Jacey took the stage on Friday, the first night of her extended tour, unsure how much longer she could endure the constant grind of celebrity life. The stage lights were giving her the start of a headache, and her lack of sleep the night before was making her lightheaded.

As she cast what she hoped was an adoring smile on her screaming fans, her heart skipped a few beats. Standing in the front row directly below the stage stretched a line of familiar faces. Don, Colette, Britt, and Luca who was beaming one of his challenging smiles up at her.

She swayed in her heels as a wave of dizziness shook her. I must be dreaming. But no. It was real. For whatever reason, her family was here in the flesh. They’d travelled all the way from Anchorage to Colorado Springs to watch her perform!

She wasn’t about to let them down. Digging deep inside herself, she forced her mind back to the performance and took a long breath.

She closed her eyes and let the opening notes of Without You transport her into the song. She sang of hopes and dreams. Ambitions and young love. She reminded her audience of what it felt like to be nineteen again. Invincible. Standing beneath a sky with no limits. Then she transitioned into the verse about broken dreams, bruised hearts, and decisions that came with consequences. She sang of atonement and redemption and second chances.

With a quick spin on her platform heels, she signaled the band to follow her lead. Serge nodded grimly, but he complied and pounded through a preparatory sequence.

She smiled at him as she began the lines to a new verse. Bits and pieces of it had been floating through her head for days. She hadn’t taken the time to write them down, but she’d hummed through them enough to memorize them. This time she sang about love springing out of nowhere, like a blade of grass pushing its way through the sidewalk. Of new beginnings rising from the ashes like a phoenix.

The words flowed through her, unedited yet perfect for the moment.

She sang directly to her husband; and for the space of several heartbeats, they were the only two people in the room.

So what if her love showed through her music? She was done playing games. From now on, he was taking all of her or none of her. She could no longer compartmentalize her feelings for him and play at being married part-time. She’d tried on that pair of shoes, and they didn’t fit her. She would either be free to love him with her entire heart, or she was walking away. For good this time.

The audience was already on their feet, but their response to the new verse was immediate and tangible. They jumped up and down, waving in a frenzy as recognition dawned that they were being treated to a whole new verse of her number one hit song.

Jacey blew kisses to them at the end of her sequence and ran laughing and joyful from the stage, more exhilarated than she’d ever been while performing. She’d given tonight’s performance her absolute best. She’d poured the very essence of who she was into the song, confessing to the world she was a woman in love. It was both humbling and liberating.

Lady Rock winked at her and kissed her cheek as she whirled past her in a flash of silver sequins and vanilla perfume. “That was amazing,” she purred.

Jacey fled to her dressing room, too excited to feel the ground beneath her feet. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, panting with her eyes closed and a hand pressed to her heart.

“Jacey.”

It was her husband’s voice. She would recognize it any time, anywhere.

Her eyelids flew open to scan the dimly lit room. Luca rose from her makeup chair and approached to stand in front of her.

“Luca? What are you doing here? When I saw you and Don and the others down there —”

“I couldn’t stay away. Not a single day longer.”

There was no mistaking the urgency in this voice or the adoration. She hardly dared to breathe. Or hope.

“I’m sorry if this comes as an inconvenience to your new career, but you deserve to know I’m in love with you.” She could hardly believe the vulnerability she saw in his face or the uncertainty she heard in his voice. Most of all, she couldn’t believe what he was saying.

He loved her? It was her highest castle-in-the-cloud dream come true.

“Luca!” she gasped, wanting to believe him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. The hand she held to her chest crept to her throat.

“I’m hoping it’s something you can accept. Something we can work out despite the feelings you have for my brother.”

Her feelings for whom? Her brain couldn’t register anything he was saying beyond the part about loving her. He loves me. She slumped against the door, dazed.

He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. The vanity lights twinkled behind his head like stars. “I know I haven’t always been the easiest man to live with, and that’s probably not going to change. All I can promise is to love you with every part of me. Forever and always.”

She was still too stunned to speak.

“I asked you a few months ago to be mine for the next eighteen years. Well, I have a different request to make tonight. Be mine, Mrs. Calcagni. For the rest of our lives.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, tears prickling behind her lids.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart. I can’t bear it.”

“They’re happy tears,” she choked, flinging herself into his arms at last.

They closed around her, and his triumphant chuckle sounded in her ear. “Does that mean you’re willing to renegotiate the terms of our original agreement?”

She couldn’t believe how anxious he sounded. “I can’t believe you feel the need to ask.”

“I’m a businessman. I like to make things official.”

“Oh, Luca! I fell for you the first time you kissed me. I spent every day since then trying to hide it from you, because I didn’t think you felt the same way.”

His hand was in her hair, drawing her closer until her face rested against his heart. “And here I was worried I was going to have to spend the rest of my life competing with a ghost. Or your career.”

“That’s plain crazy.” But was it? She herself had been jealous of sweet little Britt not too long ago. “I’m yours, Luca. I’ve been yours since the day you married me.”

“For me, it was nine years ago,” he confessed. “I fell for your smile and your laugh out there on the beach and vowed to teach you a lesson for so heartlessly teasing a man nearly a decade older than you.”

“I was completely shameless, wasn’t I?” Her tone was rueful.

“You still are,” he assured with a chuckle.

“Then let’s be shameless together.” She slid her hands up his chest and tugged his head down to hers.

“I like the way you negotiate, Mrs. Calcagni.” His mouth moved over hers, less hurried and less desperate than the last time they’d come together but no less potent. It was a kiss teaming with hope and promise. A kiss that sparked with the same hopeless yearning for each other that had been between them from the start.

“I will always love you, mi princesa,” he declared huskily between kisses.

Jacey was in no hurry to leave the dressing room, but her ringing phone transported the two of them back to reality all too soon.

It was Waverly. “I don’t suppose you know something about the whereabouts of the CEO of Genesis and Sons?”

Jacey smiled. “He and I are engaged in an, er, negotiation here in Colorado Springs.”

“I like the sound of that.” His grandmother laughed in delight, sounding woefully unashamed of whatever it was she had interrupted. “As soon as the two of you come to an agreement with that, ahem, negotiation of yours, I’d be tickled to death if you would attend a little after-hours celebration with us.”

“You’re in town, too?” Jacey thought she might die of happiness right then and there.

“These old bones don’t enjoy traveling the way they used to, but Edric and I weren’t about to miss out on the chance to hear our daughter-in-law sing on tour.”

Our daughter-in-law. They’d come for her. Not Race and not Luca. Her! She should have known better. They weren’t like the Maddoxes. Though she’d misjudged them way too many times, they were here as living proof of it.

Waverly and Edric had done more than make dinner reservations. They’d rented a cozy little Irish pub to celebrate her successful tour. The whole restaurant, as it turned out. Rhys and Knox were there, too, as well as Greyson and Alora.

It was a perfect end to a perfect evening, made even more perfect by the fact Luca never once left her side. They entered the pub with their hands intertwined. He didn’t let go of her hand even when they were eating. When they stepped onto the rustic dance floor together, he brazenly sealed his mouth over hers, branding her as his own in front of every family member and employee present.

Jacey kissed him back, no longer caring who discovered how much she was in love with her husband. She’d earned his love and his trust and considered every ounce of the blood, sweat, and tears it had taken to be worth it.

And she was secure in the knowledge that her debt to his family had finally been paid.