Page 48 of Forbidden Until Midnight

Her steps almost faltered when she saw him turn. Almost, but not quite. Because she knew. She knew that he was it for her. He was her family, her home, her heart, no matter how much distance between them, or how much time had passed. He had been that for her from the moment she’d first laid eyes on him, all those years ago.

She wasn’t quite sure of the response she would get, but she knew her love for him, she knew her own heart and her own mind.

The guests parted before her, but she barely noticed. Her gaze was on Santo, only Santo. She crossed the entire length of the ballroom while whispers grew louder and, for the first time in her life, Eleanor truly didn’t care that she was under the scrutiny of the near two hundred guests in attendance that evening—including Edward Carson.

The man she had finally released herself from the night before.

No, Freddie wasn’t eighteen yet, and no, her mother couldn’t leave Edward Carson until that happened, but Eleanor had finally stepped out from beneath his control and into her own light. A light that she desperately wanted to share with Santo.

She didn’t have much to offer him. Although her investments were good and her turnover impressive, her bank balance was truly insignificant compared to the people in this room. But she had enough to gain her own independence. Enough to know that she could and would move forward with her life alone if she had to. And that knowledge, the knowledge that she could rely on herself to recover from whatever life threw at her, to get back up and stand on her own, had given her the confidence she’d needed to come here tonight and to confess her feelings for the man she loved.

‘Santo,’ she greeted him, her gaze hungrily consuming the sight of him.

He nodded, that muscle in his jaw flickering, warning her of his restraint. But she didn’t want his restraint. She never had.

There was so much she wanted to tell him, so much that she could see in his eyes, but the most important of all was simply this.

‘I love you,’ she confessed with a shrug, as if she’d tried not to. As if she couldn’t help it. As if she were sorry for herself, when she was none of those things.

‘I...don’t need you to love me back,’ she said, her confidence wobbling, but not wavering. Because it was the truth. ‘My love for you doesn’t depend on a response. It’s not a transaction, to be bought or sold, like so much here is. My love for you doesn’t depend on what you choose to do or not do with it,’ she confessed.

She’d learned that about herself and about what she wanted from life. That she had to be happy with her choices, her decisions, her feelings, first and foremost. And, no matter what happened, she needed Santo to know that she wasn’t ashamed of her love for him and never would be.

She had been devastated that he had thought himself unworthy of her. She had heard that in his tone when he’d accused her of being with him just to disappoint Edward. Seen through his accusation to the hurt that lay beneath. And she couldn’t understand how he was unable to see that he was the best of every single person in this room.

‘I just wanted you to know that. There will never be anyone else for me. There never was. It was always you,’ she ended on a whisper.

Eleanor desperately imprinted the image of him on her memory in case it was all she would have in the months and years to come. Thick waves of dark hair making those aquamarine eyes even more hypnotic, lips almost cruelly carnal. She couldn’t linger too long on any one feature because it was nearly too much for her to bear.

The silence in the room was deafening, not even a pin drop, not even the sound of her own heartbeat. Pressing her lips together to hide the way that they wobbled, she was about to turn, when suddenly he moved. And suddenly he was there. Everywhere. All at once.

His arms wrapped around her in that way of his that made her feel worshipped and loved and precious all at the same time. His lips found hers, not even trying to prise or entice them open to him, just to press against hers as if that was all he would ever need. She felt it, the passion, the love, the sheer magnitude of what she felt herself, returned to her by him. Her heart just gave itself to him and he accepted it.

‘I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t trust that this was real, that you were real,’ he whispered into her ear, holding her to him as if she might be snatched away from him at any minute. She felt his heart racing in his chest against her own. She felt the panic, the fear, the excitement, knew those same feelingsasher own.

For a moment she couldn’t believe it either, questioning whether it was real, whether she actually got to keep him this time.

‘Can you ever forgive me?’ The question exhaled from him as if it had been lodged in his chest for the entire year that they’d been apart.

She closed her eyes as the tears built, threatening to escape even as she wished them back.

‘Can you ever forgive me?’ she asked, unable to believe that she might have earned the right, having made him feel unworthy of her love.

The whispers and tittering of the people in the crowd began to grow, even as she would have been content to simply stay there, held by him,lovedby him.

He pulled back to gaze into her eyes. And, just like that, the heat that had been banked behind declarations and confessions simmered into being.

‘Cristo, Eleanor, I love you so damn much,’ he said and she couldn’t help the smile that split her heart apart and pulled it back together at exactly the same time—reformed by him, reformedforhim. ‘It’s inconceivable to me that you don’t already know. That you don’t feel it. Because I can’t feel anything else. At all.AllI feel is my love for you. Nothing else matters. Not these people, not my company, not even the promise I made to Pietro. They are all insignificant in comparison to how much I love you.’

But before she could say anything he dropped to one knee as a gasp of shock echoed across the guests, filling the large ornate hall. Shivers racked her body as she realised that he was going to propose to her. It was more than she had dared let herself hope for in all the years she’d known that he was the one she wanted to spend her life with. And now that it was here her heart nearly exploded from the joy of it.

‘Eleanor Carson—’

She shook her head so fast that it cut off his words. A second of doubt passed across his features before comprehension blocked it out completely. She hated that she’d put that there, but it was important to her that they got this right.

‘It’s Moretti,’ she clarified, loudly and clearly. ‘My name is Eleanor Moretti.’

Santo looked at Eleanor, the pride, the confidence shining from her as she declared herself Pietro’s daughter. As she finally turned her back on the man who had caused more damage than any one man had a right to.

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