Two Passionate Proposals (13 page)

“Forever. We will have sons and daughters,
and I will be by your side until you tire of me and tell me to go away.”

She laughed. “Never,” she said softly. “Never.”

Henry kissed her again, with the swans
circling slowly in the background enjoying the warmth of the late afternoon
sun.

~The End~

Serenity Woods lives in the sub-tropical Northland of New
Zealand with her wonderful husband and gorgeous teenage son. She writes fun,
emotional, and sexy romances in a variety of romantic sub-genres. She’s won
several writing competitions and is a member of the Romance Writers of New
Zealand. She would much rather immerse herself in reading or writing romance
than do the dusting and ironing, which is why it’s not a great idea to pop
round if you have any allergies. You can check out all her books at
http://www.serenitywoodsromance.com
.

If you enjoyed
Two Passionate Proposals,
you might
also enjoy
His Christmas Present
by Serenity Woods.

Megan Green fell in love with Dion Wallace when she was nine
years old, but she hasn’t seen him since she was fifteen when he moved from New
Zealand to the UK to be with his father. Meeting up with him in Prague eight
years later is both a surprise and a relief when he rescues her during one of
her panic attacks. On the rebound after a breakup, she turns to Dion for
comfort and some hot sex, and he’s happy to oblige. But when the night ends,
they’re both certain it’s the last time they’ll ever see each other.

A year later, however, Dion’s life is falling apart. After a
decade of hard work, he thought he was next in line to be CEO of the family
company, but his father surprises everyone by giving the job to one of his
half-brothers. Angry and hurt by his dad’s betrayal, Dion books the first
available flight to New Zealand, hoping a few weeks away might give him some
perspective. And if he manages to hook up with Megan again while he’s there, he
figures that might be the medicine he needs.

Megan’s brother—and Dion’s best mate when they were
young—hasn’t told her Dion’s coming. It’s not clear who’s the most shocked when
they finally meet. Megan isn’t expecting to see the father of her new baby
quite so soon, and Dion certainly wasn’t expecting such a big Christmas
present. Angry that his life seems out of his control and that she didn’t tell
him she was pregnant, Dion refuses to acknowledge the baby. It’s only when he
finds out that his father wanted him to put love above business, and after he
reconnects with Megan on Christmas night, that he finally comes to term with
having a son and realises that it’s Megan he’s wanted all along.

An excerpt follows.

Christmas Present

It was the nineteenth of December and eighty degrees in the
shade.

After years of living through cold northern hemisphere
Christmases, Dion’s brain struggled to compute the bizarreness of his new
surroundings. The tarmac on the road shimmered in the hot sunshine, and Sean
had switched on the car’s air con to combat the high humidity. In December! It
just didn’t make sense.

Also, while flying from one side of the world to the other,
Dion had crossed the International Date Line and somehow lost an entire day.
How the hell had that happened? Had he actually travelled back in time?

Sean signalled and took the road to the town centre before
glancing across at him. “My mother would say ‘if the wind changes, your face
will stay like that.’”

Dion continued to frown as he stared out of the side window
at the lush, sub-tropical landscape of the Northland of New Zealand. “It looks
so alien,” he murmured, studying the arching palms and large, vibrant flowers.
How odd that it appeared so unfamiliar considering he’d lived there from the
ages of eight to eighteen. He remembered collapsing in bed late on Christmas
Eve as a teenager, listening to the sound of cicadas outside his window, his
skin hot and crisp from a day spent in the sun and surf. “I thought it would
feel like coming home. But it doesn’t. It feels weird.”

“You’ve been gone nearly a decade,” Sean observed. “It’s not
surprising it seems strange. And you’re not a Kiwi anymore. You’ve lost your
accent and sound all flash now.”

Dion smiled wryly. His father had taken great pains to teach
him how to speak ‘properly’ before he went to Cambridge. He’d thought his Kiwi
lilt still replaced the upper class twang when he left the office, but
obviously not as much as he’d assumed.

He fixed his gaze on the shops lining the new one-way road
system. The streets were wide and the cafés spilled tables and chairs onto the
pavements. People lazed under big umbrellas that shaded them from the hot sun,
drinking coffee while a busker entertained them with folksy jazz on a guitar.

It could have been the Mediterranean—the south of France or
Greece. Everyone looked as if they were on holiday, tanned and wearing shorts
and T-shirts, Sean included. Dion felt overdressed in his shirt and chinos, hot
in the thick material, his shirt damp against his back. Perhaps he should have
worn something more casual. Did he have anything more casual in his suitcase?
He’d forgotten how laid back the Kiwis were.

“What’s Christmas like in England?” Sean asked. “Is it all
deep and crisp and even?”

“More mild and damp,” Dion said. “I’ve only seen snow on
Christmas Day once. It usually rains. And it’s more commercialised than here.
Adverts on the TV start in August. And the shop windows are full of fake snow
with cheesy songs piped on a loop.”

“Sounds great.”

“You get used to it.” Even though he’d criticised it, he
couldn’t stop the defensiveness creeping into his voice. He didn’t particularly
love the festive season in the UK, but he’d made a life for himself there, and
he wasn’t going to let Sean insinuate that his move to England had been a
mistake.

He glanced across at his old friend. They’d kept in touch
occasionally over the nine years since he moved away, on Facebook and via the
odd email, but they’d mainly talked bloke talk, about rugby and politics and
movies. He hadn’t been able to get any real sense of how Sean had changed since
their teenage years.

He’d been relieved to still recognise his once-best mate.
He’d spotted him immediately across the tarmac at the small Kerikeri airport.
Sean had been leaning on the gate, waiting, and Dion had spotted his stocky
frame, albeit layered with a few more pounds. His short blond hair had thinned
on top, but it still stuck up in the same familiar way at the front.

They’d clasped hands and then bear-hugged, and for a brief
moment emotion had swept over Dion. They’d been close when they were younger,
and he would be forever grateful for the fact that Sean’s parents had taken him
in for six months after his mother died, before he left for the UK.

But then Sean pulled away to help him with his luggage, and
the moment passed. And perhaps he was imagining it, but after his initial
pleasure at seeing his friend, Sean now seemed more reserved, cool even. Why
would that be?

“So, how’s married life treating you?” Dion hoped to warm up
the atmosphere by encouraging his mate to tell tales of family life. Married
guys always seemed to want to extol the virtues of their partners, and he’d
learned that it helped to get men to talk.

He’d seen the pictures of the wedding on Facebook four or
five years ago. He didn’t know Sean’s wife, Gaby, but she’d looked stunning in
her wedding dress. They’d sent him an invite, but it had coincided with an
important meeting in Germany. Plus he wasn’t sure at the time that he wanted to
revisit his old life, so he’d politely declined. He’d thought they’d be
relieved to save some money on a place setting. Had they been upset instead?

“Great.” Sean’s face relaxed into a smile. He glanced across
at Dion, looking a tad mischievous. “You should try it someday.”

Dion ignored the taunt. He was adept at steering
conversation away from talk of settling down. “And two kids, eh? No hanging
around then.” They were both only twenty-seven. To Dion it seemed a young age
to already have your family done and dusted—unless…were they thinking about
having more than two kids? Jeez, some folks were a glutton for punishment.

Sean shrugged, signalled left and took a new road Dion
didn’t remember. It appeared to skirt the old Stone Store. He’d heard that the
bridge across the inlet had become choked with debris and burst its banks
during heavy rain, so they must have removed the bridge and diverted traffic
away. Shame—he’d liked the old road past the historic buildings. They’d all had
some good times in the river. He remembered the day Sean had pushed Megan in,
and how outraged she’d been. She’d stood there with her hands on her hips and
yelled at her brother, beautiful in spite of looking like a drowned rat.

“No point in waiting,” Sean said. “It’s good to have kids
while you’ve still got the energy. I find it exhausting, even though Gaby does
most of it.”

“I guess.” Dion knew nothing about having children. One of
his half-brothers in the UK had a couple, but he’d never got involved with
them. He tended to hold babies in front of him like a rugby ball, and when
people saw how uncomfortable it made him, they stopped giving them to him. He
wasn’t one of those jolly uncles who took the kids to the zoo and bought them
sweets. The children steered clear of him now when his brother came to visit,
and he was quite happy with that. “Are the kids at home with Gaby?”

“Nah, one of Gaby’s friends has them for a few hours,” Sean
said. “They take turns to give each other a break.”

That didn’t surprise Dion. New Zealanders had always had the
‘number eight wire’ approach to life. When the first European immigrants
arrived, thirteen thousand miles away from their homeland, they quickly learned
to invent things they couldn’t easily obtain, and the number eight gauge of
fencing wire was soon adapted for countless other uses in New Zealand farms,
factories and homes. The phrase came to represent a Kiwi who could turn their
hand to anything, and they were a people who reacted to problems by pulling
together to help each other out.

The houses thinned, and as Sean took the road leading to
Opito Bay, the countryside spread away from them, rising and falling in a
series of emerald hills until it met the glittering sea on either side. The finger
of land formed part of the sub-tropical paradise of the Bay of Islands.

Dion blew out a breath. “That’s quite a view.”

Sean smiled. “Yeah. I can think of worse scenery to look at
on the way to work.”

Dion thought of the narrow, dirty streets of London, the
crowded Underground, the smell and taste of the city, metallic and dusty. Like
an old but revered actress, London was beautiful in its own way, and of course
its history knocked New Zealand’s into a cocked hat, as the Cockneys would have
said. But he’d forgotten the beauty of
Aotearoa
. How vast and high and
blue the sky seemed.

“How’s the business going?” he asked. He knew Sean had
joined his father’s building trade.

Sean gave him a strange look, but said, “Yeah, good. Things
are picking up a bit after the recession. Lots of new houses being built.”

“Cool.” He tipped his head back on the headrest as a wave of
tiredness hit him. Jet lag, no doubt. It couldn’t be the pace of life in the
Northland. Even the staff at the tiny airport had been laid back, shrugging off
the plane’s late arrival with typical Kiwi indifference. And Sean hardly seemed
stressed, driving along happily at fifty in a hundred kph zone. What was
that—about thirty miles an hour? Jeez. And there weren’t even any speed cameras
to worry about.

What would it be like to get up every morning and know your
day involved driving to a field somewhere and hammering nails into planks of
wood until home time? No airports, taxis, extended lunches, long business
meetings in boardrooms, laptops, iPhones, annual reports. No air conditioning,
stewed coffee, dry sandwiches, or the cloying smell of beeswax from the
polished oak tables. No talking, talking, talking all day until he thought he’d
used every word in his vocabulary and would never be able to utter anything
ever again.

Actually, it sounded quite attractive now he thought about
it.

Then he sighed.
You’d soon get bored
, he scolded
himself. He was disillusioned and tired, stressed after the events of the past
few months, maybe a bit burned out, and he needed a break. But he wasn’t due a
mid-life crisis yet.

Sean glanced at him again.

Dion raised an eyebrow, sensing a question hovering in the
wings. “What?”

Sean’s brow furrowed. “Are you really not going to ask after
Megan?”

Dion blinked. He hadn’t asked about any of Sean’s family
yet—there had hardly been time for that sort of conversation. He stared,
surprised at Sean’s glare. And then realisation sank in.

Sean knew
.
Shit
. It had only been the one
night. They’d both agreed to keep it quiet. Why had she told her brother?

Guilt filtered through him, and he had to force himself not
to squirm in his seat. He and Megan had had a fiery relationship from the first
moment he met her when he was twelve and she was nine. Irritation and
exasperation had eventually matured into a simmering sexual attraction
throughout their teenage years, and even though he’d tried his hardest to
remind himself that she was Sean’s little sister, he hadn’t been completely
shocked—and he suspected she hadn’t either—that when they bumped into each
other the previous Christmas, they’d ended up in bed.

Her passion and apparently genuine desire for him had both
shocked and thrilled him. He liked to think himself fairly experienced in bed,
but he could safely say that night had been the hottest, most erotic night of
his life. They’d practically set the bed alight, and he suspected that if
they’d lived in the same half of the world, it would have changed their
relationship forever, an irreversible chemical reaction, like baking eggs and flour
to make a cake. A hot, sexy, chocolate-covered and caramel-filled sumptuous
delight of a cake, but changed nevertheless.

Still, they
did
live on opposite sides of the world,
and it had only been a fling—they’d both accepted that.

He cleared his throat. “Of course I was going to ask. I was
just…building up to it. How is she?”

“Good.” Sean slowed at a T-junction, but they hadn’t met a
single vehicle on the way, so he didn’t bother stopping and turned the car onto
the main road to the bay. “Her paintings are really taking off. She sells heaps
of local landscapes at the galleries in town, and she’s getting commissions
now.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah. She’s really good, Dion. People are starting to take
notice, you know? She’s been interviewed on national radio, and she held art
classes in Auckland during the winter.”

“That’s so cool.” He was pleased, but not surprised. Megan
had been painting the first time he saw her. He’d met Sean in their first year
at high school, and Sean had invited him home for tea. She’d been sitting on
the deck, trying to capture their Boxer dog on paper, and she’d scolded it when
it dashed off to greet them.

With a typical twelve-year-old boy’s tact, he’d laughed at
the brown smudges she’d made on the paper, and she’d threatened to shove her
paintbrush where the sun didn’t shine, earning her a telling off from her
mother. The memory still made him smile. Her feistiness seemed even more
prominent because it stood out against the disorder she’d had to fight against
her whole life, like a black cloud hovering in a bright blue sky.

“How’s she coping?” he asked. “With the agoraphobia, I
mean.”

“She’s good,” Sean said.

“I’m glad.” Dion had become aware of the condition when she
was eleven. They’d walked into town with a group of friends. Crowds from the
annual summer fair choked the town. They queued up to buy a burger, and the
unfamiliarity of the situation and the crush of bodies triggered an attack.

He hadn’t known about her phobia at the time, and the last
thing he expected the spirited, lively girl to have was panic attacks. Alarm
shot through him when she turned white and started shaking, her eyes widening
with fear. But when Sean reacted not by making fun of her but by announcing
he’d take her home, Dion realised the seriousness of the situation. He walked
with them without asking, and they both held her hand the whole way.

When she got home, she thanked him and cried, and he hugged
her. Her hair had smelled of strawberries, and his lips had lingered as he
kissed the top of her head for a few seconds longer than he should have.