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With Celeste he was not making a mistake, he knew! With Celeste he was doing the right thing, making the right choice! Her difference from Madeline could not be more absolute!
He felt his heart glow as he gazed at her sleeping figure. Celeste was the woman he wanted in his life—for all his life! And to achieve that he was determined.
The first step was to persuade her to come back with him to New York. He made himself broach the subject later that day over dinner.
‘I don’t want to leave Hawaii,’ he told her, his eyes lambent, ‘but I can postpone my return no longer. I have people waiting for me whose enterprises and livelihoods depend on my input and decisions. I cannot, therefore, indulge myself here for ever.’
He took a breath, for he could see by the sudden shadow in her eyes that she was as loath to leave as he was. He reached across the table, taking her hand in his, pressing it closely.
‘But that does not mean that we have to part.’ He took another breath. ‘Come with me to New York, Celeste! Stay with me there!’ His voice lowered, became husky, and his eyes poured into hers. ‘I want you so much, Celeste. I cannot do without you.’
There was a sudden caution in his eyes that she saw immediately.
‘If I am presuming too much, forgive me...’ he said.
She felt her heart lift—soar. Her fingers squeezed his. ‘Do you mean it? Do you really mean it?’ Her voice was a breath of hope in her throat. Her eyes widened with the same emotion.
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it—the age-old gesture of homage and devotion to a woman from a man...a man to whom she knew, without a flicker of doubt, she could entrust herself, a man to hold and to cherish.
‘Yes!’ he breathed. ‘What we have here I do not want to lose!’
‘Nor I,’ she answered. ‘I want only you, Rafael. Only you!’
He kissed her hand again, his lips pressing to her knuckles in the sheer relief of hearing her answer. Then, with an intake of breath, he released her hand, picked up his wine glass and took a mouthful.
‘We can be as flexible as you need in respect of your work commitments,’ he assured her. ‘It might get complicated, but I’m sure we can work something out.’
Celeste smiled back. Her heart was singing. Not to have to part from Rafael, as she had been increasingly dreading she must once this idyll here was over—for him to want her to go with him to New York—to be with him. Be part of his life!
How much he has come to mean to me! I could not bear to leave him.
Emotion welled within her.
‘In the meantime,’ he went on, his eyes pouring into hers, ‘we’re going to enjoy our very last days together here. And,’ he finished, ‘I think we should book our next visit before we leave! Coming back here again is most definitely on the agenda.’
He got to his feet, drawing her with him.
‘And now...’ He smiled down at her, familiar, intimate, making her heart lift as it always did. ‘Let’s take a walk along the beach and watch the moon set over the Pacific. And let’s make our wish to come back.’
She went with him gladly, at his side—the one and only place she wanted to be...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NEW YORK WAS...well, New York, thought Celeste. As full-on and non-stop as ever. Rafael had had to plunge into work to catch up with all he’d postponed while they’d been in Hawaii, so Celeste had looked in on the New York branch of her agency and managed to get some short-term work. But her heart was no longer in her career. It was, she knew, with a warm, glowing wonder, with Rafael.
Rafael...who had set her free from her past so that it could never haunt or harm her again! She had made herself anew—the past was finally gone from her life. Now there was only this wonderful present! Being with Rafael, living with him, was all she wanted!
