Chapter 50
My heart starts to race the instant Carlo’s silhouette appears in the sunlight and his beautifully made shoes step in through the glass-paneled doors.
I have a good table for two in the shade at the almost empty back section of the quiet, upscale restaurant. All the time I waited here, I told myself I shouldn’t expect too much. Nothing is going to happen. You’ll be lucky if you and Carlo can manage a civil conversation. His voice on the phone was enough to tell me that he was furious with me for going to see Esther. Like I went behind his back.
Okay, hands up to that one.
It’s no secret, everybody knows, the fastest way to piss off a mafia guy is to go around him. Every one of them sees himself as the very center of the known universe. So, I fully expect to hear the snap of his heels ricochet across the floor straight to my table, for him to stand in the light and let off a loud and very public tirade at me, then leave.
Possibly after shooting me.
Right now, this moment, I don’t care. It’s worth it all to watch him stride through the restaurant with the light behind him and feel all of my blood vessels burst into life. Especially the ones buzzing and tingling in the heat of my core.
I took my seat twenty minutes early, telling myself it was so I would have some time to read. I didn’t even take the tablet out of my purse once. Even my phone has been face down on the pink linen tablecloth.
He stares hard at me, but with the sun behind him, I can’t see the expression on his face. He scrapes the chair noisily and sits. Well, he’s at the table. That’s already a good start. I breathe in all the scents of him, from the silk and cotton of his tailored suit and the fresh leather of his shoes all the way through to the way the heat of his skin sparks up his cologne. And, behind that, the dark, unique scents of him.
Until now, I haven’t really faced how much I missed him. I knew him for a day at most, twenty one hours from the time we first set eyes on each other and spoke to that cold, empty moment when he watched me from the window without a word or even a wave, but the Carlo-shaped hole in my life feels too big to ever heal. Even in those short hours, I was closer to Carlo than I ever was to a man before.
He knew me. Inside and out. And I miss him. All over me, and all the way inside me. I feel like a canyon, yearning for the huge river cut the channels and gorges, that left long ago, in the lost haze of history.
I felt all the way through me that Carlo saw me clearly, knew me and felt me for everything I really was. Like nobody had ever done before. I would never have let another man see that, but now, since I was so totally exposed to him, I don’t see how I can get through another day, or even another hour, without a man who understands me so completely.
The dark glower in his eyes makes my pulse race even harder.
Looking right into me, he says, “I don’t really know what the point of this is. I got the message to come, so here I am. And I have a message for you.”
Now that he’s here, I can’t even think of what it was I had planned to say. All the hours I spent planning and trying out different speeches in my head. Now, one look from him and they all blew away like dry, copper leaves in fall.
He’s here. I can’t think past that. But I have to.
It’s unbelievable that this all went so wrong because I started to talk to Alessio and Bruno about Wood Street. It was a breach of etiquette, fair enough, but they could have just told me to mind my own business. We didn’t have to fall out over that.
The don must have poured some other poison in all of their ears. But I can’t go straight into that.
I should start at the beginning. That was what I told myself I would do. But now, now that I’m looking into his eyes, I feel helpless and lost and I can’t even remember where I thought the beginning was. So, just to get myself going, I start in the middle.
I blurt, “I tried to call you.”
“I know.” I can’t take my eyes off the set of his jaw and the pulse in his neck as he tightens his lips. His thumb presses into the cleft in his chin.
I tell him, “I went to Ischia.”
“I know.”
“I miss you.”
He looks at me. I wait. His jaw works. But he doesn’t say anything.
I say, “I wish you’d come to the summerhouse that morning after breakfast.”
His eyes are still hot, but he doesn’t speak.
“I thought at one time you left a note under my coffee cup in the dining room.”
His eyebrow wrinkles. I tell him, “It’s okay. I know you didn’t. But someone did, and I hoped it was you,” I search his eyes for a reaction.
I guess I was wrong about one thing. One of the Fortuna men can keep secrets. I should have known that about Carlo.
“Really, it’s okay,” I tell him. “I figured it must have been Jago, setting me up.”
His head dips and his eyes narrow. Under his breath he lets out, “That woman.”
“I don’t know how she knew that Bruno and Alessio would be there.”
His eyes look hurt and his lip tightens as he searches my face. I can’t tell whether he even knows they were there. So now I wish I hadn’t said that. The urge to launch myself across the table at him is hard to fight.
He says, “They went for the same reason I planned to go.”
My breath skips. “Why didn’t you?”
“The don. He lectured me in his study. He did it with all of us that morning, one at a time. I was last, after he pinned Bruno and Alessio’s ears back.”
“Saying I was an evil Jezebel, coming to bring the fires of hell and rain the apocalypse down on the house.”
“Like that, yes.” Not a smile, but I think I saw a glint. Or maybe it’s wishful thinking.
I go on, “And that I was behind the raid on Adrianna Bagniola’s engagement party.”
I let my hand drop to his thigh. The heat and strength of his body sends a surge from my hand, up into my chest, and it bursts all the way through me.
He breathes in a long, slow sniff. His hand falls on mine. Pulling. Picking me up to cast me away. I’m too near the top of his thigh not to feel his other reaction, though. The front of his pants heats up. Stretches and fills.
As he moves my hand away, I can’t tell if I’m imagining his reluctance or if it’s real. He nods. “The raid and the Crespi killings.”
Just when I thought I might be getting somewhere, that wraps cold fingers round my heart. And I hate having to hide it from him. I should be able to trust him with everything. With my life. But I can’t. Obviously.
With a sigh, I say, “You said you wanted to see me.”
“I said I needed to see you.”
My head turns at the sound of four more powerful and immaculately-shod male feet.
Bruno and Alessio strut toward me, through the restaurant.