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Rosie smiled but she was really waiting for the sound of a single helicopter overhead, for Alexius was late. A fleet of helicopters would soon follow, ferrying most of their party guests out to the island for the celebration. Some of the guests were sailing in on their yachts.
‘Aren’t you having a drink?’ Socrates asked.
‘Not at the moment,’ Rosie hedged, for she had news she wanted to share with Alexius first. Alexius, much to his surprise, had discovered that he really adored being a father and he was wonderful with Kasma, but the extreme busyness of their lives had made extending the family too much of a challenge until recently. Now that they were spending more time in Greece and on the island, the pace of their lives had slowed down. They had had more time to be together as a family, as a couple. Her eyes took on a dreamy hue as she recognised the thwack-thwack noise of the helicopter approaching.
‘Go ahead,’ Socrates advised with amusement as she shifted her feet restively. ‘Don’t mind me. He loves it when you rush outside to welcome him home!’
Rosie required no second bidding. She went to the front door, stepped out onto the brightly lit verandah, its undeniable charm carefully conserved during the renovation, and hurried down the steps. The big craft was just landing and she waited on the lawn for her first glimpse of Alexius. He sprang out of the helicopter: big, dark, devastatingly handsome, hers, and her heart leapt with the happiness as much a part of her now as her ready smile and laughter.
‘You’re late,’ she told the light of her life nonetheless.
Alexius sent her a slashing grin of amusement. ‘I had to collect your present before I left Athens. You look shockingly beautiful, Mrs Stavroulakis.’
‘I should—it was a shockingly expensive dress, and let’s not forget the diamonds,’ she urged ruefully.
‘Will you never learn to accept a compliment gracefully?’ he teased as he urged her up the steps into the house with Bas making sneak attacks on his trouser legs.
‘Probably not.’
Pausing only to greet Socrates and Kasma, who had parked herself on her great-grandfather’s lap with her favourite storybook, Alexius swept his wife upstairs to their room and kissed her breathless, pausing to look down at her with adoring eyes and a certain question.
‘No, we don’t have time,’ she informed him firmly, subduing the surge of heat at her feminine core, ignoring the tightening of her tender breasts.
He stripped without ceremony and headed into the shower, talking all the way, telling her what he had been doing, whom he had met, what they had said with the new openness that had begun to dissolve his reserve soon after their marriage. He trusted her, he valued her, he needed her. Rosie was aware of her husband’s love in a hundred different ways every day of their marriage.
‘Happy anniversary, agape mou,’ Alexius breathed when he was fully dressed. ‘Your present’s downstairs.’
‘Yours is right here.’ Rosie patted her stomach complacently.
Disconcerted, Alexius blinked and then his stunning silver eyes shone with brilliance as he grasped her meaning. ‘We’re pregnant?’
‘We are,’ Rosie confirmed proudly. ‘I haven’t told Grandad yet.’
‘You wonderful, wonderful woman,’ Alexius told her with his heart in his eyes.
They walked downstairs hand in hand to find Kasma and Bas hovering over a pet carrier in the hall.
‘Your present,’ Alexius explained, bending down to unlock the door of the carrier just as a shrill little bark sounded within.
A tiny white chihuahua puppy bounced out, barking like mad at Bas when he got too close in his efforts to investigate this strange spectacle.
‘I thought it was time that Bas got the chance to enjoy the civilising effects of sharing his life with a good woman,’ Alexius divulged with a wicked smile tugging at the corners of his charismatic mouth that only deepened as the aggressive advances of the lively puppy drove Bas into retreat below an occasional table.
Rosie laughed and wrapped her arms round her husband. ‘Is that what I did to you? Drove you into retreat?’
‘But I came out fighting,’ Alexius breathed, closing his arms round her and kissing her in spite of their daughter’s revolted kissy-kissy sounds behind them. ‘I love you so much.’
‘And I love you,’ Rosie murmured, her heart still racing while she thought about the guests due to arrive and the party still to come, all those hours to be got through before she could be alone with the man she loved again. Anticipation, however, brought an edge to the excitement that he never failed to arouse.
* * * * *
