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‘Here he is,’ said Luca, carefully lowering their adored baby into her waiting arms. ‘Wide awake again.’
His voice was tender, doting, and Ariana loved him all the more for it. Loved their son all the more, too, overcome by a wave of tenderness. She smiled, gazing as dotingly as Luca at the tiny infant wrapped in his cotton blanket, his starfish hands waving slowly, his little mouth mewing.
‘And hungry again!’ She laughed, slipping the buttons on her maternity blouse, feeling her milk come in.
He latched on hungrily, and for a while neither she nor Luca did anything but gaze in wonder and mutual adoration. And thankfulness. Such thankfulness.
Without volition, Ariana felt tears prick the back of her eyes. Luca saw them, and hunkered down beside her, taking her free hand as she cradled their nursing child.
‘I like to think,’ he said, his voice low with deep-felt emotion, and knowing why she had become tearful, ‘that he is the baby we lost—this time come again safely and healthily.’
She pressed her fingers into his, gazing across at him, eyes misting. ‘How blessed we are, Luca,’ she said.
She looked about her at the gracious house she’d restored, the gardens lush all around them, the dramatic lake edged with the mountains beyond—and the man beside her whom she loved so, so much.
And he loved her. As she had never thought he could—or would. And yet he did.
He leant forward, kissing her softly. ‘Blessed indeed,’ he said, straightening, then sitting himself down opposite her, crossing one long leg over the other.
His legs had healed almost completely, and that was another cause for her profound gratitude. It was a gratitude that Luca had shown in a massive donation to the hospital whose surgeons’ skills had saved his limbs, and to the orthopaedic centre where he’d regained the use of them.
And that was not the only use his money had been put to.
Ariana smiled fondly at him. ‘Your investment in Matt’s career continues to pay off—he and Mia are charting with their latest release, she tells me.’ She paused a moment. ‘She says she wants us to visit when she and Matt are next in Italy.’
Luca looked at her. ‘I will do so gladly.’ It was his turn to pause. ‘Ariana, she was a dream, a mirage—unreal in herself to me. I wronged her almost as much as I wronged you.’
His voice was sombre, and Ariana hated to hear it.
‘It’s in the past, Luca—and both she and I have found our happiness!’ Her expression changed. ‘I still find it astonishing that it’s turned out to be Mia who is the secret to Matt’s success! That she has such a beautiful voice. And,’ she went on, ‘how wonderful it is that our grandfather is now reconciled to her!’
It was true. A penniless musician and an eloping granddaughter had turned into a commercially and artistically successful musical duo—one for Tomaso to be proud of and one who made sure they spent a lot of time in Italy with him at hispalazzo.
And although Ariana knew wryly now, rather than bitterly, that her grandfather would never be proud ofher, in having a granddaughter who had married Luca Farnese—even if it was the wrong one!—he could not be as scathing of her as had once been.
‘I think you’ll find,’ Luca was saying drily, ‘that you too have gone up in his approval ratings by providing him with his first great-grandson...’
She gave a wry laugh. ‘I doubt my poor mother will ever forgive me for turning her into a grandmother—however glamorous!’
‘She’ll love him when she sees him,’ Luca promised her. ‘As will your grandfather.’
On cue, their son unlatched, gazing up at them, then started to mewl again.
‘Time fordulce,’ Ariana said, and busied herself swapping him to her other side, conscious, with a little colour in her cheeks, of how Luca’s eyelashes dipped down over his dark obsidian eyes as his gaze rested on her exposed breast. It would be a while yet before he could do more than look, but Ariana was already impatient...
She met his gaze as it returned to her face, remembering in vivid detail the passion that burned between them. For the moment it was only a memory—but soon...
‘Don’t look at me like that...’ Luca’s voice was husky. ‘New fatherhood is miraculous, but it has its drawbacks...’
She laughed, tossing back her hair, cuddling her suckling infant closer to her breast. The necessary days would pass, her post-partum body would heal, and then... Oh, then...
Luca leant across to kiss her. Lightly and gently. With the promise of so much more to come.
The promise of eternal love and happiness for all their days together.
And all their nights...
Definitelyall their nights.
