Dio Santo, what was he going to do? Instead of the furious response he'd deserved—he'd been expecting, this new, fragile Jemima had simply retreated in on herself. She'd refused to look at him, and when he'd finally coaxed her to open her eyes, the depths of hurt and despair in her expressive eyes had lodged themselves deep inside his heart.
The strength of his own knee-jerk response had his hands trembling even now. His only thought had been to soothe, and to wipe away the memories he could see in her eyes.
Giorgio grimaced to himself now in the shortening shadows of the gym room. Who was he kidding? That hadn't been sex. He had poured all of his feelings into making love to her like the fool he was. And what else could he have done when she woke up twice in the middle of some terrifying nightmare, but to help her forget again and again? And not once during that long night had he given any thought to contraception. Back then Jemima had been on the pill, but there was no guarantee that she still was, and besides, he hadn't seen her take any. In fact, there had been nothing in her notes from the hospital to suggest that she was on any other permanent form of birth control. He swore again and rested his head against the punch bag. He ruthlessly squashed down the tiny seed of excitement at the thought of a child of his own. The last thing they needed was a baby to complicate matters.
He hit the punch bag again, disgusted with himself and his own weakness where Jemima was concerned. No other woman had ever pushed his buttons in the same way, and where had it gotten him? To this godforsaken place, where he didn't know who he could trust anymore, and now that he finally found her again, he would lose her just as easily. The Don wanted answers, and it was painfully obvious, she was in no state to give him any. In six days their time was up.
How the hell was he going to protect her and him? What the fuck did she know that was so important? The sudden noise behind him made Giorgio spin round. Adrenaline kicked in instantly. He raised his fists and crouched low, ready to attack the man stepping out of the shadows. The stranger raised his hands in surrender.
"Easy, man, I'm not here to cause trouble, chill out."
The deep-south American drawl took him by surprise. The man stepped closer, a disarming and extremely familiar smile on his lips. Dark blond hair, streaked with grey, curled over brown eyes, creased in silent amusement.
"You looked as though you were working out some demons, so I thought it wisest to leave you alone."
Giorgio's sixth sense screamed at him, as the missing puzzle pieces fell into place. The hair on his neck stood up, and a cold hand traced a line up his spine. Blood roared in his ears, and he lowered his fists as the truth hit him. The Don's guest, of course. That smile was so familiar. Eyes the exact shade of brown behind his steel rimmed glasses, and a face lined with the years, but nonetheless, it was a replica of the one Jemima had drawn repeatedly back in his vineyard. The mysterious man from her past was standing in front of him, and Giorgio knew deep in his gut that here was the solution to their problem.
The man turned sideways, and that cold hand squeezed the air out of Giorgio's lungs. He knew that profile. Had studied it in great detail last night. Her lines were softer, but there was no mistaking the similarity—similarity that could only mean one thing.
He forced his breathing to slow down, as he studied the older man. He'd only gotten a brief glimpse of him before. The mastermind behind the Don's finances worked strictly behind the scenes, and his head carried a high price. Wanted by both the FBI and the Don's enemies, anyone who brought in Henry James, as he called himself, would fetch a nice tidy sum of cash. Enough to want Jemima dead? Or maybe they didn't want her dead, just hurt enough to get the man in front of him to agree to their terms.
Who was after Jemima? Giorgio crunched his teeth and resumed hitting the punch bag, as he sorted out his thoughts. If he was wrong about this, Jemima was as good as dead. He watched the older man pumping iron with a strength that belied his wiry frame. He knew little about Henry James's background. He was pretty sure even Don Luigi didn't know much about this man's private life.
Giorgio abandoned the punch bag and hit the button to start the treadmill instead. Running always focused his thoughts, and he needed to think, damn it. Jemima's life depended on it. Half an hour later and with his mind made up he abandoned the treadmill and snatched one of the towels of their perch on the shelf. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and approached the weight bench. Cold sweat ran down his spine, and bile churned in his gut. If he was wrong…
Henry heaved the weights bar back on its stand with one loud exhale, and straightened up slowly.
"Can I help you with something there, son?" Henry smiled at him. "You look as though you got the weight of the world of your shoulders, and I'm kinda surprised to see you here. I thought you'd be with that young wife of yours. How is she? From what I heard she got beat up pretty bad."
"And you heard about that how, exactly?" Giorgio asked, and he bunched his hands into fist at his sides.
Henry's smile deepened. "We both know that wouldn't be a good idea, now, don't we? I would like to know, though, why you seem to want to beat me into a pulp, every time you see me."
He swung his legs off the bench and took his glasses off. Using the bottom of his tee he made a show of cleaning them and then put them back with slow, assured movements. When he stood up, his eyes were level with Giorgio's, and they'd lost some of their amusement.
"Son, I haven't got time for this. Whatever it is, spit it out, or be on your way."
"I want you to meet my wife."
****
Jemima smiled in her sleep and arched into the hand caressing her cheek. Calloused fingertips skimmed across her jaw, and settled at the nape of her neck. Warm lips brushed across hers, and Giorgio's familiar scent wrapped itself around her. Laced with the musk of sweaty man it was a heady aphrodisiac, and despite the slight soreness in her nether regions her body readied itself with a gush of moisture between her legs. Her nipples beaded, and her breasts ached. Blindly she grabbed for his shoulders and ran her hands into his hair, determined to pull him closer and deepen the kiss.
Morning sex had always been his favorite, and her lips curved up in a smile of blissful remembrance. The smile gave way to a frown, when Giorgio pushed her away, and pulled the sheet back up to her neck.
"Wake up, Jemima. There is someone here you need to see."
Her sleep fogged brain didn't register the meaning behind the words at first, even as Giorgio propped a cushion behind her back and urged her to sit up. She opened her eyes when he tucked the sheet firmly around her. His tense expression chased the last remnants of sleep away. Her stomach hollowed out, and that all too familiar gut-churning fear replaced her previous contentment. Something was very wrong here.
No sooner had Giorgio finished covering her up than the door opened. That sense of foreboding increased to such a degree that her teeth chattered. She clutched the sheet to herself, dimly aware of the mattress dipping as Giorgio sat down next to her. He put one arm around her shoulders, and she'd never been so grateful for his quiet presence at her sight. The wiry man facing her now blanched when he saw her. Shock and recognition showed on his face, and had it not been for his tan, he would have turned the color of his tee shirt. Full lips thinned into a grim line, and he shook his head and mumbled something that Jemima couldn't quite catch. But she recognized this man. His was the face that had haunted her, the face she'd been painting over and over. Older, thinner than the man she remembered standing over her cot, but it was him. She made a keening sound in the back of her throat, as memory after hazy memory rolled to the surface of her befuddled brain. Giorgio pulled her closer into his side, his heartfelt curse into her neck hardly registering. The world spun, and tilted, until all she could see was the avalanche of long suppressed painful childhood memories tumbling over, spilling out of that box she'd kept them in since the day her mother had died.
Bitter arguments between mummy and this man, flying crockery, passion, and laughter. Rides on his sh
oulder, kisses at bed time, and then nothing … nothing but tears and worry … the frequent moves, mummy's tears, mummy's pain … Elise's fervent whisper in her ear that they were never to mention daddy's name again. Daddy—but it couldn't be. Tears clouded her vision as she tried to take in the older version of the man who had once been her life. She had been a daddy's girl, and when he'd left that night so many years ago now, a part of her had gone with him.
"Elodie." The man's voice broke with emotion, and he stretched a hand out toward her.
Ice cold fury replaced the blood in her veins, hearing her mother's name from this man's lips. He had no right, no fucking right at all.
"Don't you dare say her name, you bastard." She would have launched herself off the bed at him, had Giorgio not had an arm of steel around her waist by now, pinning her in place.
"Let me go. Let me go!" In her fury she turned on Giorgio. She pummeled his chest, and his grip on her slackened for an instant when she hit one of his more severe bruises. His grunt of pain brought her to her senses, and she went still, shaking her head, willing her breathing to slow down.
"You don't understand. He left us. The fucking bastard left us, and when she died, he didn't come for us. He just left us to rot on our own, in those stinking foster homes, when all this time … all this time, he's been alive and fucking thriving from the looks of it."
The quiet understanding in Giorgio's eyes was her complete undoing, and she broke into great big heaving sobs. Tears of frustration, of pain, of hurt, and shattered hopes and dreams. She screamed at the injustice of the hand life had dealt them, oblivious to the man she once called daddy coming closer.
She froze when his hand settled on her shoulder, the touch light, yet commanding her attention, and Giorgio tensed.
"Take your fucking hands off my wife." The deep, threatening tones rumbled through her, and her heart gave a little lurch at the possessive quality of the way he said, "My Wife." As though she meant something to him, as though she really was his wife to be protected, and cherished, and loved, not just someone he felt honor-bound to be with, because he'd promised her sister to keep her safe.
"She is my daughter, too, and I would move heaven and earth to protect her from harm."
The growl coming from Giorgio's chest shook the bed, and this time it was Jemima holding him back from lashing out at the man who still caressed her shoulder.
"Don't, Giorgio, he's not worth it." She shook her father's hand off and fixed her eyes on him. Some of the color had returned to the once so beloved face, and the surge of emotion she felt crash on top of her, would have brought her to her knees, had she not been sitting. But she steeled herself against it. It was just remembered childish devotion that's all. The man who stood in front of her was not her father, not in the ways that truly mattered.
"You gave up the right to call me your daughter when you walked on us." She was quite proud of the even cadence of her voice, and she watched him blanch with a grim satisfaction. "And then again, when you didn't come back for us when mummy died. How could you do that? How could you just leave us to fend for ourselves?"
"It was safer that way. I had no choice." He didn't look at her as he mumbled the words, and when he finally looked up the pain in his eyes was hard to take.
"Bullshit. You always have a choice. I should fucking know. I've made the wrong ones my entire life." Giorgio winced at her choice of words and drew her back against his chest. He nuzzled into her neck, and Jemima took strength from the simple contact. "And whose fault would that be, do you think, daddy?"
She spat the old endearment in his face, and he sat down heavily on the side of the bed, as though his legs could not hold him up any longer.
"I loved you so damn much, but it wasn't enough was it? You said I was your little princess, that you would always be there for me, but you weren't, were you? Everything you ever said to us was a lie. Nothing but a fucking lie."
She swiped the tears off her face in an angry gesture of defiance. She would not cry over him; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
"I bet even your name was a lie, wasn't it?" She glared at him, and after what seemed like an eternity he inclined his head. She snorted her disgust. "'Cause Elise and I we tried, both of us. When we were all grown up, we tried to find you. It was Elise's idea. I couldn't have cared less at that point, but there was no fucking trace of you. It's as though you never existed. As though we didn't exist, not really. Like you'd been a figment of our imagination."
She couldn't go on, the pain too raw and too intense. He put his hand over hers, and she flinched, but something about the desperate grip he had on her stopped her from pulling away. If she'd learned one thing since waking up in that hospital bed, it was that everyone had a story. Nothing was as it first seemed, and in this crazy world, she could barely make sense of, pushing the one man away who could finally answer her questions would be foolish.
"Forgive me, Jemima, but I had to disappear. It was the only way to keep you, your sister, and your mum safe." She looked up at him when the hand holding her trembled. She couldn't doubt the sincerity behind those words.
"You were right about choices. We all make them, and we have to live by them. I should have walked away from your mother when I first met her, but I wasn't strong enough. And she could be very persuasive." Jemima swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. Her father seemed far away right now, deeply in thought, an affectionate smile playing around his lips. He tightened his grip on her hand, and despite her better judgment she squeezed him back.
"You may not believe me, but I loved your mother to distraction. I still do. There has never been another woman for me, and there never will be, but the choices I made, they put her in danger."
"What choices? What are you involved in?" Jemima had to ask even though she knew it had to be something shady. He shook his head.
"I can't tell you that." Jemima snorted her annoyance, and support for her father came from an unexpected corner.
"Listen to him, cara mia. You need to hear this." Giorgio's quiet rumble in her ear focused her attention back on the man she owed her birth to.
"I never meant to fall in love, to have a family. When I met Elodie I was on the witness protection program." He smiled grimly at Jemima's sharp intake of breath. "I told her eventually. I thought it would scare her off, to make her see that it would, could never work, but she didn't listen. She convinced me that we could make it work, and as long as we were together it didn't matter where we went. We moved constantly. There was a mole at the FBI. They almost got to us once. And then for a while we settled. They'd finally convicted the guy I had to testify against, and I thought we were free. We felt safe enough to start a family, to have you and Elise."
He sighed and cupped her cheek, his brown eyes so similar to her own, looking deep inside her soul. Some of the old hurt lifted and floated away. She couldn't doubt the depth of emotion in that gaze.
"Never doubt that you were loved and wanted, Jemima. I didn't lie. Everything I ever said to you and your sister was the truth. I'd have laid down my life for you, if I'd have thought it would have stopped this madness, but by then it was too late."
He let go of her and stood up so abruptly, Jemima jumped. He paced around the room, hands balled into fists, and she had to remind herself to breathe, so caught up was she in the scene unfolding in front of her. She glanced at Giorgio, and he, too, looked grim and ready to murder someone. At her anguished whimper he smiled at her, but it didn't reach his eyes, and an icy sense of foreboding spread over her skin. The fine hair on her body stood on end, and gooseflesh broke out over her arms. Giorgio's warm hands rubbed them away, and he dropped a kiss on her exposed shoulder.
"Tell her. She deserves to know what happened."
Her father stopped his frantic pacing and leaned against the wall as though he was in need of the support.
"What happened, daddy?" The barely audible whisper made her father look at her, and she was shocked to see the tears in his eyes.
"The man I'd testified against escaped. We were moved immediately, and we kept moving, only ever barely a step ahead of him. I was terrified that he would use my family against me. The day your mother and you girls were involved in a car accident I knew I had to leave. Elodie wouldn't accept it. We had a massive row. She said it was just coincidence, but I wasn't prepared to take that chance. I left that night. If you weren't with me, you would be safe. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant you were safe."
Jemima swallowed past the lump in her throat. He made it sound so simple, but she knew it hadn't been. Again she glanced at Giorgio's closed face, and she knew without the shadow of a doubt, that she would reach the same decision. She would leave him, to keep him safe. She had done so once, after all. She would do so again if she had to.
"What happened to you after you left?" Again her voice was just a croaky whisper. She seemed utterly incapable of projecting her voice with any conviction.
"He caught up with me, of course. Turns out I was worth more to him alive than dead. He needed my computer skills. The FBI didn't take kindly to my 'conversion' as it were. I went along with it, because as long as I stayed alive, I knew he wouldn't go after you. Plus, I made good money. I put it all in a trust fund for you and Elise. You are both very wealthy young ladies by now, or at least you will be the day my life finally catches up with me."
He smiled at her gasped outrage.
"Don't knock it, Jem. That money is clean. It's the least I could do for my girls. Around the time your mum died, he was finally caught again. By then I was so heavily involved in all this shit, I had to disappear. I couldn't have come for you then, no matter how much I wanted you, and I ached to hold you both. Anyway, I reinvented myself again, became Henry James. Don Luigi offered me his protection, and I have been in the family ever since. I can't see myself leaving any time soon."
Too Devious to Tame (The Giovanni Clan) Page 10