to bring his sensual mouth within reach again to claim a slow, deep kiss as her hand ran down over his shirt front, seeking the heat of him, making him shudder. ‘I forgive you because I love you.’
‘Could we take this upstairs?’ he husked.
Wordless in the face of the smouldering hunger burnishing his stunning eyes, Amy simply nodded, her body gripped by the bone-deep craving that only Sev could induce, that tight inner clenching at her core that made her ache. Later she would not recall the passage up to their bedroom, only the breathless excitement of falling back on the bed with a man whose love for her inflamed her on every level. Actually being loved was only marginally more familiar to Amy than it was to Sev, and for both of them that intense sense of connection and mutual understanding, not to mention the sizzling sexual chemistry binding them, was new and gloriously exhilarating.
A long time later, Amy lay back boneless in the bed, her head resting on Sev’s chest, her violet eyes languorous as he gazed down at her with appreciation. ‘You’re going to have to learn to love Christmas,’ she warned him.
‘I’m pretty sure I already do because I’m always going to associate this time of year with finding you,’ Sev murmured, with his dazzling charismatic smile lightening his darkly handsome features. ‘That places the entire festive season in a much more positive light and, of course, soon we’ll have our children to celebrate with, and I think we’ll both be making a real effort to make it especially good for them.’
Amy laughed. ‘What happened to Mr Scrooge?’
‘He fell in love with a waitress, had a renaissance, discovered the secret of happiness. Dio... I love you so much,’ Sev confided, flipping her over and under him to study her with adoring eyes.
‘Not one bit more than I love you,’ Amy whispered, wrapped in a cocoon of contentment and happiness.
EPILOGUE
AMY PUT THE finishing touches of jewellery to her appearance: diamonds in her ears and that once-disputed river-of-diamonds necklace at her throat. She clasped a slender gold watch to her wrist, and she smiled in the fading winter light that had forced her to switch on the lamps. Her sapphire-blue dress was cunningly cut to conceal most of her bump.
Marco and Vito were three now, a pair of very lively little boys who kept her on her toes but, once they had started nursery school, Amy had been keen to extend their family and she was quietly looking forward to the arrival of the little girl she was carrying and wondering with amusement if her daughter would turn into a little tomboy to hold her own with her two older brothers.
Becoming a mother had lifted Amy’s confidence almost as much as Sev’s love and support had contrived to do. In the spring after that first Christmas together, they had got married in Greece, surrounded by Sev’s Greek family, the Sarantos clan. Bowled over by the warmth of their welcome, Amy had soon accepted Sev’s family as her own and their wedding had been a wonderfully happy, informal occasion. The twins’ birth had been without complication and Sev’s father, Hallas, and stepmother, Pandora, had travelled to London to welcome their arrival. Add in the growing closeness between Sev and his half-brother, Tor, who was also based in London and married with young children, and Amy felt surrounded by loving family support, something she had dreamt of all her life but never seriously expected to have. She got on particularly well with Tor’s wife, Pixie, who had been a nurse before her marriage.
Sev still had no contact with his mother and stepfather. Amy had seen his mother stare coldly at them both at a charity event, her disdain palpable, and had marvelled at her lack of affection for a son who, to all intents and purposes, she should have been proud to possess. She had been so grateful then that his father’s family were so attached to Sev that he had shaken off that encounter with his unfeeling mother without concern, her attitude to him too familiar to be wounding. Perhaps it had made Amy more appreciative of her husband’s resilience, but it had certainly made her admire her sister-in-law, Annabel, all the more for having been raised by such a woman and having still turned into a completely different individual.
Annabel, in fact, had steadily grown into being Amy’s best friend. The two women had shared a great deal during