Читать книгу Welcome to Mills & Boon - Jennifer Rae - Страница 35

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL.’ Thea finished zipping up Helena’s deep blue cocktail dress and stepped back. ‘Flynn won’t know what’s hit him.’

‘Zeke, last I saw,’ Helena joked. She didn’t know how much Zeke had told Thea about their visit to Flynn, but she’d seen Thea cooing over his bruised hand afterwards.

Thea sat on the bed, smoothing out her own bright red dress. Isabella had wanted her to wear white, but Thea had been adamant that she had already done the wedding thing. Almost twice.

‘Are you going to be okay down there tonight? With him here, I mean?’ Thea asked.

Helena shrugged. ‘I don’t think it matters if I am or not. Even if he wasn’t my husband, he would still be Zeke’s brother, Isabella’s son. He’s going to be around, always. I’m going to have to get used to it some time or another.’ Not to mention the fact that she’d met with Isabella’s divorce solicitor the day before. At some point, she’d have to sit across a table from Flynn and discuss what happened next. She wasn’t looking forward to it but if Isabella could do it, so could she.

Thea checked her watch. ‘It’s time. The first guests are probably already arriving.’

Zeke met them at the top of the stairs and they headed down together. It was strange, Helena thought. It had been so many years since the four of them had been at a party together in this house. So very much had changed in the years since Zeke had left home but, in lots of ways, it felt like just another party.

At least she was old enough to drink at them these days.

‘There you all are!’ Isabella called from the hallway. ‘Come get a glass of bubbly and say hello to some people.’ Helena and Thea exchanged a glance, grabbed champagne flutes and headed in.

The party was in full swing by the time she caught her first glimpse of Flynn. Isabella had collared him by the door and was holding his arm tightly as she spoke close to his ear. Helena had no idea what she was saying but she suspected she didn’t want to hang around and find out, either.

With so many people in attendance, it wasn’t too hard to keep moving between the crowd and stay out of Flynn’s way. It was entirely possible he was doing the same thing, of course. She was under no illusion that he’d be desperate to talk to her, either. If he had been, if he’d moved past his anger and disgust, he would have called by now.

People would talk, of course, if they weren’t seen together tonight—but people would talk anyway, the moment the divorce was announced. Maybe it was better to get the rumours started now so it wouldn’t be so shocking later. They could even bury the news under the announcement of Thea and Zeke’s wedding.

Helena looked around for Thea and her husband. This was their night, after all—theirs and Isabella’s and Thomas’s. She’d celebrate with them and then she’d disappear upstairs for an early night when no one would notice. Thea could tell people she had a headache if anyone asked.

There. She had a plan. Flynn would be so proud.

The minutes ticked by unbearably slowly, but eventually Helena figured it had to be safe to escape. She was halfway across the room to let Thea know she was going when she heard the sound of metal on glass.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I could ask for your attention, please?’ Flynn’s voice rang out across the party and stopped Helena in her tracks. ‘My mother has asked me to say a few words.’

Of course she had. Of course Isabella would be behind this.

And of course she’d be grabbing hold of Helena’s arm right now.

‘Come on,’ she said as she dragged her closer to where Flynn was making his speech. ‘I don’t want to miss this.’

I do, though! Helena sighed and allowed herself to be dragged. But after this she was going to bed.

‘As you probably all know, my mother and Thomas asked us here tonight to celebrate life and love, in its many and wondrous forms. We are all, as I know you are, giving thanks for Thomas’s swift recovery and hoping for plenty more life for him to enjoy yet. And we’re celebrating a marriage—yes, another one!’ A smatter of laughter at that, and Helena felt too many eyes on her.

Not Flynn’s, though. He hadn’t even glanced in her direction.

‘Thea and Zeke’s wasn’t a conventional wedding, by all accounts, but, since nothing else about their relationship was conventional either, it seems only right that it happened this way.’ Flynn looked out over the crowd as he spoke, as if he was meeting every person’s gaze individually. ‘There’s no point pretending you don’t already know the story. Thea and I were, only last month, intending to marry each other—until Zeke drove back into our lives and reminded us all of something important. The power love has to override all plans, make a mockery of any schedule and lead us to places we never thought we’d want to go.’

Helena’s heart clenched at his words, so similar to the speech he’d made on their wedding day. The tightness in her chest only grew when Flynn turned to gaze directly at her as he spoke again.

‘Since my own marriage, I seem to have learnt a lot about love, and about life. Far more than I ever knew before. And that is entirely down to my beautiful wife, Helena.’ He motioned towards her and Helena blushed at the ‘ahh’s from the crowd.

What was he doing? Keeping up the charade? Making it impossible for her to walk away? Or was it just possible that this was something else? Something more?

Helena held her breath and allowed herself a moment to hope.

‘In fact, I needed so much education that my wife wrote me a memo, to help me make sense of it all.’ The crowd laughed as, from a side table nearby, Flynn picked up a stack of paper and held it up. Helena’s eyes widened. Her manifesto!

She’d poured every hope and dream she had into that pile of paper. Every small detail and moment that would make her future happy. And Flynn had read it, and carried it with him tonight. Did that mean...did he want them to have another chance?

‘I won’t read this aloud, although I think every married couple should have a copy. In fact, I have a photocopy here for you, Zeke!’ More laughter, and Helena grasped at her skirt with clammy hands. She wanted this over. She wanted to know what this was, what he was doing. She wanted to understand.

‘But I did want to quote just a couple of lines.’ He flicked through the pages to a sheet towards the end, and Helena held her breath. ‘Helena wrote: “Love is about more than where it can take you or what it can provide—a marriage, a home, a family, status or money. Love is about experiencing any or all of those things with the one person who makes them worthwhile. Who makes life meaningful.”’

Flynn lowered the paper and gazed out over the crowd at her again, and the hope that had budded tightly in Helena’s heart began to blossom.

‘Helena is the only person who could ever and will ever bring that meaning into my life, whatever our future brings. And I feel so incredibly lucky to have realised that, at last.’

He looked away, smiling out at his audience again, but Helena didn’t mind. Those were the words she hadn’t even known she needed to hear.

‘Life doesn’t follow a plan, any more than love does,’ Flynn went on. ‘Sometimes the best things in life just happen—and so do the worst things. What makes it harder is that sometimes you can’t even tell which is which. But life doesn’t go backwards, and neither does love. You can’t switch love off or pretend it never happened. All you can do is love and live in the now, and look to the future with amazement and joy. And that, my friends, is what I wish for my brother and his wife, and for my mother and Thomas. And, most of all, for Helena and me.’

He stepped down to wild applause, but he didn’t seem to hear it. Instead, he walked straight to Helena, took her hand and placed something in it, folding her fingers over it before she could see. But she knew from the shape, the feel of it, exactly what Flynn had given her.

And she smiled and let him take her other hand and lead her outside.

* * *

Flynn’s heart beat double time as he walked Helena out to the outdoor seating area behind the house. There was a slight drizzle in the air, which he’d normally hate, but tonight it just meant that they were able to be alone.

‘My manifesto,’ Helena said. ‘You know that was just a sort of joke, really.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Flynn said, and tried not to focus on how long it had been since he’d seen her, and how much he had hurt her. ‘It told me everything you felt and wanted. It let me know you, see you clearer than I ever had. That and finally hearing the full story about what happened to you.’

She looked away and Flynn reached out to rest his palm against her cheek, to keep her eyes on him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me in Tuscany?’

‘Because it wouldn’t have made any difference,’ Helena said, and her mouth twisted up into an almost smile. ‘Everything you said was still true.’

‘No,’ Flynn said, as firmly as he could. He had to make her believe this. ‘I judged you as the person I thought you were, without even thinking about you as the woman I’d fallen in love with. I...before I read what you’d written, I was angry with myself for falling in love with you. For loving someone who had done something I considered unforgivable. But now...now I feel I know you better. And I know, even if you don’t, that the woman who wrote this doesn’t have it in her not to love. You think you wouldn’t have loved that child? You’re wrong.’

‘In which case, I still did the wrong thing by giving her away.’ Helena pulled away. ‘So nothing changes.’

‘I changed,’ Flynn said quietly. ‘You changed me. I thought...I thought I had to follow a plan, my rules, my schedule. That anything outside of them was wrong. By my rules, what you did was wrong, yes. But you don’t live by my rules—or anyone else’s. You made the decision you had to make at the time, with the best information you had. And that decision had a big part in shaping who you are today, in making you the woman I love.’

‘So...you’re saying you forgive me?’ Helena chewed on her lower lip as she looked up at him with those big bluebell eyes.

‘I’m saying that you don’t need my forgiveness. You need to forgive yourself.’

* * *

She couldn’t stop the tears, didn’t even want to. And, as Flynn pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest, she knew she’d come home again, at last.

‘Do you forgive me?’ Flynn asked against her hair. ‘The things I said...they were unforgivable, I know. But do you think...?’

‘Yes,’ Helena said. ‘I forgive you.’ But if forgiveness was the start for them, she knew it wouldn’t be everything. They had a long way to go yet.

‘But, Flynn,’ she said, leaning back to see his face, ‘I can’t just forget—any of it. You, or what happened to me. That’s going to take time.’

‘I have all the time in the world for you.’ Flynn set his cheek against her hair and Helena sighed. It felt right. She wanted it to be right. And yet...

‘I can’t promise you anything,’ she said. ‘Well, nothing beyond the fact that I’m apparently always going to love you. Can’t seem to shake that one.’

‘Good.’

‘But I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to have children.’ It hurt to say the words, hurt to think it. She’d been happy, imagining her life without kids, until she’d married Flynn. Now, it stung—not just because she couldn’t give him what she knew he wanted, but because for the first time she wondered if she might want it too.

Flynn loosened his arms from around her waist and took her hands in his instead, rubbing his thumb over the knuckles of the fingers, still wrapped around the object he’d placed in her palm.

‘I promise you this,’ he said, his expression solemn. ‘There is no schedule for our life together, no plan. Not any more. If it happens one day that you turn to me and tell me you’re ready to try for a baby, I’ll be the happiest man on earth. And if it doesn’t?’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll still be the happiest man on earth because I’ll be married to you.’

Slowly, he dropped to his knees and Helena bit back a sob. Could he really be giving her everything she’d ever wanted? And could she forgive herself enough to accept?

Peeling back her fingers, he took her engagement ring from her hand and placed it at the tip of her ring finger. ‘Helena Juliette Ashton. Will you do me the honour of being my wife?’

Through her tears, Helena giggled. ‘Isn’t this where we came in?’ she asked as he slid the ring home.

‘It’s the only place I want to be,’ Flynn said, and tugged her down for a kiss.