Page 96 of Virgin's Stolen Nights with the Boss

‘You look incredible,’ he told her.

‘So do you.’

She put her hand up to his jaw. He didn’t pull his head away because this was no feigned affection.

‘You still haven’t shaved?’

‘I was a bit busy...’ He looked at her shining black eyes. ‘Did you get my message on the bottle?’

‘That’s why I’m here.’ Carmen smiled. ‘To claim my dance.’

On this beautiful night the ballroom lit up, and she leant on his chest and danced in his arms.

‘Thank you for not leaving tonight...’

‘We deserve a chance.’

‘We’re more than a chance,’ Elias said. ‘I love you.’

‘Don’t say that just because you’ve won today or—’

‘I love you,’ Elias told her again.

‘Never take that back.’

It was an odd response, perhaps, especially from someone who looked so confident and poised. But he took her plea seriously, and understood that her doubts came from a world before him.

He said it a third time, right into the shell of her ear. ‘I’m going to love you for ever.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CARMENHADTHOUGHT—or rather she’d been told since she was a little girl—that she would marry in Jerez and her father would give her away.

‘I always thought I’d have a reception at the bodega, like you did,’ she said to Emily, who was taking her wedding dress out of its reams of tissue paper. ‘I don’t know what Papá would say about a wedding in Malibu!’

‘I think he’d be thrilled to see you so happy,’ Anna said.

‘We couldn’t leave Dom, you see. Not when he’s doing so well. It would really have set him back...’

Her voice trailed off. Her brothers and their wives had all been a little baffled and trying not to be when she’d explained that they couldn’t leave Dom just now.

After all, Anna had left her daughter, Willow, to attend Emily’s wedding.

She smiled now at Willow, her bridesmaid—she was officially her niece now, because the adoption had finally come through.

‘You look like a flamenco dancer,’ Carmen told her.

‘Iama flamenco dancer!’ Willow exclaimed.

And then she looked at Emily, who was holding Josefa.

They seemed like sisters, even if they didn’t quite understand each other yet.

They were there for each other.

Her family was here in Malibu for this very special wedding.

In a few weeks they would take a honeymoon in Jerez, and sort out the transfer of Carmen’s horses to Malibu... For now, though, it was all about today.

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