He paled. In one short sentence, his world came crashing down.
‘I mean,’ Francesca continued thoughtfully, ‘it takes a lot to win my love.’
‘I’ll do anything.’
‘Romantic gestures?’ She frowned. ‘You know, flowers et cetera, little love notes dotted around…’
Angelo looked at the slow smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘Yes, I can do flowers et cetera.’
‘Candlelit dinners now and again—cooked by you, of course…’
He raised his eyebrows and looked doubtful. ‘You drive a hard bargain but I’m willing to give it a go.’
‘Breakfast in bed every morning?’
‘Seriously pushing your luck here.’
‘Then how about sex on demand?’
‘I think I can manage that.’
‘I love you, Angelo.’ She looked at him with shining eyes. ‘I fell in love with you years ago and that’s why I never told you the truth about myself, my background. I thought that you would drop me like a hot potato the minute you found out and, the longer I left it, the more of a mountain it became until there was no way out but to leave, but I’ve been hurting all this time.’ She leaned towards him and kissed him, melting into his arms, letting him carry her over to the bed—but no sex, he told her, not until her doctor had given her the go-ahead.
So they talked. Once he started, Angelo found that the words poured out of him, words that had never crossed his lips before. He could remember Georgina asking him if he loved her, could remember his reply that love was an illusion, something people clung on to because it made them feel safer, less isolated. It had seemed a perfectly reasonable response to him at the time. No longer.
Francesca, caught up in the rapture of the unbelievable, could have listened to him for ever. She quizzed him over and over about whether he was certain that he could marry a woman with a colourful past and was ridiculously pleased when he told her that her past was a damn sight more interesting than anyone else’s he could think of. What she saw as a liability he viewed as an asset, and Francesca didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but what she did know was that he would protect her from anyone who might ever dare to question his decision. The rush of love that filled her made her tremble.
‘Do you realise,’ Angelo said, eventually drawing her to him, ‘I’ve never had as many unofficial days off work with any woman as I’ve had with you? And yet we’ve never been on holiday together. We’ll just have to put that right while there are just the two of us to consider…’
They did. Three months later, for their honeymoon on a tiny island in the Caribbean. The wedding had been small—just a few close friends and family and no paparazzi. Francesca had no idea how he had managed to pull that off but, as he’d wryly told her, today’s gossip became yesterday’s fish and chips’ wrapping in the blink of an eye.
With her pregnancy now beginning to show, Francesca wore a range of loose clothing and one-piece swimsuits, ignoring Angelo’s urges that she show her swelling stomach proudly. Everything about her pregnancy made him proud.
Through the open windows of their little wooden cabana she could hear the sound of the sea lapping against the shore and outside was inky black.
Angelo was standing in front of the mirror, absentmindedly trying to tidy his hair without the use of a comb, towel slung low on his hips because he had just emerged from the shower.
He caught her eye in the mirror and grinned. ‘Are you doing that on purpose?’ he asked, turning around. ‘Lying there with that sexy little smile on your face? You know what it’s going to do to me…’ As if to prove his point, he released the towel and revealed his arousal.
‘You mean I still turn you on even though I no longer possess that model figure that used to drive you crazy?’ As if she needed reassuring. He had proved to her over and over again just how much she still turned him on. He delighted in her blossoming figure and adored the heavy fullness of her breasts and the darkening of her nipples, which had become much larger and more pronounced.
Now he knelt by the side of the bed and, as she rolled over to face him, he lazily lifted her lacy pyjama top to reveal the exquisite bounty of her breasts, which lay like ripened fruit waiting for his attention.
Francesca watched with loving eyes as he delicately traced the full, dark circle, then the hardened tip, with his tongue before drawing the nipple into his mouth and suckling on it. With one hand he caressed her stomach and she groaned softly, parting her legs to invite his hand there.
This was her man and this was the very, very wonderful life she had never imagined she could ever have.