‘I want it all, Jess. If you don’t know that about me, perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think you do. I want everything I can have with you.’
‘I can’t believe you feel this way about me. If you were letting me choose, and you thought I’d chosen this life, why did you follow me?’
He gave a sheepish smile. ‘You didn’t make the right decision.’
‘So I can choose, as long as I make the choice you want me to make?’ Jessie shook her head, her eyes brimming with laughter and tears. ‘You need serious work, Silvio Brianza.’
‘Sì, I do,’ he said urgently, ‘and it is going to take you decades to finish that work. So the sooner you get started, the better. Is the answer yes?’
She lifted her hand to his cheek, overwhelmed by the love she saw in his eyes. ‘I assumed you let me go because you’d finished with me.’
‘I hadn’t even started, tesoro.’ He pulled something out of his pocket and Jessie felt him slip something onto her finger. ‘I forgot this, didn’t I? Remind me never, ever to propose to a woman again.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t let you,’ Jessie assured him, feeling slightly faint as she looked at the enormous jewel sparkling on her finger.
‘This is the beginning of our life together. The public are in love with their new star, but you are mine first. You were always mine. This ring tells the world you’re mine.’
So happy that she felt light-headed, Jessie wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘It’s stunning—but you have to stop buying me things.’
‘That might be a problem,’ Silvio confessed, pulling her gently towards the chair he’d been sitting on. ‘I’m addicted to buying you things. And I have something else that I think you might like.’ He bent down and picked up a small package.
‘What have you bought me this time?’ Jessie ripped off the paper and pulled out a camera. ‘Oh—Silvio!’
‘You need something with which to record the memories that you treasure so much,’ he drawled softly. ‘In thirty years’ time you can give the photos to our grandchildren.’
Overwhelmed by the thought as much as the gift, Jessie took it from him and stowed it safely in her gold box, which went everywhere with her. Inside were all her old photographs, her ancient stuffed rabbit and another photograph that she hadn’t seen before. It was a photograph of her.
She lifted it out, her hand shaking. ‘Did you put this there? When was this taken?’
‘Your eighteenth birthday.’
‘I’ve never seen it.’
‘That’s because I kept it.’
‘You kept a photograph of me?’
‘Sì, but please don’t tell anyone or next time we are threatened in a dark alleyway they will be laughing, not retreating,’ Silvio said dryly, prising the box out of her grip and putting it down on the chair. ‘And now I want you to stop looking at memories and create some new ones with me instead.’
Choked with happiness, Jessie flung her arms around his neck. ‘I don’t want to go back to London. I want to live on the yacht and sail to different places. I want to take photographs of everywhere we go.’
‘What about your singing career?’
‘I’ll sing if it fits in with what we’re doing.’
‘We can live on the yacht if that is what you want.’ His tone indulgent, Silvio smoothed her curls away from her face. ‘And when you have my babies and we are nervous parents, I will build you a villa in Sicily near our favourite beach.’
‘Babies?’ It was something she’d never allowed herself to imagine.
‘Of course—we cannot have grandchildren without first having children. That’s the way it works, tesoro.’ Amusement shimmering in his dark eyes, he lowered his head to kiss her. ‘I am a Sicilian man. I want a family. A proper family who will stick together and support each other. And you will be an exceptional mother. If they inherit your vocal skills, we will have our own choir. It will make us a fortune.’
Laughing, Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Does everything have to be a commercial opportunity? Even our children?’
He gave an unapologetic shrug. ‘That is who I am, you know that.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Then you will also know that I love you. Ti amo.’ Silvio lowered his head and