He smiled suddenly, a fierce and beautiful smile, making her heart turn over and over inside her chest. ‘You’re very strong, Summer mine. Very wise. I knew that right from the start.’
And she smiled back because she couldn’t help herself. Because he’d said that name and it didn’t hurt. It made her feel nothing but joy.
‘Of course I’m strong,’ she said. ‘Pressure doesn’t crush me. It just produces diamonds.’
His smile deepened, holding all the warmth and sunlight that she’d remembered from long ago. ‘Which reminds me. There’s something I want to ask you.’ Then he let her go and, before she could say a word, he got down on one knee and held out his hand to her. ‘Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife, Matilda St George?’
The tears returned and this time no amount of blinking would hold them back. ‘Yes,’ she said thickly, her heart full to overflowing. ‘Yes, I will.’
‘Good,’ Enzo said. ‘Because you’ve still got my ring.’
And Matilda laughed.
At that moment, the door of the bedroom opened and a small, black-haired, golden-eyed boy put his head around the door. ‘Papa?’
Enzo stood up and grinned at his son. ‘Buona sera, Simon.’
And he opened his arms.
EPILOGUE
ENZO STROKED HIS hands down his wife’s side, curving them over her rounded stomach. A warm summer wind was coming through the open doors of their bedroom, carrying with it the scent of the sea and the sound of their son laughing as he played in the gardens below with one of the island staff’s sons.
A deep feeling of peace filled Enzo...the hungry part of his soul had gone quiet.
But not too quiet.
Matilda was smiling up at him, her red curls in a halo around her head in fiery contrast to the white of the pillow, and he could feel himself getting hard for her. Again.
‘You should probably go down,’ she said, sliding a hand over his bare shoulder. ‘Simon will be getting impatient.’
Enzo was going to take his son for his first sailing lesson, and to say that Simon was excited was an understatement.
‘He can wait a minute or two longer,’ Enzo murmured, bending to kiss her stomach where his daughter slept, waiting to be born. ‘We’re not going to have a lot of time to ourselves once this one arrives.’
Matilda’s gaze turned smoky. ‘Well, maybe he can wait a little longer then. But it had better be more than a minute or two.’
Enzo gave her a wicked look. ‘For you, Summer mine, it’ll be five at least.’
This time she laughed and tightened her grip on him.
And it was more than five.
With smiles and laughter, and much love, they turned it into for ever.
* * * * *
Coming next month
THE MAID’S SPANISH SECRET
Dani Collins
His arrival struck like a bus. Like a train that derailed her composure and rattled on for miles, piling one broken thought onto another.
OhGodohGodohGod… Breathe. All the way in, all the way out, she reminded herself. But she had always imagined that if this much money showed up on her doorstep, it would be with an oversize check and a television crew. Not him.
Rico pivoted from surveying her neighbor’s fence and the working grain elevator against the fading Saskatchewan sky. His profile was knife sharp, carved of titanium and godlike. A hint of shadow was coming in on his jaw, just enough to bend his angelic looks into the fallen kind.
He knocked.
“Poppy—?” her grandmother prompted, tone perplexed by the way she was acting. Or failing to.
How? How could he know? Poppy had no doubt that he did. There was absolutely no other reason for this man to be this far off the beaten track. He sure as hell wasn’t here to see her.
Blood searing with fight or flight, heart pounding, she opened the door.
The full force of his impact slammed through her. The hard angle of his chin, the stern cast of his mouth, his wide shoulders and long legs, and hands held in tense, almost fists.
His jaw hardened as he took her in through mirrored aviators. Their chrome finish was cold and steely. If he’d had a fresh haircut, it had been ruffled by the wind. His boots were alligator, his cologne nothing but crisp, snow-scented air and fuming suspicion.
Poppy lifted her chin and pretended her heart wasn’t whirling like a Prairie tornado in her chest. dpg!
“Can I help you?” she asked, exactly as she would if he had been a complete stranger.
His hand went to the doorframe. His nostrils twitched as he leaned into the space. “Really?” he asked in a tone of lethal warning.
“Who is it, Poppy?” her grandmother asked.
He stiffened slightly, as though surprised she wasn’t alone. Then his mouth curled with disparagement, waiting to see if she would lie.
Poppy swallowed, her entire body buzzing, but she held his gaze through those inscrutable glasses while she said in a strong voice, “Rico, Gran. The man I told you about. From Spain.”
There, she silently conveyed. What do you think of that?
It wasn’t wise to defy him. She knew that by the roil of threat in the pit of her stomach, but she had had to grow up damned fast in the last two years. She was not some naive traveler succumbing to a charmer who turned out to be a thief, or even the starry-eyed maid who had encouraged a philandering playboy to seduce her.
She was a grown woman who had learned how to face her problems head-on.
“Oh?” Gran’s tone gave the whole game away in one murmur. There was concern beneath her curiosity. Knowledge. It was less a blithe, isn’t that nice that your friend turned up. More an alarmed, Why is he here?
There was no hiding. None. Poppy might not be able to read this man’s eyes, but she read his body language. He wasn’t here to ask questions. He was here to confront.
Because he knew she’d had his baby.
Continue reading
THE MAID’S SPANISH SECRET
Dani Collins
Available next month
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Copyright ©2019 Dani Collins
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Demanding His Hidden Heir (Mills & Boon Modern) (Secret Heirs of Billionaires, Book 26) Page 17
