by Susan Meier
He let go of her hands and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m saying this all wrong.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “When you were gone this morning, I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself, but I hit rock-bottom. Worse than when Cicely left me. I loved you in a way I’d never loved anyone. We had little more than a handful of days, and half of them I tried to stay away from you, yet I loved you.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. Her throat closed. The urge to tell him she loved him, too, bubbled up then bubbled over, but she fought to keep her mouth closed. She might be new at running her own life, but she knew what she wanted. Truth. Honesty. Reality. She wouldn’t misinterpret him again.
“What happened to the worry that our relationship was just some sort of rebound thing?”
“My nanna reminded me of a few things. Mostly that you hadn’t loved Charles. You’d left a trap not a relationship. Your feelings and Cicely’s would have been totally different.”
“Thanks... I think.”
He shook his head. “Don’t you get it? What happened between us was real.”
Tears of happiness filled her eyes. “It certainly feels that way to me.”
“When Julia said she was pregnant I could see you with a child, our child.” He took a step closer. “That’s why I was so afraid to be around you.”
She smiled. “That’s very romantic.”
“Then there were the times I almost kissed you.”
Her smile grew. “Those were nice.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “But the actual kissing was better.”
He laughed. “Infinitely better.”
It was all so terrifyingly wonderful that Morgan needed the words. The real words. Spoken clearly. On their own. Not as part of an explanation.
“And you love me?”
“Yes. I love you.”
A laugh spilled out. Relief and joy collided and danced. “I love you, too.”
“And you’re sure?”
She laid her hands on his chest, reveling in the fact that all this was real. He was hers. They were going to start a new life. A rich, wonderful life of family and honesty. There would be no more pretending to be somebody she wasn’t.
“Riccardo, I’ve had twenty-five years of being who everybody else thought I should be. You’re the first person who was worth fighting to be myself for.”
He laughed, then put both hands on her cheeks and kissed her, his mouth both clever and desperate. As it sunk in for both of them that this was real, the kiss slowed. Desperation became tenderness.
When they finally broke apart, he said, “I think we should get married.”
“I think we should date. I don’t mistrust what I feel, but I’d actually like to have the experience of dating.”
He thought about that. “You are moving to New York City?”
“Yes. But I’m thinking of getting my own apartment.”
He caught her around the waist and tugged her to him. “Not a chance.”
Then he kissed her again until her blood warmed and any worry she had about him disappeared. And she knew they were going to have a wonderful life, just as surely as she knew her dad would have one of his fits when he heard the news.
But they could handle him.
They could handle anything.
EPILOGUE
RICCARDO AND MORGAN married almost exactly a year later. The day of her wedding, she didn’t have a mom to help her dress, but she had a nanna, three moms—Paloma, Marguerite and Francine—and Lila and Julia.
“I wanted her hair up.” Julia pouted as she hoisted her three-month-old son on her hip.
“You hush,” Paloma said. “Riccardo likes her hair down.”
Julia gasped, horrified. “Morgan, please tell me you are not going to be one of those wives who does everything her husband says.”
Morgan laughed. “Riccardo should be so lucky.”
She turned from the mirror. She’d chosen a simple formfitting satin gown to let her lace veil be the showstopper. Flowing from the tiara at the top of her head to ten feet behind her and accented with pearls and sequins, the veil was the epitome of elegance.
Lila clapped. “You look perfect.”
Francine walked over and hugged her. “So beautiful.”
Paloma, Marguerite and Nanna wiped tears from their eyes. “Such a special day.”
The knock at the door had the women scrambling for tissues. “Just a minute.”
When Paloma gave the all-clear, Nanna opened the door.
The Colonel began to enter, but seeing his daughter, he stopped. “Oh, my goodness.”
Morgan saw the tears in his eyes and she walked over and hugged him. “It’s okay.”
“No. It’s not.” He choked back tears. “You look so much like your mother.”
She gave Julia a nod and the new mom quietly hustled everyone out of the room.
“You don’t often talk about mom.”
He pressed his lips together before he drew a long breath. “It’s very difficult to lose the love of your life.”
“I know. I’d only lost Riccardo for a couple of hours and I thought my life was over. I can’t imagine how you felt.”
He walked toward a window that looked out over the garden, where the wedding would be held. “This entire past year, I’ve been wanting to tell you how proud I am of you.”
She laughed. “Really? I thought I’d made the past year difficult.”
He pivoted from the window. “No.” He winced. “Well, at first, but as everything began to sink in, I realized I hadn’t been a very good mom.”
Morgan walked over and took his hand. “You’ve always done the best you could with what you had.”
He conceded that with a nod. “I’ve tried.” He caught her gaze. “My mistakes, though, could have really hurt you.”
“Nah,” she said, batting away his concern. “I think Mom was always looking down on us, making sure you didn’t go too far.”
He laughed through his tears, then pulled a hanky from the pocket of his perfect black tux.
After wiping his eyes, he took her arm and tucked it in his. “Ready to go marry that Spaniard of yours?”
“Yes.” The word came out with glee. She was so full of awe that everything had worked out the way it had that her chest hurt.
He patted her hand. “And you know, of course, I’m expecting grandchildren.” He laughed. “Not that I’m telling you what to do.”
“Oh, you’ll get your grandkids,” she assured him. “The Ochoas are all about family.”
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Susan Meier
THE BOSS’S FAKE FIANCÉE
A MISTLETOE KISS WITH THE BOSS
WEDDED FOR HIS ROYAL DUTY
PREGNANT WITH A ROYAL BABY!
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from STRANDED WITH HER GREEK TYCOON by Kandy Shepherd.
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Stranded with Her Greek Tycoon
by Kandy Shepherd
CHAPTER ONE
CRISTOS THEOFANIS HAD made such a monumental mess of his own marriage, he found it impossible to share in the joy as he watched his favourite cousin and his wife renew their wedding vows. Seeing their happiness in each other, the intimate smiles shared by a man and a woman deeply in love, made him fist his hands at the memories of what he had lost.
But he was careful to keep in place the mask he chose to present to the world—happy, without-a-care Cristos, unaffected by the losses that secretly haunted him. His pain was his own to keep all to himself.
The renewal ceremony had been held in the tiny white chapel perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the turquoise waters of the Ionian sea on his cousin’s privately owned island of Kosmimo. Now the happy couple was flocked by joyous well-wishers as they spilled out of the chapel. Cristos stood alone by a stunted cypress tree, marooned on his own black cloud of dark thoughts, his face aching from the effort of forcing smiles he didn’t feel.
Of course he wished his cousin well, but Cristos was haunted by memories of his own wedding five years ago in a register office in the medieval city of Durham in the north of England. He had looked down at Hayley, his bride, with pride and adoration and a wondering disbelief that such an amazing woman had agreed to share her life with him. In return, her eyes had shone with love and trust as she’d offered him both her body and, more importantly, her heart. A priceless gift. One that had been wrenched away from him.
Remorse tore through him like a physical pain. He had not seen his wife in more than two years. Two years and five months to be precise. He could probably estimate the time in hours, minutes even. For every second of that separation he had torn himself apart with self-recrimination and guilt. Now, he didn’t even know where Hayley lived, what she was doing. He had hurt her by not being there when she’d needed him. But she hadn’t given him a chance to make it up to her. With a ruthlessness he had not believed his sweet, gentle wife had possessed, she had left him and completely deleted him from her life.
As his cousin Alex and his wife Dell kissed to the sound of exuberant cheering, Cristos closed his eyes as he remembered the joy of kissing Hayley when the celebrant had told him he could claim his bride. They had been as happy as these two. Excited about the prospect of a lifetime together. Deliriously in love. Confident that all they’d needed was each other when the world had seemed against them.
‘We were once just like them.’ The words were no more than a broken murmur, as light and insubstantial as the breeze playing with the branches of the tree above him.
Cristos’s eyes flew open in shock at the wistful tones of a once familiar voice. Hayley. From somewhere below his shoulder, where she’d used to fit so neatly, he seemed to breathe in the elusive hint of her scent. Crazed by regret, he must be conjuring up a ghost from his past.
He turned his head. His heart jolted so hard against his ribs he gasped. She stood there beside him, looking straight ahead towards the church, not up at him, as if she couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. His wife.
He put out his hand to touch her, to make sure he was not hallucinating. Her cheek was soft and cool and very, very real. ‘It’s you, koukla mou,’ he said, his voice hoarse. He had not used that term of endearment for years—it belonged to her and her only.
Immediately he regretted his words. Drew back his hand. He had loved her unconditionally but she had thrown that love back at him. Yes, he had made mistakes he deeply regretted. But she had not given him the chance to remedy them. She had hurt him. Humiliated him. Put him through hell as he’d searched Europe for her. But she hadn’t wanted to be found.
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘I’m not your little doll or your gorgeous girl or whatever that word translates to. Not any more.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ he said tersely.
Her gaze flickered away from him and she bit her lower lip with her front teeth as she always did when she was nervous. Or dreading something. What was she doing here?
He stared at her, still scarcely able to believe she was real. Hungry, in spite of himself, for every detail of her appearance. She was wrapped against the late morning February chill in slim trousers and an elegant pale blue coat he had once bought for her from a designer in Milan. The coat, belted around her narrow waist, was the same but he was shocked to see Hayley was not. The image of her he had for so long held in his mind shimmered around the edges and reformed into a different version of his wife.
Her beautiful blonde hair that had tumbled around her shoulders in lush waves was gone, shorn into an abbreviated pixie cut. Like a boy was his first dismayed thought. He had loved her long hair, loved running his hands through it, tugging it back to tilt her head up for his kiss. But a deeper inspection made him appreciate how intensely feminine the new style was, feathered around her face, clinging to the slender column of her neck. Her features seemed to come into sharper focus, her cheekbones appeared more sculpted, her chin more determined. Her youthful English rose prettiness that had so attracted him had, at twenty-seven, bloomed into an even more enticing beauty.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here after all this time?’
She met his gaze. ‘To see you. What else?’
Hope that she might be there to—at last—explain why she had abandoned their marriage roared to life only to be beaten back down by the cool indifference of her blue eyes, the tight set of her mouth. He wanted to demand that she explain herself. She was still his legal wife. But there was a barely restrained skittishness about her that made him hold back. He couldn’t risk her running away from him again. He wanted answers.
She looked over to the gathering outside the church and then back to him. ‘I didn’t know your entire family would be here or I certainly wouldn’t have come to this island,’ she said.
There was something different about her voice. A trace of some kind of accent blurring the precise Englishness of her words. He was fluent in English and Italian, with passable French and Spanish, but he couldn’t place it. Where had she been?
‘This is a private function.’
‘I would never have been on the guest list,’ she said, a bitter undertone to her voice.
He was unable to refute the truth of her words. His family—in particular the grandmother who had raised him since he was fourteen—had disapproved of his marriage to Hayley and made no secret of it. For Yia-yia Penelope their union had been too rushed, too impulsive, too reminiscent of his own parents’ hasty marriage that had brought the family so much grief.
‘I want to know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘The last time we met you told me you hated me. And then nothing.’
He didn’t hate her, though there had been moments when he had wanted to. Since that day in the hospital in Milan when she had turned away from him, her face as pale as the hospital pillow, his emotions had gone from guilt for his neglect, to terror for her safety, through smouldering anger that she had thought so little of their marriage—of him—to wipe him without explanation from her life. Finally his anger had mellowed to a determined indifference.
Hayley made no reply. She placed great store on honesty. A shudder of foreboding made Cristos think her unexpected visit was not something he should be glad about.
‘Ho
w did you get here?’ Kosmimo was only accessible by boat. Or the helicopters of the wealthy guests who frequented the luxury retreat spa his hotelier cousin Alex had established on the island.
‘I’d heard you were back in Nidri, staying with your grandparents.’ His grandparents ran a tourist villa complex in the port town on the nearby island of Lefkada. ‘Their maid told me you were here. I hired a man and his boat to bring me over.’
There’d been storms and the water was choppy. ‘What man?’ he said too quickly, too possessively. He wouldn’t trust his wife to just anyone on these waters. Mentally he slammed a fist against his forehead. She was no longer his concern. Who knew what risks she’d taken in the last two years and five months without him to look out for her? More to the point, why should he care?
Her eyes narrowed at his tone. But she named a local boatman he knew well. ‘Good choice,’ he said.
Why had he doubted her ability to choose a safe boat ride? Hayley had always been practical, seeing a problem and finding a solution. Then she’d seen him as a problem and the solution as leaving him.
He looked over her shoulder, aware they had become the target of curious glances. Most of the people gathered here for the ceremony had never met Hayley. But he sensed their interest like a current buzzing through the congregation. Those in ignorance would very soon be made aware that this lovely blonde woman was Cristos’s estranged wife. The one who had humiliated a Greek husband in a way a Greek husband should never be humiliated.
He shifted his body to shield her from curious gazes. That was all he’d ever wanted to do—protect her and look after her. Yet when she’d really needed him, he’d let her down so badly she had been unable to forgive him. Deep down, he had been unable to forgive himself.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ he said, keeping his voice low.
‘I wanted to see you face to face. But I wasn’t sure you’d welcome me if I warned you.’
Banked up from years of frustration his words flooded out. ‘Of course I’d want to see you. I need to know what happened. You left the hospital without telling me where you were going. I tried to find you. Your parents wouldn’t tell me where you were. Or your friends. Your sister slammed the door in my face.’
