Granny Dan by Danielle Steel Page B

not be uncomfortable, but she had forced him to deny his feelings. “You deserve great happiness for all the kind things you do. You give so much to so many … and to me,” she added softly.
    “It's easy to give to you. I only wish I had more to give you. Life is cruel sometimes, isn't it? You find precisely what you want … too late to have it.”
    “Perhaps it isn't,” she said in a whisper, feeling drawn to him as she had never been to any man, except him, when he had kissed her. He didn't dare ask her what she meant, but only looked at her, and her eyes were beckoning him with an openness and love for him that was so evident, he could not mistake their invitation.
    “I don't want to hurt you … or upset you. … I love you too much to do that,” he said, trying to hold back all that he felt for her, for her sake.
    “I love you, Nikolai,” she said simply, and without hesitating this time, or fearing anything, he took her gently in his arms and kissed her, and it was all that they had each dreamed of. They were ready for it this time, it did not take them by surprise, or frighten them, and this time it was what they both wanted.
    They kissed for a long time in front of the fire, and he held her in his arms, until the fire began to dim and she began to shiver, with the chill and their excitement. She knew that she was his now.
    “Come … you will catch a cold, my love. I'll put you to bed, and go,” he whispered in the last glow of the fire, and then he led her to her bedroom. “Shall I help you out of the dress?” It looked complicated and she couldn't manage it alone, and with a small smile she nodded. She would have had to sleep in it without one of the maids to help her undo it.
    She looked like a child as he gently lifted the dress away from her, standing there with her lithe, thin, youthful dancer's body, and her eyes were huge as she looked at him with something innocent and longing. “It's too late for you to go home,” she whispered cautiously, not sure what to say to him, or how to begin it. She had never done this before, and couldn't imagine it now. But she also could no longer imagine not being with him.
    “What are you saying to me?” he whispered back in the chill of the early morning, looking worried.
    “Stay with me. We don't have to do anything we don't want to. I just want you here with me.” He belonged there, and she knew it, just as he did.
    “Oh, Danina,” he said softly, knowing that it was the beginning of a new life, and the end of an old one. For both of them, it was a moment filled with promise and decision. “I want so much to be here with you.” It was all he had wanted since the moment he met her, even more so since she had come here. And he realized now this was why he had done everything he could to bring her to this cottage, to be near him.
    They undressed carefully, and a moment later were in her huge comfortable bed, snuggled deep under the covers, and as she glanced up at him in the darkness, she giggled, and sounded like a schoolgirl.
    “Why are you laughing, silly girl?” he asked, still whispering, as though someone could hear them. But there was no one there at that hour. They were entirely alone, with their secrets and their love for each other.
    “It just seems funny. … I was so afraid of what I felt for you … and of what I knew of your feelings, and now here we are, like two naughty children.”
    “Not naughty children, my love … happy ones … maybe we have a right to this after all … perhaps it was meant to be. My destiny, and yours. Danina, I have never loved any woman as I love you.” And with that, he kissed her quietly and firmly, and her passion rose with his, as he taught her all she had never known and never dreamed of, and never thought of finding with him. But it was all there, waiting for her, the gifts, the grace, the love they had each longed for. And as she slept in his arms at last, he held her close and smiled at the