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Belatedly she blinked. ‘You said that you loved me?’
‘You’re the only person I’ve ever loved. I like my father, my little sisters, but I don’t think I love them. I don’t think I’ve let myself love them, but I didn’t get a choice with you. From the start I was flooded by these feelings about you and I was always burying them and then we lost our baby and...’ Raffaele turned in an almost clumsy half-circle. ‘Suddenly it was all there in front of me, how much I cared about you, how much it hurt to see you hurting and not be able to fix it for you. I felt helpless. I hated it at first. I was flailing around trying to work out what would be best for you, what would make you happy even if it made me unhappy and that’s why I took you to see your family.’
‘And that’s why you stayed out of bed with me too,’ Maya guessed. ‘Because you thought letting me go was the kindest thing you could do for me...you idiot!’
‘So, you stormed into the club that night and that was so incredibly sexy, such a turn-on.’
‘You’re easily impressed, Mr Manzini,’ Maya teased, looking up at him with her heart in her eyes. ‘And such a sweetie behind the nasty front. What did you really think of cousin Aurora?’
‘Pushy, fake, not my type but she made you jealous and I liked that, which is why I stayed talking to her. I could see your annoyance,’ Raffaele confessed ruefully.
‘You can besosneaky sometimes,’ Maya sighed, wrapping both arms round him and resting her cheek against his shirtfront, loving the familiar warmth and scent of him.
He tilted back her head and kissed her passionately. ‘I want you so much at this moment.’
‘You can’t have me. We have puppies to take care of,’ Maya reminded him ruefully, watching the puppies gambol about the floor.
‘All right, we feed them, we play with them, we come up with some names for them and then, we go to bed and they get an early night as well,’ Raffaele proposed.
‘We’ll see. You’re happy with them? They weren’t a stupid gift?’ she checked.
‘This is my fresh start in life alongside you. There’s nothing stupid about that,’ Raffaele assured her fondly, running a fingertip along her cheekbone and leaning down to claim another, longer kiss. ‘I love you, I’ll love our child and I’ll love our dogs.’
It was late when the puppies got fed and several shoes got chewed up in the intervening time, but Raffaele and Maya got to make love and celebrate their newfound happiness and both pets and owners remained delighted with each other.
EPILOGUE
FIVEYEARSLATER, Maya lay back on her sun lounger in the shade with Izzy beside her.
It was gloriously peaceful on the little island of Aoussa. The children and the dogs were down on the beach with their nannies. Izzy was a queen but she didn’t act like one in private because Maya was always teasing her about the fact.
Maya had given birth to a little girl called Greta, and she was blonde and dark-eyed and crazy about mechanical things. Maya had had an easy pregnancy and a straightforward delivery but she had been well into the second trimester before she’d stopped fretting about something going wrong again. A year later she had conceived twins and, like her sister, had given birth a few weeks early. She had had two little boys, Pietro and Daniele. Black-haired and green-eyed and identical, they were noisy little boys full of endless energy, she thought with a rueful smile, but wonderfully affectionate and loving. Izzy’s family was complete with her two girls, Lucia and Leila, and her son, Nazir, and Maya rather thought her family was complete as well unless Raffaele took another notion and persuaded her otherwise.
Raffaele adored children, his own children in particular. He got out of bed at night when they were babies and got under the feet of their nanny. He changed nappies, built brightly coloured plastic towers of bricks and dressed dolls and combed their hair. He showed their children all the love he himself had lacked but he didn’t over-indulge them.
The new house on Aoussa was a rambling ultra-modern property, perfectly suited to family occasions, which was fortunate when pretty much their whole lives revolved around family connections. The sisters got together as often as possible. Maya and Raffaele would fly to Zenara and stay at the palace in the desert with Rafiq and Izzy and their children would race around together kicking up a storm. As couples they got on very well. Maya had long since confided in Izzy about the loss of her very first pregnancy, but she hadn’t yet told her twin the truth of why she had married Raffaele. She didn’t think that would be fair to him when he had changed so much since then and she didn’t want her sister to think less of him. She was as protective of Raffaele as she had ever been.
She saw a great deal of her parents and her grandparents because when she visited Izzy and vice versa, their older relatives were often included in the invitation. Her little brother, Matt, had benefitted hugely from the stem cell treatment and was no longer in a wheelchair but could now get around on crutches. His condition was still improving as he was still undergoing treatment. Raffaele’s great-grandfather, Aldo, had died two years earlier and Raffaele regretted never having had the chance to get to know the old man better before his dementia set in. They saw Tommaso, Claire and Raffaele’s half-sisters regularly as well.
Raffaele’s giant business holdings had begun to take up too much of his time and when Maya complained about the long hours he was working, Raffaele sold off some of his empire, choosing to invest instead. Maya wrote a mathematics textbook, which only sold to very clever people but that didn’t bother her. She had Raffaele, her children, the dogs, a large and demanding extended family and entertainment to organise, and in reality she didn’t have time for much else.
Now, when she watched Raffaele striding up from the beach, the dogs, Luna and Primo, at his heels, Pietro plodding after his father with his thumb stuck in his mouth, Daniele lazily dribbling a football and Greta dragging her basket of toy cars and diggers behind her, she got to her feet. Behind the group, Rafiq was urging his children towards the house with the nannies in attendance.
There Raffaele was, vital and golden in swim shorts and nothing else, and her heart hammered like crazy inside her chest.
‘The nannies are about to feed the tribe and we’re...we’re taking a nap,’ Raffaele announced with a wicked gleam in his dark golden gaze.
Maya turned as red as fire.
‘I thought only children need a nap in the middle of the day,’ Izzy remarked pointedly.
‘The heat drains Maya,’ Raffaele countered cheerfully. ‘If she doesn’t get a nap now, she’ll be asleep before we get the BBQ lit.’
Izzy rolled her eyes with amusement and said nothing more.
‘Do you have to be so obvious?’ Maya hissed as Raffaele urged her upstairs to their secluded bedroom suite, which rejoiced in a spectacular view of the sea andManziniOnemoored out in the bay.
‘You know you wouldn’t have me any other way.’ Raffaele laughed. ‘I don’t want to turn into a boring lover who waits for bedtime when you’re most tired. No, I’d much rather have you sun-warmed and sexy and sandy, even if you’re embarrassed by something as entirely natural as your husband lusting after you.’
