‘That was exactly what Tom said.’ Kelly felt the tension in his broad frame at the mention of Tom. ‘Tom was a lifelong friend of my mother’s—they were in the orphanage together, and were lovers in their youth. Tom went to sea, and when he came back my mother had married my dad. Tom was like an uncle to me, a friend of the family; he appeared now and then with hosts of gifts. But after my mother’s death he had a furious fight with my father—he blamed him for Mum’s death—and we never saw him again. But I always had his address.’
A dawning realisation made Gianfranco’s dark eyes gleam with relief. ‘No wonder my detective could not find you. No relation, and no contact since you were a child.’ He shook his dark head and looked down into her lovely face, wrapping his arm more firmly around her waist, pressing her closer to the warmth of his body. ‘You took a big chance searching him out,’ he said seriously, an oddly speculative expression in his black eyes. ‘He could have been an axe-murderer, anything.’
‘You really are a worrier,’ Kelly teased with a grin. ‘Anyway, I knew no one else,’ she said simply. ‘And you haven’t needed to use protection, because he was never my lover,’ she added for good measure. It still hurt that Gianfranco had assumed the worst about her. ‘I never had a lover, which is just as well, the speed at which I seem to get pregnant,’ she added with dry humour.
His incredible dark eyes closed for a moment, and then he opened them and his voice was hard, quivering with emotion he no longer tried to hide. ‘Dio grazie.’
‘Tom was a good man; he loved Annalou and I, and I miss him,’ Kelly said softly.
Gianfranco drew in a deep breath and looked into her expressive sapphire eyes. He was going to tell her the truth, to exonerate his own behaviour, but the sadness he saw stopped him. His investigators had discovered Tom had never been a sailor, but he had travelled abroad—and spent quite a lot of time in jail for fraud. Gianfranco knew what went on in some jails, and he had genuinely feared for Kelly’s health. The relief of knowing she had never slept with the man, or any other, was overwhelming, and he smiled gently down into her beautiful face. It was no wonder Tom had been able to keep Kelly hidden so successfully. The guy had been a master of the art.
He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. ‘I’m sure he was, Kelly. He kept you and Annalou safe and he gave you both back to me. For that I will always be grateful.’
He brought his head down to cover her mouth with his own. She felt the rapid thumping of his heart against her breast as he eased her against him and her lips parted willingly, warmly, to the thrusting demand of his tongue. He kissed her with a hungry, desperate need until, lifting his head slightly, his lips moved against her smooth cheek. ‘I loved you and longed for you for three years; I still do, and always will, Kelly.’ His words vibrated against her skin, and echoed to her heart’s core.
Kelly looked deep into his eyes, searching for the truth, and she shivered at the raw emotion she saw there. ‘And the baby?’ she had to ask.
He jerked his head back and looked straight at her. ‘We will have the best medical care on the planet, and if it is a boy we will call him Tom.’
She laughed, her blue eyes sparkling with humour, and, reaching up, she wrapped her other arm around his neck. ‘You don’t have to go that far,’ she teased, her fingers tangling in the dark silk of his hair, pulling his head back down towards hers. ‘I rather like Gianni, after the first and only man I have ever loved or ever will love,’ she confessed, and she brushed her mouth tantalisingly along his sexy lips.
‘Dio. I used to lie in bed and dream of you in my arms, wake and reach for you, and find only an empty bed.’ He groaned as his hand quickly unzipped her dress and pushed it from her shoulders. He gazed with feverish eyes on the soft curve of her breasts. ‘Now I have you, I still wake in the night and simply watch you, terrified of losing you.’
‘I had noticed,’ Kelly confessed. Stunned by the golden glare of love in his eyes, the wonder of his love washing over her like a healing balm, Kelly did some undressing of her own.
‘Not the sofa. Bed,’ Gianfranco muttered frantically a few minutes later as he lifted her in his arms, he carried her into the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. Sitting on the bed, in a trice he had dispensed with their clothes and swung his long legs up. He stretched out at her side, and, supporting himself on one elbow, stared down at her naked body.
One hand almost tentatively spread out over her flat stomach. ‘I can’t believe we have made a baby again the first time we made love after three years.’ His hand swept up over her midriff and over the firm swell of one breast.
Kelly breathed a deep, shaky breath, trembling at the force of her emotions. ‘You really don’t mind?’
Gianfranco groaned and captured her mouth with his in a deeply tender kiss—a kiss like no other they had shared, an avowal of love and tenderness, commitment and hope. Finally he lifted his head and looked down at her. ‘I love you, Kelly, and I want you to have my baby.’ His dark eyes held hers, and surprisingly she discerned a certain vulnerability in their depths.
‘But…?’ she prompted, her body burning for him, and her heart suddenly fearful again as he hesitated, holding a terrific control over his emotions.
‘Watching Anna and her groom and Annalou at the wedding today, listening to our daughter talking tonight, I realised I cheated you out of so many things. Kelly, will you marry me again—in church, with all our friends and neighbours and my mother in attendance?’ He touched his lips to the elegant curve of her throat. ‘I want there to be no doubt in your mind you are my wife and I love you.’
Meeting his eyes, Kelly parted her lips in a slow, sensual smile. ‘Good idea,’ she murmured throatily. Her small hands stroking up over his broad chest with tactile pleasure before curving around his neck, she pulled his head down and pressed a light kiss on his bruised nose. ‘Sorry about the punch,’ she apologised softly. ‘But if you think for one moment I am going to be a pregnant bride for a second time, I’ll give you another!’ she teased. ‘Try asking me again when I am not pregnant.’
Twelve months later, Kelly stood in the grand hall of the Casa Maldini, wearing an ivory satin wedding gown studded with seed-pearls and sequins, the train extending four feet behind her, with Annalou standing watching, looking equally lovely in a fairy-tale blue dress, and Judy Bertoni as maid of honour in a similar blue gown.
Carmela was elegant in a tailored suit in a subtle shade of cinnamon but the effect was spoilt somewhat by the five-month-old baby boy she was holding in her arms, Gianni Thomaso Maldini. ‘You look beautiful, Kelly,’ Carmela said, ‘but let’s go—we are forty minutes late.’
Gianfranco paced up and down the path to the church; his easy smile when he’d first arrived had long since turned to a frown. Father Rosso was waiting to begin the service. Where the hell was Kelly?
Then he saw the limousine draw up, and a relieved smile split his handsome face. Judy and Annalou skipped out, followed by his mother and son. Then his dark eyes widened with incredulity at the woman who followed.
Kelly, a vision in yards of bejewelled satin, with her silver-blonde hair swept up in a coronet of curls held in place by a diamond tiara, took his breath away. He drew in a ragged breath, his eyes suddenly darkening with deep emotion as they met hers, and she smiled, a dazzling smile only for him that lit her sapphire eyes and put the diamonds she was wearing to shame.
His hand, holding the posy of roses, trembled as he stepped forward to present them to his bride, a traditional Italian custom. ‘For you.’ He pushed the posy at her.
Kelly could not help smiling. He looked incredibly handsome in a pearl-grey tailcoat and a white wing-collar shirt, with a cream and gold cravat and matching waistcoat. Tall and elegant, every inch the aristocrat. But it was the expression in his eyes that thrilled Kelly to the bone: deeply possessive and blazing with the light of love.
‘You look out of this world, incredibly beautiful, and I love you with a passion, a devotio
n, that will live through this world and the next,’ Gianfranco said in a voice not quite steady as he led her into the church.
Her eyes misting with moisture, she squeezed his hand, her heart overflowing with love. ‘Thank you,’ Kelly said, and in that one word she was thanking him for everything: his love, their children, their life together.
It was the wedding of the year. Family and friends, dignitaries from all over Italy, business colleagues—no one was excluded. After the service the reception was held out of doors in the grounds of Casa Maldini.
‘We have to leave soon…’ Gianfranco’s arm was wrapped firmly around his wife’s waist, where it had been all afternoon. He glanced down at Kelly, his dark eyes glinting with raw desire. ‘If we want to make the flight.’
Gianfranco adored Annalou, and had been at the birth of his son Gianni, and the experience had filled him with awe and humility. But, much as he loved his family, after two weddings they were finally going to get to go on honeymoon. Alone. He could not wait to get Kelly on her own for three whole weeks.
‘OK.’ Kelly beamed up at him. It had to be the best wedding any woman in the world had ever had, she thought, glowing with happiness and pride for the man at her side who had done all this for her.
‘We don’t want to be late. You were late at the church,’ Gianfranco reminded her, just as the rather loud voice of a slightly inebriated Father Rosso, who was standing behind them, boomed out.
‘Two children and five years late, but they got there in the end. Dio grazie.’
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0043-2
THE ITALIAN’S RUNAWAY BRIDE
First North American Publication 2001.
Copyright © 2001 by Jacqueline Baird.
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