The Italian's Christmas Secret

Actually, that wasn’t quite true—he had two things for her. The first was sitting in the garage wrapped in a giant red bow ready to be untied on Christmas morning. A neglected Ferrari 1948 Spider sports car which he’d tracked down with great difficulty and at considerable expense, because she’d once told him it was her dream to restore beautiful vintage cars—and Matteo was rather partial to making his wife’s dreams come true.

The second gift was rather different and he didn’t give it to her until after he’d dealt with her outrageous panty thong with its matching boned bodice, which he damaged beyond repair in his eagerness to unhook it. And once he had her naked, he was distracted for quite some time...

His throat thickened with unexpected emotion as he pulled the small box from his discarded trousers and flipped open the lid to reveal a flawless white solitaire which sparkled like a giant star against dark velvet.

‘What’s this?’ she questioned breathlessly, from among the sheets which were rumpled around her.

He lifted her left hand and slid the solitaire in place above her wedding band. ‘I never gave you an engagement ring, did I? And I didn’t give you a dream wedding either. A civil ceremony in a town hall was never something we were going to enjoy telling our grandchildren about.’ He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. ‘So I wondered if you’d like to renew our vows in my favourite church in Rome. You could wear a big white dress and do it properly this time, and we could throw a party afterwards. Or not—whichever you prefer. What I’m asking is, would you like to marry me again, Keira Valenti?’

Keira opened her mouth to say that she didn’t care about pomp or ceremony, but that wasn’t quite true. And weren’t she and Matteo all about the truth, these days? She thought about something else, too, something which had been niggling away at her for a while now. Because weddings could bring people together and heal old wounds, couldn’t they? Motherhood had changed her. Softened her. She realised now that her aunt might have been strict when she was growing up, but she’d given an orphaned little girl the home she’d badly needed and had stopped her from being taken into care. And didn’t she owe her aunt Ida a great deal for that? Wasn’t it time to invite her and Shelley to Italy, to share in her good fortune and happiness and to introduce Santino to some of her roots?

She wound her arms around Matteo’s neck and looked into his beautiful black eyes, her heart turning over with emotion. ‘Yes, Matteo,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ll be proud to marry you. To stand before our family and friends and say the thing I’ll never tire of saying, which is that I love you—and I’ll love you for the rest of my life.’

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