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Amelia’s heart quivered, little gentle shakes rippling throughout her body.
‘I love you,’ Alessandro said again, as if he knew that she needed to hear it. ‘And I will never stop loving you.’
She reached a hand to the chair to hold herself up. ‘And I know that I offered you the security you wanted with one hand, and took it away with the other—the security to know that you were safe and loved and trusted—and I will never forgive myself for that.’
Amelia wondered if his words were magic, summoning all the broken shards of herself, raising them from the ground and bringing them back together. She wanted desperately to speak, to share of herself in the same way that he was, but she held herself back because she knew that he needed to say this. They had time, she began to realise with an expansion of her heart. They could take this time not to rush.
‘I understand,’ Alessandro continued, ‘if you choose to move forward on your own with our child. I would...’ His words stumbling once again, letting her know how hard this was for him, how much he struggled with what he wanted and letting her go to have what she wanted. ‘I would like to be involved in my child’s life,’ he said, her heart cracking, but not breaking, reforming anew rather than what it had been like before, reforming to make room for him, right beside the love she felt for their child. ‘But I trust that you know what is best for our child,’ Alessandro said, and even the thought of him retreating, of him removing himself from their lives, cut her to the quick.
Finally, as if on the brink of his retreat, she found the courage to move towards what she wanted with her whole entire being.
‘Alessandro,’ she said, closing the distance between them and taking his face in her hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. The surprise in his gaze would have been near funny if it weren’t so sad. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated uselessly. Months of planning what she would say and her heart simply beat too loudly for her to hear what she had hoped to have the chance to say.
‘I was so scared. I saw you retreating into work, shutting me out, which,’ she said, holding up her hand to stop him from explaining, ‘I understand, utterly and completely. It was what you needed to do in that moment. Howcouldyou have included me after I nearly destroyed your company? But I used that to feed fears I barely knew I had. I panicked and just couldn’t see how you would want to stay with me when...when even my parents hadn’t. But I’m working on that, and on much more,’ she said, wanting to share the decisions she had made in the last few months, wanting to share so much ofherlife with him, not just their child’s.
‘I love you,’ she said, her words overwhelmed by the depth of her emotions. ‘I love you—powerful, proud, driven and occasionally flustered, you. The you who is loyal, caring, protective and who wears that love for his family on his sleeve.’ His eyes exploded with hope, starbursts alight with love and want and the infinity that she had thought she had found with him once before.
He took a sharp breath, as if shocked by her declaration, and gently pressed his forehead against hers as if in reverence.
‘If you take me back, I promise you’ll not regret it. I’ll spend every single day proving myself worthy of you.’ He pulled back enough to look her in the eye.
‘If you take me back, I promise to spend each and every day showing you the love and family that you are worthy of a hundred times over,’ she said with a vehemence that matched the man she loved.
Her lips found his, and everything she’d ever wanted was in that kiss. Love, reverence, security, and everything she wanted to give him, she desperately hoped he felt. But when she wrapped her arms around him to pull him against her, something poked into her ribs. Angling back, and reluctantly breaking the kiss, she pressed her hands to his chest.
‘What is...?’
Alessandro reached into his jacket inner pocket, a flush riding his cheeks.
‘I’ve been carrying this with me for the last two months,’ he said, and although there were nerves in his gaze, there was a dizzying anticipation. He pulled a small blue velvet box from his jacket. ‘After all the mistakes I made, there will never be a right time. I know that. But I had hoped to at least do this properly,’ he explained as he lowered himself to one knee.
Her hands flew to her mouth, stifling the gasp that caught on a smile. He opened the box to reveal a ring so perfect it could have been made for her. It had small green sapphire stones around a perfect red ruby, and it reminded her of the wildflower meadow at the heart of Alessandro’s home.
‘Amelia Seymore, you are the better part of my world, the whole of my life, and the only future I could ever have. I love you in a way that makes me better, that makes me want to be better and that brings me hope every single day. Will you do me the greatest honour, and be my lover, my partner, my companion so that I can love you, protect you and be with you for the rest of my days?’
Tears gathered in her eyes, and she happily shed them to see the shining love in his gaze for her.
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Oh, yes, please,’ she added, pulling him from the floor so that she could embrace him. ‘I love you, Alessandro Rossi,’ she said, before placing her lips across his, and finally, after what felt like years of searching, Amelia Seymore camehome.
EPILOGUE
‘CARA,PLEASE,YOU’REDOINGit all wrong—ouch!’ Alessandro exclaimed as his wife slapped his hand away from the meal she was trying to prepare. It wasn’t the slapping hand that worried him, but the knife gripped in the other that he eyed warily.
‘Mr Rossi. I have six years of experience when it comes to making our daughter’s favourite meal. Would you care to argue the same?’
The look in his eyes plainly told her he could, but instead he said, ‘I would care not to argue at all, Mrs Rossi, but if you insist, perhaps we can take this into the other room?’ The innocent expression on his face was utterly obliterated by the heady desire pouring from his gaze.
His hand slipped around her back and pulled her as close to him as her eight-month baby bump would allow. As much as Amelia wanted to, and she really did, Issy and Gianni and their children were due over soon and so much still needed to be done.
It had been nearly six months since she’d last seen them, her current pregnancy had been a little difficult and had prevented her from flying over to the Caribbean Island Issy and Gianni spent half of the year on, and she was desperately looking forward to seeing her sister.
Amelia looked across the counter top to the large wooden table set for their entire family. She remembered once imagining Alessandro sitting at it all alone and it pleased her to know that she had never seen that come to reality. As her husband tried to distract her with kisses to her neck—his favourite place on her body, it seemed—she remembered with a full heart the Christmases, New Years, birthdays, and every celebration they could make, shared with family and laughter and love.
‘They would understand,’ he whispered seductively in her ear. ‘They’re worse than we are. At it like rabbits, as you English like to say.’
‘Mamma, what are rabbits “at”?’ their daughter, Hope, asked innocently from the other side of the kitchen counter appearing—as usual—from nowhere. Hope Rossi had inherited her parents’ ferocious intelligence and her love of books from her paternal grandmother, if Aurora Vizzini’s proclamation was anything to go by.
‘Jumping. Running and jumping around the meadow,’ Amelia replied without missing a beat while Alessandro choked on his shocked laugh.
‘The one where we meet Uncle Gianni and Auntie Issy and Mia and Matteo for picnics when they’re home?’
Amelia nodded. She wondered just how much her niece and nephew would have grown as Alessandro swept up their daughter in his arms and threw her into the air, catching her without even raising Amelia’s blood pressure. He had kept true to the promise he had made, not only the day he proposed, but before then, in a café in Orvieto. He had kept them safe, he had given them everything they could have even wished for, let alone needed.
And she had never, in the days and years that followed, questioned his love and unconditional support. She’d had it when she had chosen to work with Sofia Obeid, at first part time after her maternity leave and then full time as partner in Sofia’s company. And she’d had it while she had explored her issues from her parents with the therapist. Sometimes she still felt the echoes of the past, as she knew Alessandro did, but the healing that had been done with Aurora, who was also set to arrive for his birthday meal shortly, was a beautiful thing to see.
‘My love,’ he said, gently moving her out of the way of the oven so he could check on the food. It turned out that Alessandro loved nothing more than providing for and feeding his family. A family that would grow again in just one month’s time. ‘Can you please sit down?’ he asked, still concerned about how much she was doing at this stage of her pregnancy. She shot him a glare that had none of the anger of their early interactions and all the heat that had burned between them from the very beginning.
He could see that she was about to argue when Hope heard the chatter of her cousins and the laugh of her uncle and aunt coming from the garden and she was off like a shot, allowing Alessandro to steal a kiss from his beautiful wife. He remembered how he had once been shocked by the possessiveness that had made him fear he had lost his mind. Instead, he realised later, it had been his heart. And only once he’d accepted his love, and had that love returned, had he found a peace and sense of rightness that he had never imagined possible. That didn’t mean that they hadn’t argued or that there hadn’t been hard times to overcome. But they had faced, and would continue to face, each and every challenge together, safe in the knowledge and assurance of their love.
No one looking at them from the outside would have ever believed that they had once been enemies. Enemies who had become lovers and then soulmates bound together for the rest of their days by a love that was true and everlasting.
