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And what was that he’d said? That he loved her?
“Yes,” he said grimly, his eyes locked to hers so that she knew she’d spoken the words aloud, “I love you, though I’m damned if I know why I should. To walk out on me, just when I was about to tell you what you mean to me. To run from me and leave me with half a dozen blind alleys to search—”
“Three,” Fallon said, her voice trembling.
“Tokyo. London. San Francisco.” His eyes narrowed; he came toward her slowly, one step at a time. Dimly, Fallon saw her mother stand up, smile at her, touch Stefano’s shoulder and slide the terrace door closed behind her. “Do you have any idea what a week in hell is?” Stefano grabbed her shoulders. “I sloshed around London in the rain for two days, drove the streets in San Francisco until I never wanted to see one again, got to Japan just in time for a damned typhoon—”
“A couple of lessons in humility never hurt anybody.”
“Is that what this was all about? Did you think I needed to be humbled?” His hands tightened on her. “I love you. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”
“You don’t love me,” she said, and tried to pull free. He wouldn’t let her. Instead, he jerked her to her toes.
“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t do, damn it! Your mother’s the same piece of work you are. I phoned, I said I was crazy in love with you and if she knew where you were, she had to tell me, and she said, ‘you don’t love my daughter or you wouldn’t have broken her heart.’ His voice roughened. “And I said, Mrs. O’Connell—”
“Coyle,” Fallon said numbly, while her brain tried to process what was happening. “My mother’s name is—”
“I said, Mrs. O’Connell, I didn’t break your daughter’s heart, she broke mine. There I was, about to do something I’d sworn I’d never do, get down on one knee and say, ‘Fallon, I love you. I adore you. I need you more than I need breath. Will you marry me?’ and instead of giving me the chance to say all that, your daughter tore my heart in pieces and dropped it on the floor.”
“I tore up a slip of paper,” Fallon said, her voice trembling, “because you wanted Fallon O’Connell, supermodel, instead of the Fallon O’Connell who lives inside me.”
“That’s crap!”
“You want me to have surgery on my face.”
“I want you to smile again, damn it.”
“That’s it. Make it sound as if the surgery was for me, not for—”
Stefano kissed her to silence. His mouth was hard against hers and why wouldn’t it be? he thought furiously. He wanted to shake her, to turn her over his knee, to make her know that he’d almost lost his mind when he’d thought he’d lost her.
Maybe he had. She wasn’t kissing him back, wasn’t doing anything…
And then, slowly, her lips softened against his. Her hands rose and clutched his shirt. She made a soft, sweet little sound that he’d been afraid he’d never hear her make again.
His kiss gentled and he gathered her in his arms. At last, he took his mouth from hers.
“I love you,” he said gruffly. “Can you imagine what it did to me when I saw the shadows in your eyes? I realized you were hurting inside, that I was being selfish, that if it weren’t for me you’d have contacted a surgeon—and then you confirmed it all, the night before you ran away.”
“Confirmed what?” Fallon said in confusion.
“Don’t you remember? You asked me how I’d feel, if you had surgery.” He cupped her face in his hands. “That was when I knew it was time to stop lying to myself and pretending that my love for you was enough to heal you. You have to do what’s right for you, not for me.”
“Oh, Stefano. All this time, I thought…” She touched his cheek. “But the names of those doctors—”
“The friend in Boston I told you about is a doctor. He gave me their names. If you want surgery, then I want you to have the best. And I’ll be with you, every step of the way.”
Fallon gave a watery little laugh. “You want the surgery because you think I want it?”
“I told you, I’ve been selfish—”
“You?” She shook her head and wound her arms around his neck. “You’re the most generous man in the world, Stefano. I thought you wanted me to have surgery. That you couldn’t look at me without pitying me, and I don’t want pity from you, I want—”
“What, sweetheart? What do you want? My heart? My soul? My life? They’re all yours. I wanted to wait and tell you these things when you were whole. I was afraid if I rushed things, I’d take advantage of you.”
Fallon laughed. She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ve always loved you, don’t you know that?”
Stefano kissed her again and again, until she was clinging to him. Then he leaned his forehead against hers.
“I should have told you about Carla,” he said in a low voice. “But I couldn’t figure out a way to tell the woman I loved that I’d slept with a woman she knew, much less the woman she was working for. Not when things suddenly seemed precarious. You’d stopped smiling, stopped looking at me with something special glowing in your eyes.”
Fallon nodded. He’d made mistakes, but so had she. All that mattered was that they loved each other and that they’d found each other again.
“Fallon. Sweetheart, will you be my wife?”
She smiled. The look on Stefano’s face was one she’d thought she’d never see again.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Oh, yes, my love, I will.”
He drew her close and kissed her.
On the other side of the glass doors, Mary Elizabeth O’Connell Coyle put her hand to her lips. Eyes damp, she drew the blinds, picked up the phone and dialed Special Guest Services.
“This is Mary O’Connell Coyle,” she said. “Susan, you know that lovely wedding you did for Daniel and me? What if I wanted to plan one that was just a little bit bigger…”
EPILOGUE
MEGAN O’CONNELL gazed at herself in the mirrored wall of the guest suite bedroom at Castello Lucchesi, stroked a hand down the long skirt of her pale yellow maid-of-honor gown, and sighed.
“Lovely,” she said in a dreamy voice.
Briana, standing beside her in an identical gown, smoothed back an auburn curl and looked at her sister’s reflection.
“Such modesty,” she said sweetly.
“I was talking about the gown.”
“Oh,” Bree said.
The sisters’ eyes met. Meg stuck out her tongue. Bree grinned and stuck hers out, too.
“In that case, I’ll have to agree. The gowns are gorgeous.”
“And what a cool idea Fallon had,” Meg said, “asking us both to be her maid of honor.”
“And me to be her bridesmaid,” Cassie Bercovic O’Connell said. She stepped toward the mirror. “Especially now.”
All three women dropped their gaze to Cassie’s round belly. Their eyes met in the glass and they started to giggle.
“I look like an elephant,” Cassie said.
“Hey.”
The women turned. Keir, Sean and Cullen stood in the open doorway, tall and handsome in black tuxes.
“I resent that.” Keir smiled at his wife. “You look,” he said softly, “like an incredibly beautiful woman.”
Cassie laughed as she went to him. “An incredibly pregnant, incredibly beautiful woman, you mean.”
“You’re all beautiful,” Cullen said gallantly, which earned him a round of female applause.
“He’s right,” Meg said, “we are. Us in pale yellow, Cassie in pale green, Ma downstairs in sapphire—”
“And Fallon in to-die-for white satin.” Bree sighed dramatically. “She almost makes being a bride seem like a good idea.”
Megan shuddered. “Bite your tongue!”
“Well, of course I didn’t mean it was a good idea for you or me. It’s just that Fallon’s so happy. Oh, and you, too, Cassie…Damn. I’m putting both feet in my mouth, aren’t I?”
/> “Yeah,” Cullen said amiably, “but you usually do.”
“Go on, ruin that nice stuff you said a couple of minutes ago.”
“Well, you paid me to say—oof! Hell, Bree. Elbows like that would be considered lethal weapons in some states.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t see what an awful bunch of men you were getting as brothers-in-law before you told Keir you’d marry him,” Meg told Cassie. “Or we might have lost you before we got you!”
“Yes,” Cassie said with affection, “they’re reprobates of the first order.”
