“I take it that wasn’t the case?” Arielle guessed.
Zach’s harsh laughter caused her to cringe. “Not even close. As soon as she heard the word pregnant, she started doing everything she could think of to lose the baby.”
She sensed what he was about to tell her next and instinctively placed a protective hand over her stomach.
“After a few weeks of starving herself and refusing to get the rest she needed, she was successful.”
“I’m so sorry, Zach,” Arielle sympathized. As excited as he’d been about their babies, he must have been devastated by the woman’s intentional miscarriage.
Nodding, he reached up to run his hand through his thick dark brown hair. “I’d been busy opening the Aspen resort and wasn’t paying enough attention to realize what was going on.” He shook his head. “Maybe if I had, I could have convinced her to have the baby for me to raise.”
It suddenly became clear why he’d been so determined to see that she ate right and when she mentioned anything about gaining weight, he’d become irritable. It also explained why he made sure she took a nap every day. He didn’t trust her when she told him how excited she was about having a child and was making sure nothing happened to jeopardize the pregnancy.
“I’m not her, Zach.”
“I know, darlin’. And I’m sorry for holding you accountable. I’m the one at fault for not seeing it sooner.” He shook his head. “The same as I am for not recognizing what she was doing.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Zach. It sounds to me that no matter how attentive you were, your fiancée would have found a way to end the pregnancy.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed. “But at the time, all I could see were my dreams of having a family fall apart.”
With sudden insight, she realized that just like her, his lack of a conventional family while growing up was what made having one of his own so important to him. “I’m sure that was extremely hard for you.”
“I survived.” He gave her a hesitant look. “But not without losing a good chunk of my pride.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she commented, wondering what his pride had to do with it.
He walked back over to sit down in front of her on the edge of the coffee table. “I’ve always had this thing about being right. And when I think I am, come hell or high water, I won’t back down.”
“Mattie mentioned that when you’re convinced of something, you can be extremely stubborn,” Arielle relayed, recalling how insistent he’d been about her having the flu.
“That’s right, darlin’. And when I discovered I’d been wrong about my fiancée, it sent me into a tailspin.” She watched his chest rise and fall as he drew in a deep breath. “It was hard for me to admit that I’d been wrong about her and her feelings for me. But it was that much harder when I realized I was wrong about the way I felt for her.”
“No one likes having to accept they’ve made a mistake and especially about something like that, Zach.” She knew firsthand how difficult it had been for her to concede that she’d been wrong about him never being able to love her.
He nodded. “But then I made an even bigger mistake when I made the conscious choice not to put myself in that position again and risk taking another hit to my pride.”
“In other words, you decided not to love anyone or trust that they would love you,” she recapped, realizing as never before that the situation between them had been hopeless from the beginning.
“But I was wrong.” He stared down at his hands a moment before he lifted his gaze to hers. “Only I didn’t realize it until you came along.”
Her heart squeezed painfully and she had to force herself to breathe. She couldn’t bear to hear him make a false confession of love, simply to get her to marry him.
“Please don’t, Zach.”
“What? Don’t tell you that I fell in love with you the minute I saw you out on that ski slope?” He took her hands in his as he shook his head. “I can’t do that, darlin’.”
Tears filled her eyes and she forced herself to pull away from his touch. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow herself to believe him. If she did and it turned out that he was lying, she’d never survive.
“I think…you’d better…go.”
When he moved to sit beside her on the couch and took her into his arms, her body began to tremble uncontrollably. “I can’t do this…Zach.”
“I know you don’t believe me and you think I’m just telling you what you want to hear,” he observed gently. “But I swear with everything that’s in me that I do love you, Arielle. And I’m sorry for all the heartache I’ve caused both of us.”
“I wish…I could believe—”
Suddenly turning her to face him, he cupped her cheeks and forced her to look at him. “Darlin’, don’t you think that if I was going to lie to you about how I feel, I’d have told you what I knew you wanted to hear the other night at the resort?”
What he said was true. He could have easily told her he loved her then. But he hadn’t. He’d been painfully honest about his feelings for her.
“But why…now?” she mumbled, sniffing back a fresh wave of tears. “What caused you…to change your mind?”
He smiled tenderly. “I didn’t change my mind. I just came to the realization that all the pride in the world isn’t worth having without your love. Without you, darlin’, my life means less than nothing.”
The sincerity in his eyes convinced her that he meant every word he said. “Oh, Zach, I love you so much, but—”
“I know you’re afraid, Arielle.” He brushed his lips over hers. “But if you’ll give me a second chance, I’ll spend every day for the rest of my life making sure you never doubt how much I love you.”
“Third.”
“What?” he asked, frowning.
“You asked for a second chance. But you’ve already had that. This will be your third chance.” She gave him a watery smile. “And I think it’s only fair to warn you that it’s your last. You’d better get it right this time, Mr. Forsythe, because there won’t be another.”
He crushed her to him then and gave her a kiss that left both of them gasping for breath. “I love you, Arielle Garnier. Will you marry me?”