The next morning she was sitting at the kitchen table drinking juice when he wandered in from the office. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘No,’ Natalia quietly replied. ‘The test was negative.’
Giancarlo went still for a moment to take this in, while she sat there staring fixedly at her drink and hoping to goodness that he wouldn’t see how frightened she was that this negative response was going to change everything.
Then a pair of hands came around her waist. Warm hands, strong hands, exquisitely familiar hands that firmly propelled her out of her chair, then guided her into the circle of his arms.
‘Will you marry me, Natalia?’ he softly proposed to her.
She looked up warily, wondering if this was some kind of joke. ‘You’ve asked me that question a million times already,’ she mocked him.
‘And you said yes, once, under duress. So now I ask it again. Will you marry me because you want to do so more than anything else? Will you marry me because I want you to do so more than anything else? And will you marry me because I love you more than anyone else?’
Her heart began to swell. Tears flooded her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Because I love you more than anything else.’
‘There.’ He smiled. ‘Now we both understand each other. It feels good, hmm?’
Oh, yes, she thought as she folded her arms tightly around him. It feels very good…
EPILOGUE
STANDING here on what felt like the edge of the world, Natalia gazed out on the silver-tipped navy-blue waters of a moon-kissed ocean, and wondered if a single day could ever be more perfect than this one had been.
Down there just beneath her she could see her father and Alegra strolling hand in hand along one of the many pathways that threaded through the terraced garden. Every so often they would stop and their two heads would come together over the tiny bundle Alegra held safely cradled in the crook of her arm.
Our son, Natalia thought tenderly, and felt her heart swell in her breast with the love Alessandro brought into all their lives. His arrival two months ago had been a blessing in so many ways. For her father and Alegra, Alessandro had been the final ingredient they’d needed to help heal old wounds and replace their grief for their lost son with a newfound joy who apparently looked so much like their beloved Marco.
If you didn’t count the eyes, Natalia thought smilingly. For Alessandro’s eyes were most definitely like her own eyes—as Giancarlo never ceased to complain. ‘How am I supposed to be the strong father when he only has to look at me and I melt?’ he liked to say to defend what a soft touch he was where his son was concerned.
He too had undergone a dramatic healing, she acknowledged, thinking back to the day she had tentatively suggested to him that his son should be christened in Sicily. She’d expected a knock-back—had even been prepared for it with all her reasons at the ready to fiercely argue the point with him. But after only a few short moments of sober contemplation, Giancarlo had lifted his dark head to look at her, and it had all been there. The need, the hunger to see his homeland again, the readiness to heal that final part of him by taking happiness back to the place where only pain and grief had been left behind.
So here they were, all five of them fresh from a beautiful christening service in the same beautiful little church Giancarlo himself had once been christened in, followed up by a celebratory dinner shared in this beautiful place perched high on a Sicilian hillside, which overlooked a small piece of heaven.
She sighed happily.
‘What was that for?’ a deep voice enquired behind her.
‘Come and look,’ she urged, and felt a pair of familiar hands slide around her waist as Giancarlo joined her at the open window. As usual her bones melted at his closeness and she sank back against him. His chin came to rest on the top of her head and her hands drifted up to link fingers with his where they lay across her stomach. ‘Do you see what I see?’ she asked him.
‘And what do you see?’ he prompted.
‘I see a beautiful night in a beautiful place, with two beautiful people and a beautiful child,’ she softly confided. ‘It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?’ she then questioned anxiously. ‘You all do feel much better for coming back here?’
His mouth brushed a kiss to the top of her head. ‘Marco is no longer a ghost that haunts us, but a loving memory we have learned to cherish,’ he quietly confirmed.
‘Good,’ she said, and sighed again in absolute contentment. ‘Then everything is truly perfect.’
‘Ah, you were wanting true perfection?’ Giancarlo drawled.
His tone alone had her senses quickening, the soft feeling of contentment fleeing in the face of something much more elemental that was suddenly sizzling in the air.
‘No, Giancarlo,’ she firmly denied it. ‘We can’t make love now. Alessandro—’
‘Is in the safest hands I know besides our own,’ he inserted, then was reaching out to pull shut the bedroom window, before turning her to face him.
His eyes were gleaming with sensual promises; her body began to pulse in response. He bent down to kiss her, she sighed and let him because—when had she ever been able to resist this man? His fingers found the zip to her dress, and she quivered as it drifted down her spine.
‘You really are incorrigible sometimes,’ she informed him ruefully.