‘I seduced you?’ Topsy gasped.
‘You knew I couldn’t keep my hands off you. Letting me take you somewhere that private wasn’t a wise move,’ Dante reasoned, quietly lifting her left hand and threading the diamond ring onto her engagement finger with a level of satisfaction he couldn’t hide.
‘But I didn’t say yes yet!’ Topsy protested. ‘I may be in love with you but it’s too soon to talk about marriage.’
His hands curved to her cheeks and he leant forward to extract a hungry, demanding kiss that sent the blood crashing through her veins like a tidal wave as her pulses speeded up.
‘You can stay the night,’ she told him on the back of an ecstatic sigh.
‘Not without a yes to the proposal. You get me back in bed only with a wedding ring,’ Dante informed her combatively.
‘You’re the same man who just told me that marriage made you feel suffocated and trapped.’
‘I’m not the same person I was a decade ago. You’re not the needy, clingy type either. I can see you working away at a whiteboard in maths research and forgetting I even exist for hours at a stretch!’ Dante confessed ruefully.
Topsy knew her own flaws. ‘That is a possibility and you’re right, I’m not clingy, but I still think it’s too soon to be talking about marriage.’
‘Without you in my life, I’ll get stuffy and ruthless.’
‘You’re already ruthless and more stubborn than any man should be. You almost lost me because you wouldn’t admit what you were feeling for me,’ Topsy pointed out while she tangled her fingers lazily in his black hair in a caressing move that might have warned him that losing her was becoming increasingly unlikely.
‘I love you,’ Dante confided with breathtaking sincerity. ‘And it makes me feel insecure. I won’t be happy until you tell me that you’ll marry me and stay with me for ever.’
Her amber eyes danced. ‘The more you talk, the more I’m warming up to the prospect.’
‘Do you want to stay here tonight or go back to my hotel with me?’ Dante’s hands were sliding up and down her slim thighs, rousing tingling heat in dangerous places.
‘I think I might ravish you in the car if we leave,’ Topsy admitted shakily.
‘How do I match up to your list of required male characteristics?’ Dante prompted, gathering her up into his arms with great care and tenderness.
‘The truth? You don’t match at all but you have other more important attributes,’ Topsy whispered, smoothing a possessive hand over a high cheekbone that shifted down into a strong jawline. ‘You love me. I love you, Dante Leonetti. Now let’s go and find a guestroom for two.’
‘And you’ll marry me?’ Dante pressed stubbornly.
‘Well, I’m certainly not letting you go,’ Topsy laughed, admiring the glitter of her ring in the lamplight.
‘I couldn’t bear to let you go,’ he groaned, tightening his arms appreciatively round her. ‘I love you so much I want you on a for ever and ever lease, amata mia.’
Topsy gave him a sunny smile, happiness darting and dancing through her like sunlight in the wake of a long winter. ‘Oh, I think that can be arranged at no extra cost,’ she teased.
EPILOGUE
TOPSY RACED OUT of the research department of the University of Florence, frantically checking her watch. She was late, she was always late, and sometimes it drove Dante, who was punctual to a fault, crazy.
Her husband awaited her in the car park, tall, dark and so breathtakingly handsome that not a female head in his vicinity failed to turn and look in his direction while his entire attention remained pinned to his windblown wife, half in and half out of her coat. He was lounging with folded arms and an air of long-suffering fortitude against the bonnet of his pristine Pagani Zonda.
‘Do you know how fine you’re cutting this, Dr Leonetti?’ he demanded ruefully, beautiful green eyes tracking over her brightly smiling face with a love he couldn’t and never tried to hide.
‘I just got tied up with something.’
Dante opened the door for her and she slid in, smoothing her tunic top over the very small bump beneath.
‘It’s very important that you don’t miss any appointments,’ Dante told her anxiously. ‘I want you to have the best possible care and attention.’
‘Shut up,’ his wife told him, lurching awkwardly into his lap before he could start the engine and kissing him breathless. ‘I’m as healthy as a horse and I come from good breeding stock as well. How many nephews and nieces do I have?’
Dante, who had loosened up in his habits since Topsy came into his life, wrapped both arms around her and sighed into her tumbled dark hair. ‘I know, but I can’t take your casual attitude and I couldn’t stand anything to happen to you.’
‘It’s you things are going to happen to!’ Topsy warned him cheerfully. ‘You’re going to have me and a mini-me to torment you. Life as you know it has ended.’
‘Life as I knew it ended the day I met you, amata mia,’ Dante retorted with a wide smile of satisfaction, settling her back into the passenger seat and doing up her belt for her. ‘Have you ever heard me complain?’
And Topsy had to admit, she had not heard him utter a single complaint in the three years since she had come to live in Italy. She had insisted on a long engagement and, regardless of Dante’s eagerness to get to the altar, it was a year before the wedding actually took place. Topsy had wanted both of them to be absolutely certain of what they were doing because she really did want their marriage to last for ever and ever.
Deciding to try for a baby had been a big decision and she had waited until she was twenty-six to do so, confident that she would be a more caring parent than her mother had been and convinced that Dante would make a terrific father. It had been something of a shock when she fell pregnant the first month but she was truly excited about her baby.
She had had no difficulty finding a research job at the university and was currently up for an award following the publication of her most recent maths paper. Her career took up a good deal of her time and she was frequently invited abroad to speak and share her research, as well as continually fending off head-hunters desperate to employ her in more profit-inspired fields. Dante had not been able to tolerate living away from her during the week to be at the bank headquarters in Milan. Nowadays, although he made regular business trips, he mostly worked from home.
The fancy-dress ball that had caused so much trouble between them was now a more positive memory for them both for the little girl suffering from leukaemia had travelled to the USA for highly specialised treatment and was now in recovery with every hope of maintaining her improved health.
On a less important note, Topsy still couldn’t drive, had decided she didn’t like driving and flatly refused to get behind a steering wheel with Dante beside her but it wasn’t really a big problem when Dante had hired a local driver to motor her around instead.
Vittore and Sofia and little Agnese, their daughter, who was now a cherubic toddler, had moved into their new home, Casa di Fortuna. Family contact was frequent and informal and everything that Topsy had learned to enjoy with her sister and their families. Kat had given birth safely to her much-longed-for little daughter. Topsy’s relationship with her father was open and affectionate and more than she had ever hoped to have with a parent. Dante had learned to recognise Vittore’s deep love for his mother and the awkwardness between the two men had slowly melted away.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, nothing had changed about Topsy’s relationship with her mother. Odette had been tried in court and had got off the charges through lack of acceptable proof, but the older woman’s jubilation had not lasted long when she realised that all her regular clients had deserted her because they had feared exposure after her arrest. In the end, Odette had closed down the escort agency and retired to the South of France to live on the pension she received from her sons-in-law. Neither Topsy nor any of her sisters had heard from Odette since she had relocated abroad two years earlier and, as the older woman had not written the tell-all book she had threatened to write, her daughters were inclined to think that silence from their mother was a blessing.
‘There...we just made it,’ Dante pronounced with a touch of superiority as he shot the car into a parking spot beside the obstetrician’s consulting rooms.
‘I knew we would,’ Topsy teased, tenderly stroking the back of a lean brown hand where it still rested on the steering wheel. ‘You would hate to miss a scan of our daughter.’
Dante tucked a straying strand of dark hair gently back behind her ear, his reflective green gaze resting warmly on her animated face. ‘I never knew I could be so happy...and just to think there’s going to be two of you. I can’t believe my luck, amata mia.’
Topsy gave him a knowing look that engulfed him in love. ‘I believe we make our own luck.’
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A Whisper of Disgrace by Sharon Kendrick