“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Tell me you love me. Please.” His used the backs of his fingers to gather the raindrops dripping off her jaw. He swiped his hand on his wet jeans. “I promise you I will believe you this time.”
“That word doesn’t seem like enough for the way I feel. It doesn’t seem like it matches all those wonderful things you just said. You’re—”
He cupped her jaw with his damp palm and his wet thumb silenced her lips.
“You don’t care about my past. That’s all that matters to me.”
Her chin crinkled under the line of his thumb while her insides were nothing but trapped birds flittering every which way.
“It can’t be this easy after it was so h-hard.” Her throat was tight, her voice a mere squeak. “For so l-long.”
“It won’t always be easy, mi amor,” he said with tender understanding. “Sometimes I will tell you to come in out of the rain and you’ll make me stand here and count chickens with you. Other times I’ll punish you by making you dress up in designer gowns and talk to strangers.”
“And you’ll still love me despite my petulant sighs?”
“I will love you because of them. Because they will remind me you’re there for my sake, not for designer gowns. It’s inevitable that we argue over the small nonsense of life, but it won’t compare to the harmony I feel waking next to you or holding your hand in mine.”
He took hers now, made a tiny adjustment to her rings. Brought her hand to his lips and kissed her trembling fingers.
“I want to build a life with you, Pia. Not one that seeks vengeance. One that fosters love. I need you in my life, every day, helping me do that.”
“I wanted this so badly and I’ve been trying so hard not to hope for it. It hurt so much when I was convinced it couldn’t come true. Now I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and find out I really am dreaming.”
He bit her knuckle hard enough to threaten pain.
“Ouch! Hey.” She scowled, trying to snatch her hand away in reaction.
He grinned and kept her hand in his as he stood. He gave a gentle tug. “Can we get out of the rain?”
She glanced at her ruined notebook, pages curled and turning to pulp.
“I’ll buy you a bowl of soup,” he coaxed. “We can talk about a foundation to address the effects of climate change on marine mammals or…” He scanned the beach. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you really want to know?” She was embarrassed, but trusted him enough to know that when he laughed at her, it would be in the kindest way possible. “I named them several years ago. I check on them when I’m feeling blue. I like to see who is hooking up with whom and count the new babies.”
His valiant struggle to keep a straight face was love in its purest form.
“I also have a colony of penguins and some polar bears I like to track.” She rubbed her nose where rain was dripping and causing a tickle. “A pod of whales. Way too many dolphins, but they’re so playful and cute.”
“I’m excited to hear all about them,” he assured her with a solemn nod. “Soup?”
She rose, gave a little shrug to knock the worst of the gathered rain off her coat.
“Or we could go to my hotel room,” she suggested. “Warm up in the shower before we dry off and go to bed. Maybe not talk much at all for a while.”
“Then order room service? See, this is why I love being married to a woman who is smarter than me.” He helped her gather her things, then stood with her in the rain a moment longer. Long enough to kiss her senseless.
With his arm firm around her, he drew her from the empty beach into their shared future.
EPILOGUE
Eighteen months later…
“CAN WE HOLD JELLY?” Lily asked, one arm curled trustingly around her Tío Cesar’s neck while he clasped her affectionately against his chest.
Angelo had a very difficult time denying his nieces and nephews anything, particularly sweet Lily with her high voice and innocently batted lashes and her hilarious shortening of Angelica’s name to Jelly.
Tío Cesar was another story. Angelo enjoyed a good-natured trashy relationship with his wife’s brothers, well developed over the year since they’d all had their litter of newborns and he’d partnered with them on an alloy for a gaming console they were jointly developing.
“You’re shameless,” he said to Cesar, nodding at Lily, who coaxed with a wave of her free arm, entreating her younger cousin to join them.
“I like to connect with my nieces. That’s how one keeps the title Favorite Uncle. Pro tip,” Cesar advised in a facetious drawl.
Fighting words. Angelo narrowed his eyes. “Wait until your daughter’s birthday.” He would spoil her enough for a lifetime.
“Please, Jelly?” Lily begged. “Tío Cesar wants to read us a book.”
Angelica peeked from where she had her face buried in Angelo’s neck. She wasn’t particularly shy, but she made strange with her uncles sometimes, mostly because she didn’t see them as often as she saw Poppy and Sorcha and the children.
She had also just woken from her nap to a lot of people and attention, not that they were making a big deal out of her first birthday. Pia had invited her brothers and their families to spend the weekend at their island home because it was the middle of the summer and they all enjoyed an excuse to spend time together. The grandparents had chosen not to make the journey for something so frivolous, which kept it to a laid-back gathering where the children could be as boisterous as they liked.
“Want to cuddle with Lily and Tío?” Angelo asked his daughter.
“Maybe Brenna will join us,” Cesar said of his daughter, noting the little firecracker was working up to fight her brother, Mateo, to the death over a pool noodle.
“You on that, Rico?” Angelo mocked as Angelica went to Cesar and Rico waded into the dispute, his year-old son naked on his hip.
“Tío!” Enrique called from the diving board. “Watch me flip.”
“Where are the women? How did we get outnumbered? Ah, Memo,” Rico muttered as a wet stain appeared on his shirt. “I knew that would happen. Here.” He handed his son to Angelo.
Angelo diapered his nephew while Rico caught Brenna back from chasing her brother down the stairs into deeper water. He plopped Brenna with her father and the girls, then threw off his stained shirt and cannonballed into the pool to soak the boys.
“I told you they’d have everything under control,” Sorcha said as the women appeared with trays of food and drink. Memo went to Poppy, then pointed at his father in the pool so she took him across to hand him in to Rico.
“I’m insulted there was any doubt in us.” Angelo scooped Pia close and stage-whispered, “Thank God you got here when you did.”
She chuckled and looped her arms around his waist, gazing over the convivial chaos of their pool party. “This is nice.”
“It is.”
“Okay,” Poppy said, coming back to uncork a bottle of wine. “I’ve been very excited for this day. Our first vintage and everyone is weaned, right? We girls finally get to split a bottle of wine?”
Pia wrinkled her nose and looked at Angelo. They had suspected they wouldn’t be able to keep it under wraps a full three months.
“Really?” Poppy asked with shock, catching their look while bright tears came into her eyes.
“We didn’t mean to,” Pia admitted sheepishly. “It just happened.”
“Oh, we know how it ‘just happens,’” Sorcha teased.
“Too true,” Poppy said, coming to hug both of them. “That’s wonderful news. Congratulations.”
Much later, when Angelo was lying replete next to his wife, her damp body relaxed against his, he said, “Do you remember our honeymoon?”
“I think we were just there,” she said on a luxurious sigh and a sli
ther of her naked skin against his own. She settled her head more comfortably on his shoulder.
He smiled into the dark. “That’s what I meant. I remember thinking I had to memorize it because I might never be that happy again, but I am. Often.”
“A wise person once told me that happiness is fleeting, not a state of being.”
“He might not have been as smart as the woman he was talking to.”
She brought her thigh up to rest across his stomach. Her face turned into his skin as she kissed above his heart. “For the record, after much dedicated research, I have concluded that happiness is a goal worth pursuing.”
“Hypothesis proven?”
“Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
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