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CHAPTER TWELVE
THREEYEARSLATERPascal basked in the sweetness of another perfect Christmas Day.
Up in the mountains the brooding Dolomites stood tall, high above them. He was certain he could feel them there, even in the dark. They had impressed themselves upon him so completely that sometimes he thought he could feel them down in Rome.
He heard a soft sound and turned to see his beautiful wife coming into the room that was lit only by the fire on one side and a tall, gleaming Christmas tree on the other.
He had built her this cottage that was no cottage at all. He had set it outside the small village, up in the foothills, so they could gaze down upon the pretty valley together. The abbey, the church and all those beautiful fields that had been his only entertainment once.
The villagers muttered about rich men and their houses in the hills, but Pascal didn’t care if they talked about him beneath their breath as long as they treated his wife as they should. And they did, because Cecilia was theirs no matter the rarefied air she breathed as SignoraFurlani. And with every visit, they thawed toward her husband, too.
Pascal would have sworn he didn’t care about such things. He wouldn’t have once. But Cecilia cared deeply about the good opinion of the people here—and therefore, Pascal did, too.
There was no limit to the things he would do for her.
“Come,” he said now, reaching out his hand. And his Cecilia could still smile at him the way she did now, making his world stop and shudder. “I have built us a fire.”
She took his hand and let him draw her close, then lead her over toward the fire.
“Dante told me he was not sleepy at all and would stay up all night, to spite me if necessary,” Cecilia confided with a laugh. “But he was out before I turned off the light.”
Dante was eight now, filled with his father’s stubborn purpose. Pascal anticipated that he would always be the way he was now, prepared to butt heads at the slightest provocation—and also the quickest to apologize and the first to declare his affection. Even thinking of the boy made Pascal smile.
“And Giulia?” Pascal asked, his smile widening as he thought of their headstrong and deeply beloved two-year-old daughter.
“Dead to the world,” Cecilia said happily.
Pascal pulled her into his arms, then down onto the rug before the fire. They stretched out together as the flames leaped and danced in the grate. And Cecilia sighed at the way they fit, the way she always did.
Because years might have passed, but the spark between them never took more than the simplest touch to build up into the flames that could still burn them both to ash. And sometimes it took only a look.
Pascal had learned how to work less, but Cecilia worked more. That first year, unable to remain idle, or any kind of ornament, she had started her own charity for orphans and foundlings all over the world.
Sometimes that meant Pascal got to be the trophy on her arm, which he found he greatly enjoyed.
More than that, he found it nothing but entertaining to watch her innate grace up against dedicated sharks like his board members. Or against the inevitable slings and arrows of the mercurial press, who loved them one day then hated them the next.
Cecilia handled them all the same. With that quiet steel of hers that had brought him to his knees once. And always would.
She had made him far better than he deserved to be. And he worked every day to make sure she never regretted her choices.
Last night at midnight mass in the church down on the valet floor, Mother Superior had smiled at him the way she did these days. Fondly. She clasped his hands in her old, gnarled grip, and she’d called himchild.
Pascal would die before he admitted how much he liked that.
“Fear is always a liar. Love is always the truth,” she’d said, that same ring of steel in her kind voice that she’d bequeathed to his wife. “I cannot tell you how it delights me to watch you live that.”
“Every day,” he’d said, like a new vow. “And always.”
Because every day he remembered all those things he’d thought he wanted when he’d stood on the edge of the field that he could see from his windows here on a clear day. When he’d looked at the little boy who didn’t know him, running heedless on the frozen grass, and wanted more than he’d ever been given himself.
He remembered the notion he’d had that he was looking at something huge, and how desperately he’d hoped he could find a way to cram it all inside him. To make it work.
God, how he’d wanted it to fit.
Because he hadn’t understood then. The things he’d taken for tears were oceans, too massive to be crammed inside him or any one person. There was a vastness that couldn’t fit anywhere, and that was the point.
Love grows and grows and grows, he thought as Cecilia lay beside him. It got better all the time. Especially when she tipped her face to his and kissed him.
