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Her stomach knotted. “You were such a bastard in that meeting.”
“I was severely conflicted. Then I found out you had conceived our child and left without telling me. I wanted to wring your neck. I told myself coming after you was all about the baby. But part of me couldn’t deny wanting to keep you. Wanting to hold on to the one thing I’d always wanted and could never have.”
“When all along I loved you.” Heat stung her eyes, blurring her vision.
His hands tightened around hers. “I behaved like a barbarian. I told myself I was calling the shots. But it was all about controlling my feelings for you. Refusing to allow any sign of weakness, because then you might destroy me again.”
Her throat tightened. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left. If I could do it all over again, I would deal with my insecurities so differently.”
“You were the one with the courage to tell me how you felt. That night you told me you loved me I wanted so badly to say it back to you. But I needed to be sure when I said it I meant it. I needed to know I could open my heart to you completely again, that all the bitterness I’d harbored toward you was gone.”
“When did you know?”
“The morning of my big board meeting. I was going to tell you at the benefit, then Moritz knocked me sideways.” His gaze held hers. “If there’s anything we need to keep sacrosanct, it’s the honesty. Even when we know it’s going to be painful. It’s the glue that will hold us together.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I promise that to you, Coburn.”
Something passed between them then, a promise that this time they would do this differently. That this time they were inviolate.
He let go of her hands, pulled a small velvet box from his jacket pocket and flipped it open. She had to blink to take in the full brilliance of the diamond eternity band sparkling like white fire in the light of a hundred candles.
“I once said that sometimes love isn’t enough,” he said softly. “I was wrong. Love is everything for us, Diana. It always has been.”
A lone tear slipped down her face. Coburn’s fingers tightened around hers.
“Be my wife again. Without reservation, with every dip and curve that comes with it.”
She stood there frozen, knees wobbling, emotion storming through her. Then she shoved her hand at him. Coburn slid the ring on her finger to sit flush against her wedding band. “Lose it down a sink,” he growled, “and you pay.”
She curved her fingers around his nape and brought his mouth down to hers. “I love you,” she whispered against his mouth. “Too much.”
He kissed her until she was utterly pliant and trembling under his hands. Then he stripped her with a deliberate, precise methodology that quickly left her naked in the candlelight. His predatory gaze softened, turned inquisitive as his fingers slid over the slight swell of her stomach. “It’s not flat anymore. It’s mind-boggling to think our baby is growing in there.”
“You would know,” she murmured, “if you were the one carrying him or her.”
He dropped to his knees, curved his palms around her buttocks and replaced his hand on her stomach with his mouth. His lips moved reverentially over her smooth skin, as if treasuring every inch he discovered.
If she’d ever had any doubts as to whether he wanted this baby, he obliterated them now with his touch. “I will be a better father than mine,” he said huskily against her skin. “I will be there for our child.”
“I know that,” she said softly, burying her hands in his thick, coarse hair. “I never doubted it for a second.”
He nudged her legs apart then and idolized her in a very different, very carnal way. The diamonds sparkled on her hand as she twined her fingers around a chunk of his hair and moaned his name.
He took her apart with his wicked lips and tongue, as he’d always been able to do to every part of her. But this time, as he spread her out on the carpet, divested himself of his clothes and took her with a slow, sweet possession that brought tears to her eyes, there were no ghosts between them, no halves of either of them, only a full and complete union that could never be broken.
There wasn’t a what-if left in her head as her husband carried her to bed and left her to extinguish the candles. Only what was to come. Their baby and a future that seemed as bright and limitless as the passion that bound them together.
* * * * *
Keep reading for a bonus novella by Amanda Cinelli, CHRISTMAS AT THE CASTELLO!
