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Setting her down at last, he held her face in his hand, brushed a thumb over the tears of joy rolling down her cheeks. ‘Don’t cry, Issy. This is where the fun starts.’
She smiled up at him, her body quivering with need as his hand stroked under her T-shirt.
‘Is that a promise, Hamilton?’ she said, lifting a coquettish eyebrow.
‘Pay attention, Helligan,’ He hugged her close, his lips hovering above hers. ‘That’s not a promise, it’s a guarantee.’
And then he proved it—in the most delicious way possible.
EPILOGUE
‘I MAY have to hate you.’ Sophia smiled cheekily as she settled beside Issy on one of the comfortable upholstered chairs that had been set out among the olives groves. ‘How did you get your figure back so quickly?’
Issy smiled, weary but blissfully happy. It had been a very long day—she and Gio had been woken up at three that morning by their baby son—but she wouldn’t have missed a moment of it. ‘Are you joking?’ she scoffed. ‘Haven’t you noticed? My boobs are the size of two small hot-air balloons!’
Sophia laughed. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Here in Italy, big is beautiful.’
Colour rose to Issy’s cheeks as she spotted Gio making his way towards them across the makeshift dance floor. The loose languid gait she adored made even more beguiling by the tiny baby perched on his shoulder.
‘Aha!’ Sophia said. ‘Someone has told you, I think.’
Issy didn’t even attempt to hide the blush as her smile spread.
‘Someone may have mentioned it,’ she replied demurely, enjoying Sophia’s delighted giggle as she watched her husband being stopped and kissed by an elderly woman whose name she couldn’t remember. There had to be at least a hundred people gathered at the Lorenzo farm to celebrate their son’s birth—and even with her greatly improved skill in Italian she was struggling to keep all the names and faces and family connections straight.
As she observed Gio, he took the baby off his shoulder to show him off to the cooing lady, and Issy’s grin grew. All the anxiety and confusion of their first visit a year ago had gone. Gio had been relaxed and completely comfortable today—and she suspected it was mostly their son’s doing.
One more thing to thank little Marco Lorenzo Hamilton for, whose unexpected arrival had deepened and strengthened their relationship in ways she could never have imagined.
To think she’d agonised for weeks about how to break the news to Gio when she’d fallen pregnant ten months before. Their relationship then had seemed so precious, and yet so vulnerable.
Neither of them had spoken about children since that first early pregnancy scare, and, as much as Issy might have fantasised about having Gio’s baby, the abstract romantic dream had swiftly turned into a downward spiral of doubt and panic when that little pink plus sign had appeared in the window of the home pregnancy test.
How would Gio respond to the prospect of becoming a father? How could she ask him to make more changes in his life when he’d already made so many? And how would they both cope with adding yet more pressure to an already difficult domestic situation?
For, once the romance of that mutual declaration of love had worn off, they’d soon discovered that living together was a logistical nightmare. They both had homes they loved and careers they were passionate about in two different cities, hundreds of miles apart.
To solve the problem Gio had insisted on buying a penthouse apartment in Islington, and flying between the two cities three or four times a week. But the long hours Issy put in at the theatre and the nights Gio was forced to spend in Italy meant that even with the exhausting commute they had hardly any quality time together.
Which was how she had managed to get pregnant in the first place, Issy thought wryly, her face flushing as she recalled the many frantic and shockingly explosive encounters they’d snatched together, often in the most preposterous places. She still hadn’t quite worked out how she was going to tell her son, if he ever asked, that he had been conceived on
the stage of the Crown and Feathers’s Theatre Pub late one night after Gio had flown back unexpectedly from Florence and caught her as she locked up.
In the end she would have waited a lot longer to tell Gio about the pregnancy than just a couple of weeks. She’d still been trying to second-guess his reaction and formulate a viable strategy when morning sickness had struck with a vengeance, exactly a month into her pregnancy.
Gio had patted her back while she retched. Made her nibble some dry toast and sip peppermint tea and then insisted she sit down. He had something to tell her. To her total shock he’d announced that they were getting married. That he’d planned to wait until she told him about the baby, but that he couldn’t wait any longer. And that he knew the reason she hadn’t told him was because she thought he would make a terrible father, but it was way too damn late to worry about that now.
Issy had promptly burst into tears, feeling miserably guilty and totally ecstatic and extremely hormonal—all at the same time. When she’d finally got over her crying jag she’d accepted his proposal, apologised for being such a ninny, and told him she’d never doubted his abilities as a father.
She’d seen he didn’t believe her, and it had crucified her, but in the months that had followed the agonising guilt had faded as their relationship changed and developed in new and exciting ways.
Their marriage had been immediate, at Gio’s insistence, and necessarily low-key, but still impossibly romantic to Issy’s mind. They’d said their vows together one wintry afternoon at Islington Town Hall, with only Issy’s mum, Edie, in attendance and had been thrown a surprise reception party by Maxi and the gang at the Crown and Feathers. The baby’s first ultrasound scan the day before had only added to the magic of the evening’s festivities. Issy had watched, dizzy with happiness, every time Gio whipped out the scan photo—which had looked to her very much like a picture of a large prawn—and showed it to anyone who stood still long enough.
No longer prepared to commute, Gio had announced two days after the wedding that he was relocating his architectural practice to London. The announcement had caused their first major row as husband and wife—because Issy had refused point-blank to let Gio do such an idiotic thing, explaining that she was giving up her job at the theatre instead and moving to Florence.
Gio had huffed and puffed, then cajoled and shouted, and eventually sulked for over a week. But Issy had got her way in the end—and enjoyed every minute of his irritation and anger and exasperation.
Gio had been prepared to give up everything for her, and, even though she hadn’t been consciously aware of her doubts, when he’d blithely informed her he was moving to London those last nagging doubts about his commitment to their life together had disappeared.
