Even if he hadn’t, she wasn’t sure her answer would have changed. It would have only been a tad more complicated. And because he’d thought ahead—he’d thought of all of it—now it wasn’t complicated at all.
Alessa wiped at her face, unable to stop her smile, and offered her hand. “I guess, since you went to all that trouble, I had better say ‘yes’, then.” She waited for his lips to raise more in a silent chuckle. “Yes, Rocco,” she whispered. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
Rocco let out a breath, as if he had actually been nervous, and scooped up her hand. Instead of immediately slipping the ring onto her finger, he bent forward and kissed her knuckles. “I know we may argue again,” he said quietly as he lifted his burning stare to hers, “but please, never doubt me. I am yours every bit as much as you are mine.”
Alessa’s smile didn’t waver as she squeezed his hand. “I don’t doubt you.” She hadn’t, not truly. It was only fear that had whispered those thoughts to her. “But you should also remember, if you ever were to betray me, I’ll always know people. It’s not only my gun you’d have to worry about.”
He chuckled, kissed her knuckles again, and finally slid the ring onto her finger. “I can live with those terms.”
Alessa drew a breath, letting herself register the weight and feel of her new, oversized and obscenely beautiful engagement ring. “I do have one request.”
“Name it.”
She held his stare. “I want to be married before I start to show.”
His brows flew up toward his hairline.
She rolled her eyes teasingly and untucked one leg to tease his torso with her toes. “Let’s be real. Unless one of us has fertility problems, I am definitely pregnant. I don’t need a test to tell me that.”
He dropped his gaze to her wiggling toes and, slowly, back up her bare leg. Up, over her torso, which was only covered in one of his casual shirts, until finally he was staring into her eyes again. Desire once more burning back at her. “This is Las Vegas, beautiful. We can be married within the hour.”
Alessa barked out a laugh, inadvertently collapsing back onto the mattress. “If I get married without inviting my mother, after a lifetime of her trying to marry me off,she’llbe the one who kills me.”
Rocco climbed over her, hovering just above her faintly heaving chest. “Fine. Next weekend.”
Alessa cupped his jaw. “How about … August? Or even September is probably fine. Let’s talk about it in the morning?”
He grunted. “No later than September.” Then he kissed her, scooped her up, and rolled her on top of him.
Epilogue
The Third
Alessa had been throughmany things in life. She’d experienced fear, pain, tragedy, and the hard realities of being a woman in a man’s world. She liked to think she had overcome all of them, to some extent. But damn if she did not know how women kept doing this.
She’d promised Rocco at least two, and she knew he would be thrilled with a third. Regardless of either outcome, she was having the doctors put her under in the future. The epidural had notbeen enough.
But her baby’s cries filled the air, louder and more insistent than anything else, and she couldn’t deny the spark of unfamiliar joy that lit in her heart.
Iris had told her to expect something like that. She’d explained how holding her baby in her arms for the first time had filled her with a whole new purpose, a fresh kind of love she hadn’t understood before. It had been hard for Alessa to wrap her mind around, especially via phone and video calls.
Then the nurse passed the bundle of blue to her, helping her cradle the newborn properly, and Alessa found herself staring into the tiny face of her son. He had the faintest whisps of dark hair, like whiskers on his scalp, already decorating his head. And it didn’t matter that he wasn’t fully cleaned off yet, or that she wasn’t sure she was prepared to care for such a tiny human, because she loved him. She loved him with her whole heart, in a way she’d never felt before. It didn’t overtake the love she held for Rocco, or her family, it merely expanded into a region of her heart that hadn’t existed previously and set down roots.
Rocco curled himself around her, around them, and settled one hand on her opposite shoulder in a gesture of comfort and support while he reached out to gently brush the tip of one finger along their son’s little cheek. “Look at this masterpiece you made, my queen,” he whispered above her ear. “Our son.”
Tears burned her eyes and she tipped her head to lean closer to him. She didn’t want to risk dropping her precious cargo by shifting her hold. But Rocco understood, and adjusted himself to hold her a little tighter.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away, and suddenly the name she’d known for months whispered through her mind again. She’dknown it since the day they’d learned they were having a boy. His name had never been in question. But somehow, she was only just recognizing such an obvious thing. “Rocco Cavallo III,” she murmured aloud.
Her tears broke free.
Little more than a year earlier, she had lost her beloved older brother. Losing him had torn her up, sent her spiraling. But it had also, indirectly, sent her toward her future—to Rocco. She sniffled and rubbed a finger over her son’s tiny fingers. “He’s … so precious.” Her baby boy. Her very own third-generation son.
Her brother had been a third. Alfonso Adimari III.
Now her son was a third.
She couldn’t believe she’d failed to connect that dot over the past several months of newlywedded bliss and baby prep.
