‘I know what you thought.’ Finn gripped her gloved hands between his. ‘I didn’t mean for you to think that. Please, Catherine, don’t cry any more.’
She looked up at him. ‘I love you, Finn Deverill.’
‘Te amo, Catherine. I love you,’ Finn said, enunciating each word carefully because when a man tells a woman he loves her for the first time, he wants to remember it his whole life. When that man was Finn Deverill, he wanted to remember it in English and Latin.
They were alone in the churchyard. Far ahead of them, the sounds of carols drifted back from the sleighs. Assured of their solitude, Finn bent his mouth to hers and kissed her, once for love, twice for for ever under the Christmas sky. When he’d wondered what the holidays held in store for him, he’d never imagined this, but the things one can’t imagine often make the best gifts of all for precisely that reason.