‘Because…’ She thought of his honesty and at last allowed her own true feelings to come flooding out, like a river which had burst its banks. ‘Because I thought you didn’t want me any more—’
‘Not want you?’ he demanded incredulously. ‘Not want you?’
‘You haven’t come near me since…’
‘
Since the baby?’ he prompted painfully, his mouth twisting. ‘You want to know why? Because I blamed myself! If I hadn’t made love to you—’
‘But it could have happened anyway!’ she told him fiercely.
‘I know that. Now.’
Tenderly he wiped the tears from her cheek and she looked up into his face. ‘You d-do?’
He nodded. ‘My aunt Maria helped me see things in perspective.’
‘You told her?’ asked Kate in surprise.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t mind?’
How could she mind about something that had absolved his guilt? It was just the thought of her aloof Giovanni confiding in something as personal as that to his aunt!
He saw her look of confusion.
‘Aunt Maria realised that I was hurting,’ he told her. ‘And she also realised that what you and I had between us was strong—much too strong to be broken. She made me realise that some things happen just because they are meant to. That men have been making love to pregnant women since time began—and there was no earthly reason why we shouldn’t have done the same.’
‘I shouldn’t have let you shoulder the burden of guilt,’ she told him falteringly. ‘But I was hurting too much to be able to reach out and help you—and you seemed so proud and remote. You wouldn’t come near me afterwards—you wouldn’t even touch me.’
‘I thought that you would push me away,’ he admitted. ‘As well as feeling I didn’t deserve to touch you.’
Kate shook her head wonderingly. ‘And I thought that you just didn’t want my help. Or my body.’
He gave her a searingly honest look of total capitulation. ‘I want everything you’re prepared to give me,’ he said simply.
‘Then you’d better have my love, Giovanni—because it’s yours.’ Her voice trembled with emotion. ‘Only yours.’
He was filled with the urgent need to kiss her, but he wanted to vanquish all the remaining shadows that lingered between them.
‘Does it still hurt?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘About the baby?’
She nodded. The truth was painful, yes, but out of pain grew healing, and a new kind of maturity. ‘A little. But it gets easier day by day.’
‘I want to give you more babies,’ he whispered. ‘As many as you want. And I want to marry you. Mi vo spusari, cara?’
She didn’t need to speak fluent Sicilian to understand what he had just said. ‘Sí, caro. Sí.’ Her eyes grew misty as she gently ran her fingertips lovingly around the hard, proud line of his jaw, just as she had been longing to for days and days.
‘Now kiss me, please,’ she said shakily, and he took her in his arms and held her for a long, restoring moment and then did exactly that.
EPILOGUE
THE lusty cries had abated at last, and Kate slanted Giovanni a rueful smile as she sank down onto the sofa next to him.
‘He has lungs, our baby!’ she murmured.
‘He will sing opera one day,’ predicted Giovanni with the kind of expansive pride he always used when talking about his son.
‘I thought he was going into parliament?’ teased Kate.