Chapter Twelve #4
“Then you shouldn’t have slept with me!” She punched the air at her hip.
“I know. But, Mira.” He turned up a helpless palm.
She looked down, wondering if he was indicating her dress.
You didn’t need to come here, wearing a dress designed to kick me in the crotch.
This one had been chosen with exactly as much care as that other one. She had wanted to make an impression both times, to look and feel her best. It wasn’t just the dress, anyway. It was the fact she had come here at all, knowing full well he would be here. She had wanted to see him.
And he knew it. He was pointing out the harshest truth: she hadn’t been able to stay away from him any more than he could stay away from her.
“I know you love me, bella. I couldn’t have hurt you this badly if you didn’t.”
“You warned me that you would,” she said to the floor, eyes hot. “You said I would hurt you back.” She looked up, tentative. Fearful.
“You have.” There was deep pain around his eyes. Suffering in the weighted corners of his mouth.
It pained her to see those signs of torment and know she had inflicted them. It was deeply humbling.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “I’m so afraid that you’ll only hurt me again.”
“Do you know how hard it was for me to decide to let you into my heart?”
Because of his aunt? She shook her head, starting to think maybe, if he was willing to be brave and take that kind of chance, she ought to be brave enough to do it as well.
“It wasn’t hard at all.” His mouth twitched with gentle irony. “It just happened, bella. You arrived here because you belong here.” He touched his chest.
“Rocco.” Her expression was crumpling, defenses falling away.
“Mirabella.” He started toward her and she met him halfway. “Ti amo.” He grasped her close and spoke into her hair, then against her cheek. “Amore della mia vita. Sei la mia vita.” His lips kept forming endearments and words of love even as they sought hers. “Non piangere tesoro. Per favore.”
“Happy tears,” she claimed as she brushed them away. They carried the last vestiges of hurt, but were more an expression of relief from the anguish of being apart from him. “I missed you.”
“I don’t ever want to live without you, amore. Stay with me always. Promise me.”
“Always?”
“Forever.” His hold on her tightened as their kiss deepened.
The need to be together, as close as she could possibly be to him, lit like a match within her.
It was the sensuality and fiery excitement that always combusted between them, but there was a softer, more acute emotion underpinning it.
A need to give herself to him wholly. It went beyond physical trust to entrusting herself to him. Entrusting them to him.
“Amore, mio. Are you still on the pill?” he asked in a shaken whisper.
“No.” She had thrown them away in a fit of temper, as though she was throwing away everything they had had. It hadn’t worked.
“I didn’t bring condoms. What is it about this villa?” he asked with a frustrated glance around. “Do you trust me to pull out? Take a pill later?”
“I do.” But if dreams were coming true today, she thought she would push her luck. “But what if we see what happens? Would you want— Oh!”
He swung her up into his arms and took the two steps up to the level of the bed, then dropped her onto the poofy cloud of the duvet.
“I am trying to be a gentleman,” he said with exasperation as he came down over her.
He began pulling at their clothing one-handed, braced on the other elbow so he wouldn’t crush her.
“First, I convince you to take me back. Then, I ask you to wear my ring again. I beg you to marry me quickly. When I have you firmly and legally mine, then I ask if you want children.”
“I want six,” she said with a teasing laugh and pushed his shirt off his shoulders.
“Be careful, amore mio.” He cupped her cheek and dropped a hungry kiss on her mouth. “I will hold you to that.”
A giggle of pure happiness left her. She combed her fingers into his hair. “Do you really love me? Because I love you so much, I feel like it will break me in half.”
“Finally, she says it.” He caressed her cheek and there was such tenderness in his eyes, such wonder, that emotive tears came into her own.
“It means that much to you?” she asked in a whisper, tracing his mouth with her fingertip.
“Your heart? Oh, yes. I promise to take very great care with it, now that you’ve given it to me.”
How could anything about her be so precious to him when no one had ever seemed to want it?
They stopped talking though, letting the whisper of their discarded clothing speak for them. Letting unhurried hands communicate what they were feeling, pressing meaning into skin with their lips. And, eventually, joining their bodies in the eternal language of love.
Rocco moved with slow care, drawing it out, keeping them in this state of celebrating each other with raptured sighs, ragged moans and the sweet struggle to avoid what they were both trying to attain.
When they were coated in perspiration and mindless with the joy of writhing together, his measured, masterful strokes shortened.
His groan was helpless. She arrived at the peak and keened over it, caught in his hard grip as he tumbled with her, both of them abandoning themselves to exquisite surrender.
The next week was a return to the happiness they’d known so briefly before Silvio’s identity came out and Otto passed so suddenly. It was a contentment Mira wanted to believe was unshakable, but today would put it to the test.
They were on their way to Capri, to meet Silvio’s family.
She was curious enough about her half siblings to want to meet them, but utterly daunted by the idea of meeting Silvio’s wife. She’d spent most of her life punished by Otto for the affair that had conceived her. She didn’t want to be that proxy again.
She also knew how much Rocco valued his place in Silvio’s family. She feared that whatever happened today could make or break his relationship with them, and thus her relationship with him.
“I have already chosen you, Mirabella,” Rocco reminded her as he took the hand that wore the engagement ring he’d slipped back on her finger at the villa, warning her never to remove it again.
“You know I would never take you anywhere that I thought you might get hurt. I will be right beside you. It will be okay. I promise.”
Mira was still filled with dread, bracing for her world to fall apart again.
They were meeting at Silvio and Claudina’s home, the villa Rocco had built so many years ago, he reminded her proudly when pointing it out from the helicopter.
Silvio’s children had come without their spouses or children, keeping it less overwhelming, but Mira’s throat was still dry with apprehension when they landed.
A car was waiting and the drive was far too short. Mira didn’t get so much as a chip of nail polish picked off before Rocco was helping her from the car onto a cobblestone drive.
The front door of the villa flung open.
“They’re here!” a young woman cried in Italian.
She was about Mira’s height and a few years younger.
Her hair was cut in a short, masculine style and her smile was so big it was infectious.
“Oh, my God! Look. We have the same nose.” She hugged Mira, then Rocco.
“So much for Mama’s plan that you would marry me. ”
“Simone,” Rocco informed Mira over the woman’s head. “She has a girlfriend and has never given me a second look.”
“I know we’re supposed to be angry with Papà, but once we got past the shock, we were all just so excited to have another sister— Oh, here’s Nadia.”
Another woman hurried out, smiling, and speaking a mix of English and Italian as she welcomed Mira with a warm hug.
A man closer to Rocco’s age stepped out to shake Rocco’s hand, then started to offer his hand to Mira.
“Ah, stuff it. Come here, mia sorella.” He wrapped her in a bear hug.
“Ernesto,” Rocco explained.
“Call me Ern. Where’s Vin?”
“Story of my life,” a young man Mira’s age complained as he joined them. “You send me for beer then go do something fun.” He also hugged Mira without asking.
Mira was beginning to feel like a squeeze toy, but couldn’t help smiling over it.
“We’re twins, you know,” Vin said. “Born on the same day, Mom said. Pops was shooting with a double barrel, I guess—”
“Vinny!” Nadia smacked his arm.
“What? Our sister from the same mister.”
“We can’t take him anywhere,” Nadia said with appalled laughter.
Mira chuckled, never expecting such an exuberant, playful welcome. She glanced at Rocco. His mouth twitched in a silent See?
“Excuse me, Rocco,” Simone said with exaggerated outrage. “What is this?” She snatched up Mira’s hand and goggled at the ring.
“That is a symbol of my affection,” Rocco replied mildly.
Ern whistled with admiration. “He affections the hell out of you, doesn’t he?”
“What on earth are you doing on the stoop?” an older, feminine voice scolded.
“I swear, if you don’t have your spouses around to remind you that you’re fully grown, you regress to middle school.
Quit swarming the poor woman. Let her come inside.
Girls, you said you’d set out the food. Ern, your father needs help with the pool cover. ”
Her siblings rolled their eyes and muttered apologies as they scurried past their mother into the house, leaving Mira facing Claudina, the person she was most apprehensive to meet.
Silvio’s wife was an attractive woman with the dark hair and eyes of Italian heritage, sophisticated taste in clothes and creases in her face that suggested she smiled big and often.
Her expression was reserved as she gave Mira a thorough study.
Perhaps Rocco sensed how the fear of rejection was gathering in her. His arm arrived around her back and he protectively pulled her into his side.
“Claudina, this is Mira.”
“Mira.” She accepted the hand Mira held out and pressed it between her own. “You look so much like Trude it’s disconcerting.”
That wasn’t why she was staring. Mira suspected she was looking for her husband in Mira’s face. And for traces of the children she had born for him.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Mira said humbly. Her heart was sinking as she began to imagine criticism and hostility coalescing against her.
“Look at the ring, Mama,” Simone blurted from some location inside the house. “I guess you have another wedding to plan, but I’m telling you right now I won’t wear a dress even if I am a bridesmaid.”
“That child,” Claudina sighed while she admired the ring on Mira’s hand.
“I do love a wedding, though. Goodness, that’s beautiful.
I’ve always admired your taste, Rocco.” Claudina set her hand on his cheek and gave him a very indulgent, maternal look.
“I’ve harbored dreams of you marrying into our family, you know.
Now, it will happen and I couldn’t be happier.
” She hugged Rocco and offered Mira a warm embrace, kissing both her cheeks.
“Let’s go outside before Silvio thinks we’ve run away on him. ”
Oh. Tears came into Mira’s eyes. She hung back slightly to hide how moved she was.
Rocco pulled her close and helped her disguise her shaken reaction by pressing a kiss onto her forehead.
“Okay?” he murmured.
She nodded, thinking she couldn’t be happier, either.