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“I’ll shower, and then—”
“We’ll shower,” he said, with the kind of sexy look that always turned her inside out. “And then we’ll have dinner on the terrace in the garden.” He took her hands and raised them to his lips. “And you can tell me this last secret so I can kiss you and tell you that whatever it is, it changes nothing.”
“I love you so much,” Ivy said, her voice breaking. “So much…”
One last, deep kiss. Then they walked to the road, where Damian had parked the Jeep, and drove to what had now become home.
They showered together, and made love, and dried each other off and, inevitably, made love again.
Then they dressed.
Ivy put on a classically long, slender black gown with thin straps. “Look at how my belly shows,” she said, laughing, and Damian quickly knelt and put his lips to the bump.
Maybe, she thought, holding her breath as she looked down at him, maybe what she had to tell him would go well.
He rose to his feet and took her hand. “You are so beautiful,” he said softly.
She smiled and looked at him in his white jacket and black trousers. “So are you.”
He laughed, even blushed. “Men can’t be beautiful.”
He was wrong. Her Damian was beautiful. In face and body. In heart and soul. And yes, he would understand this, her last secret.
He had to.
Damian led her down the wide marble stairs, through the oldest part of the palace to a columned terrace in a garden that overlooked the sea.
The table was lit by tall tapers in silver holders. Flowers—white orchids, crimson roses, pale pink tulips—overflowed from a magnificent urn. Champagne stood chilling in a silver bucket and a fat ivory moon sailed over the Aegean…
And standing beside the table, smiling, looking even more stunning than in the past, stood Kay.
Ivy cried out in shock. Damian said a single sharp word. Kay’s smile grew brighter.
“Isn’t anyone going to say hello?”
“Your Highness.” Esias, standing near Kay, all but wrung his hands. “I could not keep the lady out, sir. I am sorry. So sorry—”
Damian dismissed his houseman with a curt nod. His hand tightened on Ivy’s but, after a shocked couple of seconds, she tore free of his grasp and ran to her stepsister.
“Ohmygod, Kay! Kay, you’re alive!”
“Bright as always, Ivy. That, at least, hasn’t changed.”
Ivy reached out to hug her but Kay sidestepped, her eyes locked to Damian’s.
“And you,” she said, “were always a fast worker. I see you didn’t waste any time, replacing me.”
“Obviously,” Damian said, his voice cold, “you didn’t die in that car crash.”
Kay laughed. “Obviously not.”
“Did you have amnesia?” Ivy said. “You must have, otherwise—”
“People have amnesia in soap operas,” Kay said. “Not in real life. I went off a cliff into Long Island Sound. Everyone thought I’d drowned.”
“They declared you dead,” Damian said in that same icy voice.
