Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

Her eyes misted over and she shook her head, too worked up to manage a verbal negative.

Roel reached for her clenched hands. ‘Ple

ase…’

Again she shook her head. ‘I don’t want a guy who’s just making the best of things with me,’ she confided on the back of a sob. ‘Or a husband who thinks I’m so much of a second-class citizen he has to fight even fancying me—’

‘It’s not like that. If it were only sex, I wouldn’t have messed up to this extent. I’m at home with sex…it’s all this other stuff I’m useless with. Don’t you realise how much you mean to me?’ Roel held fast to her hands, brilliant dark eyes pinned to her with fierce appeal. ‘You said it in Sardinia. You said I was perfectly happy living in your fantasy fairytale marriage. You were right…in fact I have never been happier.’

Hilary was so shaken by that admission she gaped at him.

‘So possibly you can imagine how I felt when the fairy tale turned out to be a fantasy. I had thought you loved me. I had learned to like that idea—’

‘Really?’ Her voice came out all squeaky.

‘I fell in love with you. But I’ve never been in love before and, unfortunately, I didn’t recognise what was wrong with me—’

‘What was right with you,’ Hilary corrected with helpless stress, hanging eagerly on his every word.

‘Well, it didn’t feel right at the start,’ Roel asserted feelingly. ‘You were coming between me and work…’

‘Oh, dear…’ she said chokily. ‘Do I really?’

Roel looked very grave. ‘Sometimes my mind wanders to you even in important meetings.’

‘That’s more than I ever hoped for.’ Unashamed tears in her eyes, Hilary slid her arms up round his neck. ‘I love you too. I love you so much and I’m going to make you very, very happy.’

He crushed her into an emotional embrace that spoke far louder than any words could have done. For a long time they just stood there wrapped tight in each other’s arms, each of them savouring that closeness that they had both feared was gone for ever.

‘You make me feel good, amata mia,’ he muttered a shade gruffly.

‘You see—loving me is not all bad news,’ she said warmly.

‘It is when you keep on disappearing and threatening to leave me,’ Roel disagreed.

‘I won’t ever disappear again and I will never—no matter how mad you make me—threaten to leave you again,’ she promised solemnly.

He bent his handsome dark head and stole a single, almost unbearably tender kiss that made her entire being light up with loving feelings. His lustrous golden eyes clung to her upturned face. ‘I think on some level I knew four years ago that you could be very dangerous to the single lifestyle I cherished, cara mia.’

‘I was a bit immature for you then. But I did fall for you the first time I saw you.’

‘I never admitted it even to myself but I was very strongly attracted to you. That’s why I kept on coming back to the salon where you worked.’ He kissed her again and her eyes slid dreamily shut. ‘Once we’d been through that wedding ceremony, though, I couldn’t trust myself anywhere near you—’

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. Marrying you put you off limits but I’ve been carrying your photograph in my wallet for four years,’ Roel murmured ruefully.

Big grey eyes opened wide to take full appreciative note of his discomfiture. She glowed with pleasure.

His lean, intelligent face tender, he looked down at her with immense appreciation. ‘I’d love to see you wearing a wedding dress for me. We need to make more of the occasion. We should renew our vows and have our marriage blessed.’

‘I’d love that…’ she muttered, touched to the heart. ‘But you’ll have to wait until after the baby’s born.’

‘Nonsense,’ Roel contradicted without hesitation.

Eleven months later, Hilary and Roel renewed their vows in the atmospheric little chapel only a mile from the Castello Sabatino.

Hilary carried yellow roses and wore a beautiful boned brocade bodice teamed with a frothy skirt. The happy couple only had eyes for each other. A superb meal and a lively party followed the ceremony. Her two closest friends, Pippa and Tabby, attended with their husbands, Andreo and Christien. Paul and Anya Correro shared the top table, for over the past year Anya and Hilary had forged as good a friendship as their respective husbands now enjoyed. Her sister, Emma, was also present. The guest of honour was indisputably Pietro, the smallest and newest member of the Sabatino family. But being barely three months old and quite unimpressed by the festivities, he slept through most of the day.