LITMIR.BIZ

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in Bahia. Dinner together each night. A life of love and tenderness. Until he’d made one dreadful mistake.

      “Your brother would forgive you. Your family loved you,” he heard Laura’s warm, loving voice say. “They would know your heart.”

      The jet hit full throttle, racing down the runway faster and faster, preparing for takeoff.

      And Gabriel suddenly realized he was about to make the worst mistake of his life. And this time it wouldn’t be an accident, a car spun out of control on a rainy road by a nineteen-year-old boy. This time it would be a stupid, cowardly decision made by a full-grown man.

      He hadn’t wanted another family.

       But he had one.

      Gabriel saw the white fields fly past the window. The jet started to rise, lifting off from the ground, and he leapt to his feet with a scream.

      “Stop!”

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      LAURA hesitated outside the closed doors of the huge, flower-strewn library, frightened out of her mind.

      She could hear the rumble on the other side of door, the mutters and whispers. The wedding had been scheduled to start thirty minutes ago, and everyone was obviously starting to assume the worst.

      But there was no way around it. She had to get through it. With a deep breath, she pushed the doors open.

      The enormous two-story library had been modeled after an old English abbey with walls of gray stone. It was now festooned with white roses and candles, with hundreds of chairs set up to create an aisle down the middle.

      At the sight of the bride standing at the end of the aisle, musicians hastily began to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” on guitars and violins. Laura stopped the music with a chopping gesture across her neck.

      Silence fell. She could have heard a pin drop as three hundred pairs of eyes turned to her.

      She trembled, passing a hand over her eyes. Then she heard her baby cry out halfway down the aisle. Going swiftly to her cousin Sandy, who held him in her lap, Laura took her son in her arms. Robby looked dapper in a little baby tuxedo just like his father’s, complete with rose boutonniere. She smiled through her tears. For an instant, she just held her baby in her arms, feeling his soft skin and breathing his sweet smell.

      Then, squaring her shoulders, she slowly turned to face her family and friends.

      “Thank you all for coming,” she said loudly, then faltered. “But I’m afraid. Afraid that.”

      “What?” her great-aunt Gertrude demanded loudly from the back. “Talk louder!”

      Laura’s knees grew weak. Did she really have to announce to all her friends and relatives that the only man she’d ever loved had just left her at the altar? How had she ever thought this was a good idea?

      “Did he leave?” one of her hotheaded cousins demanded, rising to his feet in the front row. “Did that man desert you?”

      “No,” she cried, holding up her hand. Even now, she couldn’t bear for them to think badly of Gabriel. He’d always been honest with her from the beginning. She was the one who’d arrogantly tried to change him, who’d thought that if she loved him enough, he might love her back. She was the one who’d thought if he knew Robby was his son, he might change, and love the child he’d never wanted. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I told him to go. I made him leave—”

      “You couldn’t,” a husky voice said behind her. “Though you tried.”

      With a gasp, she whirled around.

      Gabriel stood in the double doorway, dark and dashing in his tuxedo. And most incredible of all, he was smiling at her, smiling with his whole face. Even his black eyes held endless colors of warmth and love.

      “What are you doing here?” she murmured. “I thought you were gone.”

      He started walking toward her.

      “I couldn’t go,” he said. “Not without telling you something.”

      “What?”

      He stopped, halfway down the aisle.

      “I love you,” he said simply.

      She swayed on her feet. She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming.

      He caught her before she could fall. “I love you,” he murmured with a smile, and he looked down at the baby between them. “And I love my son.”

      There was an audible gasp. Gabriel looked around him fiercely.

      “Yes,” he said sharply. “Robby is my child. Laura was afraid to tell me about Robby, afraid I wouldn’t be able to measure up to be the man—the father—he needed.” Gabriel looked back at her. “But I will. I will spend the rest of my life proving I can be the man you deserve.”

      A sob escaped Laura’s lips. Reaching up, she put her hand to his cheek, looking up at him. “You love me?”

      He pressed his hand over hers. She saw tears in his eyes. “Yes.”

      She blinked, sucking in her breath. “But what about the deal in Rio?”

      He looked down at her. “I don’t care about it. Let the Frenchman have it.”

      She gasped, shaking her head desperately. “But you’ve tried to get the company back all these years.

      It’s all you wanted. All you’ve dreamed about day and night!”

      “Because I thought it was my family’s legacy.” He reached down to cup her cheek. A smile curved his sensual lips. “But it wasn’t.”

      “It wasn’t?” she whispered.

      “My family loved me, and I loved them,” he said. “No accident can ever change that. I will honor their memory for the rest of my life. I will honor them by living as best as I can until the day I die.” He took her hand tightly in his own, looking down at her. “And today, I will start the rest of my life loving you.”

      “I love you….” she choked out. “So much.” She swallowed, then shook her head. “But we can get married later. We should leave for Rio at once. I don’t want you to lose your company, your family’s legacy—”

      “I haven’t lost it. I’ve found it at last. My family’s legacy is love,” he said. “My family’s legacy—” he lifted his shining eyes to her face “—is you.”

      The autumn leaves of New Hampshire were falling in a million shades of red, gold and green against the cold blue sky when Gabriel and Laura returned home from New York.

      Laura sighed with pleasure as their SUV rounded the bend in the road and she caught her first glimpse of the old Olmstead mansion on the hill. It was the Santos house now. The day after their wedding, Gabriel had bought it for her as a present.

      “It’s too big,” she’d protested. “We can’t possibly fill all those rooms!”

      He’d given her a sly, wicked smile. “We can try.”

      And they had certainly done their best. In fact, they’d done excellent work on that front. Laura blushed. Since they’d moved into the house in March, they’d made love in all forty rooms, and also in the secret nooks of the large sprawling garden. They’d shared many warm evenings on the banks of their private lake, swimming and talking and watching the stars twinkle in the lazy summer night. One big pond, she thought, for what was sure to be one big family. She smiled. She would someday teach her own children to swim there, as her father had taught her.

      She’d been in New York City with Gabriel for only a single night, but she was already glad to be back home. She hadn’t known it was possible for a man to fuss so much over his wife.

      As the SUV stopped,

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