by Penny Jordan
‘Why didn’t you want to tell me?’ His question brought her back down to earth.
‘It was afraid to,’ she admitted. ‘I knew that if you found out you’d insist on us getting married...’
‘And you don’t want that?’
‘What I don’t want—ever—is for you to feel that I married you because of this baby,’ she answered him fiercely. ‘You don’t know how often I’ve wished that I hadn’t held back, that I’d told you when you asked me in Sardinia that I loved you, that I’d agreed then to marry you, before I knew about this. That way at least you would never have been able to throw it back in my face—’
‘Stop right there. There is no way I will ever throw anything back in your face, Sasha. I’ve learned my lesson. And I’ve made my peace with my ghosts. Open your present—please.’
She was trembling so much it seemed to take her for ever to remove the ribbon and then the wrapping paper. Beneath it was a layer of bubblewrap, and beneath that was...
Sasha stared at what she was holding, glanced up at Gabriel, and then looked back down at his gift.
‘How...?’ she began, and then stopped as tears spilled down her face.
What she was holding in her hands wasn’t just a painting, it was her future—their future—depicted by an artist: two boys, a man and a woman, and in the woman’s arms a baby.
‘I managed to work out part of what you might be thinking while I was waiting for you to tell me about the baby. I thought that maybe this would tell you how I felt about it—about you, about all of us. I was going to tell the artist to put the baby in pink, but I decided that might be tempting fate,’ he added ruefully.
‘Gabriel.’
There was no holding back when she went into his arms. Not the love in her heart nor the joy in her eyes. When he kissed her she felt the fine tremor in his body and knew that it betrayed the intensity of his own emotion. He kissed her fiercely and passionately, claiming her as his. And then, very slowly and tenderly, she kissed him. When he started to ease her away, she tensed at first, and then relaxed, trading smiles with him when the door opened to admit the twins, whose imminent arrival he had obviously heard before her.
‘You were kissing,’ Sam accused them both sternly.
‘Yes,’ Nico agreed. The twins looked at one another. ‘Does that mean that you’re going to get married and we can go and live at Dad’s house, Mum?’
* * *
‘YOU NEEDN’T HAVE come to collect us. You only live three streets away—we could have walked,’ Sasha protested in the flurry of the boys putting on their jackets and showing Gabriel what they had found in their stockings.
‘If you were really concerned about getting me out of bed early on Christmas morning you wouldn’t have let me stay with you last night,’ Gabriel teased her in a discreet whisper. ‘Do you realise it was four o’clock when you woke me up and sent me home?’
‘Do you realise that the boys were up at five?’ She laughed as Gabriel ushered them out to his car.
‘Did you put the turkey in the oven, like I said?’ Sasha asked.
‘Of course. And I turned the oven on,’ Gabriel assured her, winking at the twins as he pulled away from the kerb.
Sasha nodded her head.
The house that Gabriel had bought was enough to make anyone drool with envy, Sasha admitted as she stood in front of the fire in the well-proportioned drawing room.
At Gabriel’s insistence she and the twins had decorated the tree, and although its somewhat homely decorations looked out of place in the elegant room, they still brought a sheen of emotional tears to Sasha’s eyes.
Her anxious inspection of the turkey confirmed that Gabriel had followed her instructions to the letter.
It had been agreed that the boys would open their presents here at Gabriel’s, and now, as she listened to their excited cries of delight as they demolished hours of careful wrapping on her part, she exchanged amused looks with Gabriel.
‘With any luck they’ll be so tired they’ll want to go to bed early tonight.’
Sasha laughed. ‘I shouldn’t count on it. If the boys don’t wear you out wanting to ride their new bikes in the park then their sister will certainly exhaust me.’
‘Isn’t it time you looked at the turkey,’ Gabriel suggested meaningfully.
Sasha got up, checking on the boys before heading for the kitchen, with Gabriel following her.
‘When I imagined formally proposing to you it certainly wasn’t in a kitchen,’ he told her, as he closed the door behind them and then leaned firmly on it, taking her in his arms. ‘I love you so very much. I hope you know that now. These last few months have been purgatory. Marry me, Sasha, and make me the happiest man on earth.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. Yes, yes...’
He bent his head to kiss her, and then suddenly stopped to say accusingly, ‘You said our daughter!’
Sasha laughed. ‘Well, when I had my scan they said they thought it was a girl. Just as well, really,’ she added.
‘Why?’
She gave him a small smile. ‘You didn’t look carefully enough at the painting.’ When he frowned, her smile broadened. ‘The baby is wearing white knitted boots threaded with pink ribbon.’
EPILOGUE
Nine months later
THEY HAD DECIDED not to hold the christening at the London church where they had been married shortly after Christmas, but here in Sardinia instead. The words of the service, spoken both in English and Italian, had been simple but well-chosen, and now they were back at the newly converted house, where five-month-old Celestine was the centre of attention, the guests cooing over her while the twins looked on with brotherly watchfulness.
‘She’s chewing her sleeve again,’ Nico warned Sasha. ‘I think she might be hungry.’
‘No, she’s not hungry. She’s teething,’ Sam corrected him scornfully. ‘She wants to come out. She doesn’t like lying there doing nothing, and it’s my turn to hold her.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s mine.’
‘Actually, it’s my turn,’ Gabriel told them both firmly, deftly removing his daughter from her basket and expertly cradling her against his shoulder in a way that still left him free to slip his other arm around the boys.
Watching them, Sasha couldn’t resist reaching for her camera.
‘She’s going to wind all three of you around her little finger,’ she warned, as she smiled lovingly at her daughter and discreetly slid her hand down Gabriel’s shirt-clad back.
‘If that’s an invitation for later, then the answer is yes,’ he murmured softly. ‘Pity we’ve got such a houseful, though...’
‘There’s always the beach,’ she reminded him teasingly as she leaned closer for his kiss.
Life could not give him another gift to rival that which he now held within his arms, Gabriel thought to himself: Sasha, the twins, and now their daughter.
‘I think when he made me the boys’ guardian Carlo wanted this to happen and for us to be together,’ he told Sasha quietly.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘He knew how much I loved you, and perhaps he sensed that you loved me—even before you acknowledged it yourself.’
‘I can acknowledge it now,’ he said, looking from his daughter and the twins to Sasha. He bent to kiss her. ‘Now and for ever, Sasha.’
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781459249653
Copyright © 2006 by Penny Jordan
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holder of the individual works as follows:
YESTERDAY’S ECHOES
Copyright © 1993 by Penny Jordan
MASTER OF PLEASURE
Copyright © 2006 by Penny Jordan
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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