Nicole: Star Crossed Lovers (A Wish for Love Series Book 2) by Mia Shales Page B

exhibited in his galleries, the child would have a nice loving man as a father and I would have a husband with no physical demands."
    "I can't perceive that.  You are a warm and sensual woman, how long did you think you could have gone on without a man's love?"
    "As long as it took. After Eric I had a few short relationships but they were a disaster. I could feel nothing. Eventually I stopped dating at all."
    "Go on." 
    "I was four months pregnant at the wedding.  We moved to Eric's house where I had a separate wing with a large, well-lit studio.  Materially, I lacked nothing.  I was very excited about the child in my womb and despite my promise that the baby would bear Eric's name, the awareness that the child was the fruit of our love granted me a measure of comfort and joy. Three months after the wedding we took Eric's car to an art exhibition in Port Douglas. A truck in front of us spilled oil on the road and Eric lost control of the wheel.  I awoke in the hospital.  My mother was by my bedside and she broke the news that Eric had been killed instantly and that I had miscarried."
    Daniel was astounded that she could maintain her sanity after the tragedies of her short life.  He held her tightly and she responded, leaning her head on his shoulder while continuing to talk in a measured tone. 
    "I didn't have to wait until twenty-five to distance my mother and myself from my uncle who was my stepfather.  Fate had stolen all I held dear and prevented me from exercising my right to love but paradoxically, it had given me a great deal of money. Eric's death made me a wealthy woman."
    "And free."
    "Yes. At last I was free from my father."
    "What did you do?"
    "I decided to buy my mother a house of her own.  I traveled to Brisbane to close the deal and upon my return was notified of my mother's death.  I believe that emotionally she retreated from this world long before.  I think she went knowingly into the eye of the storm.  In the secret recesses of her heart she wanted to join her beloved husband and find a measure of peace and happiness."
    Nicole straightened and then leaned forward to cradle a cup of coffee.  In the yellow light of the lamp her hair looked like a golden mane.  She took a sip and nestled back into his arms.
    "It was a time of despair.  Left without a support and unbearably lonely, I looked like a wraith, a shadow of myself.  I turned again to art and painted as though my life depended on it.  For days and nights on end I attacked the canvas in a rage, like a wounded lioness.  When the paintings were exhibited at the local gallery I owned they sold out quickly and at high prices.  I don't know how or why, but I suddenly felt a burden was lifting from my shoulders.  Enormous strength surged through me and proved to me how strong was my appetite for life.  When I lost you I felt my world crash about me and when my child died I felt I had died along with him.  Incredibly, I neither died nor wasted away but managed for the most part to recover my native optimism.  The ache remained of course, it never completely disappeared, but I managed to compress it into a tiny flame that burns everlastingly within a corner of my heart.  Perhaps this flame will one day burn itself out and perhaps I'll have to learn to live forever with the memories and the grief.  Only time will tell."
    Daniel stayed silent, his fingers riffling her hair.  She waited for the lacerating pain that tore through her whenever she remembered that period of her life, but it didn't come.  She felt tranquil and whole.  She had never been able to bring herself to tell a soul all she had endured but now she rushed on, the words tumbling out, unable to stop.
    "I'm boring you," she apologized.
    "Not at all.  On the contrary." 
    She expected to see pity but saw only warmth and understanding in his face. "What are you thinking?"  She bit her lips in vexation, surprised at her own question.
    "Do you really want to know?"  His