Francesca nodded slowly. ‘I think so…’
‘I’m glad you’re pregnant, Francesca. I’m over the moon that you’re having my baby but I meant what I said. I want to marry you, baby or not, because I…because I realise that sleeping with you wasn’t enough for me.’ He gave her a crooked smile but underneath she could see that he was drained. ‘Call me a greedy man, but I want more than just your beautiful body. I want your mind, your heart, your soul, because you have mine. All those things. They’re yours. They belonged to you three years ago when you walked out on me and they belong to you now. If you’ll have them. I hope you do and I hope that you’ll marry me even if I have to spend the rest of my days winning your love. Even if, right now, you may not think me the right man for you.’ Over the past torturous week Angelo had figured out what it was about love that set it aside from everything he had ever experienced in his life before. Aside from being the one thing over which he exerted no control, it was also a humbling experience. He was hanging on for dear life to what she would say.
‘That’s a tall order, Angelo.’
He paled. In one short sentence, his world came crashing down.
‘I mean,’ Francesca continued thoughtfully, ‘it takes a lot to win my love.’
‘I’ll do anything.’
‘Romantic gestures?’ She frowned. ‘You know, flowers et cetera, little love notes dotted around…’
Angelo looked at the slow smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘Yes, I can do flowers et cetera.’
‘Candlelit dinners now and again—cooked by you, of course…’
He raised his eyebrows and looked doubtful. ‘You drive a hard bargain but I’m willing to give it a go.’
‘Breakfast in bed every morning?’
‘Seriously pushing your luck here.’
‘Then how about sex on demand?’
‘I think I can manage that.’
‘I love you, Angelo.’ She looked at him with shining eyes. ‘I fell in love with you years ago and that’s why I never told you the truth about myself, my background. I thought that you would drop me like a hot potato the minute you found out and, the longer I left it, the more of a mountain it became until there was no way out but to leave, but I’ve been hurting all this time.’ She leaned towards him and kissed him, melting into his arms, letting him carry her over to the bed—but no sex, he told her, not until her doctor had given her the go-ahead.
So they talked. Once he started, Angelo found that the words poured out of him, words that had never crossed his lips before. He could remember Georgina asking him if he loved her, could remember his reply that love was an illusion, something people clung on to because it made them feel safer, less isolated. It had seemed a perfectly reasonable response to him at the time. No longer.
Francesca, caught up in the rapture of the unbelievable, could have listened to him for ever. She quizzed him over and over about whether he was certain that he could marry a woman with a colourful past and was ridiculously pleased when he told her that her past was a damn sight more interesting than anyone else’s he could think of. What she saw as a liability he viewed as an asset, and Francesca didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but what she did know was that he would protect her from anyone who might ever dare to question his decision. The rush of love that filled her made her tremble.
‘Do you realise,’ Angelo said, eventually drawing her to him, ‘I’ve never had as many unofficial days off work with any woman as I’ve had with you? And yet we’ve never been on holiday together. We’ll just have to put that right while there are just the two of us to consider…’
They did. Three months later, for their honeymoon on a tiny island in the Caribbean. The wedding had been small—just a few close friends and family and no paparazzi. Francesca had no idea how he had managed to pull that off but, as he’d wryly told her, today’s gossip became yesterday’s fish and chips’ wrapping in the blink of an eye.
With her pregnancy now beginning to show, Francesca wore a range of loose clothing and one-piece swimsuits, ignoring Angelo’s urges that she show her swelling stomach proudly. Everything about her pregnancy made him proud.