He raised his head. ‘I went back to Spain.’
‘What for?’
His hands lowered, settling around her waist, drawing her close. ‘I had some ghosts to lay to rest. Some people to visit.’
‘Including your parents?’
‘Including my parents.’
Emily’s thoughts flickered to Elena and her heart swelled with gladness for the other woman. ‘And did you make any discoveries?’
‘A few.’
His heart pumping at a fierce pace, Ramon studied the exquisite features of the woman who had boldly declared her love for him, then sent him packing and told him not to return until he’d figured himself out.
She’d shocked him to his core. Flipped him into a brutal tailspin of anger and disbelief.
And fear. Mind-bending, gut-wrenching fear—because he’d known he couldn’t lose her.
‘I learned,’ he said, ‘that sometimes a man must confront his past before he can put it behind him.’
Soft grey eyes searched his. ‘And have you?’
‘Sí, querida. I have.’
Tears filled her eyes then and, though he had no wish to see her cry, he took them as a good sign.
‘Who else did you visit?’
‘Many people,’ he confessed.
He had started with his old girlfriend, with whom, once he’d tracked her down, he’d had the conversation they should’ve had twelve years ago before he’d fled Spain. He’d found Ana in a stylish home in Madrid, married with two small children, and happy. She’d moved on and she bore Ramon no ill will. Next he’d visited Jorge’s parents in Barcelona, whom he’d not seen since the funeral, and discovered they didn’t share their youngest son’s antipathy towards Ramon. Jorge’s mother had hugged him, cried for a moment, then invited him in. Matteo, they’d said, was a troubled young man, and they’d been appalled to hear of the incident in the tapas bar.
The next day he’d gone to see his brother, and then he’d returned to his parents’ villa, where, for the first time in a long time, he’d looked his mother in the eye and embraced her in a hug that had lifted her feet clean off the ground.
Finally, he’d come back to London and had a long, frank conversation with Maxwell Royce.
It’d been an intense, cathartic five days, and at some point he’d tell it all to Emily, but not now. That was the past. Right now his interest lay only in the future.
‘Want to know what else I learned, querida?’ he asked softly.
She nodded, and he reached into his pocket, pulling out the black velvet box containing her engagement ring.
‘I learned that I’m tired of running...’ He plucked the ring from its bed, lifted her left hand and slid the cool platinum band with its striking setting of diamonds and sapphires onto her finger. ‘And that I want to be the man—the only man—who loves you for the rest of his life.’ He pressed his lips to her knuckles. ‘I love you, mi belleza. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
Eyes glistening, she wound her arms around his neck, her delicious curves pressing into his body. ‘Yes,’ she said, and a groan of relief mingled with desire tore from Ramon’s throat.
Gathering her close, he claimed her mouth in a kiss that was almost savage in its intensity.
Long minutes later, when their breath-deprived lungs cried out for air, they broke apart.
Surrendering to the feverish need to stamp his possession on her in every way possible, he swung her into his arms and headed for the bedroom.
As he lowered her onto the bed, she captured his jaw in her hand and murmured, ‘Why Paris?’
He laid his hand over her stomach, the small bump which he couldn’t wait to see grow filling his palm. ‘This is where we began. Where we created our child.’ He trailed his lips along her jaw, down her neck. ‘It will be a special place for us always, sí?’
Her eyes filled again. ‘I love you, Ramon.’