Defying Her Billionaire Protector

He stood and his gaze caught, as it sometimes did, on the antique rolltop desk in the corner of the study.

Julia’s ghost had been laid to rest many years before. Very occasionally the darkness and the guilt would stir in some deep corner of his soul, but the emotions never lasted for long—not in the face of the light and the laughter that his children and his wife brought to his world. He’d considered at one point getting rid of the desk, but Marietta had convinced him not to and he was glad she had.

He found his girls in the kitchen. Amélie launched herself into his arms again and he lifted her up.

‘Now, Papa? Can we go now?’

He looked to Marietta and felt the familiar jolt in his blood. Her hair, still long and lustrous, was pulled into a ponytail and she wore a sarong and a crimson bikini top, ready for the beach. Into her forties now, she was as beautiful as ever—and she still made his body hum with desire.

‘Are you finished with your little helper?’

She wheeled back from one of the low marble benches they’d had specially installed for her and smiled. ‘Si. And the hamper’s ready. Take Amélie and the basket down—and don’t forget to come back for your wife.’

He slid a hand around the back of her head and dropped a quick kiss on her teasing mouth. ‘Funny, Mrs César.’

She grinned and his heart expanded—and he wondered, not for the first time over the years, how his chest could feel so full and yet so incredibly, amazingly light.

* * *

Marietta lay on a towel on the sand with her eyes closed, enjoying the sun on her face and the sound of her husband and children playing in the ocean. Nico had already taken her in for a swim and she was content now to relax and let the kids frolic under his watchful eye.

This was her reality now. The one that in the early years of her marriage she had secretly feared wasn’t reality at all, but a fantastical dream of some sort. A great big bubble of joy that would sooner or later burst and send her crashing back to her real life.

But the bubble hadn’t burst. It had only grown bigger and stronger—like her love for her husband—and eventually she’d stopped waiting on tenterhooks for the fairy tale to end and allowed herself to truly enjoy the life she’d never thought she’d have.

She smiled at the sound of Amélie’s high-pitched squeal and guessed her papà was throwing her into the air. She could hear the boys too. Her son and Remy Bouchard—Luc’s son—were firm friends, and Remy usually stayed with them for a few nights when they vacationed here.

She could not believe she and Nico had been married for almost thirteen years. They had finally settled in Paris, and they lived there in a beautiful home they’d renovated and fully modified for her wheelchair. They’d sold her apartment in Rome, but retained Nico’s apartments in London, New York and Singapore, all of which he used when travelling for work.

Marietta happily divided her time between motherhood and her art career, which had flourished in the early years of their marriage and continued to keep her busy now, with several lucrative commissions each year.

She heard Nico’s deep voice telling Enzo to watch his sister and then her son’s obedient response. She smiled again. Enzo was becoming more like his father every day—serious and intense—but he also had a strong streak of curiosity about the world which showed he had something of his mother in him.

‘What are you smiling about, chérie?’

She looked up through her sunglasses at her husband and her stomach clenched, because he was still the most magnificent man she knew. Dripping wet, he stretched out on a towel beside her and she marvelled at how hard and toned his body had remained over the years. Physically, he really hadn’t changed. A few distinguished-looking grey hairs at his temples and some deeper lines on his face due to his secretly worrying about his wife and children, but otherwise he looked the same.

And he still loved her—as fiercely and passionately as he had in the beginning.

‘I was just thinking,’ she said, tracing her index finger along the strong line of his jaw, ‘that Enzo is very much like his papà.’

Nico grinned—and she melted. She always did when her husband smiled at her.

His chest puffed out. ‘But of course. He is good-looking, intelligent, irresistible—’

She slapped her hand over his mouth. ‘And lacking in modesty!’

Her took her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. ‘And our daughter is very much like her maman.’

‘Si. Beautiful, talented—’

‘Stubborn, wilful—and her wish list is already longer than her mother’s was!’

She laughed. ‘A girl needs to dream.’

And yet her own wish list was practically non-existent now, because she had everything she could possibly want—and more.

All the things that had originally been on her list had been ticked off early in their marriage, before they’d started trying for children. Nico had taken her to Egypt to see the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings, and the trip had been magical—despite a team of his security men shadowing them everywhere they went. They’d gone up in a hot air balloon again—on their honeymoon—and eventually, after much persistence on her part, he’d agreed to her doing a tandem skydive. But not before he’d vetted the skydiving company and warned the operator that if anything happened to his wife he would personally throw the man out of a plane without his parachute.