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  However, last night Bianca had approached them with a small present and stilted congratulations, her discomfiture painfully apparent.

  ‘We made it in spite of you,’ Alessio had growled ungraciously, only accepting the present after Daisy had given him a speaking glance, but then adding, ‘And do I need to remind you what people say about Greeks bearing gifts?’

  Certainly it would be a long time before Alessio trusted his sister again.

  ‘You look ravishing, piccola mia…’

  Snatched from her reverie by that innately sexy voice, Daisy collided with Alessio’s intensely appreciative gaze and blushed like a teenager. They had made love until dawn had broken the skies but her heart still skipped an impressionable beat.

  ‘It’s such a beautiful morning.’ She had been out on the balcony reliving the sheer romance of the previous night when Alessio had presented her with a magnificent diamond eternity ring and informed her that this had been without doubt the very happiest year of his entire life.

  Alessio closed possessive arms round her and pressed a whisper of a kiss to the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck. ‘It’s still early. How do you feel about breakfast in bed?’ he murmured wickedly.

  Taut with delicious tension, Daisy leant back against his hard length, and then a trio of knocks, loud enough to wake the dead, sounded on the door. Tara peered round the barrier with exaggerated care.

  ‘Honestly, you two are the limit… it’s only ten in the morning!’ Emerging fully into view, Tara brandished a rather startlingly clad infant for their inspection. ‘Nanny’s doing the packing, so I got Jen dressed.’

  Sinking down on the bed with a smile, Daisy opened her arms to receive her two-month-old daughter, Jenny. Soulful dark brown eyes looked up at her mother from below a virulent lime-green baseball cap.

  ‘What’s she wearing?’ Alessio demanded, apparently transfixed by the garish lime, purple and orange miniature dungarees.

  ‘Dad, if I have a sister fourteen years younger, it helps if she’s got street cred. Take it from me, this is what the cool baby is wearing this season… not those disgusting embroidered dresses with those weird frilly socks which Mum loves. I took pity on Jen when I was out shopping with my friends yesterday.’

  ‘That was very thoughtful of you.’ Daisy tried not to laugh as Alessio came down beside her, deftly stole Jenny from her lap and gently lifted the baseball cap in the hope of finding his youngest daughter’s tiny face.

  Alessio’s gaze briefly met Daisy’s in a shared instant of vibrant amusement as they watched Tara prowl round the room, eye-catching as a bird of paradise in colours that were a remarkable match for her baby sister’s. Their daughter was chattering at length about her plans for the family’s amusement over the weekend. And they were a family, Daisy reflected, a soft sigh of unvarnished contentment escaping her.

  Alessio had spent the past year showing her in a thousand different ways just how much he loved her and valued their marriage. Her pregnancy had been a time of real happiness for all of them. Alessio and Tara had both been thrilled to bits and Daisy had been as cosseted as a precious piece of highly breakable china. Jenny had been born a week early and with the bare minimum of fuss. With the assistance of a sensible English nanny, Daisy was thoroughly enjoying motherhood the second time around.

  Tara had settled into school, made plenty of new friends and now spoke Italian with enviable fluency. Her outgoing, confident personality had eased her passage everywhere. Her grandparents adored her, and though in the early months of her move to Italy their indulgence had led to Alessio and his daughter having several tussles for supremacy Tara now had a healthy respect for her father and his rules.

  ‘Right,’ Tara said bossily as she bent down and scooped her baby sister away from the combined attentions of her besotted parents. ‘Jen needs her nap now. We don’t want her being all cross and cranky on the drive down, do we? You two don’t need to hurry downstairs—’

  ‘We don’t?’ Daisy echoed in surprise.

  ‘Of course not. Lunch is hours away and even Janet’s still in bed,’ Tara acknowledged carelessly as she made for the door again. ‘You know, three is a nice round number…’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Daisy frowned.

  Tara popped her head back round the door, an impish smile on her mobile features. ‘That means you can return to what you were doing when I came in. I’m putting in an order for a little brother. As babies go, Jen’s really cute, but she needs company in her own age group.’

  ‘Jenny’s only ten weeks old!’ Daisy gasped as the door shut.

  A vibrant smile curving his sensual mouth, Alessio lowered his dark head to hers again, wolfish amusement glittering in his intent gaze. He closed two gentle hands round Daisy’s slight shoulders and slowly pressed her back on the pillows. ‘As an excuse to spend a great deal of time in bed, the idea has incredible appeal,’ he confessed with husky satisfaction.

  ‘I’ll consider it…in about six months,’ Daisy muttered breathlessly, drowning in his dark golden gaze.

  ‘Dio, piccola mia, I love you so much; how did I ever survive thirteen years without you?’

  Daisy ran a possessive set of fingers along a long, lean male thigh temptingly and invitingly clad in taut denim. ‘I love you too,’ she sighed. ‘You put your jeans on just so that I could take them off again…’

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-6903-3

  SECOND-TIME BRIDE

  First North American Publication 1997.

  Copyright © 1997 by Lynne Graham.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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