Max's face leached of colour. 'What are you saying?'
Darcy's vision blurred with tears and she could feel her heart knitting back together. 'I'm saying I love you too, you big idiot.'
She wasn't sure who moved, but suddenly she was in his arms with hers wrapped around him so tightly she could hardly breathe. They staggered back until Max fell onto the couch, taking Darcy with him so she was sitting on his lap.
She wasn't even aware she was crying until she felt Max's hand moving up and down her back rhythmically, heard him soothing her with words in Italian...dolcezza mia...amore...
Darcy finally lifted her head and looked up at Max, who smoothed some hair off her forehead. She manoeuvred herself so that she was straddling his lap and both her hands were on his shoulders. She saw the way his eyes flared and colour came back into his cheeks and moved experimentally, exulting when she could feel the evidence of his arousal.
She moved her hips against him subtly, but pulled back when he tried to kiss her. 'Who were the women?'
His eyes flashed with a hint of the old Max. 'They were my attempt to be normal again. And none of them was you. Which was very annoying.'
He attempted to kiss her again but Darcy arched away, making Max scowl.
'Did you kiss any of them?'
Max's scowl deepened. 'I tried.'
Darcy went still as a hot skewer of jealousy ripped through her.
'But I couldn't do it. For one thing they were too tall, too skinny, too chatty about stupid things. Not you.'
Darcy smiled. 'Good.'
'What about Jack, are you sure he's gay?'
Now Max looked as if he wanted to skewer someone with a hot poker.
Darcy rolled her eyes. 'It's John. And yes, he's gay, Max. I can practically hear him drooling from here.'
Max looked smug. 'Good.'
Darcy brought her hands up to Max's face, cupping it. And then she bent her head to kiss her husband, showing him with everything in her just how much she loved him. The emotion was almost painful. Max's hands moved all over her, undoing her hair, lifting her top up and off so that she was just in her bra.
She rested her forehead against his, wondering if this was a dream. 'I thought I'd never see you again.'
Max's hands closed tight around her hips. He shook his head. 'I would have come sooner, but I was a coward, and then when I heard you'd bought a place already I thought you were moving on.'
Darcy's heart clenched. She looked into Max's eyes. 'You're not a coward, Max...anything but.'
She ran a finger lightly down over his scar and he caught her hand and pressed a kiss to the centre of her palm. He looked at her. 'The night we met Montgomery for dinner...?'
Darcy nodded.
'I think that on some subconscious level I knew I wanted you badly enough to tie you to me by any means necessary. The thing is, I wouldn't have made that impetuous decision if you had been anyone else... It's because it was you, and I had to have you no matter what.'
Max's confession eased some tiny last piece of doubt inside Darcy. She smiled and shifted against him again, putting her hands on the couch behind him, pushing her breasts wantonly towards Max's mouth.
'I think we've said all that needs to be said for now.'
Max smiled at her, long and slow and with a cocksure Maxness that told Darcy it wouldn't be long before he was back to his arrogant self again.
'I love you, Signora Fonseca Roselli. These last three months have been a torture I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You're never leaving my side again.'
She brought her hand around to the back of his head, gripping his hair, tugging at it. 'I love you, Signor Fonseca Roselli, and I have no intention of ever leaving your side again.'
And then she bent her head and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
Max growled his frustration, cupping her jaw and angling her head so that within seconds they were kissing so deeply that there was no need for any more words for quite a while.
EPILOGUE
FOR TWO AND a half years Darcy and Max lived an idyllic existence, locked happily in a bubble of love and sensuality. She continued to work for him-but only when he travelled abroad and they didn't want to be separated.
Meanwhile, Darcy set up a business as a freelance business interpreter and frequently travelled all over Europe for different assignments-which Max invariably grumbled about. Darcy ignored him. He liked to use them as an excuse to surprise her, anyway-like the time he'd appeared in Paris when she'd walked out of a meeting and whisked her off on his private jet to the romantic and windswept west coast of Ireland. They'd ended up staying in Dromoland Castle for a week...
They bought a house in Rome's leafy exclusive Monteverde district and together made it a true home, keeping on her place in London as a pied-à-terre. Max still hadn't taken the plunge and bought a football club, but he spent lots of time at matches, investigating various teams.
One of the things Darcy was happiest about, though, was the rebuilding of Max's relationship with his brother Luca. It had been slow at first, but with the help of Luca's wife Serena, whom Darcy now counted as a firm friend, the two men were now in regular contact and needed no encouragement to spend time together. Which suited Darcy and Serena fine, especially when they wanted to catch up, without their husbands doing that annoying attention-seeking thing they did.
Max's relationship with his mother stayed strained, but he'd finally come to terms with the way she was and, together with Darcy, had managed to learn how to support her without taking on her addictions as his responsibility.
As for Darcy with her parents, she had learnt to tolerate their various love catastrophes with much more humour and less of a feeling of impending doom.
And then, two and a half years into their marriage, Darcy had walked white-faced into their bedroom one morning, holding a small plastic stick.
Max had looked at her and immediately frowned, concerned. 'Ché cosa?'
She'd felt a very ominous tightening of her chest at the thought of his reaction and what it might to do them. This was the one thing they'd never really talked about, and when Serena had fallen pregnant Darcy had seen how Max had reacted in private-by shutting it out. So she knew this was a potential minefield for him-for the young boy who had been so hurt by his own parents.
Silently she'd handed him the plastic and watched as comprehension dawned.
He'd gone a little green and looked at her. 'But...how?'
She'd shrugged, feeling slightly sick herself at his reaction. 'I don't know. I've never missed a pill... But I had that flu a while back...'
They'd never spoken about Darcy coming off the pill. She'd hoped with time that they would discuss it...but now it was beyond discussion. She was pregnant.
She'd watched Max absorb the news, much in the same way she was, but whereas she felt a tiny burgeoning excitement starting to grow, she feared Max might feel the opposite.
After a long moment he'd looked at her resolutely and had come to sit on the end of the bed, the sheets tangled around his naked body. He'd reached for her and pulled her down onto his lap.
Her heart had clenched to see the clear battle going on in the golden depths of those amazing eyes but she'd waited for him to speak, and eventually he'd said gruffly, 'You know that this was never going to be easy for me...but I love you...and I can't imagine not loving any baby of ours even if I am scared to death of hurting it as Luca and I were hurt...'
Overcome with emotion at the extent of his willingness not to run scared from this, which he might have done before, Darcy had felt tears prickle behind her eyes as she'd cupped Max's jaw and pressed her mouth to his, kissing him gently.
'I trust in you, Max. You who overcame adversity time and again and who survived your own parents' woeful lack of care. You aren't capable of giving anything less than one hundred per cent commitment and love to any baby of ours. They'll be the luckiest child in the world to have you as a father.'
He'd looked at her, his eyes suspiciously bright. 'And you as their mother. I wouldn't want to do this with anyone else.'
And now, eight months later the reality that they'd come to terms with was manifest times two!
Darcy opened tired but happy eyes to take in the scene in the corner of her private hospital room.
And she would have laughed if she hadn't been afraid of bursting her Caesarean stitches.
Max was sprawled in a chair, shirt open at the neck haphazardly, jeans low on his hips. His hair was even more mussed than usual, his jaw stubbled. If it hadn't been for the two small bundles carefully balanced, one in the crook of each arm, he might have looked like the reprobate playboy he'd used to be, coming home after a debauched night out.