Page 40 of Secrets of Cinderella's Awakening

He wanted so much to hold her—to comfort and kiss her—but the flash of her eyes was very definitely telling him not to touch. ‘What if I told you that I want to spend the rest of my life with you? That I want to marry you?’ he said huskily. ‘What if I told you that I’ve sold off two large divisions of my company, which means we can live wherever you want to live. Maybe Thessaloniki? If you’d like that,’ he amended hastily.

‘You’ve sold part of your company?’

‘Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve been simplifying my life so that I could devote the next section of it to you—that’s what’s been keeping me busy. You haven’t seen the news? It’s been all over the internet.’

‘I haven’t got any internet here. And even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have been reading anything about you.’

Leon’s heart was beating very fast as he realised that this woman needed a declaration of love so powerful that never again would she be in any doubt of his feelings for her. She’d said she didn’t know if she had the strength to risk having a relationship with him again, but he knew she did. He just had to convince her of that.

‘I love and admire you more than anyone I have ever met, Marnie,’ he said slowly, and very deliberately. ‘I love your pride and feistiness and your ability to make me laugh. I love waking up in the morning and finding you there beside me, so that I can kiss you. I like your company more than anyone else’s and I like you lying next to me when I wake in the darkness of the night. And I find myself imagining...’ For some reason, his voice had started to crack. ‘Imagining you,’ he breathed unevenly. ‘With a baby at your breast. Our child. A child we would love and protect with all our hearts. A child we would be honest with. There will be no more secrets between us from now on, my love. Agape mou. Just a shared life together. Will you share that vision with me, Marnie—will you journey down that road with me?’

As she heard the emotion underpinning his words, Marnie could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as she looked up into his beloved face. At the bronzed beauty of his sculpted features and the mouth she had thought so hard and unforgiving the first time she’d ever seen him. But Leon had crafted himself a mask to present to the world, the same as she had, she realised. A mask intended to conceal the pain they’d both suffered—a pain which had made them keep people at arm’s length.

Yet somehow the two of them had come together—and how. They had got it wrong the first time around but he was right, they could start again. Because that was what life was all about.

About hope. And redemption. And renewal.

And love. Most of all it was about love. A love she had never imagined could be hers.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I will journey down that road with you. Because I love you too, with all my heart. I think I’ve loved you from the moment I first set eyes on you, Leon Kanonidou.’

‘So you’ll marry me?’ he verified fiercely. ‘As soon as possible?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, I’ll marry you. But will you please hold me now? Because more than anything, I badly need you to kiss me.’

As his arms went round her, she sank lovingly into his embrace, feeling his warmth and protection as the sheer joy of being reunited with him flooded through her body. With tender fingers he dried the tracks of her tears and brushed the awry hair away from her cheeks and he lowered his lips to hers in what felt like slow motion.

But it was worth the wait.

Oh, yes. Definitely worth the wait.

Because that one kiss healed their past and sealed their future and made them realise how glorious their shared present was.

In fact, it was safe to say that it was the best kiss of their lives.

EPILOGUE

MARNIE HAD JUST positioned the final fondant dinosaur on top of

the cake when the sound of movement outside the window captured her attention. With sunlight glittering off the nearby sea, she glanced up to see Leon approaching and thought—as she always did—what perfect timing he had. A visual feast in sawn-off jeans and a black T-shirt, he was running to keep up with two sand-covered little boys. Their sons. Their twin sons. Their two beautiful boys who would be four years old tomorrow, and who brought their besotted parents unimaginable amounts of joy. She swallowed, overcome with emotion which was never far from the surface—particularly during the last few weeks.

Every day she gave thanks for her life and her marriage because it hadn’t all been plain sailing. Conceived early in their marriage, and born seven weeks prematurely, Theo and Atlas had been terrifyingly tiny when they had been delivered in Athens. Their parents had kept a tense vigil on the neonatal unit and Marnie had been shocked by the waxen pallor of her husband’s face and the bleak terror she could read in his eyes.

But those little boys had come battling through and today were as healthy and robust as any of their friends, five of whom would be joining them tomorrow for a raucous birthday picnic on the beach, along with their aunt and uncle. Pansy and Warren were flying in later on Leon’s private jet, along with their russet-haired daughter, Bryony—who was a loveable little terror. Warren was now one of the most successful barristers in the country and Pansy had become a valued prison visitor in London. She was even on the lecture circuit, giving increasingly popular talks about the realities of women’s experiences in jail. As she was fond of telling anyone who asked—nobody knew the inside of a cell as well as she did.

Marnie sighed. Who would ever have thought that fate could have done such a satisfying flip-flop and allowed the two Porter sisters to find true happiness?

‘That was a very big sigh,’ came a silken comment from behind her and Marnie felt a shiver of inevitable expectation rippling down her spine as she heard Leon’s voice.

She turned round, her heart clenching with pleasure. His blue eyes were bright against the bronzed gleam of his skin, but these days his raven-dark hair was styled a little longer and looked very sexy. She cut it herself, of course. In fact, lots of his friends had asked if she would cut theirs, too, but Marnie had resisted. She had loved her time as a hairdresser but other things beckoned to her now. With the help of their beloved nanny, Christina, she took an inordinate amount of pleasure from being a mother. She was on the board of trustees of a children’s home and, assisted by the philanthropic arm of Leon’s pared-down business, she hoped she was helping to make a real difference in the lives of those children. In fact, next week a tiny orphaned baby girl they were fostering was coming to the newly decorated pink nursery upstairs, which had been prepared just for her. She bit her lip. Well, that had been the theory.

‘It was a sigh of contentment,’ she informed her husband as he slid his arms around her waist.

‘But also one of faint concern,’ he noted as he traced the tiny frown on her brow with the tip of one finger.

‘Where are the boys?’

‘Christina has insisted they remove all that sand in the bath and, afterwards, they’ve decided they want to make welcome cards to give to their new baby sister next week.’

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