive house in Mayfair, but I rather fancy a smaller place, somewhere simple. Maybe near the theaters. We’ll live there in perfect bliss, scandalizing everyone we meet. The duke and the playwright and their family. How dare they be so happy when the life they are living is so abnormal? But we will dare.” He let out a happy breath, closing his eyes and reveling in his imagined future. “We’ll dare