The Secrets She Carried

‘I haven’t even packed—’

‘There’s no need. A new wardrobe awaits you at our destination. You don’t need to worry about the twins either because your mother has agreed to stay on here until we return. Let’s go—’

‘Like … right now?’ Erin exclaimed. ‘I need to get changed—’

‘No. I want to be the one to take off that dress,’ Cristo confessed, gazing down into her eyes with a sensual look of anticipation that sparked fire in her bloodstream.

They flew to the airport in the helicopter and, having presented their passports, boarded the jet straight away. By then, having been up at the crack of dawn, Erin was smothering yawns and the drone of the engines sent her into a sound sleep. When she wakened, she was embarrassed by the poor showing she was making as a bride and barely had time to tidy her mussed hair and repair her make-up before they landed.

‘You’ve brought me back to Italy,’ she registered in surprise, recognising the airport. ‘Why Italy?’

‘It’s where we began again even if we did

n’t appreciate it that weekend.’

And alighting from the limo that brought them to the villa and struggling to walk in the high-heeled sandals that were now pinching horribly, she decided that he had made a good point. Her emotions had rekindled along with her desire for him. It had been time out of time and wonderful in the strangest way of happiness coming when you least expected it to do so.

‘I gave the housekeeper the weekend off.’

Cristo swept her up in his arms to carry her through the door he had unlocked.

It was a romantic gesture she hadn’t expected from him and, eyes widening, she smiled up at him, colliding with dark golden eyes that made her heart race. They walked up the stairs, though, hand in hand and she almost giggled, unfamiliar as she was with such signs from Cristo, who was usually cooler than cool in that department. In the bedroom doorway she stilled, scanning the room, which had been transformed with lush arrangements of white flowers and dozens of candles with little flames that leapt and glowed in the darkness: she was transfixed.

‘Good heavens,’ she murmured, totally stunned by the display. ‘You organised this?’

‘I wanted it to be perfect for you.’

Hugely impressed, Erin smiled again and walked on in, kicking off her tight shoes with a sigh of relief.

‘Now you’ve shrunk,’ Cristo teased, uncorking the bottle of champagne awaiting them and handing her an elegant flute bubbling with the pale golden liquid.

Erin sipped. ‘Did you do something like this for Lisandra?’

He frowned. ‘Why do you keep on asking about her?’

‘Well, did you?’ Erin persisted.

‘No, I didn’t. It wasn’t that kind of marriage. I thought you would have worked out by now that I married Lisandra on the rebound,’ Cristo imparted with a rueful twist of his mouth. ‘I reeled away from the wreckage of our relationship and made the biggest mistake of all.’

On the rebound? She liked that news. She liked it even better that he was willing to admit that his first marriage had been a mistake. It soothed the hurt place inside her that had formed when she had realised he had taken a wife within months of their split. An extraordinary urge to move closer and hug him also assailed Erin. She might want to wrap that confession in fairy lights and laugh and smile over it but an aching sadness afflicted her at the same time. Three years back, he must have cared about her more than she had realised but she had still lost him through no fault of her own.

‘You weren’t in love with your wife?’ she prompted stiffly.

‘I thought I’d made that clear.’

‘Why did you marry her, then?’

‘After losing faith in you I had no heart for dating. My marriage pleased my family, gave me something to focus on other than you, but it was a catastrophe.’ Cristo shifted a broad shoulder in a fatalistic shrug and gave her a wry look. ‘This is our wedding night. I don’t want to talk about this now.’

Something to focus on other than you. And suddenly Erin understood something that she had never quite believed in before. When they broke up, he had been badly hurt too, he had suffered as well. He had rushed into a marriage that he had hoped would cure him of his unhappiness. But now she was suddenly reflecting on the eternity ring and the beautiful bower of flowers and candles he had had prepared for their arrival and her heart swelled with warmth and forgiveness. He was doing things he had never done before. He was trying to show her that he had feelings for her and naturally he didn’t want her rabbiting on about Lisandra in the middle of it.

‘I love you,’ he told her in a roughened undertone, detaching the champagne glass from her nerveless fingers and setting it aside so that he could pull her close. His eyes were bright with emotion in the flickering candlelight. ‘I was in love with you when we broke up but I didn’t know it. You’ve haunted me ever since. When I saw you in that photo with Sam and his staff, all I could think about was seeing you again. I lied to myself. I told myself that it was only sex and that I wanted to get over the memory of you, but I was still in love with you when I brought you here that weekend. When I woke up beside you the next morning I knew I didn’t ever want to let you go again.’

Tears welled up in Erin’s amethyst eyes and any strand of lingering resentment over that weekend vanished, for they had found each other again in this peaceful house, re-establishing the connection they had forged years earlier. That he loved her meant so much that she could barely contain the huge surge of happiness spreading inside her. ‘We’ve lost so much time when we could have been together,’ she sighed.

‘But we’re still young enough to make up for that and maybe while we were apart we both learned stuff we needed to know,’ Cristo countered more thoughtfully. ‘But if we had stayed together I would have eventually married you. I just wasn’t in a hurry.’

‘And this time around you probably felt like you didn’t have a choice,’ Erin completed.