“Maybe I drove my wife into Del Roca’s arms. My entire focus was on saving the estate.”
“You did what you had to do. You and your wife were supposed to be a team, not individuals looking out for themselves. You saw the bigger picture—the people who depended on you and the land that needed nurturing. That’s not wrong. What you did was vital, or Del Roca would have laid waste to the land too.”
“I couldn’t allow my father’s life and work to count for nothing.”
“And you didn’t. You fought and won.”
“I’d be fighting now if things hadn’t worked out,” Dante admitted.
“But they did.”
Even a grim smile was better than no smile, Rose thought as she met Dante’s harsh stare. “You can move forward now.”
“We can both move forward,” Dante insisted.
Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her until Rose wondered if her heart could actually burst out of her chest. “It’s dawn,” she whispered when they finally broke apart. “Happy birthday.”
He took a long pause and then said, “Thank you.” And smiled. The wicked, wonderful smile she loved.
Diamond dewdrops were already glistening on the carpet of green in the thin gray light when Dante took her back in his arms. “A new day. A new start. It seems fitting, doesn’t it?”
They were both out the other side, Rose thought with relief as Dante’s eyes reflected the journey they’d taken together, as well as the road ahead.
“Perfectly fitting,” she agreed softly. “And no shadows allowed.”
Dante’s kiss was lingering and gentle. “I love you, Rose Delaney,” he admitted when he pulled back.
“You love me?”
“Unless this feeling that consumes me is something else?” he said with a frown. “Maybe it’s heartburn, or indigestion—”
“Stop,” she warned.
“Try this,” he said, keeping her close. “I can’t live without you. I don’t want to try. Maybe I don’t have to. Do I, Rose?”
“You love me?” she repeated, searching his eyes.
“I know—pity me,” Dante murmured dryly. “And more than anything,” he confirmed, “I’ve got it bad.”
“Because I’m unique in your experience, and you want to add to your collection of curiosities?” Rose suggested.
Dante laughed softly against her mouth. “You’re certainly a curiosity, and you definitely need lessons in romance.”
“Coming from you, I feel a real failure.”
“We’ll learn together,” he promised, turning serious.
“Just romance?” Rose’s heart was going crazy. It was as if she was in an alternate universe where all her wildest dreams came true.
“Full-fat, five-chili romance,” Dante promised.
“Now you have my attention,” she confirmed wryly.
“I want to sleep with you too—and I want to wake with you in my arms, and then—”
“And then?” she queried.
“Make love to you until your legs won’t hold you up.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Is that a yes?”
As he asked the question, Dante dropped kisses on her brow, her eyelids, her mouth, before gently brushed his sharp black stubble against her ridiculously sensitive neck. “That’s cheating,” she gasped.
“I play to win,” he reminded her.
She looked up. “I love you with all my heart.”
“Marriage to the Romani chieftain could be quite demanding,” Dante warned.
“I’m counting on it,” she assured him. “What if I need more time to think?”
“Pretending reluctance doesn’t suit you—but if you do need more time…” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to work out how to fill that time.”
“Is that so?” Rose whispered.
“Yes, that’s so,” Dante said as he wrapped his arms around her, making further discussion impossible. Teasing her with brushes of his firm, sexy lips against her kiss-bruised mouth, he nuzzled her face while his hands worked some magic that had her knees buckling beneath her so he had to support her as she sank onto the soft, mossy ground. Tongues touched, tangled, retreated, and this play led to deeper kisses, and when Dante’s hands were more demanding, she was too. Dante had only to nudge his way between her thighs for her to lose control.
“Do I take Yes! Yes! Yes! as your answer?” he suggested dryly.
It was a good few moments before she could respond to that. “You’ve got your answer. I want to be your wife…though I might need more convincing…”
Positioning her to his liking, Dante began to convince.
“You are a very bad man,” she said when he pinned her wrists above her head so he could suckle and thrust at the same time.
“That I am,” he agreed, sinking deep.
Epilogue
Six crazy brothers arrived from Ireland, each one better looking and more outrageous than the next, though it was Niall, the roughest of the six, who brought tears to Rose’s eyes when he produced the photograph of her mother and told her that she looked just like her in her wedding dress. “You clean up well,” he observed, holding the photograph up so he could compare his mother and Rose. “She’d be proud of you today, Rose.”
“Thank you,” she managed, biting her lip hard. Her bridesmaids would not be pleased if she cried after they’d expended so much effort on turning her from a stable lad into a Romani queen, as they called her. “You’d better go and look after Pa. He’s already into the whisky, and he’s supposed to be supporting me up the aisle, not the other way around.”
With a last fond grin, Niall left Rose to continue getting ready for her wedding. She laughed as she closed the door on her suite of rooms at the hacienda. It sounded as if the entire village of Crackallen was holding a party downstairs ahead of the marriage celebrations. “I hope there’ll be someone left standing by the time I arrive at the ceremony.”
“There will be,” Celina, one of the bridesmaids, assured her. “Dante wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“They’ll soon sober up when they see you,” Rose’s friend Amber added, exchanging an appreciative glance with Celina. “You look beautiful.”
“I feel odd in a floaty dress, and Niall didn’t even laugh.”
“Doesn’t that tell you something?” Celina insisted as she and Amber helped to adjust Rose’s veil.
“If I leave you to your own devices, you’ll turn up to our wedding in breeches and a pair of filthy muckers,” Dante had teased Rose before piloting one of his smaller jets to the romance capital of the world for a whirlwind tour of all the top designers.
Proving, Rose remembered, smiling a secret smile, that it was perfectly possible to make love on the Eiffel Tower, providing you chose the moment well.
She could hardly believe the finished effect when she stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror. She was transformed, from tomboy and homespun Irish horse whisperer, into—well, if not quite a queen, as her friends would have her believe, then at least into something approaching a discreetly made-up woman with shining hair in a fabulous dress. A woman with very glamorous underwear she had completely forgotten to put on, Rose realized when she spotted the pink-and-white-striped box, packed to the brim with the most exotic flimsies made of silk and lace in the whole wide world—courtesy of the Romani chieftain, who would expect a fashion show on their wedding night, Dante had informed her.
Hmm, Rose mused. That might have to wait. She had other plans—and they didn’t include putting on clothes.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful dress,” Celina commented as she reverently traced the glittering embroidery on Rose’s wedding gown. “Tell us the story of where you found it again,” she begged.
Rose grinned. “We’d wandered off the beaten track one starlit evening in Paris and found ourselves in Montparnasse, one of the more bohemian quarters of the city. I was drawn to this tiny boutique because there was an old lady sewing on an ancient
treadle machine in the window. She beckoned us inside and told us she was Romani. Her work was exquisite. She crafted one special dress each year, she told me, and was finishing off her last commission—the dress I was admiring. Dante, needless to say, wasn’t convinced. He wanted me to have something from a top fashion house, and he asked the old lady how she managed to survive on one commission a year. I shushed him. My mind was made up. “This is where I want my dress to be made,” I told him. And then the old lady looked straight at me and said, ‘Don’t I know you?’ I was thinking the same thing about her,” Rose explained. “‘We Romani move about,’ she told me…”
“And then?” Amber pressed when Rose fell silent, though she’d heard the story several times.
“I had to beg Dante to agree.”
“But the looks you exchanged sealed the deal?” Celina traded a knowing grin with Amber.
Rose kept her own counsel, but she smiled.
“Every stitch is sewn with love,” Amber remembered, quoting the old Romani woman.
And it was a fabulous dress. Formfitting in ivory silk satin, it had a slit up one side that would have been quite revealing had it not been for the floating silk chiffon panels that formed the skirt. Rose had complained to the old Romani that she would never have the grace to carry off such a dream of a dress, but far from being put off, the skilled seamstress had created a provocatively low neckline too, as well as a floating cape that fell from Rose’s shoulders and formed a train some six yards in length. “Imagine that flying behind you when the Romani chieftain lifts you onto his horse and gallops away with you,” the old woman had said, her eyes shining with passion as she spoke.
“Did I mention my husband was Romani?” Rose had asked with surprise.
“You didn’t have to. He has the Sight,” the old elderly Romani insisted. “I feel it.”
A quiver ran through Rose now as she remembered their conversation. She would never ignore her instincts again, she vowed silently as she traced the tiny diamante symbols the old lady had sewn with love. “Romani symbols,” the old lady had said. “Fitting symbols for a Romani queen.” Rose smiled as she remembered how proudly the elderly woman had spoken of her heritage. “The tiny diamante wheels symbolize the wheel of life turning ceaselessly for all,” she had explained, “while the gold sun warms you, and the pearl love knots keep your love forever strong.”
“Thank you both,” Rose murmured, reaching for her bridesmaids’ hands and squeezing tight. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you, and you’re right, the dress is beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Dante!” Rose whirled around. “You’re not supposed to see me on the day of our wedding!”
“I’m not supposed to kiss you either, but I don’t obey the rules,” he reminded her. “I make them.”
Rose’s bridesmaids scattered as Dante dragged her close. He could break any rule he liked, as far as she was concerned. Even in a formal dark wedding suit, with a crisp white shirt pointing up his incredible tan, he was every inch the Romani chieftain.
“You are so bad,” she whispered as the girls softly closed the door behind them. “You’ve frightened my bridesmaids away.”
“I hardly think they’d want to stay and watch us kissing.”
“Kissing?”
“You sound disappointed.” Dante smiled. “What’s your rush? We have all the time in the world. Don’t they say that delay is the friend of pleasure?”
“You do,” Rose agreed wryly.
“Forever,” Dante growled as he drew her into his arms.
“Even longer than that,” Rose whispered.
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About The Author
Susan Stephens is a USA TODAY bestselling author, translated into 23 languages and published in 114 international markets around the world with sales of more than 8 million books.
Susan was a professional singer and television presenter before meeting her husband on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. In true romance style, they met on Monday, were engaged that Friday, and married three months later.
Susan’s menagerie consists of dogs, cats, horses, a donkey, any stray animal that pops by for a cuddle or a longer stay, together with a wonderful husband, three terrific children, and five edible grandchildren.
Susan enjoys entertaining, travel, and going to the theatre. To relax, she reads, cooks, plays the piano—and when she’s had enough of relaxing, she throws herself off mountains on skis, or gallops through the countryside singing loudly.
Other Books by Susan Stephens
The Blood and Thunder series...
Book 1 Christmas Tsar
Book 2 Argentinian Billionaire
Book 3 Spaniard Untamed
Book 4 (Title to Be Announced)
to be continued...
The Ladies Club series...
Christmas At The Ladies Club
Valentine’s Night At The Ladies Club
Hot Spring Nights At The Ladies Club
The Bride Wore Red At The Ladies Club
Argentinian Billionaire (Blood and Thunder 2) Page 13
