‘What are you trying to say?’ Saskia demanded dizzily.
Still cupping her face, Andreas told her, ‘I’m trying to say with words what my emotions, my heart, my soul and my body have already told you, my beloved heart, my adored, precious love. Surely you must have guessed, felt how it was for me when we made love?’
Lifting her head so that she could look into his eyes, search them to see if she actually dared believe what she was hearing, Saskia felt her heart starting to thud in a heady mixture of joy and excitement. No man could possibly fake the way Andreas was looking at her, and if that wasn’t enough his body was giving her a very distinct and intimate message of its own. Unable to help herself Saskia started to blush a little as she felt her own body respond to Andreas’s arousal.
‘I...I thought that must just be sex,’ she told him bravely.
‘What have I said?’ she demanded in bewilderment when Andreas started to laugh.
‘My dearest love,’ he told her, still laughing, ‘if I hadn’t already had incontrovertible proof of your innocence, that remark would have furnished me with it. Any woman who had experienced “just sex” would have known immediately that—’ He stopped and smiled down at her, tenderly kissing her before telling her gruffly.
‘No. Why should I bother to explain? After all, there’s never going to be any way that you will know what it is to have “just sex”. You and I, Saskia, will be making love, sharing love, giving one another love for all our lives.’
‘Oh, Andreas,’ Saskia whispered deliriously as he pulled her firmly into his arms.
‘No, Andreas, we can’t,’ she protested five minutes later as he carried her towards the bed and started to undress her.
‘All my clean clothes are packed...I won’t have anything to wear...and...’
‘Good,’ Andreas informed her without the remotest hint of remorse. ‘I can’t think of anything I want more right now than to have you naked in my bed with no means of escape.’
‘Mmm... That’s funny,’ Saskia told him impishly. ‘I was thinking exactly the same thing myself!’
Epilogue
‘WELL, YOUR GRANDFATHER may not have got his own way over our wedding, but he certainly wasn’t going to allow us to have a quiet family christening!’ Saskia laughed with Andreas as they both surveyed the huge crowd of people filling the recently completed and refurbished ‘special occasions’ suite at the group’s flagship British hotel.
‘Mmm... Are you sure that Robert will be okay with him?’ Andreas asked anxiously as he focused with fatherly concern on the other side of the room, where his grandfather was proudly showing off his three-month-old great-grandson to his friends and business cronies.
‘Well, as your grandfather keeps on reminding us, he’s held far more babies than you or I in his time,’ Saskia said, laughing.
‘Maybe, but none of them has been our son,’ Andreas returned promptly, adding, ‘I think I’d better go and retrieve him, Sas. He looks as though he might be starting to get fretful, and he never finished that last feed...’
‘Talk about doting fathers,’ Pia murmured to Saskia as they both watched Andreas hurrying proprietorially towards his son. ‘I always knew that Andreas would be a good father, mind you...’
Saskia smiled at her as she watched her husband expertly holding their son—born nine months and one day exactly after their quiet wedding, tactfully arriving three weeks after his predicted birth date. But of course only she and Andreas knew that...just as only they knew as yet that by the time he reached his first birthday he would have a brother or a sister.
‘Isn’t that a bit too soon?’ Andreas had protested when she had first told him her suspicions, and Saskia had blushed and then laughed, remembering, as she was sure Andreas was as well, that she had been the one to initiate their first lovemaking after Robert’s birth.
Andreas was the most wonderful father, and an even more wonderful husband and lover. Saskia gave a small sigh, a look darkening her eyes that Andreas immediately recognised.
If his mother was surprised to be suddenly handed her grandson whilst Andreas insisted that there was something he needed to discuss with his wife in private, she gave no sign of it, going instead to join Saskia’s grandmother, with whom she had already formed a close bond.