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‘I imagine all prospective parents feel that way—one perfect new life to mould. It is quite a responsibility. But you will be a perfect mother.’
Anna grinned, but tears prickled her eyes. So much could go wrong that she didn’t want to take anything for granted, but she knew that a baby, Soren’s baby, would make her life too perfect to be true. ‘The next eighteen years or so will tell.’
‘And now,’ Soren said, breaking the mood as he leapt to his feet and clapped his hands, ‘it is my responsibility to get you into that dress and onto that staircase.’
‘Couldn’t I just slip in a side door?’
He produced one his best autocratic alpha looks. ‘My wife-to-be, the mother of my child, does not slip in through side doors. I want the world to see what a lucky man I am.’
‘Lucky, yes, you are, but world...quite a lot of people would be more accurate.’
He stood there looking at her. ‘Are you ever going to get dressed? You are so last minute.’
‘I have my face on, my hair is done, there is a reason for the fact my dress is on the bed and not on me,’ she said, unfastening her gown to reveal the strapless bra and French knickers she wore underneath before reaching for the sliver of red silk. ‘I get ready early and you undress me, which makes me late and flustered.’
His eyes darkened dangerously. ‘Is that a challenge?’
She whisked away laughing and slipped into the bathroom, locking the door behind her just to be on the safe side—when it came to Soren a lock was a useful supplement to her non-existent willpower.
‘Wait downstairs!’
Soren looked at the locked door, an expression of frustration on his face. ‘Don’t you trust me?’ he complained.
The response did not try to spare him. ‘No... I look very hot—you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me.’ She looked in the mirror as she spoke. She was only half joking; she barely recognised the person staring back at her. The dress wasjustright. It managed to make her look as if she had a bust, which was a minor miracle, and it made her long and...sinuous and sexy.
At the top of the staircase Anna paused and thought, head back, chest up, girl, and began her descent, hoping like hell she didn’t fall off her heels.
It was the hush followed by murmurs and a collective gasp that made Soren turn his head. He was frowning, having just managed to fight off the clinging attentions of one of his grandfather’s bikini bimbos.
Soren stilled, the tightness in his chest making it hard to breathe as he watched his lovely future wife float down the staircase. He roused himself from his stupor and walked out to greet her, bowing formally at the waist as he took her hand.
Their eyes connected.
‘Tesoro mio, you do indeed look...very hot.’
He pulled her into him, moving from just friends to lovers with a smooth adjustment, then smiled and thought,Better...much better.
Together they circled the empty floor to the strains of the orchestra, but actually they didn’t need the music. They were moving to a very different tune, a tune they both remembered well.
EPILOGUE
ANNAFROWNED.‘The priest is here. Everyone’s in the chapel. They’re waiting.’
Sara, who was admiring her godmother’s hat in the mirror, turned around. ‘Well, it’s not like they can start without them, is it? No babies...no doting dad, no christening—not rocket science.’
‘I know you’re right, but I simply don’t know where they can be.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. In one of the twenty million rooms in this place...? Me, I would happily live in any of your bathrooms. The interior designer had a serious fetish, not that I’m complaining. I get so turned on by plumbing.’
‘I’ll go check the... I’ll go check.’ She stopped. Sara wasn’t listening to her; she was staring with a soppy smile at the ring on her left hand. Since her engagement to Franco she’d been doing that a lot.
Anna glanced in the mirror to check herself out. The babies were only three months and most of her baby tummy was gone, mainly because she was never still. Twins did not allow for much down time. She didn’t know how she would have coped during the early weeks when the babies wouldn’t sleep and she was shattered without Soren, who had turned out to be a very hands-on dad.
When he’d announced he was taking paternity leave his grandfather had been outraged, but since the babies had arrived he had calmed down. His boast was that only arealman, a Vitale, could father two babies...even if one was a girl.
Evangeline had been born first, her bright blue eyes so like her father’s wide open; Arturo had come a half-hour later. Smaller by a few ounces, he’d spent his first few nights in special care.
He had caught up now to his sister and had a fine pair of lungs, eyes as green as her own and, according to his father, a temper just like hers too. Anna still found herself waking him to check he was breathing.
