Chapter 15 #3
Lily’s eyes sparkled over the rim of her glass. Sandro, meanwhile, had gone very still, pretending he was not being manipulated by a ten-year-old with big eyes and absolutely no shame.
Later, when Victoria insisted on showing me three separate photo albums and Olivero got dragged into an argument about the superiority of Italian beaches versus everywhere else on earth, I found myself laughing more freely than I expected to.
Not because I forgot where I was.
Because, somehow, I didn’t need to.
That was the strangest part of all. The house still held everything Lily had implied and Pietro had confessed. The power was there. The danger too, in its own way. But so was the love, threaded through every exchange, every interruption, every glance that passed between the people around the table.
When dinner finally broke apart and the house began to settle into the rhythms of evening, Pietro found me in the hallway with one hand in his pocket and that look on his face that suggested he was trying very hard to remain dignified.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “I’ll show you your room.”
“Mine?” I asked, following him up the stairs.
“The room you are meant to sleep in if my sister is to retain her innocence and my mother is to avoid blaming me for corrupting the household.”
I laughed under my breath, and he guided me down a corridor before opening the door to a room that was elegant, warm, and just impersonal enough to suggest it was rarely used but always prepared.
“This,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the frame, “is where you’re supposed to sleep.”
I turned and looked at him. “Supposed?”
“For my sister’s sake, you understand. In this house, propriety still likes to make occasional appearances. We can only share a room when we’re married, I’ve been told, so?—”
He stopped there, just long enough for me to raise a brow.
“So?”
His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth before lifting again.
“There is no universe in which you actually sleep in here, Emily Hart.”
The warmth that ran through me had very little to do with the room.
“My real name isn’t Hart, you know,” I said softly. “It’s?—”
“It’s Hart.”
The certainty in his voice made me pause.
He stepped closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough that I could see the seriousness beneath the teasing.
“It’s Hart,” he said again. “That’s the name you chose. And I don’t care what some man or some history or some piece of paper said before. If Hart is the name that brought you here whole, then Hart is your name.”
For one second I couldn’t answer.
He reached up then and touched a curl near my temple, his knuckles brushing my skin so lightly it almost hurt.
“And if someday you want to give me another one,” he added, his voice dropping lower, “that will be your choice too.”
I stared at him.
“That,” I said eventually, because my throat had gone suspiciously tight, “was smooth.”
His mouth curved.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about you.”
“I can tell.”
He glanced toward the bed, then back at me with a look that was suddenly much less innocent.
“So,” he said, “shall we continue respecting tradition for at least another thirty seconds?”
I smiled reluctantly.
“Maybe twenty.”
“Scandalous.”
He took my hand without another word and led me down the hall to his room.
This time, when he opened the door, neither of us pretended I would be sleeping anywhere else. He let me step inside first, then closed the door quietly behind us, and the soft click of it seemed to settle something final over the evening.
I turned back toward him, still holding some of the warmth of dinner, of Lily’s kindness, of Victoria’s instant attachment, of Sandro’s measured welcome.
And that was when I realized something far worse than fear had happened.
His parents had not rejected me.
They had folded me into the house with such ease, such warmth, that some small, dangerous part of me had stopped bracing and started imagining what it would mean if this became real.
God help me, part of me wanted it to.
Wanted the warmth of that kitchen. Wanted Lily’s arm linked through mine.
Wanted Victoria dragging me upstairs to evaluate dolls and declare future plans with terrifying certainty.
Wanted the quiet, immovable center of the house and the impossible man now standing in front of me as if I had already altered the architecture of his world.
It was one thing to fall in love with Pietro.
It was another thing entirely to look at the life around him and feel my heart turn traitor for that too.
He must have seen something of it on my face because his expression changed, the teasing gone, the sharpness melting into something more careful.
“Emily?”
I let out a breath that felt almost like a laugh and almost like surrender.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that something much worse than me being scared just happened.”
One dark brow lifted. “Worse?”
I looked at him, at the man who had brought me here and then let me see exactly enough to understand the danger in wanting any of it.
“Your family didn’t reject me,” I said. “They made me feel like I belonged.”
For one suspended second he just stared at me.
Then his face softened so completely it nearly undid me.
“Sweetheart,” he said quietly, stepping closer, “you do.”
And God help me, that was exactly the problem.