Read Online All of My Love by Francis Ray - Free Book Online Page B

me?” he barked, his dark eyes blazing with fury and pain. “What did he give you that I couldn’t?”
    Her hands clenched. Her eyes closed. She didn’t want to hurt him.
    “Tell me!”
    Her eyes snapped open. They’d never begin to heal until everything was out in the open. “You were always busy with running the hotel. We never seemed to have any time for ourselves. You barely noticed me anymore. I was afraid of losing you and decided to make you jealous so you’d pay more attention to me, talk to me the way you used to.” She swallowed. “It got out of control somehow as we drifted further apart and you shut me out more.”
    “I was busy trying to keep the hotel profitable.” He shoved his hand over his head. “Grandfather always said how easy it was for a McBride male to make money. It wasn’t that way for me. I didn’t want to fail you or the generations before me. I didn’t want you to know how scared I was that I’d be the first McBride male to fail.”
    “Paul.” She went to him. “I’m sorry you couldn’t confide in me. Even sorrier that I didn’t lock us in a room and tell you how miserable and lonely I was. I ran away from our problems instead of facing them. I failed us.”
    “I did, too,” he admitted. “I have to share the blame. I ought to have remembered how we always worked together, shared everything. I should have never put the hotel above our marriage.”
    “And I should have been more sensitive, instead I started thinking you didn’t care.” She moved away from him. “I listened to Trevor saying the only reason you wanted me was to work, and later because another man did, that if you loved me, you’d be as attentive as he was. He’d proven his love and devotion by not pushing for us to be intimate until after we were married because he wanted to spend a lifetime with me.”
    “The conniving bastard,” Paul spat. “I was lost without you.”
    “The same way I was without you.” Stella faced Paul. “The marriage never felt right. I really tried, but I didn’t fit in with his friends or their lifestyles. Trevor liked to tell his friends that he had to marry me to get me into bed. He thought it was funny. I cringed each time he told it.” She shook her head.
    “He was a different man in New York than he was here. In Santa Fe he appeared to be his own man, but there he was always worried about what other people thought, always trying to make sure he remained on the A-list, that he threw the best parties, had the best wine cellar. Frankly, I was surprised the marriage lasted as long as it did,” Stella conceded.
    “You tossed away everything for that?”
    She looked Paul straight into his eyes, saw the pain, hoped he saw hers. “Yes, for a cheap illusion of happiness when I had the real thing with you all along—if I had been strong enough to fight for it.”
    “What’s to keep you from running after another illusion?” Paul asked.
    “You,” she answered simply. “Me. I hurt you in too many ways to imagine. I can only ask your forgiveness and tell you that my feet are planted firmly on the ground. I know who I am and what I want.”
    “Do you?” he taunted. “Sometimes you acted as if you’d shatter when I said something to you.”
    “Because I was ashamed,” she confessed. “I still am, but I finally realized with a little help from a friend, that you have the right to say what you feel, to see how I feel, to know that I not only messed up your life, I messed up mine as well.”
    “Ruth.”
    “Yes. So if you need to vent, I’m not promising I won’t react, but I can promise you I won’t run away.” She looked around the kitchen. “If there was ever a place where we could try and heal from my mistakes, it’s here.”
    “I made mistakes, too,” he told her, then added, “I should tell you, I don’t know if I can forget.”
    She trembled. “I think forgetting would be difficult for either of us. I’m hoping we can work past the anger. We’re