‘I know how much you love our daughter if you are willing to step back from your career for her.’
‘I will give up my career. I’ll do anything—for you, Marnie,’ he said softly.
She bit her lip, feeling more vulnerable than she had ever felt in her life. ‘I don’t understand...’
‘I want you to have the chance to follow your dreams, and I know that you will do a brilliant job of combining astronomy with motherhood. I want you to be happy.’
Leandro drew a deep breath and prayed for the first time in his life.
‘I love you, Marnie. I love you more than I knew it was possible to love someone.’ He saw the doubtful look in her eyes and knew he must try harder to convince her. ‘I love our daughter, of course. But you are everything to me, tesoro—my world, my joy, the love of my life.’
‘Leandro...?’ she whispered.
He heard the uncertainty in her voice and his heart stopped beating. What if he couldn’t convince her that his feelings were true and he was offering her his heart? What if—despair gripped Leandro—what if Marnie rejected his love and rejected him?
‘Ti amo, mio amore.’
Words were not enough to show her the depth of his feelings for her and he seized her in his arms and sought her mouth blindly, because his vision was blurred and he felt the unfamiliar burn of tears at the back of his throat.
‘I love you.’ He groaned against her lips. ‘Please believe me.’ His voice shook. ‘Please forgive me. You loved me once, and if you let me I will spend the rest of my life trying to win your love again.’
She could allow her pride to be a barrier between them for ever, Marnie realised. Or she could find the courage to follow her heart and maybe all her dreams would come true.
She cupped Leandro’s face in her hands and her heart clenched when she saw how bright his eyes were. The realisation that this big, strong man could cry because of her was humbling.
‘You won my love right from the start,’ she said softly. ‘And I never stopped loving you—even when I told myself that I was weak and pathetic for loving a man who would never love me.’
‘I do love you.’ He groaned again. ‘But for a long time I didn’t want to admit that I was falling in love with you. It was only when you went away, after I had tried to trick you into marriage, that I realised what you meant to me. And when I found you and you were justifiably furious I was afraid that I had lost you for good.’
He brushed away her tears with his lips before he kissed her mouth, slow and sweet and so heartbreakingly tender that Marnie’s last doubts disappeared and never returned.
‘I wanted to punish you for not loving me,’ she admitted. ‘My mother wasted her life crying over my father and I was scared of being like her.’
‘I promise I will never give you reason to cry,’ Leandro assured her gently.
But he broke his promise immediately when he took a small box from his pocket and opened it to reveal an exquisite ring with a sparkling, star-shaped diamond.
‘I chose this ring for you because it is unshowy and pure and as beautiful as you are. Will you make me the happiest man on this planet and marry me, Marnie, my love?’
She looked into his eyes and saw his love blazing for her. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, finding it hard to speak when there was a lump in her throat.
He slid the ring onto her finger and kissed away her tears. ‘I would give you the moon and the stars if I could.’
‘All I want is you and Stella. My family.’ Her heart felt as if it would burst with happiness.
Once more words were not enough, and Leandro tightened his arms around her and kissed her with deepening passion before he undressed her with shaking hands and then undressed himself.
‘I have wanted to do this for so long,’ he murmured as he laid her on the bed and covered her body with his, caressing her with his hands and lips until she moaned softly and lifted her hips to invite his hard possession.
When he entered her it felt as new and wondrous as the very first time they had made love—and it was new, Marnie thought, because they were making love with their hearts as well as their bodies, and she knew that their love would last a lifetime.
EPILOGUE
THE SUN BLAZED in the cobalt-blue Californian sky as Marnie drove along the freeway in an open-top sports car, enjoying the feel of the breeze blowing her hair. She had picked up a light golden tan, and nine months after giving birth to Stella she was slimmer than she had been pre-pregnancy—thanks to the amount of swimming she did in the pool.
Leandro had arranged for them to rent a luxury villa in a quiet suburb that was only a few miles from the NASA research centre where she was studying astrophysics in the intern postgraduate programme. They had been in California for nearly two months and had settled into a routine where Marnie went to the research centre three days a week and left Stella with Leandro.
‘Do you miss going to your office and making business deals?’ she had asked him a few days ago, worried that he might become bored with being a stay-at-home father.
‘Oh, sure,’ Leandro had said mock seriously. ‘I spend all day in the sunshine with my daughter, and with my gorgeous wife when she’s not busy studying. Do you really think I miss sitting in an office?’
But although Leandro was a devoted father, his natural instinct for business had led him to buy a vineyard nearby, and he had asked Jake to manage the winery and the estate.
‘I plan to let your brother be in charge and I’ll enjoy drinking the wine,’ he told Marnie. ‘The vineyard is a good investment, and now that you have been assured of a job at the research centre at the end of the intern programme it looks like we will be staying in California indefinitely.’
Life could not get much better, Marnie acknowledged as she walked through the house and stepped outside to the pool area.
‘Stella is becoming a real water baby,’ she said as she watched the baby splashing happily in the shallow end of the pool, held safely in her father’s hands.
‘She’s a wriggler.’ Leandro lifted his daughter out of the water and kissed the tip of her nose before handing her to Marnie. ‘Have you got her? She’s as slippery as an eel.’
‘But rather more beautiful than an eel.’
Marnie felt a familiar surge of maternal adoration for her golden-haired baby as she wrapped Stella in a towel. Her eyes moved to Leandro, and as she watched him rub a towel over his bronzed chest she felt a surge of a quite different kind. Desire turned her bones to liquid and the wicked gleam in his eyes as he stepped closer to her told her he had read her mind.
‘I am doubly blessed to have two beautiful females in my life,’ he said softly. ‘And one benefit of swimming is that it tires our daughter out. Stella has fallen asleep on your shoulder.’
Marnie carefully placed the baby in her pram and adjusted the parasol. ‘She should sleep for an hour or so.’
Her heart leapt as Leandro drew her into his arms. His skin had already dried in the sun, and when he closed his arms around her she pressed her face against his chest and heard the sudden acceleration of his heartbeat.
‘Mmm...a whole hour to ourselves,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder how we could spend the time.’
‘I have an idea.’ She stood on tiptoe and sought his mouth with hers.
Their kiss was slow and sweet and then hot and urgent as he took control before he swept her up and laid her on a sun lounger.
‘I hope your idea is the same as mine, mia bella,’ he said thickly, his hands busy peeling her dress from her shoulders.
The sunlight caught the sapphire and diamond eternity ring that Marnie wore with her wedding and engagement rings. Leandro had given her the ring on the second anniversary of when they had become lovers, shortly before they had come to California. They had left Stella with Marnie’s aunt
, Susan, for a weekend and spent a romantic break in Prague.
Leandro sat back on his haunches and surveyed his wife’s gorgeous naked body. The effect was predictable, and he groaned as his erection snagged on his swim shorts as he stripped and positioned himself over her. She smiled, and he felt his heart expand in his chest.
‘My idea is to love you for eternity,’ he told her, his love for her blazing in his eyes.
‘Show me,’ she invited.
And he did.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Chantelle Shaw:
MASTER OF HER INNOCENCE
MISTRESS OF HIS REVENGE
A BRIDE WORTH MILLIONS
SHEIKH’S FORBIDDEN CONQUEST
TO WEAR HIS RING AGAIN
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE SECRET BENEATH THE VEIL by Dani Collins.
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The Secret Beneath the Veil
by Dani Collins
CHAPTER ONE
THE AFTERNOON SUN came straight through the windows, blinding Viveka Brice as she walked down the makeshift aisle of the wedding she was preventing—not that anyone knew that yet.
The interior of the yacht club, situated on this remote yet exclusive island in the Aegean, was all marble and brass, adding more bounces of white light. Coupled with the layers of her veil, she could hardly see and had to reluctantly cling to the arm of her reviled stepfather.
He probably couldn’t see any better than she could. Otherwise he would have called her out for ruining his plan. He certainly hadn’t noticed she wasn’t Trina.
She was getting away with hiding the fact her sister had left the building. It made her stomach both churn with nerves and flutter with excitement.
She squinted, trying to focus past the standing guests and the wedding party arranged before the robed minister. She deliberately avoided looking at the tall, imposing form of the unsuspecting groom, staring instead through the windows and the forest of masts bobbing on the water. Her sister was safe from this forced marriage to a stranger, she reminded herself, trying to calm her racing heart.
Forty minutes ago, Trina had let her father into the room where she was dressing. She’d still been wearing this gown, but hadn’t yet put on the veil. She had promised Grigor she would be ready on time while Viveka had kept well out of sight. Grigor didn’t even know Viveka was back on the island.
The moment he’d left the room, Viveka had helped Trina out of the gown and Trina had helped her into it. They had hugged hard, then Trina had disappeared down a service elevator and onto the seaplane her true love had chartered. They were making for one of the bigger islands to the north where arrangements were in place to marry them the moment they touched land. Viveka was buying them time by allaying suspicion, letting the ceremony continue as long as possible before she revealed herself and made her own escape.
She searched the horizon again, looking for the flag of the boat she’d hired. It was impossible to spot and that made her even more anxious than the idea of getting onto the perfectly serviceable craft. She hated boats, but she wasn’t in the class that could afford private helicopters to take her to and fro. She’d given a sizable chunk of her savings to Stephanos, to help him spirit Trina away in that small plane. Spending the rest on crossing the Aegean in a speedboat was pretty close to her worst nightmare, but the ferry made only one trip per day and had left her here this morning.
She knew which slip the boat was using, though. She’d paid the captain to wait and Stephanos had assured her she could safely leave her bags on board. Once she was exposed, she wouldn’t even change. She would seek out that wretched boat, grit her teeth and sail into the sunset, content that she had finally prevailed over Grigor.
Her heart took a list and roll as they reached the top of the aisle, and Grigor handed her icy fingers to Trina’s groom, the very daunting Mikolas Petrides.
His touch caused a zing of something to go through her. She told herself it was alarm. Nervous tension.
His grip faltered almost imperceptibly. Had he felt that static shock? His fingers shifted to enfold hers, pressing warmth through her whole body. Not comfort. She didn’t fool herself into believing he would bother with that. He was even more intimidating in person than in his photos, exactly as Trina had said.
Viveka was taken aback by the quiet force he emanated, all chest and broad shoulders. He was definitely too much masculine energy for Viveka’s little sister. He was too much for her.
She peeked into his face and found his gaze trying to penetrate the layers of her veil, brows lowered into sharp angles, almost as if he suspected the wrong woman stood before him.
Lord, he was handsome with those long clean-shaven plains below his carved cheekbones and the small cleft in his chin. His eyes were a smoky gray, outlined in black spiky lashes that didn’t waver as he looked down his blade of a nose.
We could have blue-eyed children, she had thought when she’d first clicked on his photo. It was one of those silly facts of genetics that had caught her imagination when she had been young enough to believe in perfect matches. To this day it was an attribute she thought made a man more attractive.
She had been tempted to linger over his image and speculate about a future with him, but she’d been on a mission from the moment Trina had tearfully told her she was being sold off in a business merger like sixteenth-century chattel. All Viveka had had to see were the headlines that tagged Trina’s groom as the son of a murdered Greek gangster. No way would she let her sister marry this man.
Trina had begged Grigor to let her wait until March, when she turned eighteen, and to keep the wedding small and in Greece. That had been as much concession as he’d granted. Trina, legally allowed to marry whomever she wanted as of this morning, had not chosen Mikolas Petrides, wealth, power and looks notwithstanding.
Viveka swallowed. The eye contact seemed to be holding despite the ivory organza between them, creating a sense of connection that sent a fresh thrum of nervous energy through her system.
She and Trina both took after their mother in build, but Trina was definitely the darker of the two, with a rounder face and warm, brown eyes, whereas Viveka had th
ese icy blue orbs and natural blond streaks she’d covered with the veil.
Did he know she wasn’t Trina? She shielded her eyes with a drop of her lashes.
The shuffle of people sitting and the music halting sent a wash of perspiration over her skin. Could he hear her pulse slamming? Feel her trembles?
It’s just a play, she reminded herself. Nothing about this was real or valid. It would be over soon and she could move on with her life.
At one time she had imagined acting for a living. All her early career ambitions had leaned toward starving artist of one kind or another, but she’d had to grow up fast and become more practical once her mother died. She had worked here at this yacht club, lying about her age so they’d hire her, washing dishes and scrubbing floors.
She had wanted to be independent of Grigor as soon as possible, away from his disparaging remarks that had begun turning into outright abuse. He had helped her along by kicking her out of the house before she’d turned fifteen. He’d kicked her off this island, really. Out of Greece and away from her sister because once he realized she had been working, that she had the means to support herself and wouldn’t buckle to his will when he threatened to expel her from his home, he had ensured she was fired and couldn’t get work anywhere within his reach.
Trina, just nine, had been the one to whisper, Go. I’ll be okay. You should go.
Viveka had reached out to her mother’s elderly aunt in London. She had known Hildy only from Christmas cards, but the woman had taken her in. It hadn’t been ideal. Viveka got through it by dreaming of bringing her sister to live with her there. As recently as a few months ago, she had pictured them as two carefree young women, twenty-three and eighteen, figuring out their futures in the big city—
“I, Mikolas Petrides...”
He had an arresting voice. As he repeated his name and spoke his vows, the velvet-and-steel cadence of his tone held her. He smelled good, like fine clothes and spicy aftershave and something unique and masculine that she knew would imprint on her forever.
Trapped by Vialli's Vows Page 16