Page 45 of 2 Books in One Bundle

‘I’d wear it every day.’

Barely before she’d finished her sentence he stepped forward and yanked her into his arms, kissing her so hard and for so long she saw stars. He tangled his hands in her hair, holding her close, murmuring things in Greek that she didn’t technically understand but nevertheless did because they were so passionate they could only be words of love.

‘I thought I’d ruined everything,’ he muttered when at last he lifted his head, looking dazed, breathing hard.

Mia leaned back in his arms, looked around the room so thoughtfully, so stunningly transformed and shot him a smile. ‘The decorations were a good move.’

‘I hoped they would be.’

‘And, as proposals go, an engagement ring certainly beats a birth certificate.’

‘I thought that too.’ He took her left hand and threaded his fingers through hers and brought it up to the gap that separated his heart from hers. ‘Would you like to put it on now?’

She looked down at their joined hands, knowing they’d be united for ever, so excited to see what the future would bring, and said softly, ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’

EPILOGUE

One year later

‘ALITTLETOthe left,’ said Mia, tilting her head from side to side and narrowing her eyes. ‘No. That’s too far. A fraction to the right... Perfect.’

Zander, who had been up a ladder, stepped down off it, set it to one side and then returned to the bed, where she lay with their six-month-old son, Toby, who was asleep, starfished across her chest.

The mattress dipped as he sprawled himself beside her and surveyed his handiwork. ‘I can see why Willow didn’t think it suitable for public display.’

So could Mia. The portrait was of the two of them, fully clothed, arranged on a bench in the garden beneath a blossoming apple tree. There was nothing untoward about the pose, but they were gazing at each other in such adoration, the chemistry between them so strong it was almost tangible, that they might as well have been naked. The only place it could hang was in their bedroom. ‘She said she had to switch on the fan in her studio to cool herself down the first few times she worked on it.’

‘You look as if you want to devour me.’

‘You look as if you justhavedevoured me.’

‘I had, if I recall correctly,’ he mused with the beginnings of a smile that always meant trouble. ‘It’s giving me ideas.’

Her heart skipped a beat. Desire stirred. ‘Ideas, huh?’

‘Hold that thought.’

While Zander gently lifted their son off her and went to settle him in the nursery, Mia held that thought, along with a million others that she had to pinch herself every day to believe.

So much had happened in the last twelve months. They’d married in spring and, after a two-week honeymoon in Tahiti, had moved into this six-bedroomed house with a garden in the leafy London suburb that buzzed with cafés and parks. Hattie had become a partner in the business soon after that and in the summer Toby had been born.

Gone were the shadows and loneliness of the past. Zander now found family gatherings a joy and she had all the love and security she’d ever wanted. He’d promised to give her everything, to make her dreams come true, and he had. He’d given her the fairy tale.

‘Now, where were we?’ he murmured, strolling back into the bedroom and letting his gaze drift over her so thoroughly, so leisurely that she burned.

‘You were having ideas.’

‘So I was.’

He lowered himself onto the bed and she welcomed him into her arms and they explored and expanded on his ideas until they collapsed into a breathless heap of thundering hearts and tangled limbs.

And when the clock struck twelve and he murmured, ‘Happy Christmas,agàpi mou,’ Mia knew that it absolutely was.

Read on for an extract from AN HEIR MADE IN HAWAII by Emmy Grayson

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