The Italian's Rightful Bride Part 24

'In the library. Have you seen your mother?'

'In her room.'

'Thanks.'

'Thanks.'

He marched into Joanna's room without knocking. She was just drying off after stepping out of the shower, and she whirled on him indignantly.

'You've got a nerve-' she said, trying to grab the towel.

'I have now. I lost my nerve for a while but I've got it back. We've got to forget all the nonsense we talked the other night because...'

It should have been so easy, he thought distractedly. Where were the speeches of love, the declarations of pa.s.sion that had come so easily the other time?

But the other time hadn't mattered like this, and suddenly he was tongue-tied. The only words that would come were- 'Is your ex-husband an honest man?'

'What?'

'Is he an honest man? When he says you love me, that you've always loved me, going right back to last time-can I believe him?'

She stared at him, incredulous. He met her eyes, his own filled with a terrible intensity that showed what this meant to him. For a moment the whole world seemed to hang in the balance.

'Yes,' she said at last. 'You can believe him. I fell in love with you back then. I knew you didn't love me but I'd have married you and hoped for the best. I was going to make you love me. Only then Crystal turned up and I knew it was no use. You can't make people love you.'

'No,' he said slowly. 'You can only wait and hope that their eyes will open and they'll see the truth before it's too late.'

He grasped her shoulders so urgently that the last of the towel slipped to the floor. She didn't notice.

'Tell me it isn't too late for us,' he begged.

Her eyes shone. 'It will never be too late as far as I'm concerned.'

'Since we met again I've known that you were the one and only, but telling you so was impossible. There seemed to be so many things in the way, but they were all fantasies. I'd have known that if I were seeing straight.

'I said once that you shouldn't have released me, but if you hadn't it would never have worked out well for us. We could never have had then the marriage that we're going to have now.'

'Are we?'

He took her in his arms. 'Yes,' he said, 'we are.'

It was a kiss to mark the end of the lonely years and seal a promise.

'Tell me that you love me,' he whispered against her lips.

'I've always loved you, and I always will. Gustavo, my darling, are you quite sure?'

'I've never been more sure of anything in my life.'

'People will call you a fortune-hunter.'

'They can call me what they like as long as you call me husband. I was blind for far too long. But now I can see the way ahead, and it's there for both of us.'

He lifted her up in his arms, holding her against his chest.

'Come, my darling,' he said. 'No more waiting. Our time has come, and nothing will ever part us again.'