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‘Yes! Yes, we do!’ Luke’s voice cut across hers. Vehement and urgent. ‘After everything we have finally said to each other we haven’t said the one thing that really matters.’
He took a breath, his eyes directed at hers.
‘Right from the very first time I set eyes on you I knew, with every instinct in my body, that you were special. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the goal I had finally achieved, the destruction of the man who had destroyed my parents. I was finally free of that burden—finally free to choose how to live my life. Free to choose, Talia.’ He took another breath, his eyes never leaving her for an instant, a heartbeat. ‘Free to fall in love...’
He heard her give a little cry, but he could not stop.
‘Had you come with me after our first night together I would have fallen in love with you then.’
He saw the tears spilling from her eyes, catching the moonlight, and then his arms were around her, drawing her to him. He felt his heart soar in his chest.
‘Forgive me, I beg you,’ he said, his arms tightening, ‘for all the ill I thought of you. I will strive with all my strength to make amends for it—to be worthy of your love!’
He felt her arms tighten around him, clutching at him, felt her shoulders heave with sobs, and then he was cradling her tear-stained face with his hands, his eyes soft and cherishing. His mouth grazed hers in tender homage.
‘Don’t cry. Never cry again. I honour everything about you—your loving loyalty to your mother, your courage in sticking by her, not abandoning her to your father’s wrath just to gain your own freedom. I honour you for the strength and courage you’ve shown in protecting her after your father’s ruin, whatever the cost to you. And I honour, above all, the choice you made in leaving me—both that very first morning and when you left me in the Caribbean after I got it so, so wrong about you.’
‘I was scared!’ she cried, remembering her mother’s words to her in the hospital. ‘Scared I would repeat what she had done. That I would stay with a man who treated me with contempt—who never loved me.’
He kissed her again. ‘Love me as I love you...and if you do then you will love me.’
His smile seemed to melt away the harsh words that had passed between them and turn her heart over.
‘I love you to all the reaches of infinity.’
She broke into renewed sobbing and he let out a laugh, swirling her around in his arms, lifting her feet off the ground in the moonlight. Then he lowered her gently, tenderly, back to the ground.
‘Weep all you want,’ he said softly. ‘For when you have done I never want you to weep again.’
He shut his eyes momentarily, filled with an emotion he could barely contain, and then they sprang open again as he put his arm around her and they turned together to face the view of the town, the coast and the horizon beyond. A great quietness settled over him...a peace of the heart.
‘We’re finally free,’ he said quietly. ‘Free of what your father did to both of us. Free to live our lives as we wish. Free to love as we wish. And even free,’ he finished wryly, ‘should we wish it, to avail ourselves of my suite at my hotel! It’s a beautiful place up in the hills. An old Moorish fort with fabulous views over the coast.’ His hand tightened over hers. ‘Will you come with me? Stay with me this time?’
Her smile was all he needed to see. And the softening of her gaze with a light that outshone the moon.
‘I’ll never leave you again, Luke,’ she said. ‘Never.’
It was a promise. A vow. To him, and to herself.
EPILOGUE
‘SO, WHAT DO you think, Mum?’
Talia swept an arm around the circular atrium with its cobalt floor and its walls muralled in vivid emerald, with foliage and crimson flowers, wide arches opening to the glorious gardens beyond.
‘You’ve got an incredibly talented daughter,’ said Luke, and smiled, standing beside her.
Talia’s mother clapped her hands. ‘Oh, darling, it’s wonderful!’
The man beside Maxine grinned. ‘Pretty good, Talia.’ He nodded. Then he glanced at Luke. ‘When’s the grand opening?’
Luke helped himself to Talia’s hand. ‘Right after our wedding,’ he said. ‘Until then we’re keeping it private—just for family. Talia and I are going to test-drive the open-air chapel out on the promontory. Shall we go and take a look now?’
‘Oh, Luke, yes!’ Maxine cried. She cast a look at the man beside her. ‘And maybe after you two have tied the knot,’ she said lightly, ‘Mike and I might try it out too!’
Talia’s expression lit up. ‘Oh, Mum! That would be brilliant!’
She cast a warm look at the man beside her mother. Easy-going, weather-beaten, with a piratical beard. He was dressed in cut-off denims and a striped top—the uniform of a seafaring yachtsman—and he was the very antithesis of her father.
