He took a ragged breath, never letting go her gaze as she lifted it to his, yearning for his. He was filled with an emotion so strong it overpowered him, yet through it he spoke again. And each word bound him to her with bonds that would never break, could never break. Not now. Not ever.
‘I know, Fran, with every fibre of my being, that you recognised that too and still do.’ He paused, and she could hear the catch in his voice, felt her heart turn over at it. ‘And you always will. For we have it again, and more, that rightness between us. The rightness of our love.’
He cupped her face with his hands, cradling it between his strong, tender fingers. His eyes pouring into hers.
‘The love of Nic Rossi for Doc Fran—and, yes, the love between the people we also are, if we can accept it in each other. Nicolo Falcone and Donna Francesca. They too can love each other now.’
His voice changed, became edged with the bitterness engendered in him long, long ago.
‘I know I will hardly be welcomed by your family—a self-made, fatherless slum kid—’
Her fingers flew to his mouth to silence him. Emotion was streaming through her as strong as the dazzling radiance of the universe, joy and wonder and a rapture she had never known till now. But she had to speak. To counter what he’d just said. Set it to rest for ever.
‘How can you say that? You’re a billionaire hotelier! You could probably buy and sell my father ten times over.’
Her voice changed, became strained, and her eyes searched his painfully as she lifted his hands away, folding them within her own, impressing upon them the fearful emotion she felt suddenly.
‘I don’t want you despising me for an accident of birth. I can’t help being who I was born, any more than you can.’
‘I know that,’ he acknowledged heavily. His expression became shadowed. ‘But I’ve had to fight for everything I ever had, and I’ve always despised those who have it handed to them on a plate, despised everything they stand for. All that the likes of Vito Viscari stand for. I have done right from the moment he appeared, fresh out of university and wet behind the ears, and his uncle gave him the managerial position I had worked my guts out to deserve in years of hard, unrelenting slog. Right to the moment his wife’s mother gave him back the shares I’d seized from him in my takeover bid.’
She rested her forehead against the strong wall of his chest, his hands still folded within hers, feeling his heart pounding within. Then, abruptly, she lifted her head away.
‘Nic.’ Her voice was urgent. ‘You have to l
et go of such feelings.’ She guided his right hand, deliberately sliding it beneath the thick quilting of her jacket, across the soft warmth of her body beneath. She felt him start, but ignored it. She pressed her own hand over his, keeping it there.
‘Our baby, Nic,’ she said. ‘Our baby will be born to both our heritages. Its grandfather will be a marchese, its great-grandfather a duke, and it will be heir to your billions. Are you going to despise it for the circumstances of its birth?’
She nodded slowly as she went on, his silence giving her the answer she knew he must give.
‘You see?’ she said softly.
She slid her fingers into his, rounded on her still slender frame within which their baby nestled, safe and protected. Growing to become the child they had created between them.
Our baby is real. Growing and living.
Wonder filled her, and a feeling of thankfulness that was an embrace to the baby deep within her.
A baby...a mother...a father. A family.
Emotion caught at her throat and she leaned into the strong body of the man with whom she had created such a miracle. A sense of peace possessed her now, after the tumult of her tears. A peace so profound and a sense of wonder so radiant in her mind, her heart, that she could scarcely bear it.
She had come here, to the destination they had never reached on that road trip that had ended before it should, to say goodbye to him. But now—ah, now—
Joy flamed in her—the same sudden blaze that had filled her when she’d seen him after all those months in London, but more...oh, so much more!
Could they really, truly be here together? United like this?
His hand was on her belly, and her hand was on his, and beneath them both the baby they had made was growing silently and secretly. For the first time she gave a little gasp of wonder. For the first time it was real to her. And as she cradled the tiny being, and he did too, for the first time she felt the wondrous reality of conception like a flower opening within her.
We’ve made it real. Made it real because now we are real together too! Nic and Fran... Nicolo and Francesca. And we are all the family we shall make together, when our baby is born to us.
Love poured through her—love for her baby, love for the man she had created it with. Love that she had never known nor had thought to feel. But now it was alight in her—a flame that could never be quenched.
She lifted her face to his, all that she felt blazing in her gaze, clinging to him, their arms around each other.
‘Am I dreaming this?’ There was a smile in her eyes, a yearning.