Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

M ARIANNE APPROACHED THE five-month mark of her pregnancy with mounting trepidation and concern, fearing that the past might revisit her, sending her back into that dark place where she’d been twenty years before.

But her team of physicians and midwives was there to monitor her and assure her all was well. And above all, Dom was there to hold her close through day and night and promise that she would never be alone again.

And five months turned into six and then seven. When eight months clicked over, her medical team got together with Marianne and Dom. Marianne had turned forty and was considered to be a woman of advanced maternal age. So together they worked out a plan of how best to deliver her babies comfortably and safely for the babies and for Mari.

Two weeks later, the twins were delivered by Caesarean section, Dom holding Marianne’s hands while their dark-haired twins, a baby boy and a baby girl, took their first breaths.

Dom watched on in wonder as the babies were gently towelled down, before being laid one after the other on Marianne’s bare chest.

‘They’re perfect,’ Marianne said, ‘so perfect. Look at them, Dom.’

Dom was looking. He had never seen a more perfect vision than the sight of their newborn twins nestled face to face atop their beautiful mother.

He stroked Marianne’s hair with one hand and reached out his other to pat the babies’ backs, each of them no wider than his hand, and down one downy arm to the tiny hand curled in a fist. The hand opened briefly, closing over Dom’s little finger and gripping tighter than should be possible for something so tiny and vulnerable, and melting Dom’s heart in the process.

‘How is it possible to love them so much already?’ he said, his voice thick.

‘They’re a blessing,’ she said. ‘Like you were to your parents. A gift. How could we not love them?’

‘A girl and a boy,’ he said, marvelling at the mirroring of history. ‘Now that you’ve seen them, have you settled on names?’

‘Almost. Your mother asked if we had a son, that we call him Roberto to honour your father. I agreed. And I think we should call this one,’ she said, stroking their baby daughter’s head, ‘Rosaria. Rosaria Suzanne.’

He nodded. ‘Good choice. Rosaria Suzanne and Roberto—Roberto what?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t got that far.’

‘I do. We should call him Roberto Eric, because it was Eric Cooper who insisted I should keep you on and who brought you back into my life. What do you think?’

‘Oh, Dom,’ she said, tears springing to her eyes, ‘I would love it.’

He smiled and leaned over to kiss Marianne on the lips, before kissing each of their babies’ heads in turn before settling back down in his seat. ‘And while it might not have been the job he imagined I’d give you, it turns out Eric was right. My wife and the mother of my children. But more than that, the most important job of all, the love of my life. I love you, Marianne. I promise you that you’ll never be alone again.’

By now tears were streaming down her face. Happy tears. Tears of joy and bliss. But her arms were full of babies and she couldn’t wipe them away. She sniffed.

‘I love you, Dom, so much, and you better get your mouth back over here again because I seriously need to kiss you again.’

Their kiss was warm and all shades of wonderful, filled with respect and love, the past left behind in the promise for the future.

And Marianne knew that Rosaria had been right when she’d uttered those fateful words the day she’d arrived in San Sebastián after their marriage. It might not have been one hundred per cent right then, it hadn’t been ten per cent right, but it was certainly right now.

Love had finally got it right.