Her heart began to speed up, beating wildly in her chest, because it knew who he was, even as her mind balked. And her body tightened, because it knew too. The easy, powerful way he walked. The darkness of his hair. The hard, carved angles of his face...
Lucy stilled. Afraid to move in case he disappeared. Because surely he couldn’t be real. Surely he couldn’t be here on a beach in Cape Cod. With her.
But he came closer and closer and soon it was apparent that it was him, and he was here, and her heart raged behind her breastbone and she couldn’t breathe.
All she could do was stand there as he came to her and, without saying a single word, swept her into his arms.
She stiffened, pushing hard against his solid chest. This couldn’t be real. She was dreaming. She’d offered him her heart and he’d refused it.
‘Vincenzo? What are you doing here?’ And then anger in a cleansing fire hit her and she struggled. ‘Let me go.’
He shuddered, as if in pain, and then abruptly his arms opened and she was free. His face was taut with some vast, passionate emotion burning just beneath the surface of his skin, his black eyes blazing with it.
‘I need to say something, Lucy,’ he said, his voice raw and rough. ‘Will you let me?’
She was trembling now, half of her desperate to throw herself back into his arms while the other half was desperate to send him away.
‘Say what?’ she demanded, shaken and unable to hide it. ‘Didn’t you say everything you needed to back on Capri?’
‘No.’ The word was hoarse. ‘I didn’t. What I said to you then were lies.’
Shock washed through her, the trembling getting worse. ‘What lies?’
Vincenzo’s gaze was full of something hot and vital, burning steady as the fire at the centre of the earth. ‘That you were a distraction. That I didn’t care. That I wanted you to leave... You were right, civetta. Right about so many things. And it took me a while to see them, to accept what you were trying to tell me, but I know now.’ His hands were in fists at his sides, his whole body radiating a familiar tension. ‘You told me I was afraid, and you were right. I was. And if you want to know why, it’s because of this.’ He paused, his great, powerful chest heaving as he sucked in a breath. ‘My mother betrayed me. She manipulated me. She took my trust in her, my love for her, and she broke it. She broke me. I was the tool she used to make herself powerful. Not her heir and not her son. Nothing. No one.’
Her heart quivered at the desolation in those words, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh, Vincenzo. That’s not true.’
‘I was afraid it was, though, so afraid. I filled my life up with justice, with a crusade, and used it as an escape, a way to hide. So I didn’t have to face the truth that she didn’t love me. She never loved me. And perhaps there was nothing in me to love.’
A tear rolled down her cheek, the cracks in her heart aching. ‘That’s not true,’ she said hoarsely. ‘There so much in you to love.’
‘I didn’t believe you back on Capri. I used so many excuses to run from what you were trying to show me. But...I’m tired of running. I’m tired of not believing, of not trusting. I’m tired of filling my life up with something that changes nothing. I want something else, I want something better.’ He paused, his eyes dark and full of heat. ‘I want you, Lucy Armstrong. You were brave. You facing your fears helped me face mine. And if there’s one person in this world I know I can trust, it’s you.’
Her throat closed up at the certainty in his face and voice; she couldn’t speak.
‘You and your honesty and your strength, my civetta. You helped me find peace, you gave me a taste of happiness, and I...I want that more than I have wanted anything in my entire life.’ The desperate, burning look in his eyes had dissipated, and there was something else there: a steady, bright glow. Calm and sure and certain. ‘I’m afraid of being nothing more than what my mother made me, of being no one, and I thought justice would somehow make that feeling go away. But it didn’t. It was you who made it go away, Lucy. It was you all this time.’ The glow in his eyes became brighter, hotter. ‘I love you, my civetta. I love you so much. And I know it took me a long time to understand and you will never know how sorry I am that I hurt you, but I can’t bear another day of you not being in my life.’ Slowly, he raised his arms and held them out, his soul laid bare in his eyes. ‘Will you come to me, Lucy? I would very much like you to be mine. And I very much want to be yours.’
There was no thought, only certainty. Only the truth of the feeling that had burned in her heart so long it was part of her.
Lucy closed the distance without hesitation, giving him her answer.
And when his mouth found hers, she knew she’d found everything she’d ever wanted, right there in his arms.
The perfect moment to find her for ever.
The for ever they both deserved and the happiness they’d finally found.
Together.
EPILOGUE
THEY HAD SO many plans. Lucy had informed him of her idea to use her financial skills to help institutions combat fraud and other financial crimes, and so he’d helped her set up a consultancy. As for himself, he’d decided to step away from his crusade. He was going to devote more of himself to his family’s auction house and the other various businesses he had. It should keep him busy until they started a family, which they would. After all, someone had to be around to look after the children, and he fully intended to be that someone.
And if he passed on a few titbits that he’d heard through the grapevine to various law enforcement agencies on occasion, then it was only what a fine, upstanding citizen would do.
But the most important plan of all was the wedding Vincenzo had insisted on the moment they returned to Capri.
And that was where he married her, at their villa, the place where they’d both discovered what happiness was. And they discovered it anew as they said their vows to each other in front of the priest.
Lucy wore the most beautiful wedding gown of ivory silk that hugged her curvaceous form, a veil tumbling over her glossy dark curls. They’d been left loose down her spine, but some combs held it back from her lovely face.
No, she was more than lovely. She was beautiful.
She’d given up her glasses today for contact lenses, and not for vanity but because her glasses fogged whenever she cried and she was apparently going to cry a lot—or so she told him.
But she wasn’t crying now as he held her small hand and pushed his ring onto her finger. Only looking at him with so much love he could hardly meet her gaze.
Yet meet it he did as he made her his and he became hers.
And he wasn’t unworthy or undeserving. He wasn’t nothing and he wasn’t no one.