Leonardo scowled at him. “Shouldn’t you be exporting panties, given the way women throw themselves at you?”
Carlos shuddered. “Not when I’ve perfected the art of dodging feminine missiles. Unlike you, I don’t stand still long enough for them to stuff panties in my personal effects.”
As everyone laughed again, Ellie felt euphoric.
After treating the news of Rafael’s real identity and his history with due gravity, her half brothers had proceeded to seamlessly treat him as an old childhood friend, and their very welcome new brother-in-law.
Suddenly, she felt Rafael tense. After looking at his phone, he made their excuses to her brothers.
Heart thudding, she turned away with him and crossed the garden overlooking the ocean where they would have their ceremony. As they rushed, she was again thankful for her both functional and pretty wedding dress—white as snow, embroidered in pearls and sequins, chiffon and satin with a strapless, pleated bodice and a flowing, easy-to-run-in skirt.
Not that she could run. “Easy, amor.”
At her wince, Rafael slowed down at once. They’d ended the previous night by going to bed. After the two weeks of turmoil and alienation, the discharge of passion had been cataclysmic. She was deliciously sore after he’d ravished her again and again, as she’d pleaded for him to, and had spent the day struggling to walk straight.
They reentered the mansion from its western entrance, and her pulse raced with anticipation as they neared the man and woman who stood rooted in the middle of the foyer.
His parents.
She’d begged him to contact them, to let them know that the son they thought they’d lost was alive and well and incredibly happy. She couldn’t bear knowing they existed, had that permanent scar of his loss and would not be given the choice to reconnect with him. He’d finally succumbed to her wishes and called them.
His parents, especially his father, had been distraught.
Asking them not to tell anyone until they figured out a safe way to introduce him to his siblings, he’d asked them to attend their wedding. Both he and Numair had sent their private jets to fetch them from their homes in Fortaleza and Belém. They’d postponed the ceremony to around sunset until his parents could arrive.
Now Rafael was face-to-face with them. Though they’d both known Rafael for the past two years, they’d only known him as his new persona. Now they saw him as their long-lost son come back to life.
It felt surreal to Ellie, meeting his father, Andrés Ríos Navarro, who was also her father’s once-best friend. Bianca Franco Molena, his mother, had once been her mother’s friend, too.
“I’m so sorry...” Andrés blurted out, swallowed, then he burst into tears. Rafael’s mother followed suit.
Rafael pulled his father into a fierce hug. “I’m the one who’s sorry I didn’t tell you before.” He dragged his mother into the hug, and let them weep for all the years of helplessness, dread and heartache as he enclosed them in his power and protection.
When their emotional storm abated, Rafael reached out to Ellie. She rushed to join them in his all-encompassing embrace.
Kissing them all, he smiled gently at his parents, and adoringly at her. “You owe my coming to my senses to my bride, the one who put everything in my life right.”
And Ellie found herself in his parents’ arms, squeezed and kissed and thanked for the miracle of having their son back.
“It’s me who thanks you for giving me the only man I’ll ever love,” she choked out. “But has he told you my full name?”
Both blinked at her uncomprehendingly. After she told them, they gaped. Then they burst out talking at once.
“Teo’s daughter?”
“How is that even possible?”
“Where is Teo?”
“Is he here?”
She hooked her arm into theirs and steered them out to the garden. “He is here, and he’s been waiting all my life to see you again.”
* * *
Their ceremony went without a hitch, and sort of felt like an afterthought. Apart from Rafael’s parents meeting her father, and Rafael pulling her father into his embrace as he gave him her hand, and her father finally exchanging his first kiss with Isabella in jubilation after her and Rafael’s “I dos,” all the monumental stuff had already happened during and after the rehearsal yesterday.
Everyone had retired to their suites after long hours of celebration, and she was in Rafael’s arms again. And she couldn’t hold her tears back again.