Page 43 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

She squeezed his fingers. ‘They would have adored you. My dad would probably have fallen into a faint if he’d seen your car collection. They really were happy together. I would see my aunts and uncles, and my friends’ parents and none of them acted like my parents did, you know, things like squeezing each other’s bums when walking past each other and dancing in the kitchen together when a song they both liked came on the radio. That kind of thing.’ She sighed. ‘I know they loved me. They did. We were a close-knit family but...’ She swallowed away the feeling of disloyalty rising up her throat and whispered. ‘Sometimes I wanted them to dance with me too.’

He smoothed a lock of her hair. ‘I doubt they meant to exclude you.’

‘I don’t think they even realised they were doing it, but I suppose that feeling of being second best has been in me for so long that I didn’t even realise it was there, and that is what I’m trying to explain to you, that there is no way I would have even tried to explain my feelings about it to you, not even two days ago, because deep down I was terrified it would make you look differently at me. You were so ruddy perfect that I kept waiting for the day you realised you were settling for second best and that you could do better than me.’

His nostrils flared with anger, head shaking violently. ‘Never.’

‘If I’d known about your early years and what an evil witch your mother is, it would have humanised you, because, Enzo, you weren’t human. You were the perfect specimen of man, in looks, temperament and good deeds. Even the way you proposed to me, it was justperfect,and then there was your superhuman control when I would be begging you to make love to me. Well guess what? I’m glad you have feet of clay. I’m glad that you’re as capable of feeling anger and having irrational thoughts and stupid ideas as the rest of us mortals. Most of all, I’m glad that you’re mine.’

He pulled his hand out of her hold to cup her cheeks and bring the tip of his nose to hers. ‘I will always be yours, Rebecca. Always.’

‘I know you will,’ she whispered. ‘And I will always be yours.’

Their lips fused. Dizzying heat and incredulous wonder filled her. ‘Marry me,’ she said into his mouth.

Enzo pulled back just enough to stare into her eyes, that searching expression stark in his. His fingers threaded through her hair. ‘You are sure?’

‘I’ve never been more sure of anything. Let’s marry as soon as it can be arranged. Just you and me.’

Slowly, the same wonder filling Rebecca appeared as a shine in his eyes. And then his dimples flashed. And his mouth crushed hers.

The sun had long gone to bed before they went back into the villa.

EPILOGUE

‘DOYOU,ENZOALESSANDROBERESI, take Rebecca Emily Foley to be your wife? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health until death do you part?’

Enzo’s clear brown eyes didn’t leave Rebecca’s face. ‘I do.’

Their interlocked fingers squeezed.

‘And do you, Rebecca Emily Foley, take Enzo Alessandro Beresi to be your husband? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, in—?’

Unable to follow the Italian words for excitement, Rebecca’s promise zoomed off her tongue, interrupting the priest in his full flow. ‘I do!’

Even the priest laughed. If there had been a congregation watching them, they no doubt would have laughed too, but the only four people invited to witness their marriage were Rebecca’s aunt and uncle and Enzo’s paternal grandparents. No one else was wanted or needed.

The tiny chapel in the tiny Tuscan village that they were marrying in was a world away from the famous cathedral Rebecca had jilted Enzo at the altar of, and she adored the intimate simplicity of it. Adored that it stripped back all the façade and made it only about the pledging of their lives together. Because that was all that mattered. Their love and commitment to each other. Even their clothing had been stripped of all the pomp and ceremony of their original wedding day, Rebecca’s white dress a flowing, bohemian creation, her hair loose, her posy a bunch of sunflowers, Enzo’s wedding suit much less formal too, although as snazzy and dapper as the clothes he always wore.

Feeling the weight of the gold ring slide over her finger made Rebecca’s heart swell, and when she slid Enzo’s ring onto his much larger finger, the expression dancing from his eyes turned the swelling into a balloon bursting to escape the confines of her ribs.

I love you, he mouthed.

The happiness infusing her just too much to contain, she flung her arms around Enzo’s neck and kissed him. With more laughter echoing around them, he kissed her back with such enthusiasm her feet were lifted from the ground.

Once all the official stuff was done and they were husband and wife legally and under the sight of God, they left the chapel to find a crowd of local well-wishers had gathered. In the distance, a lone paparazzo was beetling his way up the hill towards them. Considering the lengths Enzo had gone to ensure this wedding was as secret as humanly possible, Rebecca had to admire the pap’s tenacity. At her insistence, Rebecca and Enzo had released a short statement which blamed a severe dose of nerves on Rebecca’s failure to go ahead with the original wedding—she would tell a thousand lies if it saved Enzo from further humiliation—and ended with their intention to notify people of the rearranged wedding date as soon as possible. All that had been ten days ago, and, despite the press continuing to follow and report on their every move, they were now properly married and other than this one lone paparazzo, they’d got away with the intimacy and privacy they’d craved.

Flinging her arms back around Enzo’s neck, she gave the pap his shot. After all, he’d earned it.

Five years later

Three-year-old Lily was the first to spot her grandmother’s arrival. Practically throwing herself out of the garden playhouse that was almost the same size as the home Rebecca had grown up in, she tore across the lawn to throw herself into her grandmother’s arms, squealing, ‘Nonna!’

Rebecca and Enzo exchanged their usual bemused ‘is this really happening?’ looks and watched as the immaculately made-up Robina happily allowed her granddaughter to drag her off to play. She’d arrived for the wedding anniversary party five hours early to look after Lily while Rebecca and Enzo supervised the preparations. Why she’d thought it a good idea to wear a tight-fitting white couture dress for a playdate with a tiny child was anyone’s guess, but that was Robina for you.

The rapprochement with her had come about in the days after Lily’s birth when Rebecca’s sadness that her parents would never meet their first grandchild had tinged the piercing joy of her precious baby. Her daughter only had one surviving grandparent and it had suddenly felt incredibly cruel that she was destined to never meet her. She wouldn’t say Lily’s birth had softened Enzo when it came to his mother, but he’d agreed to try to put the past behind them and let her back into their lives.

In a move that no one had seen coming, least of all Robina, Lily had taken to hernonnaright from the start, as content in her arms as she was in her parents’. Bestowing Robina with her very first smile that wasn’t wind had resulted in the selfish, narcissistic, morally corrupt retired jewellery thief falling head over heels in love with her granddaughter in return. Watching the couture-dressed and immaculately coiffured Italian woman crawl around on the floor chasing a toddler was something that never grew old, and though Rebecca knew Enzo still struggled to forgive and would never be able to forget, even he accepted that his daughter had enacted a fundamental change in his mother.

---