Page 48 of In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard

It nearly destroyed him that she hadn’t known how strong she was. But he understood that need. The power of self-knowledge. Hadn’t he felt it too when he’d confronted his mother?

‘But now that I do know that, I realise that I don’t have to,’ she said softly, making him want to reach for her and pull her to him. It had been a terrible price for her to pay. Years of fighting to know herself. ‘But that doesn’t stop the threat of the news coming out about you and your mother. That hasn’t changed, and I don’t see how—’

He cut her words off with a kiss that he couldn’t help any longer.

‘Will you stop doing that?’ she cried against his lips.

‘No. Never. For the rest of our lives, if I think you are speaking utter nonsense, this is what will happen, just so you know,’ he replied against her lips, though it was getting a little difficult to keep talking, kissing and smiling.

Hope pulled out of his hold, shock and hope pouring through her veins.

She stared up at him, cast in shadow by the emergency lighting, desperate to know what he’d meant by that. Questions he apparently read in her gaze.

‘I went to see Anna,’ he said, his use of her name telling.

Hope closed the distance between them, her hand reaching up to cup his jaw, to offer comfort and to be with him as he explained.

‘She had been on my mind since we spoke and...she happened to be near to where I was already, so...’ He shrugged but she saw the pain and the hurt that rippled across his features. ‘I don’t think she will ever be able to behave differently. Behave like a mother. Because she isn’t one. Truly. I don’t think she will ever be able to explain why she did what she did with the non-disclosure agreement. And for a moment there—I swear—I think she almost tried to blackmail me into silence again,’ he admitted, the gravel in his voice dragging across her senses.

‘Luca...’ Hope said, his name conciliation on her tongue.

He shook his head. ‘I protected her when I thought she needed it.’

‘You protected her when she should have been protecting you,’ Hope said gently, awareness flaring in her body when he locked his gaze on hers.

‘Like you did,’ he stated. ‘You were never going to bow to Simon’s threat, but you did it in such a way that he wouldn’t have been able to reveal that threat without absolutely destroying himself in the eyes of his colleagues. You rendered his blackmail unusable. And I was that blackmail, wasn’t I?’ he demanded.

Hope looked away from the intensity in his eyes. She nodded, incapable of words at that point, her heart in her mouth. He was everything she’d wanted and more than she could have imagined and it was terrifying. A business wouldn’t love her back, but he could. And she wanted it so much it made her sick.

‘What did Martin say to you at the opera?’ Luca asked. ‘What did he say that you wanted?’

The question cut into her thoughts, spinning her back in time, and shame that he’d witnessed their encounter filled her again. She wanted to hide Martin’s cruelty, but her loyalty and trust...they needed to be with Luca.

‘Love. He said that I wanted love,’ she admitted, tears pressing at the corners of her eyes.

Luca looked at her and she knew—she could feel his fury that her ex-fiancé had taunted her with such a thing—but she could also feel the need to give her that very same thing. She felt it shining from his eyes when he looked at her. She felt it in his touch when he held her.

And while she resented Martin for what he’d said, she knew, deep in her heart, that he’d been right. Beneath the mask and the facade she’d adopted to survive the loss of her parents, through boarding school, press attention and even working at Harcourts, had been a little girl just looking for someone to love her.

‘You’re ashamed of that?’ Luca asked, his thumb under her chin, and a part of her was. A tear fell from her eye and he swept at it with his finger.

‘Should I be ashamed of the same thing?’ he asked gently. ‘For surely that was the only reason I protected Anna’s secret.’

‘What? No, of course not,’ she said, outraged at the thought until realising the point he was making.

When he saw that she understood, he nodded. ‘I love you. I love you so much that it is beyond me. I can’t contain it. Marry me,’ Luca asked against her lips.

Hope’s tears fell into their kiss and were swept away by passion and promises, and she felt as if something had finally slotted into place to make her complete. As if the world had been righted on its axis when she hadn’t known it was off-kilter. And now she knew the power of what it was to love and be loved. This amazing, proud, powerful man would stand by her and support whatever she did, just as she would him, and she knew that as well as she knew the sky was blue and the earth was round.

‘I don’t have fancy words, but I have a declaration for you. You will never have to ask, or wonder, or doubt again. I know your name,’ Luca said, his voice a whisper and a quote she recognised from Turandot, the opera they had seen that night, her heart flaring at his words. ‘I know your name,’ he repeated. ‘Your name is love.’

Overwhelmed by the love she felt from him, by the love she felt for him, she could only say, ‘Yes. Yes, yes, yes...’ over and over again until she believed it. Until she knew that she was going to spend the rest of her life loving and being loved by Luca Calvino.

‘Erm, sorry to interrupt, ma’am.’

Hope waved an arm as if trying to get rid of the voice.

‘We’re going to have to start the lift up again, ma’am.’

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