Bestselling Authors Collection 2012(57)

‘I don’t want to marry you because I feel guilty for what happened.’

A frisson of fear zipped down her spine. ‘But you can’t marry me. Look at where I come from. What would people think?’

‘I don’t care what people think. You know that.’

‘But people will still talk.’

‘And all they will discover is that we grew up three blocks and however many years apart. Yes, Angelina,’ he said in answer to her look of disbelief, ‘I spent the first fifteen years of my life in the very next suburb. I lived there with my nonna and poppa, and mother, until none of them were left, then I was determined to find their house by the sea for them. The home they never had.’

He smiled. ‘So you see, there’s no reason why you should refuse me now, surely.’

‘But I still don’t understand why you want to.’

He took one of her hands in his and gave her a crooked grin. ‘Why? Because I love you. I was too damned stupid to admit it or even recognise it before, but nearly losing you made me realise that I love you.’

Even under the sensation-numbing drugs being pumped into her body, she could still feel the unmistakable trip of her heart, and the swell of emotion as hope sprouted and blossomed into something magnificent. Something real. Real. There was that word again—the word that seemed to surround this man from the moment she’d met him.

Yet still she dared not believe it could be true. ‘But Carla. I thought you were still in love with Carla. This is her child. I thought that’s why you wanted it so much.’

He smiled a sad smile, reaching over to brush his baby’s hair, skimming his thumb over her brow. ‘Carla will always have a place in my heart.’

‘She was so very beautiful.’

He nodded. ‘She was, and yet so brittle at the same time.’ He turned his eyes from his sleeping child to the woman holding her. ‘She wasn’t like you, Angelina, so strong and resilient. Carla always wanted what she couldn’t have, thinking it would make her happy, thinking it would be enough. But nothing was ever enough for her. Money wasn’t enough. The house wasn’t enough. Still she wasn’t happy.

‘And then she decided a baby would make her happy. But by then she was already losing weight, already starving herself. There was no way she could conceive and no way she would listen to anyone.’

He sighed. ‘When I first met you, you reminded me of how she looked. So gaunt and half-starved. I couldn’t understand why you had been able to grow this child, when she hadn’t.’

‘You said you hated me back then.’

‘I know.’ He blew out through his teeth. ‘I didn’t know you. I didn’t trust you. I was angry.’

His hand dropped to hers again. ‘I was so wrong. It was like I’d built a stone wall around my heart. I hadn’t been able to save Carla with all the money in the world. All it took was one simple infection. Anyone else would have had the strength to fight it off. She had nothing to fight with.’

Angie looked down at the baby in her arms, her heart squeezed tight.

‘I didn’t want to have to save anyone else,’ he continued. ‘When you turned up on the scene with my baby in your belly, it was like you had started shaking those walls at their very foundations. And I didn’t want them coming down. I fought it every step of the way.

‘You brought them down, and you grounded me and brought me back to life, just as you have given life to our child. So believe me when I tell you, I want to be with you for ever. I want you to be my wife. I love you, Angelina, and one day I hope you can find a way to love me too, after all that I have put you through.’

She looked up at him, blinking through misty eyes.

‘I do love you, Dominic. It’s been so hard these past few months, loving you.’ And the tears came then—tears of joy. Tears of relief. Tears of love.

He sat next to her on the bed and cradled her head in his arm, one hand behind his baby’s head. ‘Then you’ll marry me.’

She sniffed and nodded and cried some more and now she looked a complete and utter mess and still she could not stop herself, she was so deliriously happy. And as if he sensed her fears, he kissed her eyes, kissed away her tears. He took the sleeping infant from her arms and placed her back in her crib and reached down for the package he’d brought with him.

‘I didn’t think to get a ring,’ he said apologetically. ‘But I’d like you to have this.’ He handed her the parcel, wrapped in simple gold tissue paper, tied with a red ribbon.

She looked at it and then up to him, the question in her eyes. ‘Open it,’ he prompted, suddenly nervous.