Chapter Ten #3
“No. God, no. Not to us, anyway.” He dragged in a harsh breath, expression tortured.
“I told you that I argued with him the night they died. It wasn’t about my sister’s dance recital.
Earlier that day, when I was playing calcio with my friends, a man pulled me aside.
He told me who my father worked for. I won’t say his name.
It’s best you don’t know, but I knew it, even though I was only eleven.
Everyone in Sicily keeps out of that man’s way if they can.
But my father was keeping his books. And accompanying those who collected for him.
He showed me photos. Things I can’t unsee. ”
Eleven. Oh, Luca. She wanted to reach out, but she stayed very still and quiet, letting him get it out.
“I loved him so much, bella.” He shook his head, pained by disillusion. “He was a god to me. Smart, funny, strong. He was everything I believed a good man should be. And now I knew he was that.” His brows pulled with anguish.
She was held in painful thrall, wanting to hug him, but pinned in place by the revelations that were slowly bleeding out of him.
“When I told him I was ashamed to call him my father, I thought he was going to strike me. But he wasn’t a man to hit a child, especially his own.
He said…” He cleared his throat. “He said, You don’t know what you’ll do for someone you love.
I could never get past his saying that. How could he claim to love us and do that?
How could I enjoy the very comfortable life he gave us when I knew the violence that had brought it about?
What kind of love puts your family in danger, so they’re forced off a cliff? ”
She gasped.
“Yes.” His gaze slammed into hers, allowing her to read the years of tortured grief he had endured, trying to bear this horrifying truth.
Trying to square his repulsion with his admiration.
His loss with his knowledge that it hadn’t truly been an accident.
“And before we even had my family buried, men were in our house, trying to recruit me.”
She couldn’t stand it. She took a step toward him, saying, “Luca—”
“No. I’ve come this far.” He held up a hand. “Let me finish.”
It was so hard, though. He was in such pain her own throat was tight with it, her body clenched as she braced for more.
“We left Palermo. Left everything except what we could carry and moved to Catania. I was so angry with him. I blamed him. Hated him. But once we were settled, Nonna told me why he’d gone into that life.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against the middle of his chest.
“My mother didn’t have any family. None that she ever wanted to speak about.
She grew up with nothing, but she had a good singing voice so she used it.
She wound up working for the wrong people.
It saved her from selling her body, but she was property all the same.
The only way my father was able to get her out of her situation was to take her place. ”
“Oh. He must have loved her very much,” she said through a throat that was searing with painful understanding.
“He did. And Nonna said he was trying to leave. That’s why that man approached me. She thought the crash was only meant to be a warning, but…”
“Oh, Luca.” She couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed toward him and threw her arms around him.
His locked his arms around her and she felt the shudder that went through him.
“The last thing he said to me was that I didn’t know what I would do for the people I loved. This baby…becoming a father… He’s the only role model I have. I want to be like him, but I don’t,” he said tightly. “I don’t know how to square it in my head.”
No wonder he was so conflicted!
“Have you ever talked to anyone about it?”
“No,” he dismissed, pulling away. “I’ve never told anyone about it. Only Nonna knows and we don’t discuss it.” His gaze searched hers.
“I won’t tell a soul,” she vowed. “I’m really glad you told me, though.
It helps me understand why you’ve seemed to have such a mixed reaction to the baby.
But Luca, I don’t think you’ll ever go to such drastic lengths to protect us as he did.
You don’t need to. I’m not as vulnerable as it sounds like your mother was.
You’ve actually been helping me become stronger and more confident. I can fight my own battles.”
“I don’t want you to have to,” he said in a grumble.
She hugged him again and this time it was less fraught.
When she drew back, she asked tentatively, “Will you tell me about them? What was your mother like? You’ve never spoken about her.”
“Beautiful,” he said after a beat of thought, gaze drifting into the past. His tone edged into pride. “In the way you are. Naturally. Always smiling. She was very funny and warm.”
The way he dropped those compliments on her so absently, as though it was an accepted fact, made her blush with shy pleasure.
“She was very musical, obviously. Always singing and dancing. That’s how I learned to dance. She insisted it was the only way I’d get a wife.” His mouth kicked into a wry grin.
“She wasn’t wrong, was she?” she said wryly. “Is that how they met? Your father asked her to dance?”
“She was singing in a club.” His expression shuttered a little, but now she knew why.
These were difficult memories for him. He still found a faint smile as he continued.
“He would tell anyone who would listen that he fell in love with her voice first, before he even saw her. He always said she was too good for him, that he married her so quickly because he didn’t want her to realize she could do better.
I came along seven months into their marriage so I think that was the real reason. ”
He drew back enough to drop an ironic glance toward her waistline. Their little acorn was falling directly under the same passion tree.
Jade couldn’t stop smiling. She was utterly rapt as she ate up all these little details.
“What about your sister?” she asked gently.
“One of my earliest memories is singing to her with my mother.”
Her heart turned over. “That’s so sweet.”
“That’s enough for now.” He cleared his throat and pressed her away. “The agent is probably wondering what we’re doing in here. What do you say? Shall I tell her to write up an offer?”
She nodded, quiet as they made their way back because she was so deeply affected by all that he’d told her.
Luca was a man who knew how to love with his whole heart. He had loved deeply and lost and it naturally made him wary of succumbing to its power again.
Which made her wistful, wondering what it would take for him to let his guard down all the way.
She felt closer to him for his allowing her to see so deeply into his soul, though. When they made love that night, she let her own barriers dissolve. She was always uninhibited, letting him set the pace and take control, doing anything he asked.
Tonight, she poured herself over him, yearning to receive the sort of all-encompassing love he was capable of offering. She trailed her hair down his chest, anointing him to a fine point, then impaling herself to ride his hips.
He shook and groaned and clenched his fingertips into her flesh, then tumbled her across the bed, mouth and hands everywhere, as though he couldn’t drink in enough of her. As though her surrender to his lovemaking was the source of his very reason for being.
When he had her on her back, legs draped over his straining arms, his bent knees splayed to bracket her ass while he pumped into her, he said, “Tell me you’re mine. Always.”
“Always,” she vowed, soaring with joy at his possessive words. The last defenses that surrounded her heart shook apart and left it bare to him. Open. She wasn’t just falling in love with him. She was totally and completely his.
They lost control in the same instant, pulsing and crying out, clinging and shuddering in ecstasy before collapsing in a tangled heap of repletion.
She almost said the words. They were right there on her tongue, wanting to spool out and strengthen this moment of feeling profoundly connected to him.
With a noise of gratification, he rearranged them, pulling a sheet across their waists and rolling her closer.
“I promise I will love him, Jade. I do already. Don’t be worried about that.” He kissed her brow and drifted his hand across her belly, lingering as though to reassure both her and the baby within.
She didn’t doubt that. Not anymore.
But she did wonder, What about me?