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‘What?’ Leonora could hardly speak over the way her heart was expanding in her chest.
‘That you love me.’
Leonora moved so that she was straddling Gabriel’s lap. She cupped his face with both hands and pressed a kiss to his mouth. The she pulled back. ‘I love you, Gabriel Ortega Cruz y Torres. With all my heart. Is that good enough?’
His hands cupped her buttocks and he expertly manoeuvred her so that she was under him on the couch. He smiled down at her and she could see the sheer love and joy in his eyes, on his face.
He said, ‘I want for ever, Leo, is that good enough?’
Leonora looked up at him and saw the intensity blazing from his face and in his eyes. But a tendril of doubt and fear made her say, ‘What if we don’t—?’
But Gabriel cut her off with his mouth. With a kiss. He pulled back. ‘For ever, Leo. No matter what. You are all I need. Anything else will be a bonus.’
She looked up at Gabriel. She saw love and commitment in his gaze. It had been there for weeks, but she hadn’t wanted to believe in it. She’d shut it out.
She smiled up at him and wound her arms around his neck as tears pricked her eyes. ‘For ever it is, then.’
EPILOGUE
Three years later
Lazaro Sanchez Torres’s hacienda in Andalusia
‘GETTING YOU TO agree to take on the Torres name was the most difficult negotiation I’ve ever conducted.’
Lazaro grinned at his half-brother and clinked his beer bottle against Gabriel’s glass of water. ‘You didn’t think I was going to make it easy, did you?’
Gabriel smiled back. ‘God, no. That would have been far too predictable. All I can say is that I’m glad we’re on the same side now. It makes life so much easier.’
A moment passed between them. Deeply felt emotion. And then a baby’s gurgle made them both turn back to the tableau in front of them.
Dragged out onto the back lawn of Lazaro’s hacienda was a couch, overlaid with colourful throws. On the couch sat Lazaro and Skye’s almost three-year-old son Max. He was looking very serious, because lying in each of his arms, propped up by cushions either side, was a baby, the two of them blinking contentedly and kicking their arms and legs in the shade under a huge tree. They were three months old.
‘Okay, Max, you’re doing so well—just another few seconds.’
Leonora chuckled beside Skye, who had become a good friend. Her sister-in-law was moving around, getting lots of pictures from different angles with her camera.
Leonora said, ‘Poor Max looks terrified.’
Skye groaned and stood up. ‘He does, doesn’t he?’
She was wearing faded loose dungarees and a bright yellow T-shirt that should have clashed with her red hair but didn’t. The swell of her second baby was evident under her clothes, at nearly eight months along.
‘Max, smile, sweetie! It’s okay—you won’t drop them. Honestly.’
Tentatively Max smiled, his blond, slightly reddish hair blowing in the breeze. His blue-green eyes were full of pride at his responsibility as the older cousin.
After another few shots Skye straightened up. ‘Okay, that should be loads to work with.’
Skye, who had built up a name for herself as a talented portrait artist, was going to do a painting of Max and his baby cousins, Sofia and Pablo.
After Leonora and Gabriel had made the decision to try IVF, it had taken two years and three painful miscarriages before it had worked, on their last attempt. Gabriel hadn’t wanted to
put Leonora through even another attempt but she’d insisted. And, happily, that last round had brought them a successful pregnancy and the twins, and every time Leonora looked at them her heart was so full of awe and love that she almost couldn’t breathe.
An arm snaked around her waist now and she turned to look up at her husband. Her life.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
