‘And I want that too, querida. So much. I want to kiss you and never stop.’
She stared at him and her mouth was trembling but not nearly as much as his hands as he reached out to pull her into his arms. ‘Answer me honestly, that’s all I ask. Do you still love me, Carly Conner?’ he growled. ‘Will you marry me and have my babies?’
‘Babies?’
She pulled away from him and he saw her frown, like someone who was preparing for a cloud to burst on top of their head. ‘But I’m going to be a doctor, Luis. I’ve worked hard to get here and I’m not going to give it up. I’ve got six long years of training ahead of me. Six years of me being based in the south of England, while you continue with your jet-setting life elsewhere? Is that going to work out? I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think it’s possible?’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Believe me, anything is possible if you want it enough. And I want you more than I have ever wanted anything. I respect your ambition and I am prepared to work around it, to support you in whatever you want to do. Because while I can see that there are practical difficulties to be overcome, they are completely irrelevant. There is only one thing which is important and that is my next question and I think you owe it to me to answer it truthfully.’ His voice quietened. ‘Do you still love me, Carly?’
Carly didn’t speak, at least not straight away. It was as if she recognised that her world was going to change irrevocably, no matter what she answered. She became aware of the loudness of her heartbeat and, incongruously, the fact that her leather boots were sinking into the muddy grass. She could see the bare trees which surrounded them and in the sky a dark flock of birds who were heading somewhere. She wondered where. To their own warmer future? She saw Luis’s expression: his eyes were narrowed and the lines etched along the sides of his unsmiling mouth were deeper than she remembered. The faint drizzle had settled on his black hair—so that it seemed to have covered the tangled tendrils like a fine mist of diamonds.
She thought about the tears she had shed since she’d left France. About the great, gaping hole where her heart used to be. She thought about how much she’d missed their sparring. His teasing. And a million things in between.
She thought about the practical difficulties which lay ahead if she told him what he really seemed to want to hear. Of how on earth they might be able to align two obviously incompatible lifestyles to any degree of satisfaction.
And then she remembered what he had just said.
Anything is possible. And with Luis, she honestly believed it was.
She nodded, her mouth working furiously as she tried to control the emotions which were building up inside her and threatening to spill out. I am not going to cry, she told herself fiercely. Because I have an anatomy lecture to get to.
‘Yes, I love you, Luis Martinez,’ she blurted out. ‘I tried very hard not to, but in the end I couldn’t help myself.’
‘Couldn’t you?’ he questioned softly.
‘No. You were like a fever to which there was no known antidote and once you’d got into my blood, I couldn’t seem to get rid of you. I still can’t.’
‘That bad, huh?’ Tenderly, he smiled. ‘That’s not the most romantic declaration I’ve ever heard, but it’s certainly the most original. Just like you, my clever, sweet Carly.’
And that was when the tears came and there was nothing she could do to stop them. They spilled down her cheeks and dripped onto the collar of her jacket, like giant drops of rain.
But Luis was there to dry them and Luis was there to kiss her and once they started kissing, they couldn’t seem to stop, and Carly’s heart seemed to burst out of her chest as he gathered her in his arms and held her.
She touched his shoulders, his hair and his face, as if she couldn’t quite believe he was there. But he was. Every vital, warm, living and breathing atom of him. He was there. With her. And if she was to believe what he was telling her, which against all the odds she did, he wasn’t ever going to leave her again.
She made it to her anatomy class, with seconds to spare.
EPILOGUE
‘ARE YOU AWAKE?’
Carly gave a slow and luxurious wriggle as her eyelashes fluttered open to meet the soft question in Luis’s black gaze. ‘I am now.’
Dark brows arched upwards. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘Wasn’t that your intention when you started playing with my breasts like that?’
He smiled. ‘Do you want me to stop?’
She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re endlessly fascinating, Dr Martinez, and I love you very much. And I want you to know that these last six years have been the best of my life.’
Her eyes fluttered open and she bit her lip with expectation, never tiring of hearing him say these words. ‘Really?’
‘You know they have, querida.’
Yes, she knew. Just as they had been for her.