Taking off his jacket, he looped it tenderly around his wife’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘Home?’ he questioned simply.
The sudden lump in her throat was so big that it would have been impossible for her to speak a whole sentence. Good thing, then, that there was only one word she needed to say.
‘Home,’ she agreed shakily.
Epilogue
‘AND here. We put the last sprig of holly just…so. See? And just one more little tug of the scarlet ribbon—and our Christmas wreath is all ready to surprise Papa.’
‘Surprise Papa! Surprise Papa!’ squealed Chiara and clapped her little hands together. ‘Papa loves Christmas!’
‘So he does,’ agreed Cassie, smiling down into her daughter’s wide ebony eyes, which so reminded her of Giancarlo’s. ‘He adores Christmas.’
‘But it wasn’t always that way,’ came a deep voice from the doorway, and in walked Giancarlo—flakes of snow melting on his raven hair as he scooped up his beloved four-year-old daughter and held her close. ‘Papa used to hate Christmas.’
‘Papa cold,’ Chiara complained, but she snuggled into him all the same. ‘Why did you hate Christmas?’
Over the ebony tumble of his daughter’s curls, Giancarlo looked at Cassie across the room, his heart melting just like the snow as he studied her. Her hair was shorter these days, but she still wore it in a single plait if she was busy, and her figure was just as trim, in her low-cut jeans and emerald sweater. His eyes lingered on the sweater for a fraction of a beat longer than usual and then he slanted her a soft smile.
‘Because I hadn’t met your mother then,’ he said softly. ‘And I worked too hard to enjoy things like Christmas. And I needed her to show me all the things in life that were really important. Like the wreath she makes with you every year—and the mince-pies she bakes. And the way she builds sandcastles when we go to the seaside.’ But more than that, he thought—and much more than Christmas—it was the warm and loving home which she had created for the three of them.
‘How are you, cara?’ questioned Cassie softly. ‘Looking forward to the nativity play later?’
‘I can’t wait,’ he murmured. ‘To see my daughter dressed as an angel. I call that perfect type-casting. And do you know that the snow is coming down really heavily now?’
‘Snow!’ gurgled Chiara.
‘I love snow,’ said Cassie happily.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ he whispered as, still holding his daughter, he walked over to plant a kiss on his wife’s lips.
Cassie breathed in the warm, earthy scent of him, thinking that life was so good it couldn’t possibly get any better. But it did. It just kept getting better every day.
Following the scare of her bleed when she was pregnant with Chiara, she had spent the rest of her pregnancy resting so much that she had complained of feeling like a whale. And after the baby was born—and after much discussion—they had moved to a smaller house, which was more manageable. They still lived in Kensington—but Cassie had been adamant that she only wanted drop-in staff from then on. That the close-knit family unit she envisaged didn’t involve live-in staff. But she worked out a way to ensure that everyone was happy—even Gina. Actually, especially Gina.
After Chiara was born, Cassandra and Giancarlo purchased a small farm in Umbria and installed Gina there to look after it—because she had confessed that she’d been longing to go back to her native Italy. The housekeeper quickly settled into the simple way of rural life—and it just so happened that she became very friendly with a widower who lived in the nearby village. Not only did they marry—but Gina also defied the odds by producing a healthy baby boy at the ripe old age of forty-four!
Cassie’s mother had also moved into a new phase of life. She’d given up the ties and the isolation of running a B&B and had taken over her daughter’s job in Patsy’s shop. She’d added choir practice to her salsa classes and made new friends and, for the first time since her beloved husband had died, she really felt like part of the community again.
Raul and Gabriella had divorced—Raul had won custody and shed about eight years while his ex-wife quickly remarried. Her new husband was a cat-litter billionaire who lived in some style in Santa Barbara and, although Cassie sometimes worried that Allegra didn’t get to see enough of her mother, she had her niece to stay as often as possible. And Chiara loved her big cousin. In fact, Allegra hoped to go to art school in London and she and her father were both coming to spend Christmas this year.