‘You’ll never know what it’s cost me in sleepless nights to come here today,’ he told her softly. ‘I’ve been rejected once by a woman I thought I loved, and I still bear the scars, but I knew today that life without you was so meaningless, that whatever pain I risked was nothing compared with the misery my life would be without you in it.’
As she listened to him Jessica realised what an effort it had been for him it to come to her, having endured, as he had just said, one traumatic rejection from Heather.
If she had needed confirmation that he genuinely loved her she had just received it. To get her back he had been prepared to humble himself completely, to take her back on any terms, just as she would have gone back.
‘We’ve been very lucky, you and I,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘To have been given this chance to love one another, especially in view of the inauspicious way in which we met.’
‘Mmm, it does pose a problem, though,’ Jessica m
used, closing her eyes and moving closer to the hard outline of his body, ‘at least as far as my book’s concerned. Was love the cause of our marriage or the result of it? Were we attracted to one another when we first met to such an extent that we both found excuses to go through with the marriage, or did it grow after we were married?’
His mouth silenced her, taking hers in a sensually demanding kiss. When he eventually raised his head to smile down into her flushed face he asked softly, ‘Does it really matter?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘Not in the least. What does matter is that there is love.’
‘Is now and always will be,’ Lyle affirmed, adding as his lips caressed her skin, ‘you do realise that Justine is really going to be full of herself now, don’t you?’
But it seemed he wasn’t expecting an answer, because his mouth was already taking the breath from her own, telling her in a way more satisfactory than any words the truth of what he had already said: that there was love and always would be.
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of USA Today bestselling author Carol Marinelli’s next book,
BOUND BY THE SULTAN’S BABY
The second in her Billionaires & One-Night Heirs trilogy!
Sultan Alim spent one forbidden night with Gabi—when he encounters her again, she refuses to name her child’s father. Alim will seduce the truth out of Gabi, even if he has to lure her under false pretenses. Alim knows he craves her, but does he desire her as his mistress or bride?
Read on to get a glimpse of
BOUND BY THE SULTAN’S BABY
CHAPTER ONE
GABI DERAMO HAD never been a bridesmaid, let alone a bride.
However, weddings were her life and she thought about them during most of the minutes of her day.
From way back she had lived and breathed weddings.
Gabi was a dreamer.
As a little girl, her dolls would regularly be lined up in a bridal procession. Once, to her mother’s fury, Gabi had poured two whole bags of sugar and one of flour over them to create a winter wedding effect.
‘Essere nerre nuvole,’ her mother, Carmel, had scolded, telling her that she lived in the clouds.
What Gabi didn’t tell her was that at each wedding she made with her dolls, she pretended it was her mother. As if somehow she could conjure her father’s presence and make it so that he had not left a pregnant Carmel to struggle alone.
And while Gabi had never been so much as kissed, as an assistant wedding planner she had played her part in many a romantic escape.
She dreamt of the same most nights.
And she dreamt of Alim.
Now Gabi sat, flicking through the to-do list on her tablet and curling her long black hair around her finger, trying to work out how on earth she could possibly organise, from scratch, an extremely rushed but very exclusive winter wedding in Rome.
Mona, the bride-to-be, stepped out of the changing area on her third attempt at trying on a gown not of Gabi’s choice.