‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll return to Madrid once the baby’s born and I’ll live there with her like we planned but I can’t live in your home again.’
His throat closed so tightly he had to swallow numerous times before he could say, ‘I thought you wanted us to be a real family.’
‘I did.’ Gently removing her hand from his, she put it back on her lap. She stared down at it, no longer looking at him. ‘I’m happy that you want to be a real father. I swear on everything I love that I will help you however I can to love our daughter and be the best father you can be but I can’t move back in with you.’
‘You said you love me.’
‘That’s why I can’t move back in.’
He stared in disbelief at the bowed head but it wasn’t until he saw a tear drop onto her lap that it suddenly became clear to him.
Shifting forward, he gently took her cheeks in his hands and raised her face to look at him. ‘Do you still love me?’
Her lips and chin wobbled as more tears sprang out of eyes that had turned red. She jerked the smallest of nods.
Her voice was so low he had to strain everything to hear her. ‘I have loved you for so long that I can’t remember when I didn’t but it isn’t enough, not when you can’t love me back. I can’t put myself through that again. It would destroy me.’
‘I am the biggest fool in the world,’ he murmured, bringing his nose to rest against hers, his heart pounding as hard as it had ever pounded. ‘I let you walk out of my life when you are the best thing to have ever happened to me. The single best thing. You told me once that your parents regard you as their miracle from God. You are my miracle, carina. You are an angel sent to save me from myself and I love you so much that it isn’t just my heart that hurts, it is all of me. I ache from missing you. I pushed you away so many times that I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me but, mi amor, I have loved you from that first time I looked in your eyes. You have brought light into the darkness of my life—you are my light. I am sorry beyond words for the pain I have caused you and I swear, on everything I love, that if you give me—us—another chance I will be a better man. I will be the husband and lover you deserve. I swear it. I love you, Sophie, with my whole life.’
Her tears had soaked his hands, drenched them with the misery and pain he had caused.
He would give his life to take that pain from her.
‘How can you be so sure?’ she whispered.
‘Because I feel it.’ Finally, he allowed himself to smile. ‘A wise woman once told me that sometimes feelings are all we can trust.’
An arm suddenly hooked around his neck. She pressed her forehead to his and stared so deeply into his eyes that he felt the beam from it touch his soul.
And from that look, his soul flew up to his mouth and spilled out everything contained in it. ‘I want to make love to you, to touch you, to taste you, to sleep with you locked in my arms every night for the rest of my life. You look at me and I feel I could walk on water. I want to fight the wolves that would harm you and I would give my life to keep you safe.
‘Trust me with your heart, mi amor,’ he begged. ‘Trust it to me and I will keep it safe for the rest of my life.’
Her eyes continued to bore into him, searching, searching, searching until he was stripped of everything but the essence of who he was...
And then she smiled.
It was a smile of such pure, radiating joy that the last of the darkness that had lived in him his whole life was pushed out for ever.
When her lips found his and crushed him with her kisses he hauled her tightly into his arms, this angel sent to save his soul and warm his heart.
‘I love you, Javier,’ she whispered as she trailed kisses over his face. ‘I love you more than I thought it was possible to love someone. I want to spend the rest of my life locked in your arms. I want to fight the wolves that would do you harm. I want to kiss you until all the pain in your heart has gone.’
‘You have already done that, mi amor.’
Just having her in his arms like this and hearing her sweet words of love made his heart feel reborn.
And, as her lips found his and the passion between them reignited, Javier’s last conscious thought before he carried her upstairs and made love to her was that this was the start of their new life.
With Sophie he had found his heart and his soul.
Four months later...
The midwife took his daughter from his beautiful, tired wife’s chest and held her out to him.
Javier stared at the tiny form with the surprisingly long, kicking legs and allowed her to be placed in his arms.
Terrified of dropping her, it took him long moments before he dared to breathe.
He soaked in every millimetre of the delicate face, the creases, the rosebud lips that had parted in a wail when she had entered this world minutes before, stared with awe at the soft bundle of dark hair on the crown of her head, marvelled at the sharp little nails on the little fingers that had a tight grasp of his thumb...
His heart expanded. It bloomed...
And he fell madly in love.
EPILOGUE
‘I CAN SEE IT!’ called Sophie’s daughter, Fiona, a sturdy six-year-old who was sporting an outstanding front gap in her mouth, her top two front teeth having both fallen out on the same day and absolutely not with any help from Fiona. None at all.
Fiona was pointing at the nearing island, her little feet tapping with excitement.
‘I see too!’ her brother squealed.
‘No, you can’t,’ scoffed Christopher, Freya and Benjamin’s son, rightly pointing out that three-year-old Roberto was lying his head off as there was no way he could see over the railing to Marietta Island.
The three families were heading for their annual summer break on Luis and Chloe’s Caribbean island, a tradition amongst them since Luis had insisted they all go five years ago, to thrash out the past once and for all and put it to bed for good.
There had been no thrashing out. Whether it had been the magic of the sun or whether it had been because Benjamin had come to understand Javier’s contrition was genuine—a donation of the exact amount Javier had ripped him off by had been made to a charity of Benjamin’s choice in Benjamin’s name; two hundred and twenty-five million euros, plus interest—but before Sophie had known what was happening she’d witnessed her gruff husband slapping Benjamin on the back, the two men laughing uproariously.
She still wasn’t quite sure if she’d imagined that. She loved her husband dearly but he still wasn’t one for seeing the funny side of life. He was getting better though. Three children were teaching him that.
And there he was, emerging from the sun lounge, baby Raul in his arms.
Her heart lifted to see him as it always did and as she knew it always would.
Seven years of marriage and she had never once regretted her decision to give him that second chance.
It hadn’t been easy but then she had never thought it would be. The damage done to her husband had been too deep and too ingrained to be erased overnight. She had learned when to give him space and as the years had passed he’d needed less and less of it. In return, he had been nothing but supportive over her studies. She’d got the qualifications needed to study as a vet but by then she’d had Fiona and was expecting Roberto, had added to their menagerie of animals with two more dogs and come to the conclusion that it was caring for the animals themselves that she loved to do and so, with Javier’s support and backing, had opened an animal rescue centre instead. She employed Marsela to manage it for her.
She grinned at him.
He grinned back and held Raul out to her. ‘One clean baby.’
She grinned again. ‘See, I told you we didn’t need to bring the nanny along.’
He grunted but there was a sparkle in his eye. ‘You neve
r said I would be taking on her chores.’
‘I can see Thomas!’ Fiona suddenly bellowed, now waving her arms frantically at her cousin, Luis and Chloe’s eldest son born only weeks after her—which, naturally, meant Fiona was always in charge when the cousins were together—who was waving back with equal intensity. Running up behind Thomas were the four-year-old twins Gregory and Georgina, lagging behind their brother because they were punching each other every few steps.
The yacht’s captain brought the vessel to anchor next to Luis’s, which matched theirs for size—something incredibly important to both men, she and Chloe liked to snigger about—and then Freya appeared clutching her belly and looking a little green with morning sickness, Benjamin, who had no interest in yachts, preferring his growing collection of classic cars, supporting her, and they all followed the excited children onto the golden sand.
That night, wrapped in Javier’s arms on a beach chair, watching her children and their cousins wading under the moonlight, Sophie sighed with contentment.
Sometimes it felt as if her heart could explode with happiness.
* * * * *
Coming next month
THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS HOUSEKEEPER
Sharon Kendrick
‘The only thing which will stop me, is you,’ he continued, his voice a deep silken purr. ‘So stop me, Molly. Turn away and walk out right now and do us both a favour, because something tells me this is a bad idea.’
He was giving her the opportunity to leave but Molly knew she wasn’t going to take it - because when did things like this ever happen to people like her? She wasn’t like most women her age. She’d never had sex. Never come even close, despite her few forays onto a dating website which had all ended in disaster. Yet now a man she barely knew was proposing seduction and suddenly she was up for it, and she didn’t care if it was bad. Hadn’t she spent her whole life trying to be good? And where had it got her?
Her heart was crashing against her rib-cage as she stared up into his rugged features and greedily drank them in. ‘I don’t care if it’s a bad idea,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe I want it as much as you do.’
Continue reading
THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS HOUSEKEEPER
Sharon Kendrick
Available next month
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Copyright ©2018 by Sharon Kendrick
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Billionaire's Baby of Redemption Page 17
