Ava looked up at him with drowning eyes. ‘You know, I think that’s probably the nicest thing you ever said to me but I can’t marry you. You’re only asking me because you know that I wasn’t driving that night, after all,’ she condemned painfully. ‘And that wouldn’t feel right.’
‘I bought the ring the day before Greg James phoned me,’ Vito traded. ‘And I can prove it.’
‘Before?’ Ava pressed, startled by the claim. ‘But I thought you couldn’t forgive me?’
‘And I thought it too until I tried to imagine my life without you,’ Vito admitted, crouching down so that they were on the same level, his eyes filled with grave honesty as they met hers. ‘The forgiveness was there all along. I just didn’t realise that I’d already achieved it. We both loved Olly. He loved you and I love you as well. It’s a link we will never lose.’
‘You love me?’ Ava gasped, suddenly out of breath as her heart began to hammer inside her chest.
‘Why else do you think I’m asking you to marry me?’ Vito demanded with some impatience. ‘I didn’t think I would ever fall for anyone but I started falling for you the moment you came back into my life.’
‘Oh …’ Ava said again, sharply disconcerted. ‘I love you too but I thought this was just a casual affair?’
‘That was my fault. I’m so used to laying down limits and then you came along and washed them all away. Very quickly, I just wanted you, amata mia.’ Vito reached for her hand, tugged the ring from the box and threaded it onto her engagement finger. ‘And tomorrow, when you’re acting as hostess at the party, I want that ring on your finger so that everyone appreciates that you’re the woman I intend to marry.’
Ava looked down at the ring sparkling on her finger in wonderment and then back at him to take in the tenderness in his gaze with a leaping joyful sense of recognition. ‘You really do love me … even though I’m hard work?’
‘You made me think, you made me try to be something more than I was. No woman ever affected me that way before,’ Vito confided. ‘You’re not hard work … you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Only one thing about you bothers me …’
Concern assailed Ava. ‘What?’
‘You don’t confide in me. You spent three years in prison and you never ever talk about it.’
‘It’s not something you want to accidentally refer to in the wrong company. It was a different world with its own set of rules,’ Ava told him uncomfortably. ‘I had some very low moments in prison. I was scared a lot of the time. I got bullied for having a posh accent. I was strip-searched once because my cellmate was caught with drugs. At the beginning I was on suicide watch under constant surveillance for weeks—’
Troubled, Vito gripped her hand. ‘You were suicidal?’
‘No, I never was. Unfortunately the psychologist thought I was more at risk. But I was down because I got a six-year sentence for drunk driving. I had no visitors, nothing to do, it took me a long time to adapt and learn how to keep myself occupied.’
‘How did you adapt?’
She told him about the reading and writing programme she had eventually participated in and how feeling useful had lifted her mood. The move to an open prison where she had fewer restrictions had also provided a tremendous boost.
‘When my parole was granted, when I knew I was getting out, I decided to put the whole experience behind me,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t want it colouring my life for ever. I just wanted to forget it … can you understand that? Remembering those years just made me feel bad about myself.’
‘I do understand,’ Vito murmured tautly, closing his hand over hers in reassurance.
Ava shivered. ‘It’s cold. Let’s go back to bed.’
Vito bent down and scooped her up in his arms.
‘You can’t carry me up the stairs!’ Ava told him.
But he did, although he was noticeably relieved to settle her down on the bed again.
Ava dealt him a teasing smile. ‘You’re wrecked. You’ll not be fit for anything now.’
Vito laughed appreciatively as he unzipped his jeans. ‘Dio mio, I love you! Do you realise I’ve never said those words to anyone before?’
‘Not even when you were a teenager?’
‘I was a very cynical teenager. Watching my father screw up after my mother left him made a big impression on me. My father thought he was in love with every new woman who came into his life and then, five minutes later, it would all be over again,’ he explained with a curled lip. ‘I didn’t think I had what it took to fall in love and then you came along and lit up everything for me like the sun on a dull day.’
‘You do realise that marrying me will commit you to celebrating Christmas every year?’ Ava warned him.
‘I’ll share it with you. I’ll always remember that Christmas first brought us together. We’ll make new memories. I feel I can be myself with you.’
‘Domineering, arrogant, impatient, stubborn,’ Ava slotted in, spreading her fingers across his hair-roughened chest and gazing into black-fringed dark golden eyes that made her heart quicken its pace. ‘But I do love you very very much. You are also generous and kind and surprisingly thoughtful.’