Pregnant With The Billionaire′s Baby: Valentino′s Love-Child / Innocent Secretary...Accidentally Pregnant
Pregnant With The Billionaire's Baby: Valentino's Love-Child / Innocent Secretary...Accidentally Pregnant
CAROL MARINELLI
LUCY MONROE
Valentino’s Love-ChildSociety bachelor and former army sniper Ben Benedict moves between two worlds — from high-society Washington to the mean city streets, from tuxedos to Glocks. His powerful Virginia family wants him out of harm’s way, but Ben stays on the job, determined to make amends for a past that haunts him. And becomes a ticking time bomb Dr Anna Schuster is fighting demons of her own when she crosses paths with Agent Benedict.The two become adversaries — and lovers — as they search for an Al Qaeda operative bent on revenge. Ben must fight against time — and his own darkness — to rescue millions of innocents and the woman he loves from a virulent bioweapon in the hands of a dangerous enemy.Innocent Secretary…Accidentally PregnantEmma Stephenson thought all they’d be sharing was an office—not a bed! But she’s learning fast what being tycoon playboy Luca D’Amato’s personal assistant really means! And now she has to tell him she’s pregnant! Everything a man could want?
Valentino’s Love-Child
Their relationship is scorching and its intensity is unmatched… Only love can never be mentioned. But Valentino Grisafi’s stunning, intriguing American lover is testing his resolve.
He said he’d never marry again. His principles won’t allow it. The one person to tame the untamable Valentino is the woman now carrying his child…
Innocent Secretary…Accidentally Pregnant
Plain Emma Stephenson doesn’t look like a tycoon’s assistant, but for playboy Luca D’Amato, breaking through her nononsense attitude is his favorite new game. Emma thought all they’d be sharing was an office—not a bed! Now he’s offering her a promotion, and she’s trying to find the words to tell him…she’s pregnant!
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Lucy Monroe (#ulink_841611ce-3594-5975-a2a5-347d6afc159b)
“Monroe wows with her lust-at-first-sight love story. Her determined heroine and high-handed yet honorable hero will delight. Swank surroundings and detailed dialogue enliven, and the all-consuming first love scene is absorbing.”
—RT Book Reviews on A Virgin for His Prize
“This high-society romance is funny, sweet, sexy and all-American. A madcap, altruistic heiress and arrogant but honorable hero are the perfect fit.”
—RT Book Reviews on An Heiress for His Empire
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Carol Marinelli
“Marinelli’s heartrending tearjerker is a tale of two cultures. Her narrative is a sensual feast and the first love scene is awesome. The trust-building and eventual love between her two polar opposites is the pièce de résistance.”
—RT Book Reviews on Princess’s Secret Baby
“Marinelli’s romance is an exquisitely told modern-day fairy-tale, a delightful mix of laugh-out-loud pampered-princess antics and solemn realities. The first kiss between the ruthless, sexy Aussie lawyer and tempestuous Arabian royal temptress kicks off an erotic fantasy.”
—RT Book Reviews on Protecting the Desert Princess
Pregnant with the Billionaire’s Baby
Valentino’s Love-Child
Lucy Monroe
Innocent Secretary…Accidentally Pregnant
Carol Marinelli
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u70af94cc-0dff-5468-951e-e2bb9de5b2e0)
Back Cover Text (#u4773d73d-8c27-54d2-bdef-4bc2f395dd5a)
Praise (#ulink_4ce842f5-a19c-543a-a824-a61bffa77b3d)
Title Page (#u8d54268a-7bbb-58d2-96e3-f3f82a741ce8)
Valentino’s Love-Child (#ulink_5cfccf20-f726-5cce-aa34-a3330a0f50cd)
About the Author (#u87e17e26-a2bf-5353-ab31-75f207d6a70f)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_749290d4-e934-5f20-bcb6-0ea468143adb)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_84f08fe2-d7da-5007-a824-9e6df3f237a8)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9c253bde-159c-5909-b07a-8a15947e1e03)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_bf09a25b-36de-5a11-9507-7b6c3e9379b2)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_b56ff555-7ede-51d9-8153-8c6392354e7d)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_7d70e479-f806-5dcf-a072-d29cebbb64cd)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Innocent Secretary… Accidentally Pregnant (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Valentino’s Love-Child (#ulink_23555c15-a1fa-5613-a959-326a465b26dc)
Lucy Monroe
USA TODAY bestselling author LUCY MONROE lives and writes in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest. While she loves her home, she delights in experiencing different cultures and places in her travels, which she happily shares with her readers through her books. A lifelong devotee of the romance genre, Lucy can’t imagine a more fulfilling career than writing. Visit her on the web at lucymonroe.com (http://www.lucymonroe.com).
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_39a4239d-6280-58d3-95bc-4bd02230b37a)
VALENTINO GRISAFI BRUSHED a silky auburn curl away from where it blocked his view of his sleeping mistress’s face.
Mistress. An old-fashioned word for a very modern woman. Faith Williams would not appreciate the label. Were he to be foolish enough to use it within her hearing, she would no doubt let him know it too. His carina americana was no wilting flower.
Pretty American. Now, that suited her. But if he should let on he thought of her like a mistress? Ai-yi-yi.
Eyes the blue of a peacock feather would snap with temper while she lectured him on how inappropriate the term was. And he supposed she would have a point. He did not pay her bills. He did not buy her clothes. No matter how many hours they spent together here, she did not live in his Marsala apartment. She did not rely on him for anything but his company.
So, not his mistress. But not his girlfriend, either. Long-term commitment and love had no place between them. Theirs was a purely physical relationship, the duration and depth of which was dictated purely by convenience. Mostly his. Not that Faith had nothing to say in the matter.
She could walk away as easily as he and had no more incentive to make time in her schedule for him than vice versa. Luckily for them both, the relationship—such that it was—worked for each of them.
Perhaps they were friends also and he did not regret it, but that had come after. After he had discovered the way her sweet, curvaceous body responded to the slightest touch of his. After kisses that melted his brain and her resistance. After he had learned how much pleasure he could find basking in her generous sensuality, once unleashed.
The sex between them was phenomenal.
Which was no doubt why he could already feel the loss of the coming weeks.
Tracing her perfect oval features he leaned close to her ear. “Carina, you must wake.”
Her nose wrinkled and the luscious bow of her mouth twisted into a moue of denial, her exotically colored eyes remaining stubbornly closed. Her recently sated body not moving so much as a centimeter from its usual postcoital curled position.
“Come, bella mia. Waken.”
“If you’d come to my apartment, I could stay in bed sleeping while you had to get dressed and leave,” she grumbled into the pillow.
“Most nights, I leave as well, carina. You know this.” He liked to have breakfast with Giosue. His eight-year-old son was the light of Valentino’s life. “Besides, I am not waking you up to go. We need to talk.”
Faith’s eyelids fluttered, but her mouth did not slip from its downward arch.
“You are adorable like this, you know?”
That had her sitting up and staring at him with grumpy startlement, the tangerine, supersilky, Egyptian cotton sheet she’d insisted he use on his bed clutched to her chest. “Sane people do not find cranky attractive, Tino.”
Biting back a smile, he shrugged. “What can I say? I am different. Or perhaps it is you. I do not recall finding any of my other amantes so cute when they were irritable.”
He did not like using the word lover, but knew better than to refer to her as the equally ill-fitting title of mistress. And she had already cut him off at the knees for referring to her once as a bed partner. She said if he wanted to use such a clinical term, he should consider getting an anatomically accurate blow-up doll.
Why these thoughts were plaguing him tonight, he did not know. Defining her place in his life was not something he spent time doing, nor was he overly fond of labels. So why so preoccupied with them tonight?
“I have no interest in hearing about your past conquests Signor Grisafi.” Now she really looked out of sorts, her eyes starting to flash with temper.
“I apologize. But you know I was hardly an untried boy when we met.” He had already loved and lost a wife, not to mention the women who had warmed his cold bed after.
He and Faith had been together for a year, longer than he had been with any other woman since the death of his beloved Maura. But that hardly altered his past.
“Neither of us were virgins, but it’s bad form to discuss past relationships while in bed with your current lover.”
“You are so worried about following protocols, too,” he mocked.
He had never known someone less concerned with appearance and social niceties. His carina americana was the quintessential free spirit.
A small smile teased her lips at that. “Maybe not, but this is one social norm I’m one hundred percent behind.”
“Duly noted.”
“Good.” She curled up to him, snuggling against his chest, her hand resting casually on his upper thigh and causing no small reaction in his nether regions. “You said you didn’t wake me up to send me on my way?”
“No. We need to talk.”
She cocked her head to one side. “What about?”
He couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and kissed the tip of her straight nose. “You really are adorable when you first wake up.”
“I thought it was when I was grumpy.”
“Have you ever woken up not irritable?”
“I have a perfectly sunny disposition in the morning. Not that you would know that little fact as we’ve never spent a full night together, but you’ll have to take my word on it. It’s only when I have to wake up after being sated so gorgeously with your body that I complain.”
It was an old argument. She had never taken his refusal to spend the entire night together with full grace. She understood his desire to be home for breakfast with his son, but not his insistence on leaving their shared bed after at most a short nap after their lovemaking.
Her continued pressing the point frustrated him and that leaked out into his voice when he said, “Be that as it may, there is something I have been meaning to tell you.”
She stiffened and pulled away, her blue-green gaze reflecting an instant emotional wariness. “What?”
“It is nothing bad. Well, not too bad. It is simply that my parents are going on a trip. They wish to visit friends in Naples.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know.”
“Naturally, I did not tell you.”
“And?”
“And I cannot leave Giosue at night when he does not have his grandparents there to watch over him.” Never mind the staff that lived on-site at their vineyard, Vigne di Grisafi, much less the housekeeper that had her own room in the house. It was not the same.
“I understand.” He could tell from her expression that she really did. “How long will your parents be gone?”
“Two weeks only.”
“I won’t see you at all?”
“It is unlikely.”
She looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end she simply nodded.
“I will miss you,” he found himself admitting. Then he scowled. He hadn’t wanted to say that. “This.” He brushed his hand down her body. “I will miss this.”
“I heard you the first time, tough guy. You can’t take it back now. You may as well admit you like my company as much as me in your bed.”
He bore her back to the bed, his mouth hovering above hers. “Maybe almost as much. And speaking of sex. I will have to do without you for two weeks, I think we should take advantage of our time together.”
“Have I ever said no to you?” she asked with a husky laugh.
“No and tonight is no time to start.”
* * *
FAITH WOKE SURROUNDED by warmth and the scent of the man she loved.
Her eyes flew open and a grin split her face. It hadn’t been a dream. After making love into the wee hours of the morning, Tino had asked her to spend the night. For the first time ever.
Okay, maybe not asked…more like informed her that she was staying, but it was the same result. She was in his arms, in his bed—the morning after they’d made love.
And it was glorious.
Every bit as delicious a feeling as she had thought it would be.
“Are you awake?” his deep voice rumbled above her.
She lifted her head from its resting place on his hair-covered chest and turned the full wattage of her smile on him. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like you were telling me the truth when you said you had a sunny disposition in the morning. Maybe I will have to start calling you solare.”
Sunlight? Her heart squeezed. “Tay used to call me Sunshine.”
“A past boyfriend?” Tino asked on a growl, the morning whiskers on his face giving him a sexily fierce aspect. “You are right, discussing past amores while in bed with your current one is definitely bad taste.”
She laughed, not in the least offended. “He was my husband, not a past boyfriend,” she said as she scooted out of the bed, intent on making coffee.
“You were married?”
“Yes.” Weird that after almost a full year together, she was telling him about having been married before for the first time. But then, that was the nature of their relationship. She and Tino focused on the present when they were together.
She’d learned more about him—and a tragic past similar to her own—from his mother than she’d ever learned from him. Strangely enough, where Tino showed no interest in Faith’s art, his mother was a fan. They’d met at one of Faith’s showings in Palermo. In spite of the generation difference in their ages, the two women had hit it off immediately and both had been thrilled to discover they lived so close to one another. Vigne di Grisafi was a mere twenty-minute drive from Faith’s small apartment in Pizzolato.
Not that she’d ever been there as Tino’s guest. She’d been seeing Tino for two months before she realized the Valentino Agata mentioned so frequently was Tino, the man Faith spent her nights making love with. At first, she’d found it disconcerting, but she’d soon adjusted. She hadn’t told Agata about the fact she was dating Tino though.
He’d been careful to keep their relationship discreet and she felt it was his prerogative to determine when his family would be told about her.
In another almost unreal twist of fate, Faith was his son Giosue’s teacher, too. She taught an art class for primary school children in Marsala once a week. She may have lost her one chance at motherhood, but she still adored kids, and this was her way of spending time with them. Giosue was an absolute doll and she more than understood Tino’s desire to be there for him. She applauded it.
“Divorced?” Tino asked, his brown eyes intent on her and apparently not done with the topic of Tay.
“Widowed.” She didn’t elaborate, knowing Tino wouldn’t want the details. He never wanted the details. Not about her personal history.
He said he liked to concentrate on the here and now. Since that was her own personal motto, she didn’t balk at the fact he showed no interest in her life before Sicily. She had to admit, though, that he didn’t show much interest in her life here, either.
He knew she was an artist, but she wasn’t sure he knew she was a successful one or that she was a clay sculptor. He knew she lived in Pizzolato, a small town a few minutes south of Marsala, but she doubted he knew exactly where her apartment was. In the entire year they’d been together, they had made love in one place only—his apartment.
Not his home, because he didn’t live there. He said he kept it for business purposes, but she thought he meant the business of getting sex without falling under the watchful eye of his mother. Tino had been very careful to keep their lives completely separate.
At first, she hadn’t minded. She’d been no more interested in a deep emotional connection than he had been. He’d promised her sex and that was all he’d given her.
Only, at some point along the way, she’d realized, she couldn’t help giving him love.
Even so, she’d been content to keep their relationship on a shallow level. Or at least convinced herself to be. She’d lost everyone she’d ever loved and had no doubt that one day she would lose him, too. That didn’t mean she hadn’t loved spending the whole night together—she had. But as for the rest of it, the less entwined in her life he was, the better for her it would be when that time came.
At least, that was how she had thought. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
“So, that is all you have to say on the matter?”
She pushed the start button on the coffeemaker and turned to face Tino. “What?”
He’d pulled on a pair of boxers, leaving most of his tall, chiseled body on mouthwatering display. “Your husband died.”
Were they still on that? “Yes.”
“How?”
“A car accident.”
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
He ran his fingers through his morning tousled dark hair. “You never told me.”
“Did you want me to?”
“I would think that sometime in a year you would have thought to mention that you were a widow.” He came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter near her.
“Why?”
“It is an important piece of information about you.”
“About my past.”
He frowned at her.
“You prefer to focus on today, not yesterday. You’ve said so many times, Tino. What’s going on?”
“Maybe I’m just curious about the woman I’ve been bedding for a year.”
“Almost a year.”
“Do not banter semantics with me.”
“I’m glad you’re curious.”
“I…” For the first time in memory, her lover, the übercool Valentino Grisafi, looked lost for words.
“Don’t worry about it, Tino. It’s not a bad thing.”
“No, no, of course not. We are friends as well as lovers, si?”
“Yes.” And she was more relieved than she could say that he saw it that way, too.
“Good. Good.” He was silent a second. “Do I get breakfast to go with my coffee?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
He got a borderline horrified look on his face. “You do know how to cook, don’t you?”
She laughed, truly tickled. “We aren’t all filthy rich vintners, Tino. Some of us can’t afford a housekeeper or to eat out every meal—thus, knowing how to cook is essential. But I don’t mind telling you, I’m pretty good at it as well.”
“I’ll reserve judgment.”
She laughed and launched herself at him to tickle the big man into submission, or at least a lot of laughter before he subdued her wandering fingers.
* * *
FAITH FINISHED THE third form of a pregnant woman she had done in as many days. She hadn’t done women enceinte since the loss of her baby in the accident that had killed Taylish and any chance Faith would ever have at a family.
Or so she had believed.
Her clay-spattered hand pressed over her still-flat stomach, a sense of awe and wonder infusing her. It had taken her four years and fertility counseling for her to become viably pregnant the first time.
Her first actual pregnancy had occurred a mere two months after she married Taylish at the age of eighteen. They’d been ecstatic when the home pregnancy test showed positive, only to be cast into a pit of despair short weeks later when the ectopic pregnancy had come close to killing her. And of course, there had been no hope of saving the baby with a tubal pregnancy.
Her near death had not stopped her and Tay from trying again. They both wanted children with a deep desperation only those who had no family could appreciate. After a year of trying with no results they’d sought medical help. Tests had revealed that she’d been left with only one working ovary in the aftermath of her ectopic pregnancy.
The fertility specialist she and Tay had sought out had informed them that the single working ovary significantly decreased their chances at getting pregnant. However, she gave them a regime to follow that would hopefully result in conception. It had been grueling and resulted in an already passionless sex life turning flat-out clinical.
But it had worked. When the test strip had turned blue, she’d felt as if it was the greatest blessing of her life. This time she’d felt as if it was a full-on miracle.
Tino was careful to use condoms every time. The number of chances they’d taken by waiting to put the condom on until after some play, and the single time one had broken (Tino had changed where he bought his condoms after that), could be counted on one hand. With fingers left over. However, one of those times of delayed sheathing had occurred a couple of months ago.
With only one working ovary, her menstrual cycles were on an erratic two-month schedule. She hadn’t paid any attention when her sporadic period was later than even normal. It wasn’t the first time. Pregnancy had never even crossed her mind. Not when her breasts had grown excessively tender. She’d put it up to PMS. Not when the smell of bacon made her nauseous. She wasn’t a huge meat eater, anyway.
Not when she got tired in the afternoons. After all, most Sicilian businesses were closed for a couple of hours midday so people could rest. Maybe she was just taking on the habits of her adopted home. She hadn’t even clued in she might be pregnant when she burst out crying over a broken glass one morning when she’d been preparing a heavier breakfast than usual. She’d been craving eggs.
The shoe hadn’t even dropped when she made her fourth trip to the bathroom before lunchtime one day. She’d made an appointment to see her doctor to test for a suspected bladder infection, only to be stunned with the news she was carrying Tino’s child.
She pressed against her hard tummy with a reverent hand. All the symptoms of pregnancy now carried special significance for her. She, a woman who’d had every chance at family she’d ever had ripped from her by death, was expecting. It was almost impossible to believe she’d been so blind to the possibility. With her fertility problems, Faith had assumed there wasn’t even a remote chance she could or would ever get pregnant again.
Yet, according to the test her doctor had run, she was. She was.
Oh, man.
She hugged herself while looking down at the faceless pregnant figure she’d been working on. The incredible awe and joy she felt at the prospect of having a baby—Tino’s baby—could be seen in every line of the figure whose arms were raised above her head in an unmistakable gesture of celebration. Faith turned to look at the first woman she’d done after finding out she was pregnant.
That figure showed the fear that laced her joy. This woman had a face, and her expression was one of trepidation. Her hand rested protectively on her slightly protruding stomach. Faith had done the woman as a native African. Clinging to one side of her traditional dress was another small child, not so thin it was starving, but clearly at risk. The two figures were standing on a base that had been created to look like dry grass.
It was a moving statue, bringing tears to her own eyes. Which wasn’t exactly something new. The one place Faith allowed herself to express her inner pain, the feelings of aloneness that she accepted but had never quite learned to live with, was her art. While some pieces were filled with joy and peace, others evoked the kind of emotion few people liked to talk about.
Despite that—or maybe because of it—her art sold well, commanding a high price for each piece. Or at least each one she allowed to leave her workshop. The pregnant woman she’d done yesterday wasn’t going anywhere but back into a lump of clay. It was too jumbled a piece. No single emotional connotation strong enough to override the others.
Some work was like that. She accepted it as the cost of her process. She’d spent the entire day on that statue, but not late into the night like she had on the first one. Part of it was probably the fact that Tino had called her.
He rarely called her, except to set up assignations. Even when he traveled out of country and was gone for a week or more, she did not hear from him. But he had called yesterday. For no other reason she could discern other than to talk. Weird.
Really, really.
But good. Any loosening of his strictly sex relationship rule was a blessing. Especially now.
But still. Odd.
She wasn’t sure when she was going to tell him about the baby. She had no doubts she would do so, but wanted to time it right. There was always a chance of miscarriage in the first trimester, and with her track record she wasn’t going to dismiss that very real possibility. She’d lost every chance she’d had for a family up to now, it was hard to believe that this time would work out any differently.
She could still hope, though.
That didn’t mean she was going to share news of the baby before she was sure her pregnancy was viable. She had an appointment with the hospital later in the week. Further tests would determine whether the pregnancy was uteral rather than ectopic. Though her original fertility specialist had told her the chances of having another tubal pregnancy were so slim as to be almost nonexistent, Faith wasn’t taking any chances.
And she wasn’t telling Tino anything until she was sure.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_10b89dd1-7a6b-5696-9897-f189fd448cd4)
THE DAY BEFORE her appointment at the hospital was Faith’s day to teach art to the primary schoolers. She’d fallen into the job by accident. Sort of. Faith had told Agata Grisafi how much she loved children and spending time with them, but of course her career did not lend itself to doing so. The older woman had spoken to the principal of her grandson’s school and discovered he would be thrilled to have a successful artist come in and teach classes one day a week to his students.
That’s how it had begun and how Faith had ended up knowing her lover’s mother and son longer than she’d known him. Some people might say Providence had lent a hand, and Faith thought maybe, just maybe they might be right.
Giosue, Tino’s darling eight-year-old son, was in the second group she taught for the day.
He was his normal sweet self, shyly asking her opinion of the drawing he had done of Marsala’s city hall. They were doing a project combining their writing skills and art to give a picture of their city as eight-and nine-year-olds saw it.
“That’s beautiful, Gio.”
“Thank you, signora.”
She moved on to the next child, helping the little girl pick a color for the fish she wanted to draw in the sea so close to Marsala.
It was at the end of class, after all the other children had left, that Giosue came to her desk. “Signora Guglielmo?”
The children called her by the Italian equivalent of William rather than Williams because it was easier for them and she didn’t mind a bit.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
He grinned at the endearment, his cheeks pinkening a little, but so obviously pleased that she made a note to use it again. Sparingly.
No matter how special the place in her heart Tino’s son had, she would not draw attention to it. To do so would embarrass Giosue, most likely infuriate Tino and compromise Faith’s position with the school.
“I would like to invite you to join my family for dinner tonight,” he said formally. It was clear he’d practiced the phrase, as well.
“Does your father know you are inviting me to dinner?” she asked, seriously concerned by this turn of events.
“Yes, signora. He would be very pleased if you came.”
Shock slammed through her. “Did he say that?”
“Oh, yes.” Giosue gave her another of his shy smiles. “He is very pleased I like you so well.”
Hope bubbled through her like an effervescent spring. Perhaps the black cloud over her life was finally dissipating. Was it possible she had a chance at a real family once again—one that would not be taken away from her? The hope scared her so much it hurt. “I would be honored to join you for dinner.”
“Thank you, signora.” Giosue handed her a folded sheet of paper. “My father made you directions for coming, in case you need them.”
She took the paper. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”
She’d been there a few times for lunch with Agata, though the older woman preferred to meet in Pizzolato because she loved visiting Faith’s studio. She said she basked in the privilege of seeing the artist’s work before it was finished.
“It was my idea to make the map. I helped Papa with it.”
That was her cue to open it and marvel over the drawing, which had obviously been done by a child’s hand. The detailed written instructions were in Tino’s distinctive slashing scrawl, however.
“You did a wonderful job, Gio. I particularly like the grapevines with grapes on them you drew to show me what to expect to see.”
“They are ripening on the vines now. Nonno said they will be ready to harvest when he gets back from Naples maybe.”
“If your grandfather says it, than I am sure he is right.”
“He is a master winemaker,” Giosue said proudly.
“Yes. Do you help with the harvest?”
“Some. Nonno takes me into the fields with him. Papa does not work the fields, but that is okay. Nonno says so.”
“Your father’s gift is for the business side of things, I think.”
“Nonno says Papa is very good at making money,” Giosue replied artlessly.
Faith laughed. “I’m sure he is.”
“He can support a family. Nonna says so.”
“I’m sure he can.” Was Giosue matchmaking? Faith held in the smile that wanted to break over her features. She did not want to hurt Giosue by making him think she was laughing at him.
“She thinks he should marry again. She is his mama, he has to listen to her, I think.”
It was really hard to bite back the laugh at that, but she did not think Tino would share his son’s view on this particular subject. “What do you think, Gio?”
“I think I would like a mother who is not so far away in Heaven.”
She couldn’t help it. She reached out and touched him. Just a small pat on the shoulder, but she wanted to hug him to her. “I understand, Gio. I really do.”
He cocked his head to one side. “You never talk about family.”
“I don’t have any.” Her hand slid down to her stomach. She hadn’t. Before. But now, maybe she did.
“You have no mama, either?”
“No. I prayed for one, but it was not God’s will.” She shrugged.
“Do you think I will have another mother?”
“I hope so, Gio.”
“Me, too, but only if I could love her.”
Smart boy. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t marry a woman you couldn’t love as a mama, too.”
“She would have to love me also.” Giosue looked at her through his lashes, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.
Sweet little boy. “You are very lovable, that would not be a problem, I’m sure.”
The next group of children came rushing into the room along with Giosue’s teacher, who was apparently looking for her missing lamb.
“I will see you tonight?” he asked as he crossed the room to join his teacher at the door.
“Yes.”
He was grinning as he exited the room.
So, Tino’s son was matchmaking. With her. And seemingly, he had Tino’s tacit approval. Unbelievable. The prospect terrified her as much as it thrilled her. Had she suffered enough? Was she done being alone?
Somehow, she couldn’t quite picture it.
If nothing else, Tino was allowing her into another aspect of his life. The most important one to him. That was so huge, she could barely wrap her mind around it.
The fact that he was doing so without knowing about the baby boggled her mind even more.
He might not love her, but she had a different place in his life than any woman had since the death of his wife six years ago.
* * *
FAITH CONCENTRATED ON the strains of classical music filling her Mini. At least, she tried to. She was extremely nervous about this dinner. She shouldn’t be. Over the past year, they’d discovered that she and Tino were compatible in and out of bed. She and Giosue got along great in the classroom as well. It should all be good.
Only, telling herself that didn’t make the butterflies playing techno music in her stomach go away. This was the two of them together. Tino and Giosue. The three of them really.
How they interacted would dictate a big chunk of her future; she was sure of it. Tino had to be testing the waters and, as absolutely inconceivable as she found that, it sort of fit in with his odd behavior lately.
He’d called her again today. She’d missed the call and when she’d tried to return it he’d been in a meeting. His message had simply said he’d been thinking of her.
Seriously strange.
If he’d said he’d been thinking of sex with her, she wouldn’t have been surprised at all. The man had the libido of an eighteen-year-old. Sex was a really important part of his life. Important enough that he pursued it even though he had said he never wanted to remarry or get serious with a woman.
But he hadn’t said he was missing the sex. He’d said he was missing her. Well, they would be together again soon enough. And then they would see what they would see.
Her phone rang, playing his distinctive ringtone. She never answered when she was driving, so she forced herself to ignore it. Besides, she was almost to Grisafi Vineyard. He could say whatever he wanted when she got there. Most likely, he was calling to see where she was.
But she wasn’t late.
Well, not much, anyway. Maybe ten minutes. He had to be used to her sketchy time-keeping skills by now. It was one of the reasons that she loved living in Sicily. Tino was very un-Sicilian in his perfect punctuality and rigid schedule keeping. She’d teased him about it more than once.
He’d told her he had no choice, doing business on an international scale. She suspected it was in his nature and that was that.
She couldn’t see Tino changing for the convenience of others, not even when it came to making money.
She turned down the long drive that led to Casa di Fede. Faith House. She’d thought it was neat the house shared her name when she’d first come to visit Agata. Later, when she realized Tino lived here, she’d seen it as an indication they were meant to be together. Even if it was temporary.
Thinking about the coincidence sent another bubble of hope fizzing through her. Maybe it meant something more than what she’d thought. He and his family were wrapped around her life, and she was threaded through his, in ways neither had anticipated or even wanted at first.
She pulled up in front of the sprawling farmhouse. It had been in the family for six generations and been built onto almost that number of times until it had two master suites, one in its own wing with two additional bedrooms. There were four more bedrooms in the rest of the house, a formal salon, a family entertainment room that opened onto the lanai beside the oversize two-tiered pool and spa area, a huge kitchen, a library and two offices.
One was Tino’s, and the smaller, less-organized one was his father’s. Agata used the library as her office when she was working on her charity work. She had her own sitting room off the master suite, as well.
Faith had learned all of this on her previous visits with the older woman. What she hadn’t known was how overwhelming she would find the familiar home now that she was here to share dinner with Tino and his son. She sat in her car, staring at the proof of generations of Grisafis living in the same area. Proof of Tino’s roots and his wealth. Proof that he already had what she had most craved her whole life.
A family.
The prospect that he might be willing to share all that with her was almost more than she could take. Terrifying didn’t begin to describe it. Because even if Valentino Grisafi wanted her in his life, she of all people knew there was no guarantee she could keep him. No more than she’d kept the father she never knew, or her mother, or the first family that said they would adopt her, or Taylish…or her unborn son, Kaden.
Dwelling on the pain of the past had never helped her before; she knew it wasn’t about to start now. She needed to let the past go and hope for the future, or her own fears were going to destroy her chance at happiness.
With that resolved, she opened her car door. Her phone trilled Tino’s ringtone again as she stepped out of the car.
She flipped it open. “Wow, I know you’re impatient, but this is borderline obsessive, Tino. I’m here already.”
“I merely wished to—”
She rang the bell and he stopped talking.
“It is the doorbell. I must let you go.”
Shaking her head at that, she shrugged and disconnected the call.
He opened the door and then stood there staring at her as if she was an apparition—of not particularly friendly aspect. In truth, he looked absolutely horrified.
“Faith!”
“The last time I looked, yes.”
“What are you doing here?” He shook his head. “It does not matter. You need to leave. Now.”
“What? Why?”
“This is my fault.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I can see where my phone calls may have given you the wrong impression.”
“That you might be impatient to see me?”
“Yes, I am. I was. But not here. Not now.”
“Tino, you aren’t making any sense.”
“This is not a good time, Faith. I need you to leave now.”
“Won’t Gio be disappointed?”
“Gio…why would you ask about my son? Look, it doesn’t matter, we have a dinner guest coming.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know. I’m here.”
“This is no time for jokes, carina.”
“Tino, you’re starting to worry me.” Really. Definitely. Positive that Giosue would not lie and say his father had approved inviting her for dinner, she was flummoxed. Besides, hadn’t Tino helped his son make the map? What was going on? “Tino—”
“Signora!” An excited little boy voice broke into the bizarre conversation. “You are here!”
Giosue rushed past his father to throw his arms around Faith in a hug. She returned the embrace with a smile, loving the naturally affectionate nature of most of the Sicilians she had met.
Tino stood there looking at them in abject horror.
Giosue stepped back, self-consciously straightening his button-up shirt. He’d dressed up for the dinner in an outfit close to the uniform he wore to school of obviously higher quality and minus the tie. He looked like a miniature version of his father, who was wearing custom-tailored brown slacks with a champagne-colored dress shirt—untucked, the top button undone.
The clothes were absolutely yummy on the father and adorable on the son.
Faith was glad she’d taken the time to change from the clothing she wore to teach in. Her dress was made from yellow silk batiked by a fellow artist with strands of peacock blue, sunset orange and even a metallic dye with a gold cast. Faith had fallen in love with the silk when she’d seen it at an artists’ fair and had to buy it. She’d had it made into a dress of simple design with spaghetti straps that highlighted her curves and made her feel deliciously feminine. A new addition to her wardrobe, Tino had not yet seen it.
Regardless of his other reactions to her arrival, that certain gleam she knew so well in her lover’s eyes said he approved her choice.
Unaware of the strange overtones to the adults’ conversation, Gio took her hand and held it. “Papa, this is Signora Guglielmo.” Then the boy smiled up at her with pure innocence. “Signora, this is my papa, Signor Valentino Grisafi.”
“Your papa and I have met,” Faith said, when Tino remained silent and frozen like a statue. An appalled statue.
“You have?” Gio looked confused, maybe even a little hurt. “Papa told me he did not know you. Nonna told him he would like you though.”
“I did not realize that Signora Guglielmo was the woman I know as Faith Williams.” He looked at her accusingly, as if it was her fault.
“You are friends?” Giosue asked.
Faith waited to hear what her lover would say to that.
Tino looked from her to his son, his expression impossible to read. “Si. We are friends.”
Giosue’s face broke out into a grin and he giggled. “You didn’t know? Truly?”
“Truly.”
“That is a good joke, isn’t it, Papa?”
“A good joke indeed,” Tino agreed, sounding anything but amused.
Faith wasn’t feeling too lighthearted, either. Tino hadn’t approved inviting her for dinner. He hadn’t written those directions out with her in mind to use them. He’d had no intention of inviting her into an aspect of his life he had heretofore kept separate from her. In fact, he was clearly dismayed and not at all happy by this evening’s turn of events.
He’d approved inviting his son’s teacher. Another woman. A woman who Tino would have been told by his son and mother was single, near him in age and attractive (or so Agata said every time she lamented Faith’s unwed state). If the fact that Giosue had been matchmaking was obvious to Faith, it had to have been just as apparent to his father. Add to that the little detail that Agata had patently put her two cents in, and Faith was painting a picture in her mind that held no gratification for her.
Tino had approved inviting to dinner a woman his son and mother were obviously hoping he would find more than a little interesting.
All of the little pipe dreams Faith had been building since spending the night for the first time at Tino’s flat, crashed and burned.
But she wasn’t a wimp. Far from it. She’d taken a lot more that life had to dish out without giving up. She was here now. And she had important motivation to make this evening work in spite of her lover’s negative reaction to her appearance.
Perhaps if Tino saw how good they could be together around his family, he’d rethink the parameters on their relationship. Then telling him about the baby wouldn’t be so hard.
And maybe the Peruvian rain forest would freeze over in a freak weather anomaly tonight, too.
Okay, that kind of negative thinking wasn’t going to do her any good. She had to think positive. No matter what, she wasn’t about to beg off dinner. That would hurt Giosue, and Faith didn’t let children down. Ever.
She’d experienced that particular phenomenon too many times herself to inflict it on the young people in her life.
She gave both males her best winning smile and asked, “May I come in now, or were you planning to have dinner on the front porch?”
Giosue laughed and dragged her over the threshold, forcing his father to move out of the way or get knocked into. “We’re eating outside, but in back, silly signora.”
“And did you cook, Gio?”
“I helped. Ask Papa.”
She looked back over her shoulder at the silent man following their progress through the house.
“Indeed he did. He is a favorite with our housekeeper.”
“It’s easy to understand why. Gio’s a little charmer.”
“Signora!” Gio exclaimed in the long-suffering tone only an eight-year-old boy could affect so perfectly.
“Do not tell me it embarrasses you to discover your favorite teacher also holds you in high regard,” his father teased him.
The boy shrugged, blushing, but said nothing. Faith’s heart melted a little more toward him. He would make such a wonderful stepson and big brother. But she was getting ahead of herself. By light-years.
“So, what are we having for dinner?” she asked.
Especially after realizing Tino had not intended to invite her to dinner. That he had, in fact, been wholly ignorant of her relationship with his son and mother.
“Wait until you see. I got to stuff the manicotti. The filling is yummy.”
Giosue was right, the manicotti was delicious. As was everything else, and the company wasn’t bad, either. Tino started off a little stiff, but being around his son relaxed him. As hard as he so plainly tried to keep things between himself and Faith distant, his usual behavior got the better of him. He touched her when he talked to her, nothing overtly sexual. Just the normal affectionate-Sicilian-nature style, but it felt good—right.
Gio asked tons of questions about her art, questions there wasn’t time for during class. Several times she caught Tino looking surprised by her answers. But then, he knew almost nothing about that part of her life. For the first time that really bothered her. Her art made up the biggest part of her life and he was sadly ignorant of it.
That realization, more than anything else, put the nature of their relationship into perspective. While his behavior lately might indicate it was changing, theirs was still primarily a sexually based connection.
“You are asking so many questions, amorino, I am beginning to think you wish to grow up to be an artist.”
“Oh, no, Papa, I want to be a winemaker like Nonno.”
“Not a businessman and vintner like your papa?” Faith asked.
“He will have to have another son to do that. I want to get my hands dirty,” Giosue said with absolute certainty.
Rather than take offense, Tino laughed aloud. “He sounds just like my father.” He shook his head, the amusement still glittering in his eyes. “However, there will be no brothers, or sisters either. Perhaps Calogero will finally marry and have children, but if not—when I get too old to do my job, we will have to hire a business manager.”
“You will never be too old, Papa.”
Tino just smiled and ruffled his son’s hair. “You know there is nothing to stop you from making art a hobby while you follow in your grandfather’s footsteps. Isn’t that right, Faith?”
She was still reeling from the dead-on surety in Tino’s tone when he said there would be no sisters or brothers for Giosue, but she managed to nod and smile at the expectant little boy.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_7f8115fa-095d-59ce-93e2-7bb88fa60890)
TINO REJOINED FAITH on the terrace after tucking his son into bed.
Gio had wheedled, pleaded and distracted every time Faith had started making noises about going home. When it was finally time for him to go to bed, he had even gone so far as to ask to have her come in and say good-night to him before going to sleep.
She’d done so without the slightest hesitation, kissing Gio’s head before wishing him a good sleep and pleasant dreams and then leaving the room. Tino found it disconcerting that she was so relaxed, not to mention good, with his son. Their friendship was of longstanding duration, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Except uncomfortable.
He didn’t like feeling unsettled. It made him irritable.
And it wasn’t at all cute, like his lover when she was woken to go home after an evening of lovemaking.
Faith stood on the edge of the stone terrace, looking out over the vineyard. The green, leafy vines looked black in the moonlight, but she glowed. The cool illumination of the night sky reflected off her porcelain features, lending her a disturbing, ethereal beauty. She looked like an angelic specter that could be snatched to the other realms in the blink of an eye.
It was not a thought he wanted to entertain. Not after that very thing had happened to Maura through her death. The one challenge to their life together that he could not fight.
He was frowning when he laid his hand on Faith’s shoulder. “He is on his way to dreamland.”
“He’s so incredibly sweet. You are a very blessed man, Valentino Grisafi.” She turned to face him.
“I know it.” He sighed. “But there are times he puts me in an inconvenient situation.”
“Like when he invites your current lover to dinner?”
“Yes.”
She winced. “You could have said no.”
“So could you.”
“I thought you wanted me here.”
“I thought he had invited his teacher from school.”
“I am his teacher,” she chided. “His art teacher, anyway.”
“Why did you never mention this to me?” It seemed almost contrived to him.
“How could you not know? I mean, I’m aware you are supremely uninterested in my life outside our time together, but I’ve mentioned teaching art to primary schoolers in Marsala.”
“I thought you did it to support your art hobby. My mother told me Gio’s teacher was a highly successful artist who donated her time.” Realizing how wrong he’d been made him feel like fool.
Another unpleasant and infrequent experience. Grisafi men did not make a habit of ignorance or stupid behavior. His pride stung at the knowledge he was guilty of both. Knowing more about Faith would have saved him the current situation.
“And in your eyes I could not be that woman?” Faith asked in that tone all men knew was very dangerous.
The one that said a husband would be sleeping on the sofa for the foreseeable future. Faith was not his wife, but he didn’t want to be cut off from her body, nevertheless. Nor did he wish to offend her in any case.
“In my eyes, that woman, Signora Guglielmo, was Sicilian—and you are not.”
“No, I’m not. Is that a problem for you, Tino?”
Where had that question come from? He was no ethnic supremacist. “Patently not. We have been lovers for a year now, Faith.”
“Almost a year.”
“Near enough.”
“I suppose, but I’m trying to understand why my being a Sicilian art teacher would make me an appropriate dinner companion for you and your son, but being your expatriot American lover does not.”
“It will not work.”
“What?”
“Attempting to use Giosue to insinuate yourself into my life more deeply than I wish you to go.”
Hurt sparked in her peacock eyes, and then anger. “Don’t be paranoid, not to mention criminally conceited. One, I would never use a child—in any way. Two, I knew your son before I met you. What would you have had me do? Start ignoring him in class once you and I had become lovers?”
“Of course not.” He sighed. What a tangle. “But you could have discouraged outright friendship.”
“We were already friends. It would never occur to me to hurt a child with rejection that way. I won’t do it now, either, Tino, not even for you.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He swore. He wasn’t sure, and that was as disturbing as any other revelation from this night. He fell back on what he considered the topic at hand. “Let’s not make this more complicated than we need to. You know I do not allow the women I sleep with into my personal life. It would be too messy.”
Cocking her head to one side, she gave him a look filled with disbelief. “You don’t consider what we do together as personal?”
“You are nit-picking semantics here, Faith. You know what I am meaning here. Why are you being willfully obtuse? You knew the limitations of our relationship from the very beginning.” She was not normally so argumentative, and why she had to start being so now was a mystery to him.
Certainly she had strong opinions, but they were not, as a rule, in opposition to his.
“Maybe I’m no longer happy with them.” She watched him as if gauging his reaction to that bombshell.
Alarm bells for a five-alarm fire went off in his head. Her words filled him with pure panic—not an emotion he was used to feeling and not one he had predisposed reactions for. “Faith, you must understand something. I have no plans to remarry. Ever.”
“I know, but—”
Those three little words sent a shard of apprehension right through him. She could not keep thinking in this manner. “If I did remarry, it would be to a traditional Sicilian woman—like Giosue’s mother.”
Some Sicilian men married American women, but it was rare. Even rarer still, almost to the point of nonexistent, were Sicilian men who continued to live on the island after marrying them.
Regardless, were he to remarry, he felt compelled to provide a female influence as like Giosue’s real mother as possible. He owed it to Maura.
Being honest with himself would require he acknowledge that his reasons were not limited to cultural gaps and the obligation he felt to his dead wife, but had as much to do with a promise to keep. Only one woman put his promise to Maura at risk, his promise not to replace his wife, who had died too young in his heart.
And that woman was a smart, sexy American.
Faith crossed her arms, as if protecting herself from a blow. “Is that why you didn’t nip your son’s obvious attempt at matchmaking in the bud? Because you believed the woman he was trying to fix you up with was Sicilian?”
“Yes.” He could not lie, though the temptation was there.
This time Faith didn’t just wince, she flinched as if struck. “I see.”
“I don’t think you do.” Needing her understanding—her acceptance—he cupped her face with both hands. “My son is the most important person in my life, I would do anything for him.”
“Even remarry.”
“If I believed that was what he truly needed for happiness, yes.” But not to a woman who would expect access to more than his body and bank account. Not to a woman who already threatened his memories of Maura and his promise to her.
Not Faith.
“Do you?”
Again wishing he could lie, he dropped his hands. “I did not, but after tonight, I am not so sure. He loves his grandmother, but he glowed under your affection in a way that he does not with his nonna.”
“He’s very special to me.”
“If he is so special, why did you not tell me he was your student?”
“You already asked that and the simple truth is that I thought you knew. I assumed he and, well, your mother, talked about me. We are friends. I suppose that’s going to send you into another tizzy of paranoia, but please remember, she and I were friends before I even met Gio.”
“You and…and…my mother?”
“Yes.”
Tonight had been one unreal revelation after another. “You did not tell me this.”
“I thought you knew,” she repeated, sounding exasperated. She turned away from him. “Perhaps Agata and I are not as close as I assumed.”
The sad tone in Faith’s voice did something strange to Tino’s heart. He did not like it. At all. He was used to her being happy most of the time—sometimes cranky but never sad. It did not fit her.
“She did talk about you, but I did not realize it was you she was talking about.” His mother had mentioned Gio’s teacher on occasion. Not often, though, and he too wondered if the two women shared as close a friendship as Faith believed.
His mother was a true patron of the arts. She had many acquaintances in the artistic community. He could easily see her warm nature and natural graciousness being mistaken for friendship. But the only artist she mentioned often was TK.
For a while, Tino had been worried his mother had developed a tendre for the male artist. However, when he had mentioned his concern to his father, Rocco Grisafi had laughed until tears came to his eyes. Tino had drawn the conclusion that clearly there was nothing to worry about.
“That’s hardly my fault, Tino.”
“I did not say it was.”
“You implied it by asking why I didn’t tell you.”
What was it with her tonight and this taking apart everything that he said? “You are apparently very close to both my mother and my son and yet you never once mentioned seeing or talking to them.”
“You always discourage me from discussing your family, Tino.”
It was true, but for some reason, the reminder bothered him. Probably because everything was leaving him feeling disconcerted tonight. “I did not think they had a place in our combined life.”
“We don’t have a combined life, do we, Tino?” She was looking at him again and he almost wished she wasn’t.
There was such defeat and sadness in her eyes.
“I do not understand what has changed between us?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all has changed between us.”
“Then why are you sad?”
“Perhaps because I thought it had.”
Why had she believed this?
“You were under the impression I wanted you to come for dinner tonight,” he said, understanding beginning to dawn. Clearly she had liked the idea. Learning differently had hurt her. Even though he had not meant for this to happen, he had to take some responsibility for the outcome.
She nodded, silent, her lovely red hair swaying against her shoulders. He had the wholly inappropriate—considering the gravity of their discussion—urge to run his fingers through the familiar silky strands. Worse, he knew he did not want to stop there.
Focus, he must focus.
“It is not good for Giosue to be exposed to my lovers.”
“I understand you think that.”
“It is the truth.”
She said nothing.
He could not leave it there. The compulsion to explain—to make her understand—was too great. “When our relationship ends, he will be disappointed. Already he has expectations that cannot be fulfilled.”
“I’m his friend.”
“He wants you to be his mother.”
“And you don’t.”
“No.” It was a knee-jerk response, the result of ingrained beliefs since his wife’s death.
Shocked to realize he wasn’t sure he meant it. With that came grief—a sense of loss that made no sense and was something he was not even remotely willing to dwell on.
“Because I’m not Sicilian.”
“Because our relationship is not a love affair.” But was that true?
How could it be anything else when he could not love her? He had promised Maura that he would love her always. Her sudden death had not negated that pledge.
“I thought we were friends, too.”
“We are friends.” Friendship he could do—was necessary even.
“But not sweethearts.”
His heart twinged, making his tone come out more cynical than he meant it to. “What an old-fashioned term.”
She shrugged. “It’s one Tay used to use.” She said the dead man’s name with a wistfulness that he did not like.
“I gather he was an unusual man.”
“Yes. He was. One of the best, maybe even the best man I ever knew.”
“But he is gone.”
“Yes, just as Gio’s mother is gone.”
“Maura will never be gone from my heart.”
“No, she won’t, but are you so sure your heart has no room for anyone else?”
“That is not a discussion you and I should be having.” It was one he frankly could not handle.
A Sicilian man should be able to handle anything. Even the death of his wife and raising his child without a mother. But most definitely any conversation with his current mistress. The fact that he could not shamed him.
“Because we agreed that sex and friendship was enough?” she asked in a voice husky with emotion.
“Yes.”
“And if it isn’t any longer…for either of us?”
That could not be true. He would not allow it to be. “Do not presume to speak for me.”
“Fine. What if I am only speaking for myself?”
“Then we would need to talk about whether what we have is still working.” It was not a discussion he wanted to have. He was far from ready to let her go.
She nodded and turned from him. “I think it’s time I was going.” She was hurting, for all that she tried to hide it.
“No.” He hated the melancholy in her voice.
He hated the sense that somehow it was his fault. He hated thinking of going to bed alone after spending the whole evening in her company. Even worse, he hated feeling as if he might lose her and really hated how much that bothered him.
Perhaps he could erase her sorrow while easing his own fears. He was a big proponent of the win-win business proposition. It was even better when applied to personal relationships.
Before she could take more than a couple of steps, he reached out and caught her shoulder.
“Tino, don’t.”
“You do not mean that, carina.” He drew her back toward his body. He could not imagine doing the opposite—pushing her away.
Yet he knew he could not hold on to her forever. One day she would tire of life in Sicily—so different from her home—and would return to America. Wasn’t that what all American women did eventually?
Faith was currently the only single American woman he knew who was making a go of actually living permanently in Sicily. For all its charm, Marsala was a far cry from New York or London.
That only meant they should not waste the time they did have. “We are good together. Do not allow tonight to change that.”
“I need more, Tino.”
“Then I will give you more.” He was very good at that.
“I’m not talking about sex.”
He turned her to face him and lowered his head so his lips hovered above hers. “Let’s not talk at all.”
Then he kissed her. He would show her that they were too right together to dismiss their relationship because it wasn’t packaged in orange blossoms and meters of white tulle.
She fought her own response. He could feel the tension in her, knew she wanted to resist, but though she might want to, she was as much a slave to their mutual attraction as he. Her body knew where it belonged. In his arms.
But her brain was too active and she tore her lips from his. “No, Tino.”
“Do not say no. Say rather, ‘Make love to me, Tino.’ This is what I wish to hear.”
“We’re supposed to be exclusive.”
“We are.”
“You were willing to have a blind date with another woman, Tino.” She wrenched herself from his arms. “I cannot be okay with that.”
“It was not a date.”
She glared at him, but it was the light of betrayal in her eyes that cut him to the quick. “As good as.”
“I did not consider it a date.”
“But you knew your son and mother were matchmaking.”
“I had no intention of being matched.”
“But that’s changed. You said so. You said you would do anything for Gio, even give him a second mother—if she’s Sicilian.” The tone Faith spoke the last words with said how little she thought of his stance on the matter.
“I said I was considering it, not that I had decided to date other women. You are all the woman I want right now.”
“And tomorrow?”
“And tomorrow.”
“So, when does my sell-by date come into effect? Next week? Next month? Next year.”
He wanted to grab her and hold on tight, but he laid gentle hands on her shoulders instead. “You do not have a sell-by date. Our relationship is not cut-and-dried like that.”
“I won’t be with you if you’re going to date other women,” she repeated stubbornly.
“I would not ask you to.”
“What does that mean, Tino?”
“It means you can trust me to be faithful while we are together. Just as I trust you.”
Her eyes glistened suspiciously, sending shards of pain spiking through his gut. He did not want to see her cry. He kissed her, just once, oh so carefully, trying to put the tenderness and commitment—as limited as it might be—that he felt into the caress.
“Let me make love to you.” He was pleading and he did not care.
They needed each other tonight, not empty beds where regrets and memories would haunt the hours that should be for sleep. Or making love.
“No more blind dates.”
“It wasn’t—”
But she shushed him with a finger to his lips. “It was. Or would have been. Don’t do it again.”
“You have my word.” Then, because he could not help himself; because he needed it more than breathing or thinking or anything else, he once again kissed her.
He poured his passion and his fear out in that kiss, molding their lips together in a primordial dance.
At first she did not respond. She did not try to push him away, but she did not pull him closer, either. It was the only time in their relationship she had not fallen headfirst into passion with him.
She was still thinking.
He would fix that. Increasing the intensity of their kiss, he stormed her mouth, refusing to allow their mutual desire to remain a prisoner to circumstances that would not…could not…change. Bit by bit her instincts took over.
And once her brain caught up to her body, she melted into him, ending her resistance and giving him access to the interior of her mouth at the same time. She tasted like the coffee laced heavily with rich cream and sweet sugar she had drunk after dinner. It was a flavor he had come to associate only with her.
He drank his own coffee black unless he wanted an erection tenting his slacks—something that was more than inconvenient during his business day, but could be downright embarrassing. This, what they had, was beyond good. It was fantastic, and she would not end it. He could not let her.
Tonight, he would remind her how well he knew her body, what he alone could do to it, how much pleasure he could give her. Her husband had not elicited those sensations in her, or she would not have acted so shocked by each new one when Tino and Faith had first begun their affair.
She had been almost virginal, many of her reactions belying the existence of previous lovers, much less a husband.
He refused to dwell on the sense of alarm he felt realizing the extent of his ignorance about her life. She’d been his son’s art teacher since before they met a year ago, and she had known his mother even longer. Yet Tino had been totally unaware of those facts. As unknowing as he had been about the reality of Faith’s widowhood.
How had her husband died? She’d loved him, thought he was a special man.
A primal need to erase memories of the other male from her drove Tino to deepen the kiss even further.
Faith made a soft sound against his lips. He loved kissing her. Had from the very first. She was more responsive to his lips claiming hers than any woman he had ever known. And she was far from shyly submissive. She gave as good as she got, with a passion that turned him inside out.
Damn. He wanted her.
But not out here where someone might see what should be entirely private between two people. The temptation to once again make her his, right here under the stars, was strong however. He fought it, sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her inside.
He went directly to his room, no thought of taking Faith anywhere else even entering his mind. This was his bedroom. His bed. And for now at least, she was his woman.
The huge four-poster with wooden canopy had been used by his family for generations. Though the mattress and box springs were new—a pillow-top with extra coils imported from America on his younger brother’s recommendation. It had been a good piece of advice, for more than one reason.
Not only was it incredibly comfortable, but giving up the mattress and even the bed linens he had shared with his wife had been instrumental in Tino finally being able to sleep in his own suite once again.
Pulling back the coverlet, he then laid Faith onto the bed.
She looked around the room, her expression going from curious to surprised. “This is your room.”
He locked the door and returned to the bed, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. “Where else would I take you?”
“I don’t know.” She licked her lips, her focus on his chest as he peeled the shirt from his body. “You’re such an incredibly sexy man, you know?”
“You have mentioned believing so before.”
She laughed, the sound husky and warm. “I meant it then and I mean it now. I love looking at you.”
“I thought it was men who were supposed to be the visual sex.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, kicking her sandals off. “Maybe if all women had such yummy eye candy to look at, we’d be considered the visual sex, too.”
“So, I am eye candy?”
She licked her lips as if tasting something really sweet and nodded.
His sex jolted at memories of what it felt like to be partaken of by that delectable little tongue. “I think you are a minx.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
She gave him a saucy wink and stretched her body, putting her curves on sensual display.
He shook his head but knew he had no hope of clearing it. He’d been here before with this woman, so filled with desire that everything else was just a gray fog around them. He unzipped his slacks, hissing as the parting fabric made way for his steel-hard manhood.
This woman affected him like no other.
“I love it when you make that sound.”
“You are the only one who has ever heard it.” With his admission, he stripped off the remainder of his clothes—the need to deflect automatic.
“Really?” she asked, nevertheless.
“Yes.” He joined her on the bed, on all fours above her. “I want you naked.”
She brushed her hand down his flank. “I like naked.”
He could no more suppress the growl her touch evoked than he could the need to return it. He brought their mouths together again as he reached down and caressed her through the silk of her dress. All evening he had wanted to do this, to feel the curves he knew intimately through the thin fabric. Regardless of how surreal the night had been, his desire for her was as strong as always, building with each minute he was in her company.
She moaned into the kiss, arching into his touch, begging silently for more.
And more was what he was an expert at giving her. He would remind her of that. Show her that each time could be better than the last.
He continued the strokes along her breasts, the dip of her waist and bow of her hips. Over and over again, he touched the places on her body that he knew drove her wild.
Her hands were busy, too, skimming along his heated skin, kneading his chest, but best of all was when she grabbed him—her fingers digging into his shoulders with white-knuckle intensity. When she got to this point—where she could no longer concentrate on pleasuring him—he knew she was past thought. Past control.
Exactly where he wanted her to be.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_61425554-974b-5a9f-b273-d91254eef78a)
IT WAS TIME to take her clothes off. He did, using the opportunity to tease and tantalize her further. But revealing her peaches-and-cream body was a double-edged sword. The light smattering of freckles over her shoulders and upper breasts were his downfall. She had none on her face, so the cinnamon dots felt secret—private—for him alone. A special knowledge shared just between them. He was tempted to count them—with kisses—every time he got her disrobed.
This time was no different.
The allure of her body for him never diminished.
He traced the light dots on her skin. “You are so beautiful.”
“You’ve got an unnatural affection for my freckles.” It might be a full sentence, but the way she said it, breathless with pauses between words, told him that she was no more in possession of her faculties than she had been a moment before.
“You think?” he asked against her silken skin, tasting the brown sugar dots that his mind told him could not be sweet but his tongue told him they were. But then, everything about her was sweet.
Dangerously so.
Her only answer was a moan as his lips trailed the natural path to one pebbled nipple. She shuddered beneath him, her body translating her every feeling with sexy clarity. She loved nipple play and he loved tasting and touching the turgid buds.
He delicately licked the very tip, then circled the peak with his tongue, moving slowly to lave her aureole despite the need riding him hard enough to make him ache. He refused to rush this. He had something to prove to her.
He kept at it until even the act of huffing a warm breath over her sensitized skin made her tremble and whimper. Then he moved to minister in the same way to its twin.
“What are you doing? Tormenting me?” she cried out as he sucked her nipple gently into his mouth.
He lifted his head and met peacock blue eyes glazed with pleasure. “I am giving you more.”
“I don’t want more. I want you in me.” Then she bit her lip as if realizing what she’d said.
“Trust me, this—” he carefully slid two fingers into her superbly lubricated, swollen channel “—this is where I wish to be also, but only when I have given you more.” He thrust with his fingers, hitting that interior bundle of nerves some women referred to as their G-spot.
She cried out, the sound adding to his own arousal, making it harder to wait, but he would.
Tonight would be spectacular.
He continued to massage her as he leaned down and once again claimed her mouth as his. Her return kisses were desperate and filled with the feminine fire he found so irresistible.
Her walls clenched around his fingers as he moved them in and out, stimulating her G-spot with each slow stroke. She undulated, her body straining toward him and moving with those tiny, involuntary jerks that enhanced her pleasure.
He could feel her need to climax rolling off her in palpable waves of sexual energy. Her little whimpers against his lips were an inarticulate form of begging he’d become addicted to their first time together.
His Faith did not play mind games or try to hide her physical needs or desires. She expressed them in a dozen different ways, all of which turned him on. Sex with this woman was volcanically hot, but it was also honest. She amazed and delighted him.
Now it was his turn.
He brushed her clitoris with his thumb, just a light movement back and forth…back and forth, but that was all she needed. Launching upward with her pelvis, she convulsed around his fingers. Her sharp little teeth bit into his lower lip as she made a keening sound in her throat, telling him without words that this was exactly what he wanted it to be.
More.
He kissed her through the orgasm, helping her to come down, but not too far. He was not done with her yet. Not nearly.
When her breathing was less ragged, he gently lifted her legs so they draped over his forearms and he used the position to spread her thighs until she was completely open to his gaze. Her entire body was still flushed from her climax, a beautiful rose red that he could not wait to spear with his own throbbing and as yet unsatisfied flesh. Diamond hard, her nipples poked straight up, pleading for his touch. A soft sheen of perspiration coated her upper chest, attesting to the level of pleasure she had already received.
He started to speak and had to clear his throat.
She smiled at him and the words came out in a masculine growl he wasn’t in any way ashamed of. “You are so incredibly beautiful like this.”
“Sated from your lovemaking?”
“You are not sated.” He tipped his pelvis, brushing her entrance with the tip of his penis, eliciting a second keening sound from her. He smiled. “You still need me.”
Something flashed in her eyes, something he could not quite read but that looked a lot like vulnerability. “Yes.”
“I need you as well.”
“I know.” But the words came out sounding bleak.
He did not like it. There was no place for melancholy in their bed.
“You are not my mistress.” He didn’t know why he said it, but he felt compelled.
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“You are not my mistress. You are amore mio and my friend.”
“Yes.” The smile she gave him was still tinged with sadness, but a glimmer of hope shone in her gaze.
Why it should matter to him that it was there, that he would even desire such a thing, considering what it implied from her earlier words, he did not know. But illogical as it might be, he was glad.
“I am going to give you more now, carina. Are you ready for me?”
She nodded, her breath coming out in little pants, but her body did not tense in his hold. She trusted him completely. Amazing. Although she had climaxed, her body was ready for more. Ready for him.
He pressed forward, allowing the head of his granite-hard penis to brush her opening again, but did not go in, teasing them both. Her lips curved in a familiar smile as she seemed to simply melt against the bed, waiting on him with a sexy expectation he adored. It said she knew he would take care of her wants.
He thrust his hips, allowing his length to slide along her slick folds. It felt so good—so perfect—he groaned, the sound reverberating deep in his chest. With her, he was primal man. “You are so wet.”
“You are so earthy, Tino. No one would expect it.” Using her lower back muscles, she lifted herself and increased the stimulation, showing the uninhibited aspect of her own nature.
“Only you get to see this side of me.” That had to count for something.
“I better be the only one, mister.”
He laughed softly as he allowed his thickened member to enter her. “You are like hot silk. I feel like I am going to lose my mind every time I enter you.”
“I lost mine a long time ago.” She pressed her head back into the pillow, her eyelids going half-mast.
He smiled and shook his head as he moved forward with rocking motions that made it possible for her to take his entire length. He was long and thick, and that had overwhelmed more than one lover. His and Maura’s intimacy had been loving and passionate, but nothing like what it was like with Faith.
Maura had never been as comfortable exposing her desire, which was to be expected as she had been raised in the very sheltered environment of a traditional Sicilian household. But he adored that element of Faith’s lovemaking. The way his current lover not only could take his full length, but craved it was something a man like him could and would never take for granted.
He could not help rejoicing in the amount of belief in him that Faith expressed every time they came together.
“You never flinch from me.” The wonder that laced his voice embarrassed him a little, but like so many things with this woman—was an uncontrollable response.
In so many ways she was dangerous to him, but he continued to play Russian roulette with his emotions—risking the promises he had made to his dead wife. His brain told him he should get out before he got in too deep, but everything inside him rebelled at the idea.
“Why would I?” Her brows wrinkled in genuine confusion. “We are a perfect fit.”
Perfect only because she relaxed so well for him—for she was tight. Oh, so damn tight. “So, perfect.”
“Mmmm…” She licked her lips. “You’re big, but it’s good, Tino.”
“It is better than good.”
“Yessss…” she hissed as he finally sheathed himself to the hilt in her fantastic heat.
He tucked her legs around his hips. “I need to kiss you.”
“Please, Tino.” She was straining toward him even as he brought their mouths together.
Nothing had ever felt so good.
The part of his brain where guilt resided rejected that thought even as he set a steady, slow rhythm. Kissing, their bodies moved together in a motion filled with tenderness he did not want to examine.
He could feel her desire building as was his. He refused to go over, no matter how much his body clamored for the ultimate release. He was determined to bring her to another shattering peak. Her second climax would be more intense than the first.
It would be more.
Of its own volition, his pelvis swiveled on each downward thrust, as if his body had been trained to pleasure this woman exactly as she needed. Pavlov’s response. Her pleasure gave him intense satisfaction and pleasure, therefore he did all that he could to bring out every little gasp, each sweet moan, every tightening of her muscles, each shudder she could not control.
Suddenly they were both coming together, his own orgasm taking him over before he could even hope to stop it.
But he did not want to as she contracted around him, her peak lasting seconds that turned into minutes while his body vibrated with matching sensation until his muscles felt like they would collapse.
Their mouths separated, allowing each of them to take in gasps of air and he collapsed, managing only to deflect part of his weight to the side, but maintaining skin contact. From past experience, he knew she preferred that. Thank the Holy Mother because he could not have moved if he tried.
“Thank you.”
“No, cara, thank you.”
She made another sound, but he knew she would slide into sleep soon. People said men fell asleep after sex, but he rarely did. His little American lover, however, experienced orgasm as some kind of somnolence button. He did not mind. He looked forward to these moments when he could cuddle her without having to put up his macho facade.
But tonight he did something he never did. Or at least had not until their last time together in his apartment in Marsala. He let his body relax in preparation for sleep.
Although Giosue woke early, Valentino always woke even earlier. He was not worried about being caught with her. Besides, there just seemed to be something so cold about kicking her out of his bed after such an intense experience. It had been getting harder and harder to do so lately, anyway.
He was going to have to get a handle on this softening of his relationship rules, but not tonight. He wanted to sleep, for just a little while, holding Faith.
Gio would never know and therefore could not be hurt by it. He would no doubt sleep even later than he normally did on a Saturday morning. Valentino had allowed his son to stay up later than usual because of their guest.
Their guest.
His lover.
He mentally shook his head at that. He would never have guessed that she was so ingrained in the life of his family. He still was not sure how he felt about that, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough to try to figure out how the woman who had shared his bed for almost a year was such an enigma to him.
Just as it would be soon enough to reinstate his necessary rules for the women who shared his bed. Or perhaps he should reconsider those rules for Faith. At least a little.
After all, she was more than a mere bed partner.
She was his friend.
A friend he apparently knew less about than any of his business rivals. And he trusted her enough to share an intimate side of his life.
* * *
FOR THE SECOND time ever, Faith woke in the arms of her lover.
Tino had allowed her to sleep in his bed? In his family home?
Maybe he really had given her more last night.
Or had that move been an unconscious one? It didn’t really matter if he had considered it, or acted on instinct—it had to mean something.
Just as his promise not to go searching for that perfect Sicilian paragon right away meant something. Gio was Tino’s heart, but the dedicated father had still reaffirmed his commitment not to date other women while he and Faith were together.
She’d thought her heart was being ripped right out of her chest when he said he thought Gio might need a new mother, but that mother could not be Faith. She’d been angry and hurt and scared and a lot of other emotions that confused her because she couldn’t be sure if they were genuine or induced by the pregnancy hormones rampaging through her body.
The two pregnancies she’d had before had sparked serious inner upheavals as well. She and Tay would have argued constantly if he hadn’t taken her hormone-driven insecurities in his stride. Would Tino have the same patience? Did she want him to? There had been instances when Tay’s tolerance had felt more patronizing than understanding.
Right now she felt she was out of control when it came to her feelings and she didn’t enjoy the experience. There had been times the night before she’d been sorely tempted to sock Tino good and hard, but then the pendulum that was her emotions had swung to needing the reassurance that sex provided.
She didn’t think Tino was any surer of his feelings than she was. Because in the same conversation he’d spoken of getting Gio a Sicilian mother, he’d also spoken of not wanting to end things with Faith. He knew she wouldn’t be any man’s mistress.
Early in their acquaintance, she’d made sure he was aware of how she felt about those kinds of double standards.
Their intimacy last night had been awesome, she couldn’t deny it. She’d felt more connected to Tino than ever before. He’d been so intent on giving her pleasure, but more than that, he’d given her something of himself. It was in the way he’d moved inside her, with an undisputable tenderness that brought tears to her eyes just before they’d found the ultimate pleasure together.
As much as she hated to, she forced herself to slide from his embrace. Even if she thought Tino could handle it, she did not want to be caught in his bed by anyone in his household, but especially by Gio. She loved the little boy too much to spring such a relationship on him without some sort of leading up to it.
He might be playing matchmaker, but that didn’t mean he was ready for the reality of his father having a lover, a woman who had taken his mother’s place in the huge four-poster bed. She still could not believe they had made love in his bedroom. That not only had he initiated the lovemaking, but he had carried her in here.
She took a quick shower in his en suite, halting midstep on the way out by the sight of the statue on his dresser. It was of a faceless woman, her arms outstretched to a man holding a baby boy. The man was faceless and so was the baby, but she knew it was male.
How could she not? She’d done the statue. The original, complete with perfect replicas of her own face and that of Taylish holding a little boy whose features were an amalgam of both of them resided in her studio at home.
“My mother bought it for me.”
That didn’t surprise Faith. Nor did the fact that Tino was awake. He slept too lightly not to have woken to the shower running. “Do you like it?”
“Very much. It reminds me of when Maura was alive.”
“Oh.” Of course…there was nothing in this statue to show the deep sorrow that etched her face in the original.
“It is as if she has her arms open, welcoming Gio and myself into them.”
“Or as if she’s letting you go.” That’s what she’d titled the first one she’d done, but when she created another faceless rendition, she’d simply called it Family.
“Is that wishful thinking?” Tino asked, an edge to his voice.
She turned to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Are you hoping my wife has finally let me go so that I might claim someone new in her place?” There was nothing to give away what he was thinking in his face.
It didn’t matter. The only course open to her—especially now—was honesty. “If I say yes?”
“I will remind you that if I ever do remarry it will be to a Sicilian woman, someone who can give Gio that little part of his mother at the very least.” Pain flashed in his eyes, quickly followed by guilt and then both were gone, leaving only the stoic expression behind.
Promise not to date others notwithstanding, she could really have done without that reminder. The knowledge he was still so adamant about not marrying her hurt. Badly. And she was absolutely certain that pain was not a hormones-gone-wild-induced emotion.
“Why did you let me sleep here last night?” she had to ask as she fought against showing the pain his words had caused.
“I fell asleep.”
“You never just fall asleep.”
“There is a first time for everything.”
So it had been subconscious. She’d wondered and now she knew. He didn’t know why he’d brought her to his bed in his family home. And honestly? That didn’t matter right now. What did matter was that he regretted it. That much was obvious. Anything else he might be feeling was hidden behind the enigmatic mask he wore.
And she should not be surprised.
She was the first woman to share that bed since the death of his wife. As hard as his regret was for her to bear, the situation was equally difficult for him. Only in a different way.
She’d had her own moments of letting go in the years since Taylish and their unborn son had died. She knew how wrenching they could be. Regardless of her own feelings right now, she could not ignore the pain twisting inside Tino. It was not in her nature to do so, but beyond that—she loved him.
She caressed the statue. It was a beautiful piece. One of her favorites. The one in her studio expressed and brought a measure of peace for an emotional agony she had been unable to give voice to. No one had been there to hear.
She would be there for Tino now, if he wanted her to be. “Tino—”
“I won’t be able to see you again until my parents return.” The words were clipped, hard.
“I understand.” She really did.
He stood there, silent, as if he expected her to say something else.
“It’s all right, Tino.” She gave one last lingering glance at the statue and then began dressing.
He flinched, as if those were not the words he wanted or expected to hear. “I will see you then?”
She paused in the act of slipping on her sandals. “Of course.”
“Good.” He nodded, looking at a loss. So different from the typical Tino—business tycoon and suave but distant lover.
When she was done dressing she stopped in front of him and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “It really is going to be all right.” Letting go was a necessary part of grief.
The fact that Tino was doing so, even if only on a subconscious level, gave her hope.
“No doubt.”
“It isn’t easy for any of us.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, edgy again. Or still. He hadn’t relaxed since she came out of the bathroom.
“Letting go.”
“I have nothing to let go of.”
She didn’t argue. There would be no point. And it would only make him more determined to prove himself right. He had enough to overcome in moving forward, without adding another dose of his stubborn will to the mix.
“I’ll see you when your parents return from Naples.”
* * *
VALENTINO SWORE AND slammed his hand down beside the statue Faith had admired. His wife letting him go? He did not think so.
Maura would be in his heart forever. He had promised.
The memory was as visceral today as it had been an hour after it happened.
His beautiful young wife had started off not feeling well that morning. He’d had the temerity to hope it meant she was pregnant again.
But that had not been the case.
Ignorant of the tragedy to come, he’d flown out of country for a business meeting in Greece with hope in his heart of increasing his family. He remembered that while his wife’s body betrayed her and she slipped further away from him, he had spent the day smiling more than usual, feeling on top of the world. And then his world had come crashing down.
His meeting had been a success, opening the doors for the major expansion of the Grisafi family interests. He would exchange that success and all that had come later for one more lucid day with the mother of his son.
Valentino’s mother had called him just before he boarded the jet for home. Papa had taken Maura to the hospital because she had passed out walking up the stairs. By the time Valentino had reached the hospital, his wife was in a coma.
Petrified for the first time in his life, sweating through his expensive shirt, he’d rushed into the room. Maura had been so damn pale and completely motionless. He’d taken her lifeless hand, his heart ceasing at its coolness. He had begged her to wake up, to speak to him, to squeeze his hand—anything.
But nothing. Not then. Not later. No fluttering eyelids. No half-formed words. No goodbyes. Absolutely nothing.
The only sounds had come from him—his desperate pleas and constant talking until his voice was no more than a hoarse whisper in hopes of sparking a connection to her shut-down brain—and from the machines hooked up to her. Machines and medications that had been unsuccessful at saving her life.
Her first discernable diabetic attack had been her last. Nothing the doctors did brought her blood sugars under control and she died without coming out of the coma.
He’d spent every minute with her, but it had done no good. And when she’d gone into cardiac arrest, the doctors had called security to force him from the room. He’d been in another country when she’d fallen into the coma and out in the hall when she let go of life.
The doctors said her reaction to the disease was extremely rare. But not rare enough, was it? His wife, the mother of his child was dead and nothing would ever change that.
He would never forget the rage, the grief and the utter helplessness he felt holding his small son in his arms as they said goodbye to her. He had promised then, standing over her grave, holding their sobbing son who just wanted his mama. Valentino had promised he would never stop loving her, that he would never replace her in his heart.
Valentino Grisafi had never broken a promise and he wasn’t about to start now.
This thing with Faith had to get back on track, or it had to end.
There simply was no other option. No matter what he might want or think he needed.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_b2f7412d-6e07-5e7e-ae70-8d705e3de033)
TRUE TO HIS WORD, Faith did not see Tino again while Agata and Rocco were in Naples. There were no more phone calls, either.
She didn’t expect there to be.
Tino wasn’t going to accept the change in their relationship gracefully. If he accepted it at all. She had to believe he would though.
Especially after allowing him to make love to her that night. Not that she’d had a lot of choice. Once he set his course on seduction, she was a goner. She loved him. Needed him. While that truth scared her to death, she didn’t try to deny it. Self-deception was not something she indulged in. She’d accepted the physical intimacy because it substituted for the emotional connection she craved after learning she carried his baby. And sometimes, when he made love to her, she actually felt loved by him—if only for that short while.
It was that simple. And that complicated.
But maybe it was on the way to something better… something truly more.
He had initiated the shift in their relationship in the first place. Initially, sleeping all night with her in his apartment in Marsala, and then making love to her in his family home. That reality mitigated her fears for their future, although it did not completely rid her of them.
He might not want to admit it, but he was already thinking about her in broader terms than simply his “current convenient partner.” They’d been exclusive from the very beginning—something they had both insisted on. Add that to how well she fit with his family and their friendship and they had a strong basis for a lasting relationship. The fact that she loved him would only make it easier to raise a family with him.
Even if he never came to love her as he’d loved Maura, it would be enough to be his wife and mother of his children. She had never expected to have this much claim to family again. She certainly did not expect it all.
Not after everything she had lost.
Besides, she’d never loved Taylish like she loved Tino, but he’d been happy in their marriage. Content to have her loving commitment if not her passion.
There were times she knew he had wanted more, but he’d never regretted their marriage. Only leaving it in death. He’d told her so, just before breathing his last.
But she didn’t want to remember that day. It belonged in her past—along with the two families she’d lost. The only real families she’d ever had. Until now.
Her current hopes and dreams were reflected in the series of joy-filled family-centric sculptures she did over the next week.
Agata called her when the older couple returned from the continent. Faith did not tell her about having dinner with Tino and Giosue, leaving that bit of information for them to reveal. She also avoided having Agata come to her studio the following week. She did not want Tino’s mother to see the revealing pieces of art before Faith had a chance to tell him of his impending fatherhood.
Every day that went by and she did not hear from him, she missed him more. She wanted to share the miracle of her pregnancy with him, but it was important to give him space. He had to come to terms on his own with the new parameters of their relationship.
However, when the silence between them stretched a week beyond his parents’ return, she called him. Only to discover he’d had to fly to New York to meet with his brother and a potential client. She tried his cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail. After that had happened a couple of times, once very late in the evening, she figured out he was avoiding her with diligence.
It bothered her, feeling a lot like rejection. She clung to the knowledge that if he wanted to break it off with her, he would do so definitively. He would not simply begin avoiding her like an adolescent. No, he was just struggling with the changes between them more than she’d anticipated.
It made her nervous about how he might react to the news of her pregnancy. Thankfully, he was as Sicilian as a man could get. Some might think that meant unreconstructed male, but she knew that for Tino that translated into an all-out love for family and children especially. He might not be thrilled about her new role in his life, but he would be happy about the baby. Being the traditional Sicilian that he was, it would never occur to him to seek a relationship with the child that excluded her.
Thank goodness.
His desire to marry a Sicilian woman if he ever did remarry worried her a little, but he would just have to buck up and deal with it like a grown-up. It wasn’t as if he objected to her personally. He liked her as much outside the bedroom as in it. She was sure of it. Even at his apartment they did not spend all their time in bed together.
And when they were in bed, they didn’t only have sex. They talked. Not about anything personal, but about politics, faith, what they thought of the latest news, his business—the types of things you didn’t talk about with a bare acquaintance.
He might not know much about her art career, but he knew her stance on environmentalism, government deficits, latch-key children and his desire to dominate his own corner of the upscale wine market.
Right now, though, he had to adjust to the fact that she was a part of his family’s life and a bigger part of his than he had intended when they first got together.
In the meantime, she agreed to join Agata for lunch at the vineyard.
* * *
A DAY EARLIER than he had told his family to expect him, Valentino pulled his car into his spot in the newer multicar garage he’d had built to the side of the house when he married Maura. So she could keep her car parked inside for her comfort. She’d teased him about spoiling her, but it had been so easy to do. His dead wife had been a very sweet woman.
Much like Faith.
He sighed at the thought, frustrated with himself.
The trip to New York had been longer than he wanted or expected, though it had one side benefit. It had made it easier to distance himself from Faith. Though forwarding her calls directly to voice mail had taken a larger measure of self-control than he would have expected. Much larger.
Which only went to show that he had to become serious about getting their relationship back on track.
Or he would have to let her go, and that was not something he wanted to do.
The craving he felt to hear her voice filled him with anger at himself along with a sense of helplessness he refused to give in to. He had been fighting the urge to sleep all night with her since the beginning. Never before had he been tempted not to be home in the morning for his son to wake up to because of a woman. He’d known giving in would come with a cost, but he had not expected it to be his sanity.
It had felt right taking her to his bed in the family home. Too right. Now he questioned his intelligence in doing so. For that insanely stupid choice had come at an emotional cost, as well, one he had no right to pay.
If he were a truly honorable man, he would let her go completely. He’d told himself so over and over again while in New York. What did it say for his inner strength that he could not do it?
Certainly it was nothing to be proud of.
Physically distancing himself from her was not the same as regrouped emotions, he had learned. His need to see her grew with each day even as he fought it. He might have won, but he hungered for not only the sound of her voice, but the shiver of her laughter and the feel of her skin. He was like a drug addict shaking for his next fix.
It would be a couple of days at least before he could go to her, too. Agonizing days if those in New York were anything to go by. But Gio had missed his papa and had to be Valentino’s first consideration.
Of course, if he left when his son was sleeping, Gio would be missing nothing.
The thought derailed from its already shaky tracks as he recognized the melodious laughter mingled with his mother’s voice coming from the terrace. He stood frozen, uncharacteristically unsure of what to do. No doubts about what he wanted to do. He wanted to see Faith. But what should he do?
His decision was taken from him by his mother’s voice. “Valentino, figlio mio, is that you?”
“Si, Mama. It is me.”
“Come out here.”
He had no choice but to obey. He might be thirty years old, but a Sicilian man knew better than to dismiss a direct command from his mother. It would hurt her and cause her distress. Hurting those he loved was something he avoided at all costs. Even when it was his peace of mind at stake, like now.
Walking out onto the terrace, he found not only his mother and Faith, but his father and Giosue as well.
His son jumped up from where he’d been dangling his feet in the water beside Faith and came running full tilt at Valentino. “Papa, Papa…you are home!”
“Si, I am home and glad to be here.” He swung his son high into his arms and hugged the wiggling, eight-year-old body to his.
“I missed you, Papa. Zio Calogero should not call you to New York.”
“Sometimes it is necessary, cucciola. You know this.”
His son ducked his head. “Papa! Do not call me that. It is a name for little boys, but I am big. I am eight!”
“Ah, but a man’s son is always his little one,” Rocco Grisafi said as he came and hugged both Valentino and Giosue. “Welcome home, piccolo,” his father said, emphasizing his point with a humorous glint in eyes the same color as Valentino’s.
It had been decades since his father had last called him that and Valentino laughed.
Giosue giggled. “Papa is bigger than you Nonno, how can he be your little one?”
Valentino’s father, who was in fact a head shorter than he, winked at his grandson. “It is not about size, it is about age, and I will always be older, no?”
“That’s right,” Valentino agreed. “And I will always be older than you,” he said as he tickled his swimsuit-clad son.
Giosue screeched with laughter and squirmed down, running to the pool and jumping in, his head immediately coming up out of the water. “You can’t get me now, Papa.”
“You think I cannot?”
“I know it. Nonna would be mad if you got your business clothes wet.”
That made everyone laugh, including Faith, drawing Valentino’s attention like a bee to a rose. Damn, damn, damn. She was beautiful, wearing a bright green top and matching pair of capri pants she had rolled up above her knees so she could dangle her feet in the water of the pool. Her gorgeous red hair fell loose around her shoulders and her sandals were nowhere to be seen.
Even his mother’s hug and greeting got only a portion of his attention as the rest of him strained toward the woman he wanted to take into his arms and kiss the daylights out of.
“So, I hear from my grandson that you and my dear friend are well acquainted already,” his mother said, finally garnering his whole focus.
Well versed in how his mother’s mind worked, he immediately went hyperalert to any nuance and ultra-cautious in his own reactions. She was on a kick to get him married and fathering more grandbabies for her. His argument that it was time for Calogero to do his duty by the family was met with deaf ears.
His mother wanted more grandchildren from Valentino. Full stop. Period.
And now she’d discovered he was friends with Faith.
He had to be very careful here. If his mother even got a hint of the intimate nature of his relationship with Faith, Agata Grisafi would have her oldest son married off before he could get a word in edgewise. “We’d met before, yes.”
“You’d met? I am sure your son said you were friends,” his mother chided with a gleam in her eyes, confirming Valentino’s worst fears.
He simply shrugged, confirming nothing. Denying nothing. Sometimes that was the only way to deal with his mother and her machinations. Deflection wasn’t a bad tactic, either, when he could get away with it.
He’d long ago acknowledged he never wanted to face his mother across a boardroom table. She made his toughest clients and strongest competition look like amateurs.
“More interesting to me is your friendship with her,” he said. “You rarely mention Faith.”
“You are joking me, my son. I talk about my dear friend TK all of the time.”
“Yes, but what has that to do with Faith?”
His mother’s eyes widened and she flicked a glance to the woman in question. Faith was not looking at them, but her shoulders were stiff with unmistakable tension. This grilling had to be causing her stress as well.
“You are not good friends, are you?” his mother asked, in a tone that said she no longer had any doubts about the superficial nature of their relationship.
Relieved, but unsure what had convinced her, he simply said, “We know each other.”
“Not very well.”
He shrugged again, but had a strong urge to deny what felt like an accusation. Though the words had been spoken in his mother’s normal voice, his own emotions convicted him.
Mama shrugged, looking smug, her expression that of a woman who knew what he did not. “Faith Williams is TK.”
“Your artist friend?” he asked in genuine shock. “I thought he was a man!”
“No, she is very much a female, as you can see.” The laughter lacing his mother’s voice did not faze him.
The memory of Faith saying maybe the woman in the statue on his dresser was letting go did. She was the artist of that particular piece of art. When she’d made the comment, she could have been hinting, but more likely she was exposing the true inspiration behind the figure.
Which meant what? That she had a son? “You did not tell me you had a child,” he said to her.
She stood up and faced him. “If you will recall, the father is holding the child,” she said, proving once again that their thoughts traveled similar paths.
“What is that supposed to signify?”
“Figure it out for yourself, Tino. Or better yet, ask your mother. Agata understands far more than you do and knows me much better.”
He couldn’t believe she was being so argumentative in front of his family. His mother was bound to realize there was more between them than a casual friendship if Faith kept this up. Hell, if he had to explain what they were talking about, things would get dicey. The statue was in his bedroom, after all. How could he explain Faith—his not so good friend—seeing it?
“It’s not important,” he said, in an attempt to put sand on the fire of his mother’s curiosity.
“No, I don’t suppose it is.” Faith turned to his mother and gave her a strained smile. “It’s time for me to be going.”
“But I thought you would stay for dinner.”
“Yes, do not let my arrival change your plans.” He wanted to see Faith, even if it meant being judicious under the watchful eye of his family.
He knew it was not the smartest attitude to take. He was supposed to be cooling down their relationship, but seeing her brought into sharp relief just how hard that had been over the past weeks. How much he had missed her.
“I feel the need to create.” She hugged his mother. “You know how it is for me when I have a fit of inspiration. You are not offended, are you?”
“Will you let me see the results of this inspiration?” Agata asked. “I am still waiting to see the pieces you made while Rocco and I were in Naples.”
Faith’s hand dropped to her stomach, like she was nervous. “I’ll let you see them all eventually. You know that.”
“You promise? I know how you artists are. Especially you. If you think a piece is not up to standards, you will pound it back into clay.”
That strained smile crossed Faith’s beautiful features again. “I can’t promise to keep something I hate, but you should be used to that by now.”
His mother gave a long-suffering sigh, but she hugged Faith warmly. “I am. You cannot blame me for trying, though. You have spoiled me, allowing me access to your work before you do others.”
Faith’s laugh was even more strained than her smile. “You are my friend.” Even though he was wet from the pool, she hugged Giosue goodbye, as well. “I will see you next week in school.”
Her leave-taking of his father was the usual kisses on both cheeks. But she simply nodded at Tino before turning to go. Though it fit in with the facade of casual friendship he had tried to create, he felt the slight like a blow to his midsection.
He understood being careful in front of his parents, but this went beyond that. Had it been deliberate? Or was she simply doing her part to allay suspicion? Unfortunately, he could not ask her, nor could he request a more warm goodbye without looking suspect himself. They would have to talk about how to act in front of his family, as it was clear that was going to be an issue in the future. He was only surprised it had taken so long for the matter to arise, now that he knew how close she was to his mother and son.
That was secondary as he watched Faith walk away, and he had to fight everything in himself not to go after her.
“And you worried your mother was developing a tendre for TK,” his father said with a big, amused laugh.
“Never say so!” His mother shook her head. “Sometimes, my son, you are singularly obtuse.”
“But he is good at business,” Giosue piped in, as if trying to stand up for his deficient father and not knowing exactly what to say.
Apparently everyone else in his family knew Faith’s life more intimately than he did.
He was determined to rectify that ignorance. Starting now. “Mama, what did she mean by saying that the father was holding the baby in my statue?”
It was one of the reasons he loved the piece so much. It showed the father having a tender moment with his child as well as his wife.
His mother’s pause before answering gave him time to realize what a monumentally stupid question that had been to ask. He had just gotten through admonishing himself regarding this very topic and here he was drawing attention to it.
No doubt about it. Faith Williams messed up his equilibrium and made mush of his usually superior brain function.
There was nothing wrong with the way his mother’s brain was working, however. “Do you mean the statue that I bought you? The one that you keep on the bureau in your bedroom, Valentino?” she asked delicately like a cat licking at cream.
“Yes, that is the one,” he said with as much insouciance as he could muster under his mother’s gimlet stare.
He offered no explanation and, surprisingly enough, she did not demand he do so. He could read the speculation in her eyes as easily as a first-year primer.
She looked down at her hands as if examining her manicure, which was incidentally perfect as usual, before looking back at him. “I’m not sure that is something she would care for me to share with you.”
He wasn’t about to be deterred after the huge gaffe he’d committed to get the information. “Mama,” he said with exasperation. “She told me to ask you.”
“Si, well, I suppose. You know she lost her husband to a car accident six years ago?”
“I know she is a widow, yes.”
“She lost her child in the same accident.”
“How horrible.” It had nearly destroyed him to lose Maura; if he had lost Giosue as well, he did not know how he would have stood it.
“Just so.” Mama reached out and hugged her wet grandson to her. “She sells her artwork under TK as a tribute to them. Her husband’s name was Taylish and her son would have been named Kaden.”
“Would have been?”
“She was pregnant. And from what she said, that was something of a minor miracle. Her life has not been an easy one. She was left an orphan by her mother’s death years earlier. She never knew her father—or even who he was, I believe.”
“Life has enough pain to make joy all the sweeter,” his father said with the same pragmatism he spoke the well-used Sicilian proverb, cu’ avi ‘nna bona vigna avi pani, vinu e linga.
He who owns a good vineyard has bread, wine and wood.
The Sicilian people were a practical lot. The fatalism of their cultural thinking reflected in the fact that Sicilian vernacular had no future tense. Just past and present.
Regardless of his pragmatic heritage, Valentino found it almost debilitatingly painful to discover that his happy-go-lucky Faith had such a sorrow-filled past. Her optimistic nature was one of the things he found most attractive about her. She made him feel good just being around.
To discover that her attitude was in spite of past agonies, not because she had never had any, was so startling as to leave him speechless.
“I think Signora Guglielmo wanted to be a mama very much,” Giosue said. “She loves all the children at school, even the bratty ones.”
His son’s observation made Valentino chuckle even as it made him sad for the woman who had to find an outlet for her nurturing nature with other people’s children.
He remembered her once telling him that she believed she was not meant to have a family. He had assumed that meant she thought she was not cut out to be a mother. He had not minded knowing that at all, as it assured him she would not expect marriage and children someday down the road. Now he saw a far more disturbing meaning behind the words.
When Faith had said she wanted more from him, she truly had meant more. She wanted what she had thought she could not have. A family.
And the only way he could give it to her was to break a promise that for him was sacred.
It was not an option.
But neither was letting her go so she could find that with someone else.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_3adb7947-18f9-56b7-81a6-56924137e825)
FAITH DROVE LIKE an automaton toward Pizzolato. They’d met? They knew each other?
Each word Tino had used to answer his mother’s innocent questions had driven into her heart with the precision of an assassin’s dagger. And the wounds were still raw and bleeding. As they would be for a very long time.
How could he dismiss her as if she meant nothing to him?
But she had the answer to that, an answer she wanted to ignore, to pretend no knowledge of for the sake of her lacerated heart. She only wished she could do it—that she could lie to herself as easily as she had deluded herself into believing things were changing between them.
He could dismiss her as someone of no importance in his life because that was exactly what she was. She was his convenient sex partner. Nothing more. Friends? When it was convenient for him to think so, but that clearly did not extend to times with his family.
They’d met. The words reverberated through her mind over and over again. A two-word refrain with the power to torture her emotions as effectively as a rack and bullwhip.
She did not know why he had slept with her that night in Marsala. She had no clue why he had taken her to his bed in his family home, but she knew why he hadn’t called her for two weeks and had ignored her calls to him.
Perhaps he regretted that intimacy and was even hoping to end their association.
The pain that thought brought her doubled her over, and she had to pull to the side of the road. Tears came then.
She never cried, but right now she could not stop.
She sobbed, the sounds coming from her mouth like those of a wounded animal, and she had no way of stopping them, of pulling her cheerful covering around her and marching on with a smile on her face. Not now.
She had thought maybe it was her turn for happiness. Maybe this baby heralded a new time in her life, one where she did not lose everyone who she loved.
But she could see already that was not true.
She had lost Tino, or was on the verge of doing so.
Her body racked with sobs, she ached with a physical pain no one was there to assuage.
What if Tino’s rejection was merely a harbinger of things to come?
What if she lost this baby, too? She could not stand it.
The first trimester was a risky one, even though her doctor had confirmed her pregnancy was viable and not ectopic. The prospect of miscarriage was a dark, scary shadow over her mind.
Falling apart at the seams like this could not be helping, but she didn’t know if she had the strength to rein the tears in. How was she supposed to buck up under this new loss?
The pain did not diminish, but eventually the tears did and she was able to drive home.
She had not lied when she told Agata she felt the need to create, but the piece she did that night was not one she wanted to share with anyone. Especially not a woman as kind as Tino’s mother.
Faith could not make herself destroy it, though.
Once again it embodied pain she had been unable to share with anyone else.
It was another pregnant figure, but this woman was starving, her skin stretched taut over bones etched in sharp relief in the clay. Her clothes were worn and clung to the tiny bump that indicated her pregnancy in hopeless poverty. Her hair whipped around her face, raindrops mixed with tears on the visage of a mother-to-be almost certain not to make it another month, much less carry her baby to term.
The figure reflected the emotional starvation that had plagued Faith for so long. She’d tried to feed it like a beggar would her empty belly in the streets. Teaching children art, sharing their lives. Her friendship with Agata. Her intimacy with Tino, but all of it was as precarious as the statue woman’s hold on life.
Faith had no one to absolutely call her own and feared that somehow the baby she carried would be lost to her as well.
She could not let that happen.
* * *
VALENTINO CALLED FAITH the next day. He’d tried calling the night before several times, after Gio had gone to bed, but she had not answered. He’d hoped to see her, but she had been ignoring the phone.
It was the first time she had done so during their association. He had not liked it one bit and had resolved not to avoid her calls in the future.
This time however, she answered on the third ring, just when he thought it was going to go to voice mail again.
“Hello, Tino.”
“Carina.”
“Do you need something?”
“No ‘How was your trip?’ or anything?”
“If you had wanted to tell me about your trip, you would have called while you were away…or answered my calls to you.”
Ouch. “I apologize for not doing so. I was busy.” Which was the truth, just not the whole truth.
“Too busy for a thirty-second hello? I don’t think so.”
“I should have called,” he admitted.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If it offended you, it does.” Of course it had offended her.
He would not have cared with any of the other bed partners he had had since Maura’s death, but this was Faith. And he cared.
“I guess you didn’t have time for phone sex and saw no reason to speak to me otherwise,” she said in a loaded tone.
He had already apologized. What more did she want? “Now you are being foolish.” They had never engaged in phone sex, though the thought was somewhat intriguing.
“I seem to make a habit of that with you.”
“Not that I have noticed.”
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CAROL MARINELLI
LUCY MONROE
Valentino’s Love-ChildSociety bachelor and former army sniper Ben Benedict moves between two worlds — from high-society Washington to the mean city streets, from tuxedos to Glocks. His powerful Virginia family wants him out of harm’s way, but Ben stays on the job, determined to make amends for a past that haunts him. And becomes a ticking time bomb Dr Anna Schuster is fighting demons of her own when she crosses paths with Agent Benedict.The two become adversaries — and lovers — as they search for an Al Qaeda operative bent on revenge. Ben must fight against time — and his own darkness — to rescue millions of innocents and the woman he loves from a virulent bioweapon in the hands of a dangerous enemy.Innocent Secretary…Accidentally PregnantEmma Stephenson thought all they’d be sharing was an office—not a bed! But she’s learning fast what being tycoon playboy Luca D’Amato’s personal assistant really means! And now she has to tell him she’s pregnant! Everything a man could want?
Valentino’s Love-Child
Their relationship is scorching and its intensity is unmatched… Only love can never be mentioned. But Valentino Grisafi’s stunning, intriguing American lover is testing his resolve.
He said he’d never marry again. His principles won’t allow it. The one person to tame the untamable Valentino is the woman now carrying his child…
Innocent Secretary…Accidentally Pregnant
Plain Emma Stephenson doesn’t look like a tycoon’s assistant, but for playboy Luca D’Amato, breaking through her nononsense attitude is his favorite new game. Emma thought all they’d be sharing was an office—not a bed! Now he’s offering her a promotion, and she’s trying to find the words to tell him…she’s pregnant!
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Lucy Monroe (#ulink_841611ce-3594-5975-a2a5-347d6afc159b)
“Monroe wows with her lust-at-first-sight love story. Her determined heroine and high-handed yet honorable hero will delight. Swank surroundings and detailed dialogue enliven, and the all-consuming first love scene is absorbing.”
—RT Book Reviews on A Virgin for His Prize
“This high-society romance is funny, sweet, sexy and all-American. A madcap, altruistic heiress and arrogant but honorable hero are the perfect fit.”
—RT Book Reviews on An Heiress for His Empire
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Carol Marinelli
“Marinelli’s heartrending tearjerker is a tale of two cultures. Her narrative is a sensual feast and the first love scene is awesome. The trust-building and eventual love between her two polar opposites is the pièce de résistance.”
—RT Book Reviews on Princess’s Secret Baby
“Marinelli’s romance is an exquisitely told modern-day fairy-tale, a delightful mix of laugh-out-loud pampered-princess antics and solemn realities. The first kiss between the ruthless, sexy Aussie lawyer and tempestuous Arabian royal temptress kicks off an erotic fantasy.”
—RT Book Reviews on Protecting the Desert Princess
Pregnant with the Billionaire’s Baby
Valentino’s Love-Child
Lucy Monroe
Innocent Secretary…Accidentally Pregnant
Carol Marinelli
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u70af94cc-0dff-5468-951e-e2bb9de5b2e0)
Back Cover Text (#u4773d73d-8c27-54d2-bdef-4bc2f395dd5a)
Praise (#ulink_4ce842f5-a19c-543a-a824-a61bffa77b3d)
Title Page (#u8d54268a-7bbb-58d2-96e3-f3f82a741ce8)
Valentino’s Love-Child (#ulink_5cfccf20-f726-5cce-aa34-a3330a0f50cd)
About the Author (#u87e17e26-a2bf-5353-ab31-75f207d6a70f)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_749290d4-e934-5f20-bcb6-0ea468143adb)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_84f08fe2-d7da-5007-a824-9e6df3f237a8)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9c253bde-159c-5909-b07a-8a15947e1e03)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_bf09a25b-36de-5a11-9507-7b6c3e9379b2)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_b56ff555-7ede-51d9-8153-8c6392354e7d)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_7d70e479-f806-5dcf-a072-d29cebbb64cd)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Innocent Secretary… Accidentally Pregnant (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Valentino’s Love-Child (#ulink_23555c15-a1fa-5613-a959-326a465b26dc)
Lucy Monroe
USA TODAY bestselling author LUCY MONROE lives and writes in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest. While she loves her home, she delights in experiencing different cultures and places in her travels, which she happily shares with her readers through her books. A lifelong devotee of the romance genre, Lucy can’t imagine a more fulfilling career than writing. Visit her on the web at lucymonroe.com (http://www.lucymonroe.com).
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_39a4239d-6280-58d3-95bc-4bd02230b37a)
VALENTINO GRISAFI BRUSHED a silky auburn curl away from where it blocked his view of his sleeping mistress’s face.
Mistress. An old-fashioned word for a very modern woman. Faith Williams would not appreciate the label. Were he to be foolish enough to use it within her hearing, she would no doubt let him know it too. His carina americana was no wilting flower.
Pretty American. Now, that suited her. But if he should let on he thought of her like a mistress? Ai-yi-yi.
Eyes the blue of a peacock feather would snap with temper while she lectured him on how inappropriate the term was. And he supposed she would have a point. He did not pay her bills. He did not buy her clothes. No matter how many hours they spent together here, she did not live in his Marsala apartment. She did not rely on him for anything but his company.
So, not his mistress. But not his girlfriend, either. Long-term commitment and love had no place between them. Theirs was a purely physical relationship, the duration and depth of which was dictated purely by convenience. Mostly his. Not that Faith had nothing to say in the matter.
She could walk away as easily as he and had no more incentive to make time in her schedule for him than vice versa. Luckily for them both, the relationship—such that it was—worked for each of them.
Perhaps they were friends also and he did not regret it, but that had come after. After he had discovered the way her sweet, curvaceous body responded to the slightest touch of his. After kisses that melted his brain and her resistance. After he had learned how much pleasure he could find basking in her generous sensuality, once unleashed.
The sex between them was phenomenal.
Which was no doubt why he could already feel the loss of the coming weeks.
Tracing her perfect oval features he leaned close to her ear. “Carina, you must wake.”
Her nose wrinkled and the luscious bow of her mouth twisted into a moue of denial, her exotically colored eyes remaining stubbornly closed. Her recently sated body not moving so much as a centimeter from its usual postcoital curled position.
“Come, bella mia. Waken.”
“If you’d come to my apartment, I could stay in bed sleeping while you had to get dressed and leave,” she grumbled into the pillow.
“Most nights, I leave as well, carina. You know this.” He liked to have breakfast with Giosue. His eight-year-old son was the light of Valentino’s life. “Besides, I am not waking you up to go. We need to talk.”
Faith’s eyelids fluttered, but her mouth did not slip from its downward arch.
“You are adorable like this, you know?”
That had her sitting up and staring at him with grumpy startlement, the tangerine, supersilky, Egyptian cotton sheet she’d insisted he use on his bed clutched to her chest. “Sane people do not find cranky attractive, Tino.”
Biting back a smile, he shrugged. “What can I say? I am different. Or perhaps it is you. I do not recall finding any of my other amantes so cute when they were irritable.”
He did not like using the word lover, but knew better than to refer to her as the equally ill-fitting title of mistress. And she had already cut him off at the knees for referring to her once as a bed partner. She said if he wanted to use such a clinical term, he should consider getting an anatomically accurate blow-up doll.
Why these thoughts were plaguing him tonight, he did not know. Defining her place in his life was not something he spent time doing, nor was he overly fond of labels. So why so preoccupied with them tonight?
“I have no interest in hearing about your past conquests Signor Grisafi.” Now she really looked out of sorts, her eyes starting to flash with temper.
“I apologize. But you know I was hardly an untried boy when we met.” He had already loved and lost a wife, not to mention the women who had warmed his cold bed after.
He and Faith had been together for a year, longer than he had been with any other woman since the death of his beloved Maura. But that hardly altered his past.
“Neither of us were virgins, but it’s bad form to discuss past relationships while in bed with your current lover.”
“You are so worried about following protocols, too,” he mocked.
He had never known someone less concerned with appearance and social niceties. His carina americana was the quintessential free spirit.
A small smile teased her lips at that. “Maybe not, but this is one social norm I’m one hundred percent behind.”
“Duly noted.”
“Good.” She curled up to him, snuggling against his chest, her hand resting casually on his upper thigh and causing no small reaction in his nether regions. “You said you didn’t wake me up to send me on my way?”
“No. We need to talk.”
She cocked her head to one side. “What about?”
He couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and kissed the tip of her straight nose. “You really are adorable when you first wake up.”
“I thought it was when I was grumpy.”
“Have you ever woken up not irritable?”
“I have a perfectly sunny disposition in the morning. Not that you would know that little fact as we’ve never spent a full night together, but you’ll have to take my word on it. It’s only when I have to wake up after being sated so gorgeously with your body that I complain.”
It was an old argument. She had never taken his refusal to spend the entire night together with full grace. She understood his desire to be home for breakfast with his son, but not his insistence on leaving their shared bed after at most a short nap after their lovemaking.
Her continued pressing the point frustrated him and that leaked out into his voice when he said, “Be that as it may, there is something I have been meaning to tell you.”
She stiffened and pulled away, her blue-green gaze reflecting an instant emotional wariness. “What?”
“It is nothing bad. Well, not too bad. It is simply that my parents are going on a trip. They wish to visit friends in Naples.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know.”
“Naturally, I did not tell you.”
“And?”
“And I cannot leave Giosue at night when he does not have his grandparents there to watch over him.” Never mind the staff that lived on-site at their vineyard, Vigne di Grisafi, much less the housekeeper that had her own room in the house. It was not the same.
“I understand.” He could tell from her expression that she really did. “How long will your parents be gone?”
“Two weeks only.”
“I won’t see you at all?”
“It is unlikely.”
She looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end she simply nodded.
“I will miss you,” he found himself admitting. Then he scowled. He hadn’t wanted to say that. “This.” He brushed his hand down her body. “I will miss this.”
“I heard you the first time, tough guy. You can’t take it back now. You may as well admit you like my company as much as me in your bed.”
He bore her back to the bed, his mouth hovering above hers. “Maybe almost as much. And speaking of sex. I will have to do without you for two weeks, I think we should take advantage of our time together.”
“Have I ever said no to you?” she asked with a husky laugh.
“No and tonight is no time to start.”
* * *
FAITH WOKE SURROUNDED by warmth and the scent of the man she loved.
Her eyes flew open and a grin split her face. It hadn’t been a dream. After making love into the wee hours of the morning, Tino had asked her to spend the night. For the first time ever.
Okay, maybe not asked…more like informed her that she was staying, but it was the same result. She was in his arms, in his bed—the morning after they’d made love.
And it was glorious.
Every bit as delicious a feeling as she had thought it would be.
“Are you awake?” his deep voice rumbled above her.
She lifted her head from its resting place on his hair-covered chest and turned the full wattage of her smile on him. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like you were telling me the truth when you said you had a sunny disposition in the morning. Maybe I will have to start calling you solare.”
Sunlight? Her heart squeezed. “Tay used to call me Sunshine.”
“A past boyfriend?” Tino asked on a growl, the morning whiskers on his face giving him a sexily fierce aspect. “You are right, discussing past amores while in bed with your current one is definitely bad taste.”
She laughed, not in the least offended. “He was my husband, not a past boyfriend,” she said as she scooted out of the bed, intent on making coffee.
“You were married?”
“Yes.” Weird that after almost a full year together, she was telling him about having been married before for the first time. But then, that was the nature of their relationship. She and Tino focused on the present when they were together.
She’d learned more about him—and a tragic past similar to her own—from his mother than she’d ever learned from him. Strangely enough, where Tino showed no interest in Faith’s art, his mother was a fan. They’d met at one of Faith’s showings in Palermo. In spite of the generation difference in their ages, the two women had hit it off immediately and both had been thrilled to discover they lived so close to one another. Vigne di Grisafi was a mere twenty-minute drive from Faith’s small apartment in Pizzolato.
Not that she’d ever been there as Tino’s guest. She’d been seeing Tino for two months before she realized the Valentino Agata mentioned so frequently was Tino, the man Faith spent her nights making love with. At first, she’d found it disconcerting, but she’d soon adjusted. She hadn’t told Agata about the fact she was dating Tino though.
He’d been careful to keep their relationship discreet and she felt it was his prerogative to determine when his family would be told about her.
In another almost unreal twist of fate, Faith was his son Giosue’s teacher, too. She taught an art class for primary school children in Marsala once a week. She may have lost her one chance at motherhood, but she still adored kids, and this was her way of spending time with them. Giosue was an absolute doll and she more than understood Tino’s desire to be there for him. She applauded it.
“Divorced?” Tino asked, his brown eyes intent on her and apparently not done with the topic of Tay.
“Widowed.” She didn’t elaborate, knowing Tino wouldn’t want the details. He never wanted the details. Not about her personal history.
He said he liked to concentrate on the here and now. Since that was her own personal motto, she didn’t balk at the fact he showed no interest in her life before Sicily. She had to admit, though, that he didn’t show much interest in her life here, either.
He knew she was an artist, but she wasn’t sure he knew she was a successful one or that she was a clay sculptor. He knew she lived in Pizzolato, a small town a few minutes south of Marsala, but she doubted he knew exactly where her apartment was. In the entire year they’d been together, they had made love in one place only—his apartment.
Not his home, because he didn’t live there. He said he kept it for business purposes, but she thought he meant the business of getting sex without falling under the watchful eye of his mother. Tino had been very careful to keep their lives completely separate.
At first, she hadn’t minded. She’d been no more interested in a deep emotional connection than he had been. He’d promised her sex and that was all he’d given her.
Only, at some point along the way, she’d realized, she couldn’t help giving him love.
Even so, she’d been content to keep their relationship on a shallow level. Or at least convinced herself to be. She’d lost everyone she’d ever loved and had no doubt that one day she would lose him, too. That didn’t mean she hadn’t loved spending the whole night together—she had. But as for the rest of it, the less entwined in her life he was, the better for her it would be when that time came.
At least, that was how she had thought. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
“So, that is all you have to say on the matter?”
She pushed the start button on the coffeemaker and turned to face Tino. “What?”
He’d pulled on a pair of boxers, leaving most of his tall, chiseled body on mouthwatering display. “Your husband died.”
Were they still on that? “Yes.”
“How?”
“A car accident.”
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
He ran his fingers through his morning tousled dark hair. “You never told me.”
“Did you want me to?”
“I would think that sometime in a year you would have thought to mention that you were a widow.” He came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter near her.
“Why?”
“It is an important piece of information about you.”
“About my past.”
He frowned at her.
“You prefer to focus on today, not yesterday. You’ve said so many times, Tino. What’s going on?”
“Maybe I’m just curious about the woman I’ve been bedding for a year.”
“Almost a year.”
“Do not banter semantics with me.”
“I’m glad you’re curious.”
“I…” For the first time in memory, her lover, the übercool Valentino Grisafi, looked lost for words.
“Don’t worry about it, Tino. It’s not a bad thing.”
“No, no, of course not. We are friends as well as lovers, si?”
“Yes.” And she was more relieved than she could say that he saw it that way, too.
“Good. Good.” He was silent a second. “Do I get breakfast to go with my coffee?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
He got a borderline horrified look on his face. “You do know how to cook, don’t you?”
She laughed, truly tickled. “We aren’t all filthy rich vintners, Tino. Some of us can’t afford a housekeeper or to eat out every meal—thus, knowing how to cook is essential. But I don’t mind telling you, I’m pretty good at it as well.”
“I’ll reserve judgment.”
She laughed and launched herself at him to tickle the big man into submission, or at least a lot of laughter before he subdued her wandering fingers.
* * *
FAITH FINISHED THE third form of a pregnant woman she had done in as many days. She hadn’t done women enceinte since the loss of her baby in the accident that had killed Taylish and any chance Faith would ever have at a family.
Or so she had believed.
Her clay-spattered hand pressed over her still-flat stomach, a sense of awe and wonder infusing her. It had taken her four years and fertility counseling for her to become viably pregnant the first time.
Her first actual pregnancy had occurred a mere two months after she married Taylish at the age of eighteen. They’d been ecstatic when the home pregnancy test showed positive, only to be cast into a pit of despair short weeks later when the ectopic pregnancy had come close to killing her. And of course, there had been no hope of saving the baby with a tubal pregnancy.
Her near death had not stopped her and Tay from trying again. They both wanted children with a deep desperation only those who had no family could appreciate. After a year of trying with no results they’d sought medical help. Tests had revealed that she’d been left with only one working ovary in the aftermath of her ectopic pregnancy.
The fertility specialist she and Tay had sought out had informed them that the single working ovary significantly decreased their chances at getting pregnant. However, she gave them a regime to follow that would hopefully result in conception. It had been grueling and resulted in an already passionless sex life turning flat-out clinical.
But it had worked. When the test strip had turned blue, she’d felt as if it was the greatest blessing of her life. This time she’d felt as if it was a full-on miracle.
Tino was careful to use condoms every time. The number of chances they’d taken by waiting to put the condom on until after some play, and the single time one had broken (Tino had changed where he bought his condoms after that), could be counted on one hand. With fingers left over. However, one of those times of delayed sheathing had occurred a couple of months ago.
With only one working ovary, her menstrual cycles were on an erratic two-month schedule. She hadn’t paid any attention when her sporadic period was later than even normal. It wasn’t the first time. Pregnancy had never even crossed her mind. Not when her breasts had grown excessively tender. She’d put it up to PMS. Not when the smell of bacon made her nauseous. She wasn’t a huge meat eater, anyway.
Not when she got tired in the afternoons. After all, most Sicilian businesses were closed for a couple of hours midday so people could rest. Maybe she was just taking on the habits of her adopted home. She hadn’t even clued in she might be pregnant when she burst out crying over a broken glass one morning when she’d been preparing a heavier breakfast than usual. She’d been craving eggs.
The shoe hadn’t even dropped when she made her fourth trip to the bathroom before lunchtime one day. She’d made an appointment to see her doctor to test for a suspected bladder infection, only to be stunned with the news she was carrying Tino’s child.
She pressed against her hard tummy with a reverent hand. All the symptoms of pregnancy now carried special significance for her. She, a woman who’d had every chance at family she’d ever had ripped from her by death, was expecting. It was almost impossible to believe she’d been so blind to the possibility. With her fertility problems, Faith had assumed there wasn’t even a remote chance she could or would ever get pregnant again.
Yet, according to the test her doctor had run, she was. She was.
Oh, man.
She hugged herself while looking down at the faceless pregnant figure she’d been working on. The incredible awe and joy she felt at the prospect of having a baby—Tino’s baby—could be seen in every line of the figure whose arms were raised above her head in an unmistakable gesture of celebration. Faith turned to look at the first woman she’d done after finding out she was pregnant.
That figure showed the fear that laced her joy. This woman had a face, and her expression was one of trepidation. Her hand rested protectively on her slightly protruding stomach. Faith had done the woman as a native African. Clinging to one side of her traditional dress was another small child, not so thin it was starving, but clearly at risk. The two figures were standing on a base that had been created to look like dry grass.
It was a moving statue, bringing tears to her own eyes. Which wasn’t exactly something new. The one place Faith allowed herself to express her inner pain, the feelings of aloneness that she accepted but had never quite learned to live with, was her art. While some pieces were filled with joy and peace, others evoked the kind of emotion few people liked to talk about.
Despite that—or maybe because of it—her art sold well, commanding a high price for each piece. Or at least each one she allowed to leave her workshop. The pregnant woman she’d done yesterday wasn’t going anywhere but back into a lump of clay. It was too jumbled a piece. No single emotional connotation strong enough to override the others.
Some work was like that. She accepted it as the cost of her process. She’d spent the entire day on that statue, but not late into the night like she had on the first one. Part of it was probably the fact that Tino had called her.
He rarely called her, except to set up assignations. Even when he traveled out of country and was gone for a week or more, she did not hear from him. But he had called yesterday. For no other reason she could discern other than to talk. Weird.
Really, really.
But good. Any loosening of his strictly sex relationship rule was a blessing. Especially now.
But still. Odd.
She wasn’t sure when she was going to tell him about the baby. She had no doubts she would do so, but wanted to time it right. There was always a chance of miscarriage in the first trimester, and with her track record she wasn’t going to dismiss that very real possibility. She’d lost every chance she’d had for a family up to now, it was hard to believe that this time would work out any differently.
She could still hope, though.
That didn’t mean she was going to share news of the baby before she was sure her pregnancy was viable. She had an appointment with the hospital later in the week. Further tests would determine whether the pregnancy was uteral rather than ectopic. Though her original fertility specialist had told her the chances of having another tubal pregnancy were so slim as to be almost nonexistent, Faith wasn’t taking any chances.
And she wasn’t telling Tino anything until she was sure.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_10b89dd1-7a6b-5696-9897-f189fd448cd4)
THE DAY BEFORE her appointment at the hospital was Faith’s day to teach art to the primary schoolers. She’d fallen into the job by accident. Sort of. Faith had told Agata Grisafi how much she loved children and spending time with them, but of course her career did not lend itself to doing so. The older woman had spoken to the principal of her grandson’s school and discovered he would be thrilled to have a successful artist come in and teach classes one day a week to his students.
That’s how it had begun and how Faith had ended up knowing her lover’s mother and son longer than she’d known him. Some people might say Providence had lent a hand, and Faith thought maybe, just maybe they might be right.
Giosue, Tino’s darling eight-year-old son, was in the second group she taught for the day.
He was his normal sweet self, shyly asking her opinion of the drawing he had done of Marsala’s city hall. They were doing a project combining their writing skills and art to give a picture of their city as eight-and nine-year-olds saw it.
“That’s beautiful, Gio.”
“Thank you, signora.”
She moved on to the next child, helping the little girl pick a color for the fish she wanted to draw in the sea so close to Marsala.
It was at the end of class, after all the other children had left, that Giosue came to her desk. “Signora Guglielmo?”
The children called her by the Italian equivalent of William rather than Williams because it was easier for them and she didn’t mind a bit.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
He grinned at the endearment, his cheeks pinkening a little, but so obviously pleased that she made a note to use it again. Sparingly.
No matter how special the place in her heart Tino’s son had, she would not draw attention to it. To do so would embarrass Giosue, most likely infuriate Tino and compromise Faith’s position with the school.
“I would like to invite you to join my family for dinner tonight,” he said formally. It was clear he’d practiced the phrase, as well.
“Does your father know you are inviting me to dinner?” she asked, seriously concerned by this turn of events.
“Yes, signora. He would be very pleased if you came.”
Shock slammed through her. “Did he say that?”
“Oh, yes.” Giosue gave her another of his shy smiles. “He is very pleased I like you so well.”
Hope bubbled through her like an effervescent spring. Perhaps the black cloud over her life was finally dissipating. Was it possible she had a chance at a real family once again—one that would not be taken away from her? The hope scared her so much it hurt. “I would be honored to join you for dinner.”
“Thank you, signora.” Giosue handed her a folded sheet of paper. “My father made you directions for coming, in case you need them.”
She took the paper. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”
She’d been there a few times for lunch with Agata, though the older woman preferred to meet in Pizzolato because she loved visiting Faith’s studio. She said she basked in the privilege of seeing the artist’s work before it was finished.
“It was my idea to make the map. I helped Papa with it.”
That was her cue to open it and marvel over the drawing, which had obviously been done by a child’s hand. The detailed written instructions were in Tino’s distinctive slashing scrawl, however.
“You did a wonderful job, Gio. I particularly like the grapevines with grapes on them you drew to show me what to expect to see.”
“They are ripening on the vines now. Nonno said they will be ready to harvest when he gets back from Naples maybe.”
“If your grandfather says it, than I am sure he is right.”
“He is a master winemaker,” Giosue said proudly.
“Yes. Do you help with the harvest?”
“Some. Nonno takes me into the fields with him. Papa does not work the fields, but that is okay. Nonno says so.”
“Your father’s gift is for the business side of things, I think.”
“Nonno says Papa is very good at making money,” Giosue replied artlessly.
Faith laughed. “I’m sure he is.”
“He can support a family. Nonna says so.”
“I’m sure he can.” Was Giosue matchmaking? Faith held in the smile that wanted to break over her features. She did not want to hurt Giosue by making him think she was laughing at him.
“She thinks he should marry again. She is his mama, he has to listen to her, I think.”
It was really hard to bite back the laugh at that, but she did not think Tino would share his son’s view on this particular subject. “What do you think, Gio?”
“I think I would like a mother who is not so far away in Heaven.”
She couldn’t help it. She reached out and touched him. Just a small pat on the shoulder, but she wanted to hug him to her. “I understand, Gio. I really do.”
He cocked his head to one side. “You never talk about family.”
“I don’t have any.” Her hand slid down to her stomach. She hadn’t. Before. But now, maybe she did.
“You have no mama, either?”
“No. I prayed for one, but it was not God’s will.” She shrugged.
“Do you think I will have another mother?”
“I hope so, Gio.”
“Me, too, but only if I could love her.”
Smart boy. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t marry a woman you couldn’t love as a mama, too.”
“She would have to love me also.” Giosue looked at her through his lashes, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.
Sweet little boy. “You are very lovable, that would not be a problem, I’m sure.”
The next group of children came rushing into the room along with Giosue’s teacher, who was apparently looking for her missing lamb.
“I will see you tonight?” he asked as he crossed the room to join his teacher at the door.
“Yes.”
He was grinning as he exited the room.
So, Tino’s son was matchmaking. With her. And seemingly, he had Tino’s tacit approval. Unbelievable. The prospect terrified her as much as it thrilled her. Had she suffered enough? Was she done being alone?
Somehow, she couldn’t quite picture it.
If nothing else, Tino was allowing her into another aspect of his life. The most important one to him. That was so huge, she could barely wrap her mind around it.
The fact that he was doing so without knowing about the baby boggled her mind even more.
He might not love her, but she had a different place in his life than any woman had since the death of his wife six years ago.
* * *
FAITH CONCENTRATED ON the strains of classical music filling her Mini. At least, she tried to. She was extremely nervous about this dinner. She shouldn’t be. Over the past year, they’d discovered that she and Tino were compatible in and out of bed. She and Giosue got along great in the classroom as well. It should all be good.
Only, telling herself that didn’t make the butterflies playing techno music in her stomach go away. This was the two of them together. Tino and Giosue. The three of them really.
How they interacted would dictate a big chunk of her future; she was sure of it. Tino had to be testing the waters and, as absolutely inconceivable as she found that, it sort of fit in with his odd behavior lately.
He’d called her again today. She’d missed the call and when she’d tried to return it he’d been in a meeting. His message had simply said he’d been thinking of her.
Seriously strange.
If he’d said he’d been thinking of sex with her, she wouldn’t have been surprised at all. The man had the libido of an eighteen-year-old. Sex was a really important part of his life. Important enough that he pursued it even though he had said he never wanted to remarry or get serious with a woman.
But he hadn’t said he was missing the sex. He’d said he was missing her. Well, they would be together again soon enough. And then they would see what they would see.
Her phone rang, playing his distinctive ringtone. She never answered when she was driving, so she forced herself to ignore it. Besides, she was almost to Grisafi Vineyard. He could say whatever he wanted when she got there. Most likely, he was calling to see where she was.
But she wasn’t late.
Well, not much, anyway. Maybe ten minutes. He had to be used to her sketchy time-keeping skills by now. It was one of the reasons that she loved living in Sicily. Tino was very un-Sicilian in his perfect punctuality and rigid schedule keeping. She’d teased him about it more than once.
He’d told her he had no choice, doing business on an international scale. She suspected it was in his nature and that was that.
She couldn’t see Tino changing for the convenience of others, not even when it came to making money.
She turned down the long drive that led to Casa di Fede. Faith House. She’d thought it was neat the house shared her name when she’d first come to visit Agata. Later, when she realized Tino lived here, she’d seen it as an indication they were meant to be together. Even if it was temporary.
Thinking about the coincidence sent another bubble of hope fizzing through her. Maybe it meant something more than what she’d thought. He and his family were wrapped around her life, and she was threaded through his, in ways neither had anticipated or even wanted at first.
She pulled up in front of the sprawling farmhouse. It had been in the family for six generations and been built onto almost that number of times until it had two master suites, one in its own wing with two additional bedrooms. There were four more bedrooms in the rest of the house, a formal salon, a family entertainment room that opened onto the lanai beside the oversize two-tiered pool and spa area, a huge kitchen, a library and two offices.
One was Tino’s, and the smaller, less-organized one was his father’s. Agata used the library as her office when she was working on her charity work. She had her own sitting room off the master suite, as well.
Faith had learned all of this on her previous visits with the older woman. What she hadn’t known was how overwhelming she would find the familiar home now that she was here to share dinner with Tino and his son. She sat in her car, staring at the proof of generations of Grisafis living in the same area. Proof of Tino’s roots and his wealth. Proof that he already had what she had most craved her whole life.
A family.
The prospect that he might be willing to share all that with her was almost more than she could take. Terrifying didn’t begin to describe it. Because even if Valentino Grisafi wanted her in his life, she of all people knew there was no guarantee she could keep him. No more than she’d kept the father she never knew, or her mother, or the first family that said they would adopt her, or Taylish…or her unborn son, Kaden.
Dwelling on the pain of the past had never helped her before; she knew it wasn’t about to start now. She needed to let the past go and hope for the future, or her own fears were going to destroy her chance at happiness.
With that resolved, she opened her car door. Her phone trilled Tino’s ringtone again as she stepped out of the car.
She flipped it open. “Wow, I know you’re impatient, but this is borderline obsessive, Tino. I’m here already.”
“I merely wished to—”
She rang the bell and he stopped talking.
“It is the doorbell. I must let you go.”
Shaking her head at that, she shrugged and disconnected the call.
He opened the door and then stood there staring at her as if she was an apparition—of not particularly friendly aspect. In truth, he looked absolutely horrified.
“Faith!”
“The last time I looked, yes.”
“What are you doing here?” He shook his head. “It does not matter. You need to leave. Now.”
“What? Why?”
“This is my fault.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I can see where my phone calls may have given you the wrong impression.”
“That you might be impatient to see me?”
“Yes, I am. I was. But not here. Not now.”
“Tino, you aren’t making any sense.”
“This is not a good time, Faith. I need you to leave now.”
“Won’t Gio be disappointed?”
“Gio…why would you ask about my son? Look, it doesn’t matter, we have a dinner guest coming.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know. I’m here.”
“This is no time for jokes, carina.”
“Tino, you’re starting to worry me.” Really. Definitely. Positive that Giosue would not lie and say his father had approved inviting her for dinner, she was flummoxed. Besides, hadn’t Tino helped his son make the map? What was going on? “Tino—”
“Signora!” An excited little boy voice broke into the bizarre conversation. “You are here!”
Giosue rushed past his father to throw his arms around Faith in a hug. She returned the embrace with a smile, loving the naturally affectionate nature of most of the Sicilians she had met.
Tino stood there looking at them in abject horror.
Giosue stepped back, self-consciously straightening his button-up shirt. He’d dressed up for the dinner in an outfit close to the uniform he wore to school of obviously higher quality and minus the tie. He looked like a miniature version of his father, who was wearing custom-tailored brown slacks with a champagne-colored dress shirt—untucked, the top button undone.
The clothes were absolutely yummy on the father and adorable on the son.
Faith was glad she’d taken the time to change from the clothing she wore to teach in. Her dress was made from yellow silk batiked by a fellow artist with strands of peacock blue, sunset orange and even a metallic dye with a gold cast. Faith had fallen in love with the silk when she’d seen it at an artists’ fair and had to buy it. She’d had it made into a dress of simple design with spaghetti straps that highlighted her curves and made her feel deliciously feminine. A new addition to her wardrobe, Tino had not yet seen it.
Regardless of his other reactions to her arrival, that certain gleam she knew so well in her lover’s eyes said he approved her choice.
Unaware of the strange overtones to the adults’ conversation, Gio took her hand and held it. “Papa, this is Signora Guglielmo.” Then the boy smiled up at her with pure innocence. “Signora, this is my papa, Signor Valentino Grisafi.”
“Your papa and I have met,” Faith said, when Tino remained silent and frozen like a statue. An appalled statue.
“You have?” Gio looked confused, maybe even a little hurt. “Papa told me he did not know you. Nonna told him he would like you though.”
“I did not realize that Signora Guglielmo was the woman I know as Faith Williams.” He looked at her accusingly, as if it was her fault.
“You are friends?” Giosue asked.
Faith waited to hear what her lover would say to that.
Tino looked from her to his son, his expression impossible to read. “Si. We are friends.”
Giosue’s face broke out into a grin and he giggled. “You didn’t know? Truly?”
“Truly.”
“That is a good joke, isn’t it, Papa?”
“A good joke indeed,” Tino agreed, sounding anything but amused.
Faith wasn’t feeling too lighthearted, either. Tino hadn’t approved inviting her for dinner. He hadn’t written those directions out with her in mind to use them. He’d had no intention of inviting her into an aspect of his life he had heretofore kept separate from her. In fact, he was clearly dismayed and not at all happy by this evening’s turn of events.
He’d approved inviting his son’s teacher. Another woman. A woman who Tino would have been told by his son and mother was single, near him in age and attractive (or so Agata said every time she lamented Faith’s unwed state). If the fact that Giosue had been matchmaking was obvious to Faith, it had to have been just as apparent to his father. Add to that the little detail that Agata had patently put her two cents in, and Faith was painting a picture in her mind that held no gratification for her.
Tino had approved inviting to dinner a woman his son and mother were obviously hoping he would find more than a little interesting.
All of the little pipe dreams Faith had been building since spending the night for the first time at Tino’s flat, crashed and burned.
But she wasn’t a wimp. Far from it. She’d taken a lot more that life had to dish out without giving up. She was here now. And she had important motivation to make this evening work in spite of her lover’s negative reaction to her appearance.
Perhaps if Tino saw how good they could be together around his family, he’d rethink the parameters on their relationship. Then telling him about the baby wouldn’t be so hard.
And maybe the Peruvian rain forest would freeze over in a freak weather anomaly tonight, too.
Okay, that kind of negative thinking wasn’t going to do her any good. She had to think positive. No matter what, she wasn’t about to beg off dinner. That would hurt Giosue, and Faith didn’t let children down. Ever.
She’d experienced that particular phenomenon too many times herself to inflict it on the young people in her life.
She gave both males her best winning smile and asked, “May I come in now, or were you planning to have dinner on the front porch?”
Giosue laughed and dragged her over the threshold, forcing his father to move out of the way or get knocked into. “We’re eating outside, but in back, silly signora.”
“And did you cook, Gio?”
“I helped. Ask Papa.”
She looked back over her shoulder at the silent man following their progress through the house.
“Indeed he did. He is a favorite with our housekeeper.”
“It’s easy to understand why. Gio’s a little charmer.”
“Signora!” Gio exclaimed in the long-suffering tone only an eight-year-old boy could affect so perfectly.
“Do not tell me it embarrasses you to discover your favorite teacher also holds you in high regard,” his father teased him.
The boy shrugged, blushing, but said nothing. Faith’s heart melted a little more toward him. He would make such a wonderful stepson and big brother. But she was getting ahead of herself. By light-years.
“So, what are we having for dinner?” she asked.
Especially after realizing Tino had not intended to invite her to dinner. That he had, in fact, been wholly ignorant of her relationship with his son and mother.
“Wait until you see. I got to stuff the manicotti. The filling is yummy.”
Giosue was right, the manicotti was delicious. As was everything else, and the company wasn’t bad, either. Tino started off a little stiff, but being around his son relaxed him. As hard as he so plainly tried to keep things between himself and Faith distant, his usual behavior got the better of him. He touched her when he talked to her, nothing overtly sexual. Just the normal affectionate-Sicilian-nature style, but it felt good—right.
Gio asked tons of questions about her art, questions there wasn’t time for during class. Several times she caught Tino looking surprised by her answers. But then, he knew almost nothing about that part of her life. For the first time that really bothered her. Her art made up the biggest part of her life and he was sadly ignorant of it.
That realization, more than anything else, put the nature of their relationship into perspective. While his behavior lately might indicate it was changing, theirs was still primarily a sexually based connection.
“You are asking so many questions, amorino, I am beginning to think you wish to grow up to be an artist.”
“Oh, no, Papa, I want to be a winemaker like Nonno.”
“Not a businessman and vintner like your papa?” Faith asked.
“He will have to have another son to do that. I want to get my hands dirty,” Giosue said with absolute certainty.
Rather than take offense, Tino laughed aloud. “He sounds just like my father.” He shook his head, the amusement still glittering in his eyes. “However, there will be no brothers, or sisters either. Perhaps Calogero will finally marry and have children, but if not—when I get too old to do my job, we will have to hire a business manager.”
“You will never be too old, Papa.”
Tino just smiled and ruffled his son’s hair. “You know there is nothing to stop you from making art a hobby while you follow in your grandfather’s footsteps. Isn’t that right, Faith?”
She was still reeling from the dead-on surety in Tino’s tone when he said there would be no sisters or brothers for Giosue, but she managed to nod and smile at the expectant little boy.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_7f8115fa-095d-59ce-93e2-7bb88fa60890)
TINO REJOINED FAITH on the terrace after tucking his son into bed.
Gio had wheedled, pleaded and distracted every time Faith had started making noises about going home. When it was finally time for him to go to bed, he had even gone so far as to ask to have her come in and say good-night to him before going to sleep.
She’d done so without the slightest hesitation, kissing Gio’s head before wishing him a good sleep and pleasant dreams and then leaving the room. Tino found it disconcerting that she was so relaxed, not to mention good, with his son. Their friendship was of longstanding duration, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Except uncomfortable.
He didn’t like feeling unsettled. It made him irritable.
And it wasn’t at all cute, like his lover when she was woken to go home after an evening of lovemaking.
Faith stood on the edge of the stone terrace, looking out over the vineyard. The green, leafy vines looked black in the moonlight, but she glowed. The cool illumination of the night sky reflected off her porcelain features, lending her a disturbing, ethereal beauty. She looked like an angelic specter that could be snatched to the other realms in the blink of an eye.
It was not a thought he wanted to entertain. Not after that very thing had happened to Maura through her death. The one challenge to their life together that he could not fight.
He was frowning when he laid his hand on Faith’s shoulder. “He is on his way to dreamland.”
“He’s so incredibly sweet. You are a very blessed man, Valentino Grisafi.” She turned to face him.
“I know it.” He sighed. “But there are times he puts me in an inconvenient situation.”
“Like when he invites your current lover to dinner?”
“Yes.”
She winced. “You could have said no.”
“So could you.”
“I thought you wanted me here.”
“I thought he had invited his teacher from school.”
“I am his teacher,” she chided. “His art teacher, anyway.”
“Why did you never mention this to me?” It seemed almost contrived to him.
“How could you not know? I mean, I’m aware you are supremely uninterested in my life outside our time together, but I’ve mentioned teaching art to primary schoolers in Marsala.”
“I thought you did it to support your art hobby. My mother told me Gio’s teacher was a highly successful artist who donated her time.” Realizing how wrong he’d been made him feel like fool.
Another unpleasant and infrequent experience. Grisafi men did not make a habit of ignorance or stupid behavior. His pride stung at the knowledge he was guilty of both. Knowing more about Faith would have saved him the current situation.
“And in your eyes I could not be that woman?” Faith asked in that tone all men knew was very dangerous.
The one that said a husband would be sleeping on the sofa for the foreseeable future. Faith was not his wife, but he didn’t want to be cut off from her body, nevertheless. Nor did he wish to offend her in any case.
“In my eyes, that woman, Signora Guglielmo, was Sicilian—and you are not.”
“No, I’m not. Is that a problem for you, Tino?”
Where had that question come from? He was no ethnic supremacist. “Patently not. We have been lovers for a year now, Faith.”
“Almost a year.”
“Near enough.”
“I suppose, but I’m trying to understand why my being a Sicilian art teacher would make me an appropriate dinner companion for you and your son, but being your expatriot American lover does not.”
“It will not work.”
“What?”
“Attempting to use Giosue to insinuate yourself into my life more deeply than I wish you to go.”
Hurt sparked in her peacock eyes, and then anger. “Don’t be paranoid, not to mention criminally conceited. One, I would never use a child—in any way. Two, I knew your son before I met you. What would you have had me do? Start ignoring him in class once you and I had become lovers?”
“Of course not.” He sighed. What a tangle. “But you could have discouraged outright friendship.”
“We were already friends. It would never occur to me to hurt a child with rejection that way. I won’t do it now, either, Tino, not even for you.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He swore. He wasn’t sure, and that was as disturbing as any other revelation from this night. He fell back on what he considered the topic at hand. “Let’s not make this more complicated than we need to. You know I do not allow the women I sleep with into my personal life. It would be too messy.”
Cocking her head to one side, she gave him a look filled with disbelief. “You don’t consider what we do together as personal?”
“You are nit-picking semantics here, Faith. You know what I am meaning here. Why are you being willfully obtuse? You knew the limitations of our relationship from the very beginning.” She was not normally so argumentative, and why she had to start being so now was a mystery to him.
Certainly she had strong opinions, but they were not, as a rule, in opposition to his.
“Maybe I’m no longer happy with them.” She watched him as if gauging his reaction to that bombshell.
Alarm bells for a five-alarm fire went off in his head. Her words filled him with pure panic—not an emotion he was used to feeling and not one he had predisposed reactions for. “Faith, you must understand something. I have no plans to remarry. Ever.”
“I know, but—”
Those three little words sent a shard of apprehension right through him. She could not keep thinking in this manner. “If I did remarry, it would be to a traditional Sicilian woman—like Giosue’s mother.”
Some Sicilian men married American women, but it was rare. Even rarer still, almost to the point of nonexistent, were Sicilian men who continued to live on the island after marrying them.
Regardless, were he to remarry, he felt compelled to provide a female influence as like Giosue’s real mother as possible. He owed it to Maura.
Being honest with himself would require he acknowledge that his reasons were not limited to cultural gaps and the obligation he felt to his dead wife, but had as much to do with a promise to keep. Only one woman put his promise to Maura at risk, his promise not to replace his wife, who had died too young in his heart.
And that woman was a smart, sexy American.
Faith crossed her arms, as if protecting herself from a blow. “Is that why you didn’t nip your son’s obvious attempt at matchmaking in the bud? Because you believed the woman he was trying to fix you up with was Sicilian?”
“Yes.” He could not lie, though the temptation was there.
This time Faith didn’t just wince, she flinched as if struck. “I see.”
“I don’t think you do.” Needing her understanding—her acceptance—he cupped her face with both hands. “My son is the most important person in my life, I would do anything for him.”
“Even remarry.”
“If I believed that was what he truly needed for happiness, yes.” But not to a woman who would expect access to more than his body and bank account. Not to a woman who already threatened his memories of Maura and his promise to her.
Not Faith.
“Do you?”
Again wishing he could lie, he dropped his hands. “I did not, but after tonight, I am not so sure. He loves his grandmother, but he glowed under your affection in a way that he does not with his nonna.”
“He’s very special to me.”
“If he is so special, why did you not tell me he was your student?”
“You already asked that and the simple truth is that I thought you knew. I assumed he and, well, your mother, talked about me. We are friends. I suppose that’s going to send you into another tizzy of paranoia, but please remember, she and I were friends before I even met Gio.”
“You and…and…my mother?”
“Yes.”
Tonight had been one unreal revelation after another. “You did not tell me this.”
“I thought you knew,” she repeated, sounding exasperated. She turned away from him. “Perhaps Agata and I are not as close as I assumed.”
The sad tone in Faith’s voice did something strange to Tino’s heart. He did not like it. At all. He was used to her being happy most of the time—sometimes cranky but never sad. It did not fit her.
“She did talk about you, but I did not realize it was you she was talking about.” His mother had mentioned Gio’s teacher on occasion. Not often, though, and he too wondered if the two women shared as close a friendship as Faith believed.
His mother was a true patron of the arts. She had many acquaintances in the artistic community. He could easily see her warm nature and natural graciousness being mistaken for friendship. But the only artist she mentioned often was TK.
For a while, Tino had been worried his mother had developed a tendre for the male artist. However, when he had mentioned his concern to his father, Rocco Grisafi had laughed until tears came to his eyes. Tino had drawn the conclusion that clearly there was nothing to worry about.
“That’s hardly my fault, Tino.”
“I did not say it was.”
“You implied it by asking why I didn’t tell you.”
What was it with her tonight and this taking apart everything that he said? “You are apparently very close to both my mother and my son and yet you never once mentioned seeing or talking to them.”
“You always discourage me from discussing your family, Tino.”
It was true, but for some reason, the reminder bothered him. Probably because everything was leaving him feeling disconcerted tonight. “I did not think they had a place in our combined life.”
“We don’t have a combined life, do we, Tino?” She was looking at him again and he almost wished she wasn’t.
There was such defeat and sadness in her eyes.
“I do not understand what has changed between us?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all has changed between us.”
“Then why are you sad?”
“Perhaps because I thought it had.”
Why had she believed this?
“You were under the impression I wanted you to come for dinner tonight,” he said, understanding beginning to dawn. Clearly she had liked the idea. Learning differently had hurt her. Even though he had not meant for this to happen, he had to take some responsibility for the outcome.
She nodded, silent, her lovely red hair swaying against her shoulders. He had the wholly inappropriate—considering the gravity of their discussion—urge to run his fingers through the familiar silky strands. Worse, he knew he did not want to stop there.
Focus, he must focus.
“It is not good for Giosue to be exposed to my lovers.”
“I understand you think that.”
“It is the truth.”
She said nothing.
He could not leave it there. The compulsion to explain—to make her understand—was too great. “When our relationship ends, he will be disappointed. Already he has expectations that cannot be fulfilled.”
“I’m his friend.”
“He wants you to be his mother.”
“And you don’t.”
“No.” It was a knee-jerk response, the result of ingrained beliefs since his wife’s death.
Shocked to realize he wasn’t sure he meant it. With that came grief—a sense of loss that made no sense and was something he was not even remotely willing to dwell on.
“Because I’m not Sicilian.”
“Because our relationship is not a love affair.” But was that true?
How could it be anything else when he could not love her? He had promised Maura that he would love her always. Her sudden death had not negated that pledge.
“I thought we were friends, too.”
“We are friends.” Friendship he could do—was necessary even.
“But not sweethearts.”
His heart twinged, making his tone come out more cynical than he meant it to. “What an old-fashioned term.”
She shrugged. “It’s one Tay used to use.” She said the dead man’s name with a wistfulness that he did not like.
“I gather he was an unusual man.”
“Yes. He was. One of the best, maybe even the best man I ever knew.”
“But he is gone.”
“Yes, just as Gio’s mother is gone.”
“Maura will never be gone from my heart.”
“No, she won’t, but are you so sure your heart has no room for anyone else?”
“That is not a discussion you and I should be having.” It was one he frankly could not handle.
A Sicilian man should be able to handle anything. Even the death of his wife and raising his child without a mother. But most definitely any conversation with his current mistress. The fact that he could not shamed him.
“Because we agreed that sex and friendship was enough?” she asked in a voice husky with emotion.
“Yes.”
“And if it isn’t any longer…for either of us?”
That could not be true. He would not allow it to be. “Do not presume to speak for me.”
“Fine. What if I am only speaking for myself?”
“Then we would need to talk about whether what we have is still working.” It was not a discussion he wanted to have. He was far from ready to let her go.
She nodded and turned from him. “I think it’s time I was going.” She was hurting, for all that she tried to hide it.
“No.” He hated the melancholy in her voice.
He hated the sense that somehow it was his fault. He hated thinking of going to bed alone after spending the whole evening in her company. Even worse, he hated feeling as if he might lose her and really hated how much that bothered him.
Perhaps he could erase her sorrow while easing his own fears. He was a big proponent of the win-win business proposition. It was even better when applied to personal relationships.
Before she could take more than a couple of steps, he reached out and caught her shoulder.
“Tino, don’t.”
“You do not mean that, carina.” He drew her back toward his body. He could not imagine doing the opposite—pushing her away.
Yet he knew he could not hold on to her forever. One day she would tire of life in Sicily—so different from her home—and would return to America. Wasn’t that what all American women did eventually?
Faith was currently the only single American woman he knew who was making a go of actually living permanently in Sicily. For all its charm, Marsala was a far cry from New York or London.
That only meant they should not waste the time they did have. “We are good together. Do not allow tonight to change that.”
“I need more, Tino.”
“Then I will give you more.” He was very good at that.
“I’m not talking about sex.”
He turned her to face him and lowered his head so his lips hovered above hers. “Let’s not talk at all.”
Then he kissed her. He would show her that they were too right together to dismiss their relationship because it wasn’t packaged in orange blossoms and meters of white tulle.
She fought her own response. He could feel the tension in her, knew she wanted to resist, but though she might want to, she was as much a slave to their mutual attraction as he. Her body knew where it belonged. In his arms.
But her brain was too active and she tore her lips from his. “No, Tino.”
“Do not say no. Say rather, ‘Make love to me, Tino.’ This is what I wish to hear.”
“We’re supposed to be exclusive.”
“We are.”
“You were willing to have a blind date with another woman, Tino.” She wrenched herself from his arms. “I cannot be okay with that.”
“It was not a date.”
She glared at him, but it was the light of betrayal in her eyes that cut him to the quick. “As good as.”
“I did not consider it a date.”
“But you knew your son and mother were matchmaking.”
“I had no intention of being matched.”
“But that’s changed. You said so. You said you would do anything for Gio, even give him a second mother—if she’s Sicilian.” The tone Faith spoke the last words with said how little she thought of his stance on the matter.
“I said I was considering it, not that I had decided to date other women. You are all the woman I want right now.”
“And tomorrow?”
“And tomorrow.”
“So, when does my sell-by date come into effect? Next week? Next month? Next year.”
He wanted to grab her and hold on tight, but he laid gentle hands on her shoulders instead. “You do not have a sell-by date. Our relationship is not cut-and-dried like that.”
“I won’t be with you if you’re going to date other women,” she repeated stubbornly.
“I would not ask you to.”
“What does that mean, Tino?”
“It means you can trust me to be faithful while we are together. Just as I trust you.”
Her eyes glistened suspiciously, sending shards of pain spiking through his gut. He did not want to see her cry. He kissed her, just once, oh so carefully, trying to put the tenderness and commitment—as limited as it might be—that he felt into the caress.
“Let me make love to you.” He was pleading and he did not care.
They needed each other tonight, not empty beds where regrets and memories would haunt the hours that should be for sleep. Or making love.
“No more blind dates.”
“It wasn’t—”
But she shushed him with a finger to his lips. “It was. Or would have been. Don’t do it again.”
“You have my word.” Then, because he could not help himself; because he needed it more than breathing or thinking or anything else, he once again kissed her.
He poured his passion and his fear out in that kiss, molding their lips together in a primordial dance.
At first she did not respond. She did not try to push him away, but she did not pull him closer, either. It was the only time in their relationship she had not fallen headfirst into passion with him.
She was still thinking.
He would fix that. Increasing the intensity of their kiss, he stormed her mouth, refusing to allow their mutual desire to remain a prisoner to circumstances that would not…could not…change. Bit by bit her instincts took over.
And once her brain caught up to her body, she melted into him, ending her resistance and giving him access to the interior of her mouth at the same time. She tasted like the coffee laced heavily with rich cream and sweet sugar she had drunk after dinner. It was a flavor he had come to associate only with her.
He drank his own coffee black unless he wanted an erection tenting his slacks—something that was more than inconvenient during his business day, but could be downright embarrassing. This, what they had, was beyond good. It was fantastic, and she would not end it. He could not let her.
Tonight, he would remind her how well he knew her body, what he alone could do to it, how much pleasure he could give her. Her husband had not elicited those sensations in her, or she would not have acted so shocked by each new one when Tino and Faith had first begun their affair.
She had been almost virginal, many of her reactions belying the existence of previous lovers, much less a husband.
He refused to dwell on the sense of alarm he felt realizing the extent of his ignorance about her life. She’d been his son’s art teacher since before they met a year ago, and she had known his mother even longer. Yet Tino had been totally unaware of those facts. As unknowing as he had been about the reality of Faith’s widowhood.
How had her husband died? She’d loved him, thought he was a special man.
A primal need to erase memories of the other male from her drove Tino to deepen the kiss even further.
Faith made a soft sound against his lips. He loved kissing her. Had from the very first. She was more responsive to his lips claiming hers than any woman he had ever known. And she was far from shyly submissive. She gave as good as she got, with a passion that turned him inside out.
Damn. He wanted her.
But not out here where someone might see what should be entirely private between two people. The temptation to once again make her his, right here under the stars, was strong however. He fought it, sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her inside.
He went directly to his room, no thought of taking Faith anywhere else even entering his mind. This was his bedroom. His bed. And for now at least, she was his woman.
The huge four-poster with wooden canopy had been used by his family for generations. Though the mattress and box springs were new—a pillow-top with extra coils imported from America on his younger brother’s recommendation. It had been a good piece of advice, for more than one reason.
Not only was it incredibly comfortable, but giving up the mattress and even the bed linens he had shared with his wife had been instrumental in Tino finally being able to sleep in his own suite once again.
Pulling back the coverlet, he then laid Faith onto the bed.
She looked around the room, her expression going from curious to surprised. “This is your room.”
He locked the door and returned to the bed, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. “Where else would I take you?”
“I don’t know.” She licked her lips, her focus on his chest as he peeled the shirt from his body. “You’re such an incredibly sexy man, you know?”
“You have mentioned believing so before.”
She laughed, the sound husky and warm. “I meant it then and I mean it now. I love looking at you.”
“I thought it was men who were supposed to be the visual sex.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, kicking her sandals off. “Maybe if all women had such yummy eye candy to look at, we’d be considered the visual sex, too.”
“So, I am eye candy?”
She licked her lips as if tasting something really sweet and nodded.
His sex jolted at memories of what it felt like to be partaken of by that delectable little tongue. “I think you are a minx.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
She gave him a saucy wink and stretched her body, putting her curves on sensual display.
He shook his head but knew he had no hope of clearing it. He’d been here before with this woman, so filled with desire that everything else was just a gray fog around them. He unzipped his slacks, hissing as the parting fabric made way for his steel-hard manhood.
This woman affected him like no other.
“I love it when you make that sound.”
“You are the only one who has ever heard it.” With his admission, he stripped off the remainder of his clothes—the need to deflect automatic.
“Really?” she asked, nevertheless.
“Yes.” He joined her on the bed, on all fours above her. “I want you naked.”
She brushed her hand down his flank. “I like naked.”
He could no more suppress the growl her touch evoked than he could the need to return it. He brought their mouths together again as he reached down and caressed her through the silk of her dress. All evening he had wanted to do this, to feel the curves he knew intimately through the thin fabric. Regardless of how surreal the night had been, his desire for her was as strong as always, building with each minute he was in her company.
She moaned into the kiss, arching into his touch, begging silently for more.
And more was what he was an expert at giving her. He would remind her of that. Show her that each time could be better than the last.
He continued the strokes along her breasts, the dip of her waist and bow of her hips. Over and over again, he touched the places on her body that he knew drove her wild.
Her hands were busy, too, skimming along his heated skin, kneading his chest, but best of all was when she grabbed him—her fingers digging into his shoulders with white-knuckle intensity. When she got to this point—where she could no longer concentrate on pleasuring him—he knew she was past thought. Past control.
Exactly where he wanted her to be.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_61425554-974b-5a9f-b273-d91254eef78a)
IT WAS TIME to take her clothes off. He did, using the opportunity to tease and tantalize her further. But revealing her peaches-and-cream body was a double-edged sword. The light smattering of freckles over her shoulders and upper breasts were his downfall. She had none on her face, so the cinnamon dots felt secret—private—for him alone. A special knowledge shared just between them. He was tempted to count them—with kisses—every time he got her disrobed.
This time was no different.
The allure of her body for him never diminished.
He traced the light dots on her skin. “You are so beautiful.”
“You’ve got an unnatural affection for my freckles.” It might be a full sentence, but the way she said it, breathless with pauses between words, told him that she was no more in possession of her faculties than she had been a moment before.
“You think?” he asked against her silken skin, tasting the brown sugar dots that his mind told him could not be sweet but his tongue told him they were. But then, everything about her was sweet.
Dangerously so.
Her only answer was a moan as his lips trailed the natural path to one pebbled nipple. She shuddered beneath him, her body translating her every feeling with sexy clarity. She loved nipple play and he loved tasting and touching the turgid buds.
He delicately licked the very tip, then circled the peak with his tongue, moving slowly to lave her aureole despite the need riding him hard enough to make him ache. He refused to rush this. He had something to prove to her.
He kept at it until even the act of huffing a warm breath over her sensitized skin made her tremble and whimper. Then he moved to minister in the same way to its twin.
“What are you doing? Tormenting me?” she cried out as he sucked her nipple gently into his mouth.
He lifted his head and met peacock blue eyes glazed with pleasure. “I am giving you more.”
“I don’t want more. I want you in me.” Then she bit her lip as if realizing what she’d said.
“Trust me, this—” he carefully slid two fingers into her superbly lubricated, swollen channel “—this is where I wish to be also, but only when I have given you more.” He thrust with his fingers, hitting that interior bundle of nerves some women referred to as their G-spot.
She cried out, the sound adding to his own arousal, making it harder to wait, but he would.
Tonight would be spectacular.
He continued to massage her as he leaned down and once again claimed her mouth as his. Her return kisses were desperate and filled with the feminine fire he found so irresistible.
Her walls clenched around his fingers as he moved them in and out, stimulating her G-spot with each slow stroke. She undulated, her body straining toward him and moving with those tiny, involuntary jerks that enhanced her pleasure.
He could feel her need to climax rolling off her in palpable waves of sexual energy. Her little whimpers against his lips were an inarticulate form of begging he’d become addicted to their first time together.
His Faith did not play mind games or try to hide her physical needs or desires. She expressed them in a dozen different ways, all of which turned him on. Sex with this woman was volcanically hot, but it was also honest. She amazed and delighted him.
Now it was his turn.
He brushed her clitoris with his thumb, just a light movement back and forth…back and forth, but that was all she needed. Launching upward with her pelvis, she convulsed around his fingers. Her sharp little teeth bit into his lower lip as she made a keening sound in her throat, telling him without words that this was exactly what he wanted it to be.
More.
He kissed her through the orgasm, helping her to come down, but not too far. He was not done with her yet. Not nearly.
When her breathing was less ragged, he gently lifted her legs so they draped over his forearms and he used the position to spread her thighs until she was completely open to his gaze. Her entire body was still flushed from her climax, a beautiful rose red that he could not wait to spear with his own throbbing and as yet unsatisfied flesh. Diamond hard, her nipples poked straight up, pleading for his touch. A soft sheen of perspiration coated her upper chest, attesting to the level of pleasure she had already received.
He started to speak and had to clear his throat.
She smiled at him and the words came out in a masculine growl he wasn’t in any way ashamed of. “You are so incredibly beautiful like this.”
“Sated from your lovemaking?”
“You are not sated.” He tipped his pelvis, brushing her entrance with the tip of his penis, eliciting a second keening sound from her. He smiled. “You still need me.”
Something flashed in her eyes, something he could not quite read but that looked a lot like vulnerability. “Yes.”
“I need you as well.”
“I know.” But the words came out sounding bleak.
He did not like it. There was no place for melancholy in their bed.
“You are not my mistress.” He didn’t know why he said it, but he felt compelled.
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“You are not my mistress. You are amore mio and my friend.”
“Yes.” The smile she gave him was still tinged with sadness, but a glimmer of hope shone in her gaze.
Why it should matter to him that it was there, that he would even desire such a thing, considering what it implied from her earlier words, he did not know. But illogical as it might be, he was glad.
“I am going to give you more now, carina. Are you ready for me?”
She nodded, her breath coming out in little pants, but her body did not tense in his hold. She trusted him completely. Amazing. Although she had climaxed, her body was ready for more. Ready for him.
He pressed forward, allowing the head of his granite-hard penis to brush her opening again, but did not go in, teasing them both. Her lips curved in a familiar smile as she seemed to simply melt against the bed, waiting on him with a sexy expectation he adored. It said she knew he would take care of her wants.
He thrust his hips, allowing his length to slide along her slick folds. It felt so good—so perfect—he groaned, the sound reverberating deep in his chest. With her, he was primal man. “You are so wet.”
“You are so earthy, Tino. No one would expect it.” Using her lower back muscles, she lifted herself and increased the stimulation, showing the uninhibited aspect of her own nature.
“Only you get to see this side of me.” That had to count for something.
“I better be the only one, mister.”
He laughed softly as he allowed his thickened member to enter her. “You are like hot silk. I feel like I am going to lose my mind every time I enter you.”
“I lost mine a long time ago.” She pressed her head back into the pillow, her eyelids going half-mast.
He smiled and shook his head as he moved forward with rocking motions that made it possible for her to take his entire length. He was long and thick, and that had overwhelmed more than one lover. His and Maura’s intimacy had been loving and passionate, but nothing like what it was like with Faith.
Maura had never been as comfortable exposing her desire, which was to be expected as she had been raised in the very sheltered environment of a traditional Sicilian household. But he adored that element of Faith’s lovemaking. The way his current lover not only could take his full length, but craved it was something a man like him could and would never take for granted.
He could not help rejoicing in the amount of belief in him that Faith expressed every time they came together.
“You never flinch from me.” The wonder that laced his voice embarrassed him a little, but like so many things with this woman—was an uncontrollable response.
In so many ways she was dangerous to him, but he continued to play Russian roulette with his emotions—risking the promises he had made to his dead wife. His brain told him he should get out before he got in too deep, but everything inside him rebelled at the idea.
“Why would I?” Her brows wrinkled in genuine confusion. “We are a perfect fit.”
Perfect only because she relaxed so well for him—for she was tight. Oh, so damn tight. “So, perfect.”
“Mmmm…” She licked her lips. “You’re big, but it’s good, Tino.”
“It is better than good.”
“Yessss…” she hissed as he finally sheathed himself to the hilt in her fantastic heat.
He tucked her legs around his hips. “I need to kiss you.”
“Please, Tino.” She was straining toward him even as he brought their mouths together.
Nothing had ever felt so good.
The part of his brain where guilt resided rejected that thought even as he set a steady, slow rhythm. Kissing, their bodies moved together in a motion filled with tenderness he did not want to examine.
He could feel her desire building as was his. He refused to go over, no matter how much his body clamored for the ultimate release. He was determined to bring her to another shattering peak. Her second climax would be more intense than the first.
It would be more.
Of its own volition, his pelvis swiveled on each downward thrust, as if his body had been trained to pleasure this woman exactly as she needed. Pavlov’s response. Her pleasure gave him intense satisfaction and pleasure, therefore he did all that he could to bring out every little gasp, each sweet moan, every tightening of her muscles, each shudder she could not control.
Suddenly they were both coming together, his own orgasm taking him over before he could even hope to stop it.
But he did not want to as she contracted around him, her peak lasting seconds that turned into minutes while his body vibrated with matching sensation until his muscles felt like they would collapse.
Their mouths separated, allowing each of them to take in gasps of air and he collapsed, managing only to deflect part of his weight to the side, but maintaining skin contact. From past experience, he knew she preferred that. Thank the Holy Mother because he could not have moved if he tried.
“Thank you.”
“No, cara, thank you.”
She made another sound, but he knew she would slide into sleep soon. People said men fell asleep after sex, but he rarely did. His little American lover, however, experienced orgasm as some kind of somnolence button. He did not mind. He looked forward to these moments when he could cuddle her without having to put up his macho facade.
But tonight he did something he never did. Or at least had not until their last time together in his apartment in Marsala. He let his body relax in preparation for sleep.
Although Giosue woke early, Valentino always woke even earlier. He was not worried about being caught with her. Besides, there just seemed to be something so cold about kicking her out of his bed after such an intense experience. It had been getting harder and harder to do so lately, anyway.
He was going to have to get a handle on this softening of his relationship rules, but not tonight. He wanted to sleep, for just a little while, holding Faith.
Gio would never know and therefore could not be hurt by it. He would no doubt sleep even later than he normally did on a Saturday morning. Valentino had allowed his son to stay up later than usual because of their guest.
Their guest.
His lover.
He mentally shook his head at that. He would never have guessed that she was so ingrained in the life of his family. He still was not sure how he felt about that, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough to try to figure out how the woman who had shared his bed for almost a year was such an enigma to him.
Just as it would be soon enough to reinstate his necessary rules for the women who shared his bed. Or perhaps he should reconsider those rules for Faith. At least a little.
After all, she was more than a mere bed partner.
She was his friend.
A friend he apparently knew less about than any of his business rivals. And he trusted her enough to share an intimate side of his life.
* * *
FOR THE SECOND time ever, Faith woke in the arms of her lover.
Tino had allowed her to sleep in his bed? In his family home?
Maybe he really had given her more last night.
Or had that move been an unconscious one? It didn’t really matter if he had considered it, or acted on instinct—it had to mean something.
Just as his promise not to go searching for that perfect Sicilian paragon right away meant something. Gio was Tino’s heart, but the dedicated father had still reaffirmed his commitment not to date other women while he and Faith were together.
She’d thought her heart was being ripped right out of her chest when he said he thought Gio might need a new mother, but that mother could not be Faith. She’d been angry and hurt and scared and a lot of other emotions that confused her because she couldn’t be sure if they were genuine or induced by the pregnancy hormones rampaging through her body.
The two pregnancies she’d had before had sparked serious inner upheavals as well. She and Tay would have argued constantly if he hadn’t taken her hormone-driven insecurities in his stride. Would Tino have the same patience? Did she want him to? There had been instances when Tay’s tolerance had felt more patronizing than understanding.
Right now she felt she was out of control when it came to her feelings and she didn’t enjoy the experience. There had been times the night before she’d been sorely tempted to sock Tino good and hard, but then the pendulum that was her emotions had swung to needing the reassurance that sex provided.
She didn’t think Tino was any surer of his feelings than she was. Because in the same conversation he’d spoken of getting Gio a Sicilian mother, he’d also spoken of not wanting to end things with Faith. He knew she wouldn’t be any man’s mistress.
Early in their acquaintance, she’d made sure he was aware of how she felt about those kinds of double standards.
Their intimacy last night had been awesome, she couldn’t deny it. She’d felt more connected to Tino than ever before. He’d been so intent on giving her pleasure, but more than that, he’d given her something of himself. It was in the way he’d moved inside her, with an undisputable tenderness that brought tears to her eyes just before they’d found the ultimate pleasure together.
As much as she hated to, she forced herself to slide from his embrace. Even if she thought Tino could handle it, she did not want to be caught in his bed by anyone in his household, but especially by Gio. She loved the little boy too much to spring such a relationship on him without some sort of leading up to it.
He might be playing matchmaker, but that didn’t mean he was ready for the reality of his father having a lover, a woman who had taken his mother’s place in the huge four-poster bed. She still could not believe they had made love in his bedroom. That not only had he initiated the lovemaking, but he had carried her in here.
She took a quick shower in his en suite, halting midstep on the way out by the sight of the statue on his dresser. It was of a faceless woman, her arms outstretched to a man holding a baby boy. The man was faceless and so was the baby, but she knew it was male.
How could she not? She’d done the statue. The original, complete with perfect replicas of her own face and that of Taylish holding a little boy whose features were an amalgam of both of them resided in her studio at home.
“My mother bought it for me.”
That didn’t surprise Faith. Nor did the fact that Tino was awake. He slept too lightly not to have woken to the shower running. “Do you like it?”
“Very much. It reminds me of when Maura was alive.”
“Oh.” Of course…there was nothing in this statue to show the deep sorrow that etched her face in the original.
“It is as if she has her arms open, welcoming Gio and myself into them.”
“Or as if she’s letting you go.” That’s what she’d titled the first one she’d done, but when she created another faceless rendition, she’d simply called it Family.
“Is that wishful thinking?” Tino asked, an edge to his voice.
She turned to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Are you hoping my wife has finally let me go so that I might claim someone new in her place?” There was nothing to give away what he was thinking in his face.
It didn’t matter. The only course open to her—especially now—was honesty. “If I say yes?”
“I will remind you that if I ever do remarry it will be to a Sicilian woman, someone who can give Gio that little part of his mother at the very least.” Pain flashed in his eyes, quickly followed by guilt and then both were gone, leaving only the stoic expression behind.
Promise not to date others notwithstanding, she could really have done without that reminder. The knowledge he was still so adamant about not marrying her hurt. Badly. And she was absolutely certain that pain was not a hormones-gone-wild-induced emotion.
“Why did you let me sleep here last night?” she had to ask as she fought against showing the pain his words had caused.
“I fell asleep.”
“You never just fall asleep.”
“There is a first time for everything.”
So it had been subconscious. She’d wondered and now she knew. He didn’t know why he’d brought her to his bed in his family home. And honestly? That didn’t matter right now. What did matter was that he regretted it. That much was obvious. Anything else he might be feeling was hidden behind the enigmatic mask he wore.
And she should not be surprised.
She was the first woman to share that bed since the death of his wife. As hard as his regret was for her to bear, the situation was equally difficult for him. Only in a different way.
She’d had her own moments of letting go in the years since Taylish and their unborn son had died. She knew how wrenching they could be. Regardless of her own feelings right now, she could not ignore the pain twisting inside Tino. It was not in her nature to do so, but beyond that—she loved him.
She caressed the statue. It was a beautiful piece. One of her favorites. The one in her studio expressed and brought a measure of peace for an emotional agony she had been unable to give voice to. No one had been there to hear.
She would be there for Tino now, if he wanted her to be. “Tino—”
“I won’t be able to see you again until my parents return.” The words were clipped, hard.
“I understand.” She really did.
He stood there, silent, as if he expected her to say something else.
“It’s all right, Tino.” She gave one last lingering glance at the statue and then began dressing.
He flinched, as if those were not the words he wanted or expected to hear. “I will see you then?”
She paused in the act of slipping on her sandals. “Of course.”
“Good.” He nodded, looking at a loss. So different from the typical Tino—business tycoon and suave but distant lover.
When she was done dressing she stopped in front of him and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “It really is going to be all right.” Letting go was a necessary part of grief.
The fact that Tino was doing so, even if only on a subconscious level, gave her hope.
“No doubt.”
“It isn’t easy for any of us.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, edgy again. Or still. He hadn’t relaxed since she came out of the bathroom.
“Letting go.”
“I have nothing to let go of.”
She didn’t argue. There would be no point. And it would only make him more determined to prove himself right. He had enough to overcome in moving forward, without adding another dose of his stubborn will to the mix.
“I’ll see you when your parents return from Naples.”
* * *
VALENTINO SWORE AND slammed his hand down beside the statue Faith had admired. His wife letting him go? He did not think so.
Maura would be in his heart forever. He had promised.
The memory was as visceral today as it had been an hour after it happened.
His beautiful young wife had started off not feeling well that morning. He’d had the temerity to hope it meant she was pregnant again.
But that had not been the case.
Ignorant of the tragedy to come, he’d flown out of country for a business meeting in Greece with hope in his heart of increasing his family. He remembered that while his wife’s body betrayed her and she slipped further away from him, he had spent the day smiling more than usual, feeling on top of the world. And then his world had come crashing down.
His meeting had been a success, opening the doors for the major expansion of the Grisafi family interests. He would exchange that success and all that had come later for one more lucid day with the mother of his son.
Valentino’s mother had called him just before he boarded the jet for home. Papa had taken Maura to the hospital because she had passed out walking up the stairs. By the time Valentino had reached the hospital, his wife was in a coma.
Petrified for the first time in his life, sweating through his expensive shirt, he’d rushed into the room. Maura had been so damn pale and completely motionless. He’d taken her lifeless hand, his heart ceasing at its coolness. He had begged her to wake up, to speak to him, to squeeze his hand—anything.
But nothing. Not then. Not later. No fluttering eyelids. No half-formed words. No goodbyes. Absolutely nothing.
The only sounds had come from him—his desperate pleas and constant talking until his voice was no more than a hoarse whisper in hopes of sparking a connection to her shut-down brain—and from the machines hooked up to her. Machines and medications that had been unsuccessful at saving her life.
Her first discernable diabetic attack had been her last. Nothing the doctors did brought her blood sugars under control and she died without coming out of the coma.
He’d spent every minute with her, but it had done no good. And when she’d gone into cardiac arrest, the doctors had called security to force him from the room. He’d been in another country when she’d fallen into the coma and out in the hall when she let go of life.
The doctors said her reaction to the disease was extremely rare. But not rare enough, was it? His wife, the mother of his child was dead and nothing would ever change that.
He would never forget the rage, the grief and the utter helplessness he felt holding his small son in his arms as they said goodbye to her. He had promised then, standing over her grave, holding their sobbing son who just wanted his mama. Valentino had promised he would never stop loving her, that he would never replace her in his heart.
Valentino Grisafi had never broken a promise and he wasn’t about to start now.
This thing with Faith had to get back on track, or it had to end.
There simply was no other option. No matter what he might want or think he needed.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_b2f7412d-6e07-5e7e-ae70-8d705e3de033)
TRUE TO HIS WORD, Faith did not see Tino again while Agata and Rocco were in Naples. There were no more phone calls, either.
She didn’t expect there to be.
Tino wasn’t going to accept the change in their relationship gracefully. If he accepted it at all. She had to believe he would though.
Especially after allowing him to make love to her that night. Not that she’d had a lot of choice. Once he set his course on seduction, she was a goner. She loved him. Needed him. While that truth scared her to death, she didn’t try to deny it. Self-deception was not something she indulged in. She’d accepted the physical intimacy because it substituted for the emotional connection she craved after learning she carried his baby. And sometimes, when he made love to her, she actually felt loved by him—if only for that short while.
It was that simple. And that complicated.
But maybe it was on the way to something better… something truly more.
He had initiated the shift in their relationship in the first place. Initially, sleeping all night with her in his apartment in Marsala, and then making love to her in his family home. That reality mitigated her fears for their future, although it did not completely rid her of them.
He might not want to admit it, but he was already thinking about her in broader terms than simply his “current convenient partner.” They’d been exclusive from the very beginning—something they had both insisted on. Add that to how well she fit with his family and their friendship and they had a strong basis for a lasting relationship. The fact that she loved him would only make it easier to raise a family with him.
Even if he never came to love her as he’d loved Maura, it would be enough to be his wife and mother of his children. She had never expected to have this much claim to family again. She certainly did not expect it all.
Not after everything she had lost.
Besides, she’d never loved Taylish like she loved Tino, but he’d been happy in their marriage. Content to have her loving commitment if not her passion.
There were times she knew he had wanted more, but he’d never regretted their marriage. Only leaving it in death. He’d told her so, just before breathing his last.
But she didn’t want to remember that day. It belonged in her past—along with the two families she’d lost. The only real families she’d ever had. Until now.
Her current hopes and dreams were reflected in the series of joy-filled family-centric sculptures she did over the next week.
Agata called her when the older couple returned from the continent. Faith did not tell her about having dinner with Tino and Giosue, leaving that bit of information for them to reveal. She also avoided having Agata come to her studio the following week. She did not want Tino’s mother to see the revealing pieces of art before Faith had a chance to tell him of his impending fatherhood.
Every day that went by and she did not hear from him, she missed him more. She wanted to share the miracle of her pregnancy with him, but it was important to give him space. He had to come to terms on his own with the new parameters of their relationship.
However, when the silence between them stretched a week beyond his parents’ return, she called him. Only to discover he’d had to fly to New York to meet with his brother and a potential client. She tried his cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail. After that had happened a couple of times, once very late in the evening, she figured out he was avoiding her with diligence.
It bothered her, feeling a lot like rejection. She clung to the knowledge that if he wanted to break it off with her, he would do so definitively. He would not simply begin avoiding her like an adolescent. No, he was just struggling with the changes between them more than she’d anticipated.
It made her nervous about how he might react to the news of her pregnancy. Thankfully, he was as Sicilian as a man could get. Some might think that meant unreconstructed male, but she knew that for Tino that translated into an all-out love for family and children especially. He might not be thrilled about her new role in his life, but he would be happy about the baby. Being the traditional Sicilian that he was, it would never occur to him to seek a relationship with the child that excluded her.
Thank goodness.
His desire to marry a Sicilian woman if he ever did remarry worried her a little, but he would just have to buck up and deal with it like a grown-up. It wasn’t as if he objected to her personally. He liked her as much outside the bedroom as in it. She was sure of it. Even at his apartment they did not spend all their time in bed together.
And when they were in bed, they didn’t only have sex. They talked. Not about anything personal, but about politics, faith, what they thought of the latest news, his business—the types of things you didn’t talk about with a bare acquaintance.
He might not know much about her art career, but he knew her stance on environmentalism, government deficits, latch-key children and his desire to dominate his own corner of the upscale wine market.
Right now, though, he had to adjust to the fact that she was a part of his family’s life and a bigger part of his than he had intended when they first got together.
In the meantime, she agreed to join Agata for lunch at the vineyard.
* * *
A DAY EARLIER than he had told his family to expect him, Valentino pulled his car into his spot in the newer multicar garage he’d had built to the side of the house when he married Maura. So she could keep her car parked inside for her comfort. She’d teased him about spoiling her, but it had been so easy to do. His dead wife had been a very sweet woman.
Much like Faith.
He sighed at the thought, frustrated with himself.
The trip to New York had been longer than he wanted or expected, though it had one side benefit. It had made it easier to distance himself from Faith. Though forwarding her calls directly to voice mail had taken a larger measure of self-control than he would have expected. Much larger.
Which only went to show that he had to become serious about getting their relationship back on track.
Or he would have to let her go, and that was not something he wanted to do.
The craving he felt to hear her voice filled him with anger at himself along with a sense of helplessness he refused to give in to. He had been fighting the urge to sleep all night with her since the beginning. Never before had he been tempted not to be home in the morning for his son to wake up to because of a woman. He’d known giving in would come with a cost, but he had not expected it to be his sanity.
It had felt right taking her to his bed in the family home. Too right. Now he questioned his intelligence in doing so. For that insanely stupid choice had come at an emotional cost, as well, one he had no right to pay.
If he were a truly honorable man, he would let her go completely. He’d told himself so over and over again while in New York. What did it say for his inner strength that he could not do it?
Certainly it was nothing to be proud of.
Physically distancing himself from her was not the same as regrouped emotions, he had learned. His need to see her grew with each day even as he fought it. He might have won, but he hungered for not only the sound of her voice, but the shiver of her laughter and the feel of her skin. He was like a drug addict shaking for his next fix.
It would be a couple of days at least before he could go to her, too. Agonizing days if those in New York were anything to go by. But Gio had missed his papa and had to be Valentino’s first consideration.
Of course, if he left when his son was sleeping, Gio would be missing nothing.
The thought derailed from its already shaky tracks as he recognized the melodious laughter mingled with his mother’s voice coming from the terrace. He stood frozen, uncharacteristically unsure of what to do. No doubts about what he wanted to do. He wanted to see Faith. But what should he do?
His decision was taken from him by his mother’s voice. “Valentino, figlio mio, is that you?”
“Si, Mama. It is me.”
“Come out here.”
He had no choice but to obey. He might be thirty years old, but a Sicilian man knew better than to dismiss a direct command from his mother. It would hurt her and cause her distress. Hurting those he loved was something he avoided at all costs. Even when it was his peace of mind at stake, like now.
Walking out onto the terrace, he found not only his mother and Faith, but his father and Giosue as well.
His son jumped up from where he’d been dangling his feet in the water beside Faith and came running full tilt at Valentino. “Papa, Papa…you are home!”
“Si, I am home and glad to be here.” He swung his son high into his arms and hugged the wiggling, eight-year-old body to his.
“I missed you, Papa. Zio Calogero should not call you to New York.”
“Sometimes it is necessary, cucciola. You know this.”
His son ducked his head. “Papa! Do not call me that. It is a name for little boys, but I am big. I am eight!”
“Ah, but a man’s son is always his little one,” Rocco Grisafi said as he came and hugged both Valentino and Giosue. “Welcome home, piccolo,” his father said, emphasizing his point with a humorous glint in eyes the same color as Valentino’s.
It had been decades since his father had last called him that and Valentino laughed.
Giosue giggled. “Papa is bigger than you Nonno, how can he be your little one?”
Valentino’s father, who was in fact a head shorter than he, winked at his grandson. “It is not about size, it is about age, and I will always be older, no?”
“That’s right,” Valentino agreed. “And I will always be older than you,” he said as he tickled his swimsuit-clad son.
Giosue screeched with laughter and squirmed down, running to the pool and jumping in, his head immediately coming up out of the water. “You can’t get me now, Papa.”
“You think I cannot?”
“I know it. Nonna would be mad if you got your business clothes wet.”
That made everyone laugh, including Faith, drawing Valentino’s attention like a bee to a rose. Damn, damn, damn. She was beautiful, wearing a bright green top and matching pair of capri pants she had rolled up above her knees so she could dangle her feet in the water of the pool. Her gorgeous red hair fell loose around her shoulders and her sandals were nowhere to be seen.
Even his mother’s hug and greeting got only a portion of his attention as the rest of him strained toward the woman he wanted to take into his arms and kiss the daylights out of.
“So, I hear from my grandson that you and my dear friend are well acquainted already,” his mother said, finally garnering his whole focus.
Well versed in how his mother’s mind worked, he immediately went hyperalert to any nuance and ultra-cautious in his own reactions. She was on a kick to get him married and fathering more grandbabies for her. His argument that it was time for Calogero to do his duty by the family was met with deaf ears.
His mother wanted more grandchildren from Valentino. Full stop. Period.
And now she’d discovered he was friends with Faith.
He had to be very careful here. If his mother even got a hint of the intimate nature of his relationship with Faith, Agata Grisafi would have her oldest son married off before he could get a word in edgewise. “We’d met before, yes.”
“You’d met? I am sure your son said you were friends,” his mother chided with a gleam in her eyes, confirming Valentino’s worst fears.
He simply shrugged, confirming nothing. Denying nothing. Sometimes that was the only way to deal with his mother and her machinations. Deflection wasn’t a bad tactic, either, when he could get away with it.
He’d long ago acknowledged he never wanted to face his mother across a boardroom table. She made his toughest clients and strongest competition look like amateurs.
“More interesting to me is your friendship with her,” he said. “You rarely mention Faith.”
“You are joking me, my son. I talk about my dear friend TK all of the time.”
“Yes, but what has that to do with Faith?”
His mother’s eyes widened and she flicked a glance to the woman in question. Faith was not looking at them, but her shoulders were stiff with unmistakable tension. This grilling had to be causing her stress as well.
“You are not good friends, are you?” his mother asked, in a tone that said she no longer had any doubts about the superficial nature of their relationship.
Relieved, but unsure what had convinced her, he simply said, “We know each other.”
“Not very well.”
He shrugged again, but had a strong urge to deny what felt like an accusation. Though the words had been spoken in his mother’s normal voice, his own emotions convicted him.
Mama shrugged, looking smug, her expression that of a woman who knew what he did not. “Faith Williams is TK.”
“Your artist friend?” he asked in genuine shock. “I thought he was a man!”
“No, she is very much a female, as you can see.” The laughter lacing his mother’s voice did not faze him.
The memory of Faith saying maybe the woman in the statue on his dresser was letting go did. She was the artist of that particular piece of art. When she’d made the comment, she could have been hinting, but more likely she was exposing the true inspiration behind the figure.
Which meant what? That she had a son? “You did not tell me you had a child,” he said to her.
She stood up and faced him. “If you will recall, the father is holding the child,” she said, proving once again that their thoughts traveled similar paths.
“What is that supposed to signify?”
“Figure it out for yourself, Tino. Or better yet, ask your mother. Agata understands far more than you do and knows me much better.”
He couldn’t believe she was being so argumentative in front of his family. His mother was bound to realize there was more between them than a casual friendship if Faith kept this up. Hell, if he had to explain what they were talking about, things would get dicey. The statue was in his bedroom, after all. How could he explain Faith—his not so good friend—seeing it?
“It’s not important,” he said, in an attempt to put sand on the fire of his mother’s curiosity.
“No, I don’t suppose it is.” Faith turned to his mother and gave her a strained smile. “It’s time for me to be going.”
“But I thought you would stay for dinner.”
“Yes, do not let my arrival change your plans.” He wanted to see Faith, even if it meant being judicious under the watchful eye of his family.
He knew it was not the smartest attitude to take. He was supposed to be cooling down their relationship, but seeing her brought into sharp relief just how hard that had been over the past weeks. How much he had missed her.
“I feel the need to create.” She hugged his mother. “You know how it is for me when I have a fit of inspiration. You are not offended, are you?”
“Will you let me see the results of this inspiration?” Agata asked. “I am still waiting to see the pieces you made while Rocco and I were in Naples.”
Faith’s hand dropped to her stomach, like she was nervous. “I’ll let you see them all eventually. You know that.”
“You promise? I know how you artists are. Especially you. If you think a piece is not up to standards, you will pound it back into clay.”
That strained smile crossed Faith’s beautiful features again. “I can’t promise to keep something I hate, but you should be used to that by now.”
His mother gave a long-suffering sigh, but she hugged Faith warmly. “I am. You cannot blame me for trying, though. You have spoiled me, allowing me access to your work before you do others.”
Faith’s laugh was even more strained than her smile. “You are my friend.” Even though he was wet from the pool, she hugged Giosue goodbye, as well. “I will see you next week in school.”
Her leave-taking of his father was the usual kisses on both cheeks. But she simply nodded at Tino before turning to go. Though it fit in with the facade of casual friendship he had tried to create, he felt the slight like a blow to his midsection.
He understood being careful in front of his parents, but this went beyond that. Had it been deliberate? Or was she simply doing her part to allay suspicion? Unfortunately, he could not ask her, nor could he request a more warm goodbye without looking suspect himself. They would have to talk about how to act in front of his family, as it was clear that was going to be an issue in the future. He was only surprised it had taken so long for the matter to arise, now that he knew how close she was to his mother and son.
That was secondary as he watched Faith walk away, and he had to fight everything in himself not to go after her.
“And you worried your mother was developing a tendre for TK,” his father said with a big, amused laugh.
“Never say so!” His mother shook her head. “Sometimes, my son, you are singularly obtuse.”
“But he is good at business,” Giosue piped in, as if trying to stand up for his deficient father and not knowing exactly what to say.
Apparently everyone else in his family knew Faith’s life more intimately than he did.
He was determined to rectify that ignorance. Starting now. “Mama, what did she mean by saying that the father was holding the baby in my statue?”
It was one of the reasons he loved the piece so much. It showed the father having a tender moment with his child as well as his wife.
His mother’s pause before answering gave him time to realize what a monumentally stupid question that had been to ask. He had just gotten through admonishing himself regarding this very topic and here he was drawing attention to it.
No doubt about it. Faith Williams messed up his equilibrium and made mush of his usually superior brain function.
There was nothing wrong with the way his mother’s brain was working, however. “Do you mean the statue that I bought you? The one that you keep on the bureau in your bedroom, Valentino?” she asked delicately like a cat licking at cream.
“Yes, that is the one,” he said with as much insouciance as he could muster under his mother’s gimlet stare.
He offered no explanation and, surprisingly enough, she did not demand he do so. He could read the speculation in her eyes as easily as a first-year primer.
She looked down at her hands as if examining her manicure, which was incidentally perfect as usual, before looking back at him. “I’m not sure that is something she would care for me to share with you.”
He wasn’t about to be deterred after the huge gaffe he’d committed to get the information. “Mama,” he said with exasperation. “She told me to ask you.”
“Si, well, I suppose. You know she lost her husband to a car accident six years ago?”
“I know she is a widow, yes.”
“She lost her child in the same accident.”
“How horrible.” It had nearly destroyed him to lose Maura; if he had lost Giosue as well, he did not know how he would have stood it.
“Just so.” Mama reached out and hugged her wet grandson to her. “She sells her artwork under TK as a tribute to them. Her husband’s name was Taylish and her son would have been named Kaden.”
“Would have been?”
“She was pregnant. And from what she said, that was something of a minor miracle. Her life has not been an easy one. She was left an orphan by her mother’s death years earlier. She never knew her father—or even who he was, I believe.”
“Life has enough pain to make joy all the sweeter,” his father said with the same pragmatism he spoke the well-used Sicilian proverb, cu’ avi ‘nna bona vigna avi pani, vinu e linga.
He who owns a good vineyard has bread, wine and wood.
The Sicilian people were a practical lot. The fatalism of their cultural thinking reflected in the fact that Sicilian vernacular had no future tense. Just past and present.
Regardless of his pragmatic heritage, Valentino found it almost debilitatingly painful to discover that his happy-go-lucky Faith had such a sorrow-filled past. Her optimistic nature was one of the things he found most attractive about her. She made him feel good just being around.
To discover that her attitude was in spite of past agonies, not because she had never had any, was so startling as to leave him speechless.
“I think Signora Guglielmo wanted to be a mama very much,” Giosue said. “She loves all the children at school, even the bratty ones.”
His son’s observation made Valentino chuckle even as it made him sad for the woman who had to find an outlet for her nurturing nature with other people’s children.
He remembered her once telling him that she believed she was not meant to have a family. He had assumed that meant she thought she was not cut out to be a mother. He had not minded knowing that at all, as it assured him she would not expect marriage and children someday down the road. Now he saw a far more disturbing meaning behind the words.
When Faith had said she wanted more from him, she truly had meant more. She wanted what she had thought she could not have. A family.
And the only way he could give it to her was to break a promise that for him was sacred.
It was not an option.
But neither was letting her go so she could find that with someone else.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_3adb7947-18f9-56b7-81a6-56924137e825)
FAITH DROVE LIKE an automaton toward Pizzolato. They’d met? They knew each other?
Each word Tino had used to answer his mother’s innocent questions had driven into her heart with the precision of an assassin’s dagger. And the wounds were still raw and bleeding. As they would be for a very long time.
How could he dismiss her as if she meant nothing to him?
But she had the answer to that, an answer she wanted to ignore, to pretend no knowledge of for the sake of her lacerated heart. She only wished she could do it—that she could lie to herself as easily as she had deluded herself into believing things were changing between them.
He could dismiss her as someone of no importance in his life because that was exactly what she was. She was his convenient sex partner. Nothing more. Friends? When it was convenient for him to think so, but that clearly did not extend to times with his family.
They’d met. The words reverberated through her mind over and over again. A two-word refrain with the power to torture her emotions as effectively as a rack and bullwhip.
She did not know why he had slept with her that night in Marsala. She had no clue why he had taken her to his bed in his family home, but she knew why he hadn’t called her for two weeks and had ignored her calls to him.
Perhaps he regretted that intimacy and was even hoping to end their association.
The pain that thought brought her doubled her over, and she had to pull to the side of the road. Tears came then.
She never cried, but right now she could not stop.
She sobbed, the sounds coming from her mouth like those of a wounded animal, and she had no way of stopping them, of pulling her cheerful covering around her and marching on with a smile on her face. Not now.
She had thought maybe it was her turn for happiness. Maybe this baby heralded a new time in her life, one where she did not lose everyone who she loved.
But she could see already that was not true.
She had lost Tino, or was on the verge of doing so.
Her body racked with sobs, she ached with a physical pain no one was there to assuage.
What if Tino’s rejection was merely a harbinger of things to come?
What if she lost this baby, too? She could not stand it.
The first trimester was a risky one, even though her doctor had confirmed her pregnancy was viable and not ectopic. The prospect of miscarriage was a dark, scary shadow over her mind.
Falling apart at the seams like this could not be helping, but she didn’t know if she had the strength to rein the tears in. How was she supposed to buck up under this new loss?
The pain did not diminish, but eventually the tears did and she was able to drive home.
She had not lied when she told Agata she felt the need to create, but the piece she did that night was not one she wanted to share with anyone. Especially not a woman as kind as Tino’s mother.
Faith could not make herself destroy it, though.
Once again it embodied pain she had been unable to share with anyone else.
It was another pregnant figure, but this woman was starving, her skin stretched taut over bones etched in sharp relief in the clay. Her clothes were worn and clung to the tiny bump that indicated her pregnancy in hopeless poverty. Her hair whipped around her face, raindrops mixed with tears on the visage of a mother-to-be almost certain not to make it another month, much less carry her baby to term.
The figure reflected the emotional starvation that had plagued Faith for so long. She’d tried to feed it like a beggar would her empty belly in the streets. Teaching children art, sharing their lives. Her friendship with Agata. Her intimacy with Tino, but all of it was as precarious as the statue woman’s hold on life.
Faith had no one to absolutely call her own and feared that somehow the baby she carried would be lost to her as well.
She could not let that happen.
* * *
VALENTINO CALLED FAITH the next day. He’d tried calling the night before several times, after Gio had gone to bed, but she had not answered. He’d hoped to see her, but she had been ignoring the phone.
It was the first time she had done so during their association. He had not liked it one bit and had resolved not to avoid her calls in the future.
This time however, she answered on the third ring, just when he thought it was going to go to voice mail again.
“Hello, Tino.”
“Carina.”
“Do you need something?”
“No ‘How was your trip?’ or anything?”
“If you had wanted to tell me about your trip, you would have called while you were away…or answered my calls to you.”
Ouch. “I apologize for not doing so. I was busy.” Which was the truth, just not the whole truth.
“Too busy for a thirty-second hello? I don’t think so.”
“I should have called,” he admitted.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If it offended you, it does.” Of course it had offended her.
He would not have cared with any of the other bed partners he had had since Maura’s death, but this was Faith. And he cared.
“I guess you didn’t have time for phone sex and saw no reason to speak to me otherwise,” she said in a loaded tone.
He had already apologized. What more did she want? “Now you are being foolish.” They had never engaged in phone sex, though the thought was somewhat intriguing.
“I seem to make a habit of that with you.”
“Not that I have noticed.”
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Люси Монро и Carol Marinelli
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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