Passion and the Prince

‘I love you so much. So very much. I want you to marry me, Lily. I want us to be together for always. I want us to give our children—the children we shall create in our love for one another—the childhood that we never had.’

‘Yes, I want that too,’ Lily whispered beneath his kiss, as her senses and her body flowered into fresh eager longing beneath his touch.

EPILOGUE

THE final sound of the bells ringing out from the castello’s chapel to announce their marriage were dying away, and the rose petals Lily had insisted on, instead of vulnerable doves being released, as their wedding planner had wanted were still drifting down from a perfect blue spring sky. The gentlest of breezes brushed the slender column of her wedding dress, its silk embossed with a traditional family design and especially made for her at the silk mill in Como in which Marco had an interest.

It had been a perfect day—but then every day since the day Marco had told her he loved her had been perfect in its own individual way.

‘So many generations of your family have married and lived here,’ Lily said as they stood arm in arm, watching their wedding guests.

‘And hopefully many more will,’ Marco told her, his hand resting deliberately against her body, where earlier that week the test Lily had done had confirmed their first child was already growing. A baby that would be born seven months into their marriage.

‘I just hope we’ve done the right thing letting Rick take the photographs and video of the wedding,’ she admitted to Marco, watching her half-brother photographing a group of pretty girls who were amongst the wedding guests.

Pietro, Marco’s nephew, was assisting him. Once the misunderstanding over his modelling had been cleared up the two young men, so close in age, had become good friends, and were now work colleagues.

‘It was very generous of you to fund the film Rick’s going to make about the California wineries. His mother has told me that she intends to keep an eye on both him and Pietro whilst they are over there working on it.’

‘Your brother is a good man at heart. But enough of family. I can’t wait for us to leave for our honeymoon, so that I can have you to myself and show you and tell you how happy you’ve made me today, Lily. The happiest man in the world and the luckiest.’

‘We’ve both been lucky,’ Lily whispered back. ‘Lucky to have found one another. Oh, Marco if we hadn’t …’

‘We had to,’ Marco told her. ‘We were destined to meet and love one another. Destined to be together, and we always will be.’