Chapter Nine
LUCA WALKED INTO the bedroom to find Jade packing her small suitcase.
He had arrived home furious. This toppled him into incensed.
“You’ve heard that your father has started rumors about us, I presume?”
She jolted under his sharp tone, then zipped her makeup bag, profile tense. “Yes. And I’m very sor—”
“Never apologize for him. He is the offender, not you. And we agreed last night that we don’t speak of him in this room. Come.” He walked back to the lounge.
She followed, hands twisting before her, face so pale, her freckles stood out like cinnamon on frothed milk.
“What happened to trusting me?” he demanded.
“I’m not stupid enough to believe that a night of sex means you feel any sense of loyalty toward me.” Her tone rang with accusations around hitting and quitting. “Not when I’ve become such a liability. We’ve only known each other a handful of days.”
“So you want to rush back to London and do as you’re told again? What has he promised you?”
“Nothing,” she choked. “And no. I’m going to find a place that can accommodate Mum’s chair, somewhere well away from London. Up north maybe. I’ll live with her and find a job and not have to answer to anyone ever again. Especially not him.” Or you, the defiant lift of her chin suggested.
Luca was barely hanging on to his temper, but he couldn’t help but notice. “You’re shaking. What did he say to you to make you think drastic measures are your only option?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t speak to me. Cyril does.”
“Jade.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She hugged herself, eyes glistening as she looked to the wall.
“I want him out of my life. If I stay here with you, he’ll keep inserting himself, going after you to keep me from being an ‘embarrassment’ to him.
He’ll make all of us miserable and I can’t take it anymore, Luca. I just can’t.”
“Cara.” He moved close enough to touch her chin, wanting her to look at him.
She recoiled, but when her gaze flashed to his, the devastation lurking there kicked him in the stomach.
“What did he say?” he insisted, wrapping firm chains around his temper when he could feel it gathering like a storm.
Her face nearly crumpled, but she held on to her composure by a few tattered threads. “He suggested I terminate so all of this will go away.”
A cold, resolved rage awakened in Luca. A beast that understood there were times when murder was necessary. It was something he had never wanted to happen to him, but it was happening, exactly as he’d feared.
“You’re not doing that,” he said, voice like gravel in his chest.
“No,” she said in a voice that sounded strangled. “But I’m tired of being the knife he uses to turn inside Mum. Now he wants to make me into that against you. Eventually, he’ll try to use this baby against me. I need to make a life away from him, somewhere he can’t touch any of us.”
“That’s here.” Luca jabbed his finger in a point at the floor.
“No, it’s not. Look online.” She ran a trembling fingertip beneath her damp eyes.
“He’ll take you down to take me down. Please let me do this, Luca.
You can still see the baby. I promise.” Her crinkled brow begged for understanding.
“But not like this. Not where I’m showing up in photos that provoke him. ”
“Come here.” He opened his arms.
“I don’t want to have sex right now.” Her eyes clenched and she balled her fists at the end of arms that she shot straight at her sides.
“Neither do I,” he near shouted. “I’m too angry to control myself. But has no one ever held you because you need to be held? Come here.”
He took her arms and dragged her against his chest.
She remained stiff for a few seconds before she shuddered. Her shoulders fell and her back softened and he heard her snuffle.
“I don’t want to be weak,” she mumbled into his chest.
“You are not weak. Dio. You think I don’t know anything about this fight you’re in?
I have carried my grandmother for twenty years.
” And felt many times that the deck was stacked so far against him, he had no chance to win.
“We are in this together, Jade.” He drew back enough to set his hand on the arc of her abdomen.
She caught his wrist, but didn’t push his touch away, only asked with despair, “How do we fight him, though?”
“What part of my being Sicilian do you not understand? He thinks he can wield you like a knife? I will take his knife.”
Shadows darkened her eyes before she lowered her lashes. “I’m not an object.”
“No. You’re not. I’m asking you to marry me, Jade. As soon as possible. Then what does he have? Hmm?”
Her gaze swept back to his. Uncertain. Searching.
“Do you really think I will allow anyone to take my child from me?” he asked.
Her gaze fell again. “I know you want the baby. I just didn’t think you’d want me.”
“Because of a few false rumors? I know the baby is mine. I don’t care how many lovers you’ve had in the past so long as I’m the only one you have now.”
“There was only one,” she said truculently, pushing out of his arms. “And he’s the reason people say I get around.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was a friend of my half brother and he…” She swallowed. “We were together for a few weeks one summer. He said he loved me, but when we got back to Oxford and my half brother saw us together, he said he was just…taking what I gave away to anyone.”
The betrayal in her voice, the hurt, relit the murderous rage he’d almost managed to bank. “What is this man’s name?”
“That’s not the point. I’m telling you what kind of power my father has.
” Her expression was angry and helpless, red-gold lashes blinking rapidly.
“I want to believe you when you say we’re in this together, Luca.
I really do. But I fell for that once before.
When push came to shove, he chose staying on my father’s good side. The stakes are so much higher now.”
“They are. That’s why we’ll marry immediately.
So you will start believing my commitment to both of you.
And so will he. Call your mother. Tell her I’ll make arrangements for her to come to us so she can attend the wedding.
As for your father, he is dead to us.” His hand swept the air with finality.
“Any mention of him is in the past. He does not exist in our future.”
Don’t be stubborn. Those had been Luca’s final words when she said she had already booked a flight to London. We’ll take my jet if you want to see your mother. You are not flying coach in the middle of the night.
Then he had spent almost two hours in his home gym, stomping on the treadmill and grunting with weights before joining her in bed.
She hadn’t been able to sleep and turned to him, still anxious, needing to reconnect with him. “Luca…”
He had scooped her close and kissed her before she could say anything more. His steely length had been inside her moments later, the act basic, primal even, but filling her with the sense that he had needed this joining as desperately as she had.
“Sei mio,” he had rasped as his hips swiveled and pushed both of them toward the precipice.
Fourteen days later, he was making those words come true. Making her his.
They were standing in the Palazzo Reale, a building with a history stretching back to medieval times.
Unlike the humble, out-of-the-way country church where she had nearly married Reggie, this was a sprawling stately venue in the heart of Milan.
Chandeliers cast sparkling light down upon them.
Gold-framed mirrors reflected their solemn faces.
The four-hundred-year-old tapestry absorbed their vows into its spun-silk threads.
Jade hadn’t dared suggest wearing her same wedding dress. Even her mother and Kandili wore new ones. Filomena had also been collected by his private jet and had her own private nurse with her, all provided by Luca’s deep pockets.
Hiro had nearly had a stroke when Jade had asked if he could furnish her a wedding gown in two weeks, but he’d been beyond thrilled to take up the challenge.
Within days, he had fit her into this ivory charmeuse gown.
Its asymmetric cut draped her figure in a way that gracefully acknowledged her growing bump.
Its curving line of buttons began over her heart and wound forward, then down her opposite thigh, allowing her to show as much leg as she wanted.
It was unique, avant-garde and eye-catching, refusing to let her fade into invisibility. She felt magnified, but not in a bad way. Taller and ultrafeminine with a voluptuous figure and unapologetic with her orange hair and freckles.
She felt beautiful.
Luca had taken one look at all the buttons and said in a smoky voice, I will spend the entire ceremony trying to decide whether to start at the bottom or the top.
She couldn’t help wondering which way he was leaning as the officiant spoke in Italian and the interpreter provided the translation.
“I hereby pronounce that Luca and Jade are united in matrimony. You may kiss.”
That was it?
It must be. Luca was stepping closer, sliding his hand behind her neck and drawing her in. She lifted her mouth, still expecting the bash of a door, an interruption. Calamity and disaster.
But the chaos was all inside her as his mouth sealed hers, claiming a long, thorough taste before he drew back.
She touched his mouth where her pink color stained the edge of his lip.
“I don’t mind if you leave your mark on me, bella,” he said with a feral look that told her he was thinking of the blue fingerprints he’d kissed better in the shower this morning, the ones on her backside and thighs.
He was never rough when they made love, but in the throes of culmination, he sometimes forgot himself and gripped her a little too tightly.