The champagne arrived, delivered to the table with a flourish in two fluted glasses. ‘With the compliments of the hotel, senhor—senhora.’ The waiter smiled, then melted away.
‘He thinks we are already married.’ Cristina sighed.
‘Optimistic of him—but then he doesn’t know my bride’s penchant for pulling my strings.’
‘You’re cross.’
‘Getting there,’ Anton agreed as he handed her a glass. ‘Now, drink,’ he commanded. ‘You are going to need Dutch courage to sustain you when I become weary of this and decide to pick you up and throw you over my shoulder—and don’t kid yourself I won’t do it,’ he added warningly. ‘Because you know very well that I will.’
‘This just isn’t fair! If you had agreed to speak to me on the telephone we would not be sitting here at all!’
A sleek black eyebrow made a sardonic arch. ‘You wanted to dump me by telephone this time?’
‘I’m going to hit you in a minute.’ She glared at him.
‘Well, that would be a whole lot healthier than sitting here giving the impression that you are about to attend a wake,’ Anton snapped, then uttered a sigh. ‘You know that I love you, Cristina,’ he declared wearily. ‘I’ve tried to show you I do in every which way I can. But if you cannot find it in you to love me enough to want to spend the rest of your life with me, then I will accept that and let you go.’
‘I don’t feel like that.’ Cristina even shivered at the thought of him letting her go. But her eyes were bleak as they stared into her champagne glass. ‘You are being asked to sacrifice too much for me, Luis.’
‘We aren’t talking about me, now. We are talking about you and what you want.’
‘I want more than anything for you to be happy.’
‘And you believe that you are the best one to judge what will make me happy?’ His tone alone mocked her ability to judge anything with any accuracy.
‘Your half-brothers,’ she said huskily. ‘I cannot let you sacrifice the chance of meeting them because I cannot—’
‘They are not an issue,’ he interrupted. ‘Seriously,’ he added, at her impatient look, ‘they are not an issue. You are the issue, Cristina. You know it and I know it, so get to the point.’
‘I don’t think that I can be truly happy again,’ she admitted on a helpless rush. ‘And that could make you unhappy—understand?’
‘You could be right.’ Anton was not going to pull his punches here, this was just too important, but he did reach out to gently move a stray twist of hair from her unhappy cheek. ‘I know I can never fill that empty place you carry around inside you, and that does make me unhappy, but I would rather live with it than live without you.’
‘And what about the empty place that you will carry around inside you because you can never conceive your own child with me?’
Anton heaved in a sigh and straightened his body. He spied his mother standing anxiously by, not far away, and knew she wanted to approach them, but he stopped her with a small frowning glance.
‘I wish you had met Sebastian.’ He turned back to Cristina. ‘If you had met him you would know what a true father really is, and then you would not have needed to ask me that question. Sebastian was—special.’
‘I know.’ Cristina nodded. ‘You used to talk a lot about him six years ago, w-when…’
‘What you do not know is that Sebastian always knew that I was not his real son,’ Anton told her, and watched her gaze flick to his in surprise. He held it there. ‘Yet he loved me, Cristina, totally and unstintingly, from the moment I arrived in his world. My being someone else’s son just did not matter to him. And if there is one thing I wish I could have changed in my relationship with him I wish I had known that he was not my blood father before he died, so I could have shown him how gut-wrenchingly grateful I feel for his loving me the way that he did.’
His voice had roughened with feeling—the same feeling that was showing on his face. Cristina wanted to reach out and soothe it away, but he had not finished.
‘Well, I can do that,’ he avowed. ‘I can love someone else’s child like that, because I had the best to show me how to do it. The point is, though, Cristina—can you do it? Can you take someone else’s child into your life and allow it to fill that empty space inside you, as Sebastian allowed me to fill that empty place inside him?’
He was talking about adoption here. Filling their lives with other people’s children and filling her with that dangerous thing called hope. Could she do it? Would it really be enough for him?
‘But you can have your own child if you want to,’ she persisted. ‘It has to make a difference to how you feel! Maybe not now,’ she conceded. ‘But in years to come you might feel differently, and—’
‘We don’t live in the Dark Ages any more, when a man’s only quest in life was to pass on his genes to the next generation,’ he cut in. ‘We’ve managed to evolve, look for other quests in life to chase—mine being getting a wedding ring on your finger, if you would only stop being so damn stubborn about this!’
‘You really don’t mind that we will have to adopt our children?’
‘One, two, five—ten! Hell, Cristina, I don’t care how many it takes to make you feel better about yourself! We could fill Santa Rosa with them if that’s what you would like to do.’
‘Or bring up a dozen little banker’s children in England,’ she added, with one of her impulsive little laughs.
The little laugh did it. Anton had had enough. That laugh told him he had her hooked, whether she wanted to be hooked or not. He stood up and swung the chair out of his way, then tugged his bride into his arms and kissed her—hard.
She fell into that kiss as she always did, without an ounce of control. By the time he pulled back she was wrapped to him, clinging and wanting more.
‘Can we go and get married now?’ he requested hopefully.
Cristina looked up at him, all dark, glowing eyes. ‘I love you so much it frightens me,’ she confided. ‘But if you are absolutely sure this is what you want, Luis, then, yes.’ She smiled. ‘Let’s go and get married.’
At last! Anton almost shouted it. Instead he contained the urge and drew her beneath his arm. As he turned them towards the restaurant exit his mother began to approach with one of her anxiously hopeful smiles. She received a kiss from her son, then one from her future daughter, and all three of them walked arm in arm back inside the hotel.