There, in the dark, with only her headlights against the night and the snow dancing all around, it felt expansive.
Something close enough to miraculous.
“Very well, then,” Antonluca said in his grave way, apparently deciding that her windshield was clear enough. “I will see you in the morning.”
“All right,” she agreed. But he was looking down at her and that gray gaze seemed to be as much inside her as in front of her.
And this time, instead of simply falling off the side of a cliff and plummeting against her will into a life she couldn’t have imagined in advance, she could decide. She couldchoosethe fall, and that felt powerful.
So she did.
She reached over and she put her hand on the sleeve of his coat.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes?” he repeated.
She swallowed, and asked herself if she meant it. If she really, truly wanted this. But she did.
Hannah jumped, and it was much, much better than falling. That was clear at once. This way, it felt like she was flying.
“Yes, Antonluca,” she said, with all the gravity the moment deserved, though her heart had wings and she let them unfurl, where only she could see them. “I will marry you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Antonluca approached hisupcoming nuptials the way he did everything in this world, which was also theonlyway he knew how to do anything.
Meaning, he treated it like business.
And he was deliberately as cold and as calculating as possible in all things when it concerned his business, because that was how a street kid who came from nothing became an international phenomenon.
He quickly decided that there was no point in inviting their families. Antonluca and Hannah were becoming a family thanks to Dominic, and surely that was enough. And he didn’t have very many friends, either. Friendships were the sorts of things that were developed when a person had free time, and he’d never had any. Certainly not when he was younger, and could have used some friends. Back then he’d had work and his siblings, that was all.
But then he’d become very famous and very rich, very fast, and had quickly discovered that he could not possibly trust anyone who cozied up to him once that happened. They didn’t wanthim.They wanted the image they had of him in their heads and those two things never matched.
If he really took the time to consider it closely, that had likely been a huge part of why he’d liked Hannah so much, and so instantaneously, in New York. It had been very clear that she had no idea who he was. Not the faintest inkling.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, someone had simply…liked him for him.
It still made Antonluca hard when he remembered it.
Then again, so did the memory of her delicate, gloved hand on his arm and her face tilted up toward his as she sat in that car of hers that night. There had been snow in the air and the faint sound of music in the distance from the hotel lobby. He had thought to himself that she had never looked more beautiful, this one long night that had become so much more.
And then she had agreed to become his wife.
There was very little about Hannah that did not arouse him, which was something Antonluca found he was more comfortable admitting now.
Because she was going to become his wife.She’d agreed.
So he set about making certain that she didn’t have time to change her mind. He didn’t want to involve his siblings, because he wasn’t interested in their opinions on this matter, and they would certainly wish to give them anyway. There were no friends to gather near, which he decided was a blessing.
What he had, in lieu of those things, was a great deal of money, a lovely old chapel that had been built in his castle when the residents needed to pray over the deaths caused by many ancient battles, and the ability to obtain, within twenty-four hours, a special license to marry at will.
All he needed then was a priest to perform the ceremony.
“This is very unusual,” the priest tutted reprovingly when Antonluca called on him in person, special license in hand.
“It seems to me that all the churches in the diocese could use repairs,” Antonluca replied, with a vague wave of his hand toward the whole of the village outside, and the rolling hills beyond with their dusting of white. “Perhaps they have roofs that date back a few wars. Perhaps they could use plumbing from at least the last century or so. Modern conveniences are so helpful, do you not think, in allowing the faithful to concentrate on their eternal souls instead of historic irritants.”
