She cleared her throat and still the words wouldn’t form.
He extended a hand and took a shuffling step towards her. His throat moved before he croaked, ‘Why are you here?’
She cleared her throat again and finally managed to speak. ‘I got your letter.’
He just stared at her.
Aislin took the deepest breath of her life. ‘Dante... In your letter, you said whatever I do with my life I have to be happy. Dante... If I’m to be happy in my future...’ Her voice became a whispered quiver, everything she wanted to say jumbled. ‘The days I spent with you were the happiest I’ve ever known.’
‘What are you saying?’ he whispered.
A tear leaked down her cheek. ‘That since I’ve left Sicily it’s felt as if I don’t know how to be happy any more. You make me happy.’
The eyes that hadn’t left her face or even blinked gave a sudden spark of life.
‘Dante, I’m sorry for the cruel things I said to you...’
‘No!’ Suddenly he was striding towards her, the warm hands whose touch she’d missed more than she’d believed humanly possible cupping her cheeks, fingers kneading into her skin. ‘Don’t you dare apologise for speaking the truth. I behaved abominably.’
Dante cursed and gritted his teeth, sliding his hands around her face to delve his fingers into the russet hair he adored so much.
He’d thought he’d hallucinated her. But she was here, beautiful and sweet-smelling and solidly real.
He pressed his forehead to hers. ‘I was scared... My feelings for you, all the things I was trying to deal with... I couldn’t deal with any of it. I was a fool. The biggest fool. I told myself you were everything I didn’t want when the truth is you are everything I need.’
Her glistening eyes widened and her chin wobbled.
He kissed her gently. ‘I’ve known you such a short time but it feels as if you’ve been in my heart for ever.’
‘You’re in my heart too,’ she whispered.
‘Am I?’ He hardly dared to believe... ‘I thought you hated me.’
She placed a tender hand to his cheek and brushed her lips to his. ‘I told myself I hated you because it was the only way I could cope, but the truth is I’m lost without you. I try to smile and plan for the future but it’s all been a lie because I can’t eat, I can’t sleep... Our time together did something to me. You’ve done something to me. The only future my heart wants is a future with you.’
Suddenly he did dare to believe.
Dante dared to believe that his future could be happy too.
Claiming her mouth with his, he hauled her to him and wrapped his arms tightly around her, kissing the raspberry lips until he had no air left in him.
Breaking away to trace his mouth over her cheeks, he then buried his nose into her hair and filled his lungs with her wonderful scent.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
She nuzzled her nose into his neck. ‘I love you too.’
Those four short words were sweeter than the sweetest confectionery. The weight that had compressed him since she’d gone not only lifted from his chest but from his entire body.
His heart beat loud and rapidly, but for the first time in weeks he could breathe, and the air he inhaled had never smelled so good.
When he next looked at the beautiful face he had missed so much, her smile infused every cell in his body with the sunlight it had missed without her. Dante made a vow to himself there and then that he would never drive her sunlight from his life again.
It was a vow he kept for the rest of his life.
EPILOGUE
THE CATHEDRAL BOUNCED with the beams of the late-summer sun and, as Aislin approached it, careful of the enormous train of her dress which Orla and Sab