As he made short work of undoing her jeans and pulling them down excitement mounted, and she said breathily, ‘I have no objections.’ She kicked her jeans off completely.
Cruz stopped for a moment and looked at her, all teasing and sexy seductiveness gone as the significance of the moment impacted on them. ‘I love you.’
Trinity nodded, biting her lip to stave off more emotion. ‘I love you too...’
But then their urgency to connect on a deeper level took over again.
Cruz stepped out of his clothes. She reached up and wound her arms around his neck, revelling in the friction of her body against his, and when Cruz picked her up
she wrapped her legs tight around his hips and together they finished what they’d started, soaring high enough to finally leave the past behind and start again.
EPILOGUE
‘CAREFUL, BOYS, YOUR little sister is not a doll,’ Cruz admonished Matty and Sancho, who were tickling their four-month-old sister where she lay in her pram in the shade. The fact that she was their cousin and not really their sister was something they could wrap their heads around when they were older.
The boys giggled and ran away, chasing each other down the lawn, dark heads gleaming in the sunlight.
Cruz watched them go. They’d grown so much in the two years since he and Trinity had officially adopted them—turning their legal guardianship into something much more permanent and binding.
One day, not long after the adoption had come through, they’d both suddenly started calling him Papa. As if they’d taken a private mutual consultation to do so. The day it had happened he’d looked at Trinity, unable to keep the emotion from filling his eyes and chest. She’d reached out and taken his hand, her eyes welling up too as they’d realised what had just happened.
They were a family.
He shook his head now, marvelling that he couldn’t even remember a time before these two small boys existed. He would die for them. It was that simple. It was bittersweet to know that he was finally able to show his love for Rio by protecting and nurturing his nephews like this.
A happy gurgle made Cruz look down again to see his daughter, Olivia—who was already being called Livvy—smiling gummily and waving her arms and legs. She had the bright blue eyes of her mother and a tuft of golden curls on her head, and she had Cruz so wrapped around her tiny finger that he could only grin like a loon and bend down to pick her up.
‘Hey,’ protested a sleepy voice, ‘you’re meant to be getting her to sleep.’
Cruz looked to where Trinity was lying in a gently rocking hammock between two trees. Her hair was loose and long around her shoulders and she was wearing short shorts and a halterneck top that showed off her lightly golden skin and luscious curves. An indulgent smile made her mouth curve up, telling Cruz that he was so busted where his baby daughter was concerned.
Whatever he felt for his children expanded tenfold every time he looked at this woman, who filled his heart and soul with such profound grace and love he was constantly awed by it.
In spite of their busy lives she was already one year into a three-year degree in business and economics at the University of Seville, and loving it.
The castillo was almost unrecognisable too, having undergone a massive renovation and redecoration. Now it was bright and airy, with none of the darkness of its tainted past left behind.
Cruz devoured her with his eyes as he walked over, holding his precious bundle close. Trinity’s cheeks flushed as their eyes met and desire zinged between them. Ever-present. Everlasting.
She made room for him on the family-sized hammock and then settled under the arm he put behind her, her hand over Livvy where she was now sleeping on his chest, legs and arms sprawled in happy abandon.
The boys were shouting in the distance—happy sounds. Cruz could hear Mrs Jordan’s voice, so he knew they were being watched. He took advantage of the brief respite and tugged Trinity closer into his chest. She looked up at him, her mouth still turned up in a smile that was halfway between innocent and devilishly sexy.
Emotion gripped him, as it so often did now, but instead of avoiding it he dived in. ‘Thank you,’ he said, with a wealth of meaning in his words.
Thank you for giving him back his heart and an emotional satisfaction he would never have known if he hadn’t met her and fallen in love.
And even though he didn’t say those words he didn’t have to, because he could see from the sudden brightness in her eyes that she knew exactly what he meant.
She reached up and touched her lips to his—a chaste kiss, but with a promise of so much more. And she whispered emotionally against his mouth, ‘I love you, Cruz. Always.’
‘Always,’ he whispered back, twining his fingers with hers where they rested over their daughter.
Trinity rested her head in the spot made for her, between his chin and his shoulder, and the future stretched out before them, full of love and endless days just like this one.
* * * * *