IT WAS the “please” that did it. She couldn’t stand to hear her proud husband pleading with her.

She flew across the room and landed against his back, her arms going around him like channel locks. She felt the baby move and kick. She was plastered so close to Seungri, he had to have felt their son as well.

His entire body shuddered as if he’d been touched by a live electric wire. She pressed her face into back, kissing him with feverish intensity. “I don’t hate you. I love you,” she whispered fiercely against his skin. “I’m sorry I’ve expressed my love so dismally you can’t believe me. Love is supposed to be generous, but I’ve been too busy protecting myself.”

He forcefully peeled her hands from his body and spun around. “Don’t. I cannot stand it. It is me who has hurt you. I who stupidly rejected your gift of a child, your gift of yourself. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.”

“Don’t I?”

She shook her head and placed her hand over his mouth when he opened it to speak.

“Please. Let me say this.”

His lips moved against her palm in a kiss as gentle as the brush of angel’s wings and he nodded.

She lowered her hand and stepped back from him. She met the russet depths of his gaze and held it. “I love my mother, but she’s always doled out her approval and affection based on my performance as her daughter.”

Harumi took a deep breath and let it out. “I learned early on that love was conditional, that it had limits and that it hurt.”

He nodded as if he understood and considering his background, she had no doubt he did.

“So when I fell in love with you, I set limits on that love, impossible conditions you had no way of meeting. I didn’t tell you the truth because I was afraid to. You were, you are, this incredible guy, SeungHyun. You teased me about how my mom sees you as a god among men, but for me it’s no joke. You’re so much more than anything I ever believed I could have. More generous. More y. More wonderful. More man. More everything and I couldn’t believe you wanted me.”

She in more air, trying to control her emotions, before going on. “It shocked me that you’d want Alexandra, but I was sure you wouldn’t want me as myself, a convent educated girl from a conservative family that had lost all its money. And to be honest, I thought if I kept that part of myself from you, I could protect myself from you taking me over completely. There would still be that part of me left when you were gone.”

At his look of dawning understanding, she nodded. “You were right in Paris. I did expect our relationship to end, though I didn’t consciously acknowledge it at the time. By keeping the other part of my life from you, I was preparing to go on when it did. But it didn’t work because as you’ve said more than once—I was both Alexandra and Harumi with you. I grieved your loss in my other life as surely as I would have grieved if I’d stayed in Paris.”

“I wish you had stayed. I would have found you sooner.”

She grimaced. “I didn’t think you wanted to find me.”

Devastating pain radiated from his eyes. “I know. This is my fault.”

She didn’t deny it. They each had their portion of blame for the disastrous end to their relationship.

“I should have told you where I was going on my trips. I made it easy for you to distrust me and when I told you about the baby, it was understandable you thought at first I might have had a lover.”

“No! It was not!” The words exploded from him.

“I let my mother’s behavior color how I saw you. I had no reason to distrust you. You were so generous with me when we made love, so giving of yourself. I knew, I knew you could not have been that way with anyone else, but I was fighting a rearguard action against ending up as obsessed as my father had been. The feelings I had for you made me vulnerable. That was not acceptable, so I acted like the bastard you called me.”

Tears clogged . “No.”

“Yes. My only excuse is that I was not thinking clearly. Worry for my grandfather, frustration over the promise he had extracted from me, it played hell with my thinking processes. The worst part was the desperation I felt at the thought of losing you. It horrified me and when I am afraid ,I act. I lashed out at you and I lost you.”

“I waited a week for you,” she said helplessly. Not wanting him to feel worse than he already did, but wanting him to know she’d loved him enough to stay even after he had her evicted from the apartment.

“I didn’t leave until I saw the announcement of your engagement to Phoebe.”

His eyes closed and his head went back, his jaw taut. “I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life when I let my grandfather put the announcement in the paper. It all hit me. How wrong everything was. How wrong everything would continue to be if I didn’t get you back, but you were gone.”

There was a wealth of pain in those words.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I could not find you,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken,

“I had my detectives looking everywhere, but you had disappeared as if you didn’t even exist. When I slept, I had nightmares of you falling down a deep hole and vanishing forever.”

His skin broke out in sweat at the memory. She stepped forward and laid her hand against his heart.

“Losing you hurt so much, I thought I was going to die.”

He crushed her to him. “I’m sorry.”

Two words sincerely spoken, words she had never heard him say in all the time they had known each other. And they healed wounds deep in her heart.

“I love you, mon cher.”

He kissed her with a passion that seared her soul. She was lost in the beauty of his kiss when he pulled away abruptly.

“Ouch.”

She looked up, dazed. “What?”

“Something poked me.”

She looked down at her left hand where the hatpin protruded from her tightly clutched fingers. She lifted her hand and opened it to reveal the two objects she held. “I think it was the hatpin.”

“Hatpin?” he asked as if he didn’t know what one was. Maybe he didn’t. Not many women had them anymore, bu ther mother was old fashioned. She still carried starched hankies.

“Yes.”

“You planned to wear a hat?”

She laughed softly. “No. It was to pick the lock.”

“But I did not lock the door.”

“I wanted to be prepared.”

“You know how to pick a lock?” he asked, a smile tugging at his mouth.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t going to let that stop me.”

He laughed and pulled her back into his arms, this time with more caution.

“Mon cher, you are my dearest treasure and I will love you forever.”

She gulped back tears and pleaded, “Say it again.”

He cupped her face between the solid warmth of his hands. “I love you whether you are the independent career woman, Alexandra, the spitting kitten, Harumi or any other persona you choose to take on. You are the wife of my heart.”

“Show me, SeungHyun.”

And he did. Beautifully. ally. Thoroughly. Then he carried her back to their bed and showed her again. She fell asleep in his arms.