AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Stricken, she stared at him as tears spilled over and splashed down her face.
He’d done this for her, as a gesture to show that he loved her. That she could give him another chance and she could trust him because he’d truly changed.
And he had changed. She’d recognized that from the very beginning.
He wasn’t the same Antonio. It was blatantly, wonderfully obvious that he’d become someone else. Someone better, stronger, who knew the meaning of love to a far greater degree than she did.
He’d fought the demon of amnesia to find his family and fought to regain a foothold in his life. Antonio had been nothing but brutally honest with Caitlyn from day one, and just as he’d been honest about his affair, she could trust that he was telling the truth that he’d never do that to her. Perhaps she should look within for the root of her issues.
She’d feared for a long time that she wasn’t woman enough, strong enough or just plain enough for a powerful, complex man like Antonio. Because she wasn’t Vanessa and couldn’t be like her sister.
But the dynamic between Caitlyn and Antonio would never follow the same path as his first marriage because her relationship with Antonio had no parallel to the one he’d had with her sister. He loved Caitlyn, enough to do something crazy like sell his company, which he’d never have considered for Vanessa.
No, she wasn’t Vanessa, who had no clue how to love a man like Antonio. Caitlyn did.
Antonio was a fighter. And so was she.
“No,” she said firmly. “I refuse to stand by and let you do this. It’s not necessary.”
“Then, what can I do, Caitlyn?” Frustrated, he started to drop his hands, but she snatched them back and threw her arms around him.
“You can love me.” His embrace tightened and she melted into it as all her reservations vanished. “Forever. That’s what I want.”
She loved Antonio, and forgiveness was a part of that. She wouldn’t withhold it a moment longer.
He murmured her name, his lips in her hair as he shifted her more deeply in his lap. “You’ve already got that. You should ask for the moon because I would give it to you.”
“You’re more than enough. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”
Antonio stood with her in his arms and navigated the narrow stairway from the attic with all the grace and finesse she’d come to expect from such a magnificent man.
Caitlyn silently said goodbye to her sister and left the past in the dusty attic where it belonged. She had the family of her dreams and she’d never let it go again.
Epilogue
The announcer took the mic and announced, “And by unanimous decision, the winner is Antonio Cavallari!”
With his name buzzing in his ears, Antonio raised his aching hands to the roaring crowd in a classic fighter’s victory pose, but his gaze only sought one face—Caitlyn’s. The lights of the packed arena blinded him, as did the trickle of blood from his eyebrow, but he ignored it all until he located her in her usual ringside spot.
His wife of six months shot him that sexy, sleepy smile that had replaced her maidenly blush. Sometimes he missed that blush, but not very often, because she backed up the smile with abandon behind closed doors. He grinned back. He couldn’t wait to get her alone later. But it would have to wait because a hundred people wanted a piece of the new welterweight champion.
After an hour of interviews, in which he was asked over and over again the secret to revitalizing his career, and then showering through the pain of his cuts and bruises and Thomas Warren’s incessant chatter about another champion coming out of Falco, Antonio finally threaded through the animated crowd to press up against Caitlyn’s back.
Exactly where he wanted to be.
She leaned into him, and he slipped his arms around her. The silk of her blue dress felt like heaven under his battered hands, but her skin would feel even better, and he let all his desire for her surge through his veins because she could take it. Later, she would beg for him to love her, meet him in his urgency. Because she was his missing piece, and without her, he’d still be wandering through the confusion inside his head, trying to figure out where he belonged.
“Congratulations,” she murmured and turned her head to press a kiss to his throat. “How does it feel to be the king of the comeback?”
“Feels as if it’s been too long since you were naked,” he grumbled in her ear, careful not to say it too loudly when Brigitte was only a few feet away with the babies.
