The Italian's Pregnant Cinderella (Mills & Boon Modern)
Page 15
Hope, love and joy.
Cristiano.
“You already have my heart,” he said. “I want you to have this, too. Because if I keep it, I think we both know that I will use whatever stones I have to build as many walls as possible. But not you, my beautiful Julienne. You make life. You make love. And I want nothing else than to dedicate myself to making you happy.”
“Cristiano,” she said, and this time, he did not cut her off. And she did not falter. “I love you. And I don’t want to be a princess. You are not a fool, and I am your wife, and we will love each other as best we can, for as long as we can, so that our son grows up and doesn’t spend his time worried about stones and ogres and trolls. But rather, happiness. Family. Love. All the things that make life worth living.”
“I can think of no better happy-ever-after than that,” he said, there against her mouth.
This time, when he kissed her, it tasted like forever.
And kiss by kiss, and stone by stone, they made it so.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JULIENNE WENT INTO labor the following morning, and by nightfall, their son was born.
And in Cristiano’s wholly unbiased opinion, he was perfect.
They named him Pietro, which meant rock, because he was the greatest magic either one of them could imagine. And something far bigger and better than a mere stone.
And the more Cristiano allowed himself to love, the more magic there was to be found.
It took him the better part of a year, but he convinced Paola to start attending family functions, such as they were. To meet her great-grandson, and better still, the woman who had convinced a Cassara man to change.
“Perhaps it is not me who is the witch, then,” the old woman cackled with glee, the first time she and Julienne met.
“I will take that as the highest compliment imaginable,” Julienne replied.
It took him another year to convince Paola to move into the villa, where she could be mistress of the house at last. And his grandmother might have been in her nineties, but she ran the villa with an iron fist. And ordered Cristiano, Pietro and the three other sons Julienne bore him around at her leisure.
“It is not difficult to make a good man,” the old woman told him on her hundredth birthday, grinning at him over her cane. “All it takes is a woman’s firm hand.”
Cristiano could not disagree.
But the hands he preferred on him belonged to his wife.
Julienne was his north star, his lodestone. She carried his babies, she raised his sons and when she was not busy creating tiny humans, she served on the Cassara Corporation board as well.
And, finally, together, they made it the family company it never had been in his grandfather’s hands.
“That’s because you are the man your grandfather never was,” Julienne told him, year after year. “You love your wife. You would die for your family. You have honored your grandmother, and yes, Cristiano, you have rescued each and every one of us. Over and over again.”
But Cristiano always knew the truth.
Julienne might have been the one to walk into that bar, determined to sell herself. But she had been the one to do the rescuing.
“I love you,” he told her, every day of their lives.
And better still, showed her.
In any way he could, in every way that mattered, he showed her.
How he loved her. How crucial she was not only to his happiness, but to the mechanics that kept the world turning. How perfect she was and always had been, just as she was.
And in tougher times, or when things seemed the darkest, they would take out that stone that was shaped like a heart, and it would make them laugh.
Cristiano would tell her stories about ogres and trolls and terrible fools. Julienne would tell him stories about princesses who were born on hilltops, who came down to the sea to find their Prince Charmings.
Again and again, they wove their stories around themselves until they were right again.
Until they were whole.
“Happy-ever-after isn’t made,” Julienne liked to say as they lay in their bed, still wrapped around each other tightly twenty years on. “It’s mended. The days are the thread, the years are the colors, and all we have to do is sew.”
“I love you,” Cristiano told her. “Ti amo, mi amore. Tu mi completi.”
His heart, his love, his wife.
His whole life, gleaming there before him. Light and joy.
And then he rolled her over, and showed her how he loved her in the language he was most fluent in, once again.
Until she sang their love back to him, the way he loved best.
The way she always did, and always would, all the rest of their days.
Coming next month
THE SECRET KEPT FROM THE KING
Clare Connelly
‘No.’ He held onto her wrist as though he could tell she was about to run from the room. ‘Stop.’
Her eyes lifted to his and she jerked on her wrist so she could lift her fingers to her eyes and brush away her tears. Panic was filling her, panic and disbelief at the mess she found herself in.
‘How is this upsetting to you?’ he asked more gently, pressing his hands to her shoulders, stroking his thumbs over her collarbone. ‘We agreed at the hotel that we could only have two nights together, and you were fine with that. I’m offering you three months, on exactly those same terms, and you’re acting as though I’ve asked you to parade naked through the streets of Shajarah.’
‘You’re ashamed of me,’ she said simply. ‘In New York we were two people who wanted to be together. What you’re proposing turns me into your possession.’
He stared at her, his eyes narrowed. ‘The money I will give you is beside the point.’
More tears sparkled on her lashes. ‘Not to me it’s not.’
‘Then don’t take the money,’ he said, urgently. ‘Come to the RKH and be my lover because you want to be with me.’
‘I can’t.’ Tears fell freely down her face now. ‘I need that money. I need it.’
A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘So have both.’
‘No, you don’t understand.’
She was a live wire of panic but she had to tell him, so that he understood why his offer was so revolting to her. She pulled away from him, pacing towards the windows, looking out on this city she loved. The trees at Bryant Park whistled in the fall breeze and she watched them for a moment, remembering the first time she’d seen them. She’d been a little girl, five, maybe six, and her dad had been performing at the restaurant on the fringes of the park. She’d worn her Very Best dress, and, despite the heat, she’d worn tights that were so uncomfortable she could vividly remember that feeling now. But the park had been beautiful and her dad’s music had, as always, filled her heart with pleasure and joy.
Sariq was behind her now, she felt him, but didn’t turn to look at him.loz
‘I’m glad you were so honest with me today.’ Her voice was hollow. ‘It makes it easier for me, in a way, because I know exactly how you feel, how you see me, and what you want from me.’ Her voice was hollow, completely devoid of emotion when she had a thousand throbbing inside her.
He said nothing. He didn’t try to deny it. Good. Just as she’d said, it was easier when things were black and white.
‘I don’t want money so I can attend the Juilliard, Your Highness.’ It pleased her to use his title, to use that as a point of difference, to put a line between them that neither of them could cross.
Silence. Heavy, loaded with questions. And finally, ‘Then what do you need such a sum for?’
She bit down on her lip, her tummy squeezing tight. ‘I’m pregnant. And you’re the father.’dpg
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THE SECRET KEPT FROM THE KING
Clare Connelly
Available next month
Copyright ©2020 b
y Clare Connelly
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