He took a deep inhalation and nodded.
‘Why?’
The heavy weight compressing his chest spread to smother his throat. It took a moment for him to clear it.
Tentatively, he took her uninjured hand in his. The weight loosened a fraction when she didn’t immediately tug it away. The beautiful brown eyes that rarely missed anything kept a steadfast gaze on him.
‘I just...’ he cleared his throat again ‘...needed to see you. Bedda... I’ve missed you.’
She drew a sharp breath.
He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it. ‘I’m sorry, bedda. For how I reacted. For running away. For being an arrogant, impatient bastard.’
Her throat moved as she breathed deeply through her pretty, snub nose.
His heart ached to look at her. Everything in him ached.
He’d hurt her so much and in so many ways. How could she bear to share the same air as him?
‘I’ve always been impatient,’ he said. ‘I had so many dreams as a little boy and I couldn’t wait to get out into the world and live them. I was always pushing, always striving for the next fix, always restless. I neglected my parents. Not deliberately but I took them for granted. I fitted them into my schedule, never considering how they would drop everything for one of my visits. I knew they were proud of me and that felt great. Because it was all about me. When my father died...’ He breathed into her hand. The softness of her skin soothed his raging heartbeats. The gentleness of her stare felt as if his soul were being bathed in honey.
‘You know how much his death devastated me,’ he said quietly. ‘You were right about so many things. I didn’t give myself time to grieve. And I did blame myself as much as I blamed your father. I don’t know if Papà thought of confiding his troubles in me. I don’t know because I wasn’t there. When I left Sicily at eighteen, I left body and soul and my parents knew it. That is something else I must live with—my neglect of the two people who gave me more love than a child could wish for. But you were wrong about one thing.’
Her eyes flickered.
‘I don’t want a ready-made family with you to ease my guilt or because it’s convenient.’
He let go of her hand and dragged his fingers down his face. The sigh he gave contained such hopelessness that Claudia’s heart wrenched to hear it.
‘You made me feel things right from the start. Real feelings. And then I found myself trapped in a hell of my own making, locked in a marriage with my enemy’s daughter and I couldn’t handle it. Even when I asked you to stay and be a family, I was fighting the truth.’
‘Which is?’ she whispered.
‘That I love you. These weeks without you have been the worst of my life. I am broken without you. You, Claudia Buscetta—and you must always wear your name with pride because your goodness counteracts every one of your father’s evil deeds—are the most loving, beautiful human being in the world. You deserve so much more than life has given you and I will regret my treatment of you to my dying day. I am here to ask—beg—you to give me one more chance. Please. I can’t breathe without you. I’ll accept whatever terms you make but, please, I beg you, let me share your life as well as our baby’s life.’
As Claudia listened to this most prideful of men bear his soul, the last of the coldness that had enveloped her since he’d left melted away and sunshine heated her skin.
Leaning closer to him, she palmed his cheek. Now that she dared look at him properly, she saw the weight of the grief lining his handsome features. His eyes were heavy with sleep deprivation. He needed a shave.
‘You never asked how I injured myself,’ she said quietly.
His pain-filled eyes flashed with curiosity.
She rubbed her nose to his. Her senses exploded with joy as his woody scent hit her. ‘I accidentally cut myself because I suddenly realised I love you. A moment later our baby moved. Ciro, it felt like she was kicking sense into me.’
He stared at her, brow furrowed with confusion.
‘You’re not the only one who’s been fighting their feelings.’ She stroked his cheekbone. ‘I was too frightened to trust you again and terrified of trusting my feelings for you. I kept going over the past rather than thinking of all the wonderful things you’ve done for me in the present. You refused to let me make excuses for myself. You forced me to stand tall and be counted. That’s what you’ve given me, Ciro, my self-respect. If having the freedom to live without you means being cold to my bones for the rest of my life then it’s a freedom I don’t want. The only freedom I want is the freedom to love you and wake beside you every day and the freedom to know you will love and support me in everything I do, just as I will love and support you in everything you do.’
Ciro’s heart thudded. He hardly dared believe what Claudia’s mouth and loving eyes were saying. He swallowed. ‘You love me?’
‘Yes. I love you,’ she repeated softly against his lips. ‘And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Together. Under the same roof. You, me and our daughter. You’re my world, Ciro.’
Something cracked deep inside him, a fissure that ripped open, expelling the last of the darkness that had made itself at home in him since his father’s death. Into its place poured dazzling sunlight. Wrapping his arms around her, he crushed his mouth to hers and kissed her with all the love flowing in his heart.
‘Oh, my beautiful love,’ he whispered. ‘I swear I will always love and cherish you. Always.’
‘Always,’ she echoed.
And he did love and cherish her. Always.
EPILOGUE
CIRO DROVE THROUGH the security gates that protected this exclusive New York suburb, nodded at the two guards on duty, and continued to the end of the long drive where he drove through another electric gate, this one exclusively protecting his estate. As happened every day of his working life, his heart lifted to see his huge white home gleaming under the sun and he had to resist putting his foot down to get there quicker. With three children, there was always the risk one of them might come flying out from behind one of the trees in the orchard to spray his car with rubber bullets.
He got out, threw his keys at his head groundsman to park for him and hurried into the house.
To his disappointment, Claudia wasn’t in. The huge kitchen, with its three hobs and three ovens designed by her own beautiful hands, was filled with jars of jam she’d made from the fruit she grew in their huge plot. They would go into the Christmas hampers she made every year for his Manhattan store, a natural follow-on from the cake-shop concession she’d opened in it and which had proved to be a massive hit with his clientele.
There were no labels on the jars. That would be done by the assistant Ciro employed for her. Suddenly hungry, he wondered if she’d notice if he opened one of them to spread over the crumpets she’d made the day before.
About to pilfer one of the jars, he suddenly noticed the letter left on the kitchen island, which by itself was as large as the kitchen of his old apartment.
Written in large, unsteady, childish writing, the note said:
Dear Ciro
Taken Alessandro and Roberto swimming.
Rosa at playdate.
I love you.
Claudia xxxxx
Seeing Claudia’s penmanship never failed to choke him. He knew she would have perspired with the strain of writing this simple letter.
His beautiful, brave wife would never be able to read fluently—their youngest child, three-year-old Roberto, had an older reading age—but every letter written and every letter read was a feat of endurance that filled him with more pride than he could contain.
He was about to swallow his first bite of crumpet when the front door flew open and his two youngest children hurled themselves at him like ballistic missiles. Their mother followed, took one look at what was in his hand and the opened jam jar on the counter, and he
r eyes narrowed.
Using their children as a human shield failed to save him from her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and licked the jam from the corner of his mouth. ‘You, Ciro Trapani, are in so much trouble.’
‘Are you going to punish me?’ he murmured, squeezing her peachy bottom.
‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed.
‘I can’t wait.’
That night, baby number four was conceived.
Coming next month
ITALY’S MOST SCANDALOUS VIRGIN
Carol Marinelli
Dante’s want for her was perpetual, a lit fuse he was constantly stamping out, but it was getting harder and harder to keep it up. His breathing was ragged; there was a shift in the air and he desperately fought to throw petrol on the row, for his resistance was fast fading. ‘What did you think, Mia, that we were going to walk into the church together? A family united? Don’t make me laugh…’
No one was laughing.
‘Take your tea and go to bed.’ Dante dismissed her with an angry wave of his hand, but even as he did so he halted, for it was not his place to send her to bed. ‘I didn’t mean that. Do what you will. I will leave.’
‘It’s fine. I’m going up.’ She retrieved the tray.
‘We leave tomorrow at eleven,’ he said again as they headed through to the entrance.
‘Yes.’
She turned then and gave him a tight smile, and saw his black eyes meet hers, and there was that look again between them, the one they had shared at the dining table. It was a look that she dared not decipher.
His lips, which were usually plump and red, the only splash of colour in his black and white features, were for once pale. There was a muscle leaping in his cheek, and she was almost sure it was pure contempt, except her body was misreading it as something else.
She had always been aware of his potent sexuality, but now Mia was suddenly aware of her own.
Conscious that she was naked beneath the gown, her breasts felt full and heavy, aware of the lust that danced inappropriately in the air between them. The prison gates were parting further and she was terrified to step out. ‘Goodnight,’ she croaked, and climbed the stairs, almost tipping the tray and only able to breathe when she heard the door slam.
Tea forgotten, she lay on the bed, frantic and unsettled. So much for the Ice Queen! She was burning for him in a way she had never known until she’d met Dante.
Mia had thought for a long time that there was something wrong with her, something missing in her make-up, for she’d had little to no interest in sex. Even back at school she would listen in on her peers, quietly bemused by their obsessive talking about boys and the things they did that to Mia sounded filthy. Her mother’s awkward talk about the facts of life had left Mia revolted. The fact of Mia’s life: it was something she didn’t want! There was no reason she could find. There had been no trauma, nothing she could pin it to. Just for her, those feelings simply did not exist. Mia had tried to ignite the absent fire and had been on a couple of dates, but had found she couldn’t even tolerate kisses, and tongues positively revolted her. She couldn’t bear to consider anything else.
And while this marriage had given her a unique chance to heal from the appalling disaster that had befallen her family, the deeper truth was that it had given her a chance to hide from something she perhaps ought to address.
A no-sex marriage had felt like a blessing when she and Rafael had agreed to it.
Yet the ink had barely dried on the contract when she had found out that though those feelings might be buried deep, they were there after all.
Mia had been just a few days into the pretend position of Rafael’s PA, and the carefully engineered rumours had just started to fly, when Dante Romano had walked in. A mere moment with him had helped her understand all she had been missing, for with just a look she found herself reacting in a way she never had before.
His dark eyes had transfixed her, the deep growl of his voice had elicited a shiver low in her stomach, and even his scent, as it reached her, went straight to form a perfect memory. When Dante had asked who she was, his voice and his presence had alerted, startled and awoken her. So much so that she had half expected him to snap his fingers like a genie right before her scalding face.
Three wishes?
You.
You.
You.
Continue reading
ITALY’S MOST SCANDALOUS VIRGIN
Carol Marinelli
Available next month
Copyright ©2020 by Carol Marinelli
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A Baby To Bind His Innocent (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Sicilian Marriage Pact, Book 1) Page 17