Epilogue
Four years later…
“BE GOOD FOR Nonna and Nonno,” Mira urged three-year-old Ricci. He was named after his father and his grandfather, but Rocco had shortened it to a nickname that had suited his colicky newborn personality. Thankfully, Ricci had grown out of his most prickly, hedgehog moments, but the name had stuck.
“Help them look after Tutu, hmm?” Rocco crouched to speak man-to-man to their son. “You understand her better than anyone else so you tell them what she needs.”
Ricci hadn’t been able to say his little sister’s name, Trude, after Mira’s mother. He had called her Tutu from the day she arrived and the moniker was even more apropos these days. Tutu was more “two” than ever.
“We’ll be fine,” Claudina assured them, trying to shoo them toward the door. “Take the afternoon. Stay out for dinner if you want to.”
It wasn’t the first time she and Silvio had sat for them. The children loved them. Silvio was already sitting with Tutu, reading the book she’d brought him, proving she knew exactly how to get what she wanted even though she wasn’t talking much yet.
“They’re such a handful these days,” Mira protested to Claudina as she accepted Rocco’s help with her jacket. They had a nanny, but she had booked this vacation ages ago, long before Mira had known she would have an ultrasound appointment to go to.
“All the more reason you should turn this into a date. Go have fun,” Claudina insisted.
After a last hug and kiss, Mira allowed Rocco to corral her into the elevator.
“I feel like they deserve danger pay,” Mira said.
“You’d prefer to hurry back? No dinner date?”
“Date night is what got us into this situation, isn’t it?” she said wryly.
Ricci had been born nine months after their reunion at the villa. Tutu had come along a little over a year later, very unexpectedly. After that, they’d been more careful, but a few months ago they’d had an evening away from the children and here they were, headed for a scan.
“Are you okay with this?” Rocco asked, dropping a concerned glance to her middle. “You’ve seemed anxious since we found out.”
“Only because of exams. I am one-thousand-percent happy about this.” She had thought this fall would be the year she would finally get back to full-time classes, but if it took her a decade to get her degree, she was fine with that.
She enjoyed taking one or two classes each semester, but she enjoyed her children more.
She liked having time with Rocco, too. They had an amazing life. They traveled for work and play, carting their children along, but they also spent as much time as they could with her siblings. She loved them and their families as much as she’d come to love Silvio and Claudina.
She and Rocco had also become very good friends with Axel and Joy. More than once, they had traveled to Berlin to see Joy dance. The men were cooperating on a number of projects, no longer rivals. Both companies were thriving because of it.
“What about you?” she asked as they walked out of the wedding-cake building that was her second favorite home after the villa. “Any reservations about having another baby?”
“Mirabella.” He paused with his hand on the latch of the car’s rear door, not opening it. “Amore della mia vita. Luce dei miei occhi. You know what I have to say to that question.”
She blinked, still caught up in all those effusive endearments. The man seduced her every single minute of her life, standing there so handsome, with amusement glinting in his eyes and twitching his mouth.
“What?” she prompted.
“I am no coward. Three down, three to go.”
“Oh, you!” She pretended to push him, but wound up in his arms, laughing as he lifted her off her feet and spun her around.