Bound to the Tuscan Billionaire

Marco grinned at her. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I’ll handle the visitors.’

‘We make a good team,’ she called back as she raced to the house.

‘The best,’ Marco murmured happily.

* * *

With three-year-old Luca sitting on his shoulders and baby Cristina sleeping in the shade at his side, Marco looked on with pride as his beautiful wife, the woman who had given his life meaning, took the local dignitaries and other avid gardeners on a guided tour around the beautiful garden she had created. Her seedlings were fully grown, and had burst into flower right on cue.

He glanced down at their baby daughter, and jiggled the legs of the son they adored. All their seedlings were growing nicely, thanks to the love and care of a woman who was a natural mother, as well as his lover and closest friend. Cass designed gardens for other people now, which gave her an interesting and varied life but allowed her to spend plenty of time with the children. Maria and Giuseppe were more a part of the family than they had ever been, thanks to Cass, as were Quentin and Paolo, and Cass’s godmother, who was home briefly from Australia, where she would return each winter to live with her son. He could safely say that the past and all its demons had finally been laid to rest.

When the visitors had gone she gave the children tea, while he set about the necessary job of splitting logs. Winters could be cold in Tuscany, and he had a family to keep warm.

When the children were in bed, Cass came outside in the burnished light of early evening to find Marco dressed in faded denim, stripped to the waist. She would never get used to seeing him half-naked. He was such a magnificent sight, bronzed and lean, with his muscles rippling. She indulged herself by just standing and watching him for a while, until he looked up and smiled, sensing she was there. He was glistening with sweat and covered in mud, as she had been on the day they’d first met...

Planting his axe, he strode towards her.

They went inside where the house was quiet. The children were sleeping, and a low buzz of conversation was coming from the kitchen where everyone else was happily chewing over the events of the day. They went straight up to their suite of rooms, where Marco headed for the shower. Snatching hold of her wrist, he took a laughing Cass in with him beneath the spray.

‘Marco—I’m fully dressed!’

‘Not for long, cara...’

Cupping her face, Marco kissed her long and slow. ‘Do you have any idea how much I love you?’

‘Not half as much as I love you. I must do to put up with you—I’m soaked.’

The look in Marco’s eyes reduced her in an instant to a trembling mass of need, and the smile on his firm, sexy mouth effortlessly completed the task.

‘My wife,’ he whispered against her ear. ‘The mother of my children. My friend. My lover. The woman I love more than life itself.’