It felt as though her heart was lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.
‘You love me, Lukas, and I love you. It really is as simple as that.’
‘I still don’t know what that is,’ he told her, but this time his voice was softer. Awed. ‘I don’t know if I can be what you need.’
‘You can,’ she assured him. ‘I know you can make me happy, Lukas.’
‘If you truly believe that, then I’ll willingly spend my whole life trying to make it so.’
She patted his hand where it still lay over her belly.
‘What’s more, you will make our baby happy.’
He watched her for a moment, speechless. And then, at long last, he kissed her.
It poured through her, wild, and hot, and perfect. As if she—and their baby—were the only things that mattered to him.
; It said all the things that he couldn’t yet say, and it spoke of for ever. And as Oti wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, she decided happily that was more than enough to be getting on with.
EPILOGUE
MAXIMILIAN CHARLES WOODS roared into the world seven months later. A gloriously bawling eight-pound bundle who sounded as fiercely determined as his father had always been.
He wrapped his fingers around his father’s large thumb and squeezed mightily, and Lukas was besotted.
So was Edward, who had wheeled himself to the hospital as soon as Lukas had called him. He had taken his young nephew in his arms and held him in the way he would never have believed possible nine months earlier.
And later that night, when Lukas and Oti were alone again, their cherished baby in their arms, Lukas lifted his eyes to his wife, those granite-grey depths spilling over with emotion.
‘I never knew my heart could feel so full,’ he told her huskily.
‘You love us.’ She nodded solemnly.
‘I love you,’ he confirmed, as he had so many times before. It had come hesitantly at first, but then, as if that first time was all he’d needed, she’d heard it again and again.
More than that, he had shown her he loved her, wholly and thoroughly, each and every day. He’d applied himself to it with the same drive and focus that he applied to everything that he did.
He had turned out to be an even better husband than Octavia had dreamed, and already he had proved that he would never be the kind of father that his, or hers, had been.
Max would never want for love, and he was going to have the role model that Lukas had never had. She had known that Lukas would make her happy, but she hadn’t appreciated just how much he would make her heart swell.
‘I never dreamed that I could have a wife. A family,’ he marvelled. ‘People who want me for me. Not for the billionaire, or the knighthood. Yet you looked past all that. You looked past the broken man inside, empty and unfulfilled, and you saw who I could be.’
‘Only after I’d dragged you halfway around the world to live in a tukul. I saw the version of you that no one else got to see.’
‘And about a million mosquitoes.’ He laughed, leaning down to press his lips to her forehead. ‘But I want to be that version of myself. For you. With you. And with our son. I couldn’t want for anything more.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ she told him, her voice thick with love. ‘I have plans for a whole team of little Woods children running around.’
And Oti was true to her word.
Two years later, they added a daughter to their family, who came out less fiercely than her brother, but with a grip on life—and her father’s thumb—that was equally strong. And, two years after that, twins, a girl and a boy.
They were sitting in the snug at Sedeshire Hall, having settled the last of their brood to sleep, and having bid farewell to both Edward, who lived independently in the gatehouse, and her father, who had mellowed considerably at the arrival of his grandchildren and now lived in his own apartment in the north wing.
‘He wants to be a part of Max’s life.’ Oti had bitten her lip as she’d told Lukas, a few months after their eldest son’s birth. ‘He asked for a second chance, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea.’