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He lifted her chin with his finger and she looked up at him. Such joy filled him that it almost scared him with its intensity. Had last night really happened?
As if reading his mind, Sadie whispered, ‘I’m afraid this isn’t real. That this is just a dream.’
Quin pushed the doubts and fears away.No more.‘It’s real. We’re here, together again. Please reassure me that no matter what happens in the future we’ll deal with it together, as a team.’
Sadie smiled. ‘I promise.’
‘And will you marry me? Officially?’ The words flowed out of Quin’s mouth.
Sadie didn’t skip a beat. ‘Of course.’
‘How about we go and get our son and have breakfast, and then start living the rest of our lives together?’
Sadie’s eyes were suspiciously bright. ‘I’d really like that.’
So they went to get their son—who squealed when he saw Sadie and ran straight into her arms. They held a hand each as they walked back to their beach house while Sol chattered happily. They looked at each other over his head and smiled, and then they did start living their lives again...together for ever, in love and at peace.
EPILOGUE
Three years and nine months later, Sao Sebastiao
‘THEREARETOOmany women in this family,’ Sol grumbled good-naturedly as he moved his younger charges away from the danger of the open gate that led onto the beach, taking care to close it behind him. He really adored his three-year-old twin sisters, Luna and Stella, but he’d never let on—because at the grand age of nearly eight he was far too grown up to be mushy.
The girls were non-identical, their colouring closer to Quin’s than to Sadie’s this time. Dark eyes full of mischief.
Quin’s voice was close to Sadie’s ear. ‘Do you think we should put him out of his misery and tell him he’ll soon have a baby brother?’
He patted Sadie’s sizeable bump under her one-piece swimsuit. She was lying with her back to his chest, his long legs spread out each side of her.
She squeezed a firm, muscular thigh and chuckled. ‘No harm in letting him appreciate his outnumbering by women for a little longer.’
They’d been officially married in Sao Paulo, with Sol as their very proud ring-bearer, not long after that first trip back to the beach house.
In spite of her protestations that she didn’t need one, Sadie now had a wedding band that was the perfect accompaniment to her first wedding ring, inlaid with diamonds, emeralds and sapphires.
She’d almost forgotten the pain of their four years of forced estrangement. Only very rarely now did she have a bad dream, and Quin was always there to wake her, and remind her that she was safe and loved and at home.
At home.With her family. Safe and loved.
They were literally creating a life full of love and happiness, giving their children all the things they hadn’t had, and not for one second did they take it for granted.
Sol stomped up the steps to where they were sitting on their beloved porch and sighed dramatically before saying, ‘I think we need to take the girls for a walk on the beach. Or they’ll never go down for their afternoon nap and I will have no peace.’
Sadie could feel the effort it took for Quin not to laugh out loud as he gently disentangled himself from her. She sat up with ahuff, feeling more and more like a beached whale every day.
He pulled her up from the seat and they donned hats and more suncream and set off to the beach—just one family among all the others, no more remarkable than anyone else. Except theywere—because of the trials they’d endured and survived. And because of their rare love.
Quin wrapped an arm around Sadie’s waist and they followed in the wake of Sol and his little sisters, who trotted devotedly in his wake on their sturdy little legs.
‘Happy?’ Quin asked, looking down at Sadie.
She looked up and grinned. ‘So happy.’
A few weeks later Kai was born, and their love and happiness was multiplied. But, much more importantly, Sol was no longer outnumbered by women.