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When Annalisa was finally asleep, she gently placed the months-old baby back in her cot and her ever-watchful nanny came forward, whispering, “I’ll take over here, Mrs. Gazis. You go and celebrate your anniversary.”
Easier said than done, Pollyanna thought moments later, considering that her husband was nowhere to be found.
She knew she could just ask someone to look for him, but then, that wouldn’t be fun at all. And what if Kyr was playing hide and seek with her? He had become extremely sweet lately, sweeter than he had ever been, so she wasn’t putting anything past him.
As she roamed the resort on her own, visiting one hallway after another, she thought about her life and shook her head, no longer surprised that it still felt surreal.
Eight years, she thought and almost giggled. They were celebrating their eighth wedding anniversary this year, and in those eight years, she had given birth to four beautiful children at the grand old age of twenty-six.
Heaven help her if Kyr ended up wanting another one, Pollyanna thought. But in truth, she kind of liked the idea, too. Being an only child had been so lonely, and she knew that Kyr felt the same. If God saw to bless them with more kids, she wasn’t going to complain at all.
On her way to the ballroom, she bumped into her godparents, and she asked, “Have you seen Kyr?” It was cheating, but it was also getting late, and she didn’t want their guests to wait too long.
Ezio and Dinah exchanged an uneasy look.
Pollyanna grinned. “Either he’s really playing hide and seek with me,” she teased, “or he’s planned a surprise and you two are in on it.” Moving forward, she placed a kiss on each of their cheeks, saying, “It’s okay, I won’t force you to say anything. I’ll find him, sooner or later.”
And she was right, but she would wish by then that she had never found him at all.
PRACTICALLY EVERYONE in the island, guests and locals alike, had been invited to their wedding anniversary, and all of them had said yes, even though invitations had only gone out a few days ago. And for a change, it had all been Kyr’s idea and not his wife’s.
The first time he had told Pollyanna about it, she had immediately tiptoed to lay a hand on his forehead. “Are you sick?”
This had him rolling his eyes and the twins, who were with them in the living room doing their summer reading, burst out laughing, too.
“You can’t blame me,” his wife said defensively at the dirty look he had thrown at her. “We both know how antisocial you are.”
“Do you want the party or not?” But his irritable voice had been entirely feigned, and the way his wife giggled had told him she was aware of this, too.
Even so, she had pretended to think about it. “I don’t know...it depends.” And at his raised eyebrow, she had answered cheekily, “On how many...” But then it was as if her embarrassment had caught up with her and she had trailed off in obvious discomfit.
Had she said what he thought she had said? When Kyr had looked back at his wife in visible bemusement, her cheeks had suddenly become flushed, and Kyr realized that she had wanted to shock him.
“Why, you little...”
But their daughter had interrupted him then, asking curiously, “How many what, Mama?”
Pollyanna had gasped and turned even redder.
Serves you right, he thought with a smirk. Facing his daughter, he said solemnly, “Mama is just asking how many times she could eat—-” But he hadn’t been able to speak, his wife quickly covering his mouth with a gasp of dismay.
Dio had put his pencil down. “You’re hungry, Mama?”
Pollyanna had moaned, and he had taken advantage of her distraction by taking her hand off his mouth, saying, “Mama is very—-”
His wife had hurriedly covered her mouth again.
Recalling the incident made him smile even now. And it would get even better tonight, he thought in satisfaction. Tonight, he would give his wife the biggest surprise of all. He had built a corner office at the resort, where he hoped she would soon be working as head of her own event styling firm.
He would never give her headquarters in New York or anywhere else, but he felt that he was finally ready to have her traveling for work whenever the occasion called for it.
Just thinking of how his wife would react to his surprise made his lips curve in another smile, but this was completely wiped away when he saw the woman standing at the other end of the hall.
Ana.
She looked almost exactly like the day he had last seen her. Tall, golden-skinned, slender, and exotic, she was still vibrantly beautiful even though, like him, she was in her mid-thirties.
But her clothes had changed, and so had her bearing. In the past, Ana had been like the ice maiden, and even then he had known it was her way of coping, her way of preventing herself to be hurt by how others had looked down on her because of her poverty.
