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Alessia shook her head. “You say it because of this. The emergency. It has made you think you love me but—”
“I love you, princess. I adore you. I was just too damned stupid to see it, or maybe too scared to put my heart in your hands.”
Her eyes searched his. Some of the sadness in their blue depths seemed to fade. Nick felt his heart lift.
“Oh, Nicolo,” she whispered, “I love you so much! If you knew how I have longed to hear you say that you love me, too…”
“I’m going to say it every day for the rest of our lives, baby, if you’ll forgive me for having been such a fool all these weeks.”
“I was the fool. I should have explained everything, but—”
“We need to talk. I know that.” Nick lifted his wife’s hands to his lips and kissed them. “But first tell me what happened today. What did the doctor say?”
“The baby is fine.”
“Good. That’s great. But you. Are you all right? Because—because I can’t—I can’t lose you, sweetheart. Do you understand? You’re my world, my heart, my life.”
His wife’s smile was the most beautiful sight imaginable. “As you are mine, Nicolo. And I am fine. The doctor says I only need a few days rest.”
Nick let out a pent-up breath, tilted Alessia’s face to his and kissed her.
“Can you ever forgive me? When I think of how I treated you, of what I so stupidly believed—”
“No, no, it is my fault, too. I should have told you about…” Alessia took a deep breath. “My father had threatened to remove my mother from the sanatorio unless I met with you. But the rest—what I came to feel for you, it was all true. I fell in love with you, Nicolo, so deeply in love that I forgot to ask what he had done about my mother. The conversation you overheard was about her future. I was trying to find a way to be sure he could never hurt her again—”
“He won’t,” Nick said, with such stern determination that Alessia knew his words were a promise. “I’ll see to it your mother is always happy and well-cared for.”
“You are a good man, Nicolo Orsini,” she said softly. “I know you cannot be what—what I believed you to be.”
“A thug?” Nick smiled as he gathered his wife in his arms. “It’s worse than that, sweetheart. I’m an investment banker.”
She laughed, looped her arms around his neck and kissed him. After a long, long time, Nick drew back and framed her face with his hands.
“Principessa. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
Alessia touched the tip of her index finger to her husband’s beautiful mouth. Her eyes were as bright as stars.
r /> “But we are already married.”
“I want to marry you the right way.” He grinned. “A Sicilian wedding. The works. You know. The church. The reception. My brothers and their wives welcoming you to our family, my sisters driving you nuts, my mother sobbing because I’ve finally found the perfect sposa. You in a white wedding gown…and me in a tux that makes me look like something out of Madame Tussaud’s.”
Alessia laughed again. It was, Nick thought, the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Smiling, he bent his head and laid his forehead against hers.
“Is that a yes?”
She kissed him.
“It is, with all my heart, a ‘yes.’ Now, mio amante, per favore, take me home.”
And, with joy filling his heart, Nick did.
EPILOGUE
SOFIA Orsini wept with joy at the news that her fourth son was taking a wife.
The civil ceremony in Italy? It did not count. They would have a real wedding in the old-fashioned Greenwich Village church Sofia loved—the church she still thought of as being part of her beloved Little Italy. The reception would be in the conservatory of the Orsini mansion. Isabella would arrange for the flowers, Anna would deal with the menu, Chiara and Gabriella and Elle would take Alessia shopping for the perfect gown. Her veil would be the one her new motherin-law had worn so many years before.
It would be, Sofia announced, a perfect day.
