EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

M ATEO WALKED THROUGH the front door to the sounds of kitchen chaos and smiled. For a few minutes, he stood in the hallway and breathed in the glorious, heady scent of domestic bliss: cooking smells, toddler smells and the aroma of a house lived in, which was so unlike the mansion he had once owned, where everything had felt so sterile in comparison. He’d hung onto that for a couple of months after he and Alice had married, after the most amazing pre-wedding honeymoon a guy could ever have asked for, and had then promptly sold it.

Thoughts of using it if and when he needed to be closer to the office, or if and when he might want to work with a client in privacy, had vanished because, to put it simply, he was quite unwilling to spend a single minute away from his wife if he could help it.

He looked around at the comfortable furnishings: the warm paint on the walls, the clutter of shoes by the door, the tiny yellow wellies with smiley faces, Alice’s perpetually mud-splattered green ones and a half-opened umbrella. This was home—the warmth and comfort of family life which he had never envisaged for himself.

He walked towards the sounds of chatter and smiled from the doorway at just the scene he knew would be waiting for him. Isabella was protesting vehemently at being trapped in a high chair. She was squirming and glaring, her pudgy fingers covered in food, her curly dark hair a cloud around an angry, determined face that was similarly covered in food.

He caught her eye and she stopped, protesting immediately, raising her arms and delivering the sort of beaming smile that got to Mateo every time.

‘How do I always know when you’re here without having to see you?’

Alice turned to him and her heart swelled with love. They’d been married for two years and the impact he had on her remained the same—had grown, if anything. It wasn’t simply because he was just so devastatingly handsome, standing there in a pair of fabulously tailored grey trousers and a white shirt cuffed to the elbows, jacket discarded somewhere between front door and kitchen doorway. No; her heart beat quicker every time, swelled with love and tenderness every time, because when he looked at her it was with such undisguised adoration.

‘Tell me,’ Mateo drawled, strolling towards his daughter and scooping her up into his arms, regardless of the food that was now going to be deposited on his white shirt or of the little carroty fingers patting his face.

‘Whenever Izzy goes silent, I know it’s because you’ve appeared. She knows that she’s about to be thoroughly spoiled.’

‘If you mean rescuing her from a fate of squished-up vegetables, then I can’t deny it.’

He padded towards his wife and looked down at her with adoring eyes, while his daughter did her utmost to get his attention before subsiding against his shoulder with a little gurgle of pure contentment.

‘Not that much longer,’ he murmured with satisfaction.

‘Tell me about it. Was I ever this tired with Izzy?’

Mateo placed his hand protectively on the bump that signalled baby number two. As with Izzy, neither had wanted to find out the sex.

‘Probably going to be a boy,’ he predicted with a grin. ‘Then I can have back-up with you women.’

He pulled her towards him and kissed her as thoroughly as he could with a toddler’s head on his shoulder.

‘Have I ever told you, my darling, how much I treasure you and how much I thank everything there is to thank that you skied into my life?’ He drew back and lovingly stroked her cheek with his thumb. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you or this little scrap nodding off on my shoulder. The life I lived before was no life. I’ve only begun living since I met you.’

‘Just what I want to hear,’ Alice said approvingly. ‘And, now, you’d better go and change before you find your clothes ruined beyond repair with squished up vegetables.’

She reached for their daughter and saw from the flare in her husband’s eyes that desire was building in him, a desire she was happy to return.

She grinned. ‘And then let’s get this evening over with and have some fun. Because in the blink of an eye we’ll be back, my darling, to sleepless nights.’

‘I can’t wait...’