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He led her up the winding stairs and she went to walk through the cloister, but he pulled her back. ‘This way.’
‘Aren’t we staying in the Temple Suite?’ Aurora checked, for it was the suite they both loved and the view that felt like theirs.
‘Not tonight,’ Nico said. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, this is our honeymoon.’
Oh!
For all she had pored over the pictures and been on board with the renovations, she had a blind spot when it came to the Honeymoon Suite. So certain that she would never stay there.
Or, worse, that she might be there with a reluctant groom.
But now she stepped in and it was Aurora who gasped—for she had seen it by day, but never at night.
It was one Silibri’s best-kept secrets.
‘Oh, Nico!’
The glass domed ceiling revealed the stars and the Sicilian night sky.
‘And do you know,’ Nico said, ‘that there are steps down to a private beach?’
‘I wrote the brochure, Nico,’ she teased.
But in truth she was in awe. How did a boy from Silibri, even if he’d inherited the land, do all this?
For there was magic in this building.
‘It should be called the Starlight Suite,’ Aurora said. ‘And you know I’m right.’
‘Of course you are,’ Nico said, ‘and that is why I have a present for you.’
Aurora frowned as he went over to a tray, where an ice bucket was cooling a bottle of champagne, but it was not that which he brought over. Instead it was a small pouch that he handed to her.
‘Keys?’ Aurora frowned as they fell into her palm. ‘Is this to your home in Rome? Because I thought that was all electronic—’
‘Aurora, look at them.’
They were old keys. One was thick and heavy, the type you might use to open a gate.
The gate at the side of hernonna’s house…
‘Nico?’ She did not understand. ‘You’ve bought Nonna’s house?’
‘I bought yournonna’s house many months ago—through a third party, so your father wouldn’t know it was me. Aurora, the only draw about my staying in Silibri was the thought that at night I would come home to you…’
Aurora looked at the heavy keys she held in her palm and laughed. ‘Nico, the only thing that kept me sane in Silibri was the fact that one day I would marry you.’
‘I love you,’ he told her again. Aurora had always been his fabled wife.
‘You really bought the cottage?’
She held the keys now. Or rather, they shared them.
‘I bought the cottage, Aurora. At the time I didn’t know why, but I do now—I guess I didn’t want that dream of being with you to die completely.’
‘But…’ She looked at him. ‘You said you could think of nothing worse than living opposite my parents.’
‘And I still can’t,’ Nico admitted. ‘But for holidays, and for things like Christmas, when there are too many Messinas in your parents’ house, we can just head over the road to our own little home. And for the times when we are fed up with the hotel…’
And Aurora’s tiny, grating percentage of doubt faded under a million Sicilian stars and the softest kiss.
‘Tomorrow,’ Nico said as he removed her dress and her pretty underwear, ‘we will take the steps down to the beach and I am going to have you in the water.’
‘What about now?’ She liked the thought of a naked swim, but Nico was already laying her down.
‘No, no,’ he said, and parted her legs, ready to dive into her. ‘For tonight, all you have to do is look to the stars.’
