It was sex he wanted from her—and nothing more.
She showered, wishing the water could wash away her shame, her stupidity. She, Emma Stephenson, had been so sure she could handle it, so sure she would never succumb to his fatal charms. Eventually, like all the rest, she had. Bit by bit, each rule, each guideline had been chipped away—each time she had promised herself that this would be the last…
Till next time.
Turning off the shower, she shivered and reached for a towel that wasn’t there. Walking across the bathroom, she stood naked as he walked in, her hands moving to cover herself as she leant against the sink.
‘Don’t you ever knock?’ She attempted a smile to save face, and hoped the steam and the water from the shower would hide the evidence of her tears.
But he saw her.
Saw the body he had missed for weeks and saw the changes too.
Full, ripe breasts made his throat catch, and he noticed the dusting of weight on her hips, although there was something else too that he couldn’t define, an added dimension to her femininity.
She was like a drug that kept beckoning. Never had he cared for someone like this before—last night he had accepted the release she had offered, not for escape but to go back, to return, to savour the feelings they had once created in one another.
He had told her some of it, he had told her, and she hadn’t blanched or turned away from his horrible past—and he was finally glimpsing a future, a future where bathroom doors were open, where you kissed and made up and you tried again.
Where you were there for each other.
‘Why would I knock?’ he teased gently.
‘Because…’ She was starting to cry and couldn’t help it. ‘Because…’
He pressed her against the sink with his kiss—naked, gorgeous, she made today possible. He had sworn to never again make love with her, he had sworn to just let her go, let her be, keep her safe, but he was finally seeing things differently.
She was safer by his side.
Safer with him than without him.
He kissed her as if it was the first time, relishing her all over again.
‘You do make things better. With you things are better.’ And that he remembered their words, that each conversation they’d ever had was in his head the same way it was in hers, brought assurance. ‘You could always make things better…’
‘This isn’t just sex.’ She wept out the words as he lifted her to the edge of the sink. His mouth lowered and suckled her swollen breast as her fingers knotted in his hair.
‘No,’ he murmured, because it wasn’t. This was it, this was him and this was her and this was the place he always wanted to be. He lifted his head and kissed away her tears, kissed her mouth as his hands followed the curve of her thickening waist.
‘Don’t hurt me again, Luca…’ she begged brokenly.
His eyes jerked up to hers, his mouth pulling away simultaneously with her words. Was that what he had done? Yes, he acknowledged. In protecting her, he had hurt her badly.
He could never hurt her again, never would hurt her again. Of that, at this very moment, he was absolutely certain.
‘Never.’ He growled out his truth.
‘And tell me this isn’t just sex,’ she pleaded as his hips parted her thighs, because it wasn’t just sex for her, because she could never be so real, so open, so exposed with anyone other than Luca. His fingers spread her pretty butterfly lips and he saw changes there too, and he was awash with this fierce surge of protection, assured in his answer.
‘No.’ His mouth was in her neck, he was as close to weeping as he had ever been. Her curls, wet from the shower, draped his face and as he slid inside her, he was certain of the moment. He was smelling her again, tasting her again, inside her again, and he was truly home, deep, deep inside her. His arms circled her, his mind wrapped around hers, and this was nothing like anything he had ever envisaged. Then she was arching towards him and he didn’t have to hold back, he didn’t have to do anything except love her, and that was so scarily easy.
The passion that blazed in his eyes should have assured her, but then he lowered his head. Nuzzling her shoulders, her neck, he drove deeper into her, only she couldn’t give in, couldn’t let herself be swept away by the building current, because she couldn’t risk going under again.
Her body was twitching, her legs wet and wrapped around him, and it was Emma who sought release now. She could see his jet curls, see him slide in and out of her, and knew he was ready, knew he awaited her—but she was too scared to trust, too scared to hand over that last little bit of her heart to him.
She wanted his love, wanted a father for her baby, wanted him no matter how her head denied it.
She knew he was close and, locked into a rhythm, his body begged her to join him. He was saying her name over and over, his lips kissing the back of her neck, his hands cupping her damp bottom, and she could feel his abandon.
‘I love you.’ He groaned out the words as if it hurt to say them. She’d never thought she’d ever hear him say them, but he was saying them again and again, saying them over and over as he spilled inside her, rapid, urgent thrusts that took her to this heady place where she gave in to him, gave in to her body, and she was saying it too.
He was kissing her passionately, his tongue circling hers, as finally she joined him, and he dragged from her that last restraint. His mouth stifled her sobs as she gave that piece to him and then his tongue soothed her as he slowly kissed her back to the world.
‘You,’ Luca said slowly, wrapping a towel around her, holding her shivering body, comforting her on a day when it should be her comforting him, ‘make this day bearable.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SHE was pregnant.
Of that he was sure.
That the baby was his there was no doubt.
He stood in the church, supporting his mother, his weeping sister, and stared beyond the priest to the baptismal font. He tried to comprehend the fact of the D’Amato name carrying on after all—his baby, the future, the family name continuing.
Tried to imagine himself as a father.
Could he do it—could he break every promise he had made to himself?
Today he did his duty, threw a handful of dirt on the coffin and then stepped back.
It should be over—and yet the cycle might now continue.
His mind was a blizzard of conflicting emotions, every tombstone reminding him of his history, of his legacy, of the true meaning of his family name. He wanted to go back to this morning, to the certainty he had felt then, the assuredness that no harm would ever come to someone he loved.
The priest was talking about faith and hope and love.
His faith had long since gone.
He desperately wanted to hope.
And he was terrified to love.
But he was dangerously close to accepting a different future.
He needed to think.
‘Come…’ Mia was calmer. Her tears had filled the church but now she seemed resigned. ‘The cars are waiting.’
‘I will make my own way back.’ Luca looked over at Emma. ‘You go to the house.’
‘You need to greet the guests,’ she pointed out.
‘I want to walk.’
‘You must come back to the house,’ Mia said in exasperation. ‘As his only son, it is tradition…’
‘I will be back.’ Luca refused to be swayed. ‘But right now I need to be alone.’
He did, he needed so badly to be alone, because this was too big to leap into without serious thought.
Soon Emma would tell him, soon he would formally know that he was to become a father, and his response had to be right.
He walked around the graveyard then stood for a pensive moment.
He could hear his mother’s bitter words from the past as clearly as though she’d just said them to him. You are no better than him—you are the same. You are a D’Amato through and through.
‘Luca!�
� Leo stood beside him as he stared at his father’s new grave. ‘Can I give you a lift back to the house?’
‘I am not going back yet—I want to walk.’
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ He was about to decline the offer of company, only Leo was wise. Surely, at some point over the years, he must have treated his mother’s wounds or at least seen what was going on— maybe the older man could give him answers.
They walked in silence—through the winding roads and to the next village, where finally they sat. Luca ordered coffee and whisky and wondered how to ask without telling.
‘Emma seems a lovely woman.’ Leo broke the silence.
‘She is,’ Luca agreed.
‘It is good to see you two supporting each other, Luca. To know even in sad times you can find peace.’
‘Can I speak with you as a doctor?’ Luca asked bluntly.
‘Of course.’
‘I think she may be pregnant,’ he revealed. The doctor didn’t offer congratulations; instead he waited to hear what else Luca had to say. ‘I have questions, Leo. Things I need to know about my past, about me…’
‘Then ask,’ Leo offered, ‘and I will try to give honest answers.’
‘Always I feel different from my father—my mother says I am the same, that I am like him…’ He watched as Leo’s drink paused near his lips. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘I think so.’
‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true, Luca?’ Leo asked.
That I will beat my wife, that the cruel streak of the D’Amato men is my inevitable fate—or Emma’s? This was what he wanted to say, but instead he downed his drink.
‘I should never have started this.’ Luca stood up. ‘I should get back to the house.’
‘Sit, Luca.’ Leo gestured to the waiter to fill his glass, but Luca remained standing. ‘There are things we need to discuss, and it will be better for you, for Emma too perhaps, to know the truth.’
‘I don’t want to discuss it any more,’ Luca said, because even if he had started it, he didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to face the inevitable, but it was coming at him now.
‘There is a good counsellor in Palermo, one I highly recommend to deal with these things.’
‘No!’ He shouted it.
‘Luca, you cannot escape your genes.’ It was like hearing the guillotine fall, the truth was so appalling, and the horrible inevitability had Luca wanting to vomit. But instead he drowned the acrid taste in his mouth with whisky and willed the fear to abate as the doctor delivered his diagnosis that no matter the strength of Luca’s feelings, his unenviable gene pool would claim, not just him but Emma and the baby he was sure she carried.
‘No!’ It was Emma’s sobs that filled the house—and Luca had to restrain her flailing arms from making contact with his chest as he broke her heart again. ‘You said you loved me.’
‘Emma.’ His voice was detached, matter-of-fact even, as she raged at what he was doing, at what he was saying. ‘I was upset this morning, emotional…’
‘You!’ Emma sobbed. ‘Emotional? You’re a coldhearted bastard. You looked me in the eyes and said you loved me, and you did love me, I could see it.’ She wanted to lash out again if he would just let go of her arms.
‘People say that…’ Luca’s was the voice of cool reason. ‘Men say that, you know that. Men say these things to—’
‘Get what they want?’ Emma finished for him. ‘You already had what you wanted, Luca. You were already screwing me when you said it!’
‘Don’t talk like a tart.’
‘Well, that’s what you made me, that’s what you did to me!’ And then, because he was holding her arms, because she couldn’t hit him again, she swore at him instead.
And then she swore again, using the most vile epithets she could think of.
He didn’t even flinch.
She didn’t tell him about the baby, didn’t play her last card.
And for that Luca had grudging admiration.
She didn’t cash in the cheque he sent her, which made Luca worry.
In the weeks and months that followed, every day he waited, for her letter, or her lawyer’s letter, or a phone call—admiring her that it never came, eroding him that it didn’t.
Back in his village for another tour of duty, for the three-month mass to mark his father’s passing, it killed him to be back in the same room, only this time without her.
He lay in bed that morning, not wanting to get up, not wanting to shower, to walk into the bathroom, where he had told her his ultimate truth.
He had hurt her.
Not in the way that he had feared, but he had hurt her all the same.
He had never—except in this—doubted himself.
And he was angry now.
Angry for doubting himself, because after weeks of soul searching he knew—Luca knew—he would never hurt her. His grief on the night of his father’s funeral and in the days that had followed had been real—except it had all been because of losing Emma.
Since she’d left, in the depths of his grief, this proud man had visited a counsellor—although not the Italian one Leo had suggested. Instead, he had sat in a bland beige office in the middle of London and had opened his closed heart to a stranger, explored his closed mind in a way he had never dared to do before, and he knew now.
Knew, despite his heritage, despite what Leo had said, despite the facts and figures, despite the anger of his youth and the unenviable history of the D’Amato men, he knew that his anger would never, could never be aimed at her.
For the very first time he trusted himself, except now it was maybe too late.
‘Luca?’ His mother knocked and then came into the bedroom, placed coffee on the bedside table and handed him the tray then headed to the window, opening the shutters and letting the sun stream in.
‘You did not have to do that!’ Luca protested. ‘I should be looking after you.’
‘You should be looking after Emma,’ his mother pointed out.
She was dressed in black. This was a dark day, but there was a lightness to her—the absence of fear, Luca realised. Oh, she would respectfully mourn her husband, but her duty was done now, there would be no feigned tears—life could be peaceful now.
For her.
‘I thought I was looking after her,’ Luca said, ‘by keeping her away. I thought I was doing the right thing by her.’
‘How?’ Mia begged. ‘I thought you were happy with Martha, but with Emma I just knew…How could you think you were helping her by ending it? Emma loves you.’
‘I did not want to be like him.’
‘I know I said hurtful things to you, out of fear, out of pain, out of guilt, and for that I am truly sorry. But you are nothing like him,’ his mother said fiercely.
‘I know that now,’ Luca said. ‘But I still wasn’t sure back then.’
‘Leo said you spoke with him.’ Mia sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes sparkling with tears. ‘I don’t understand, Luca. He said you understood your past, and wanted to ask him about it. I know it must have been a shock, that it must have caused you pain to hear the truth, but to end it with Emma! Why, Luca?’
‘Because Leo said it was in my blood, that I could not escape my genes. That the violent traits in my grandfather, my uncle, my father could not be denied. I said I felt nothing like them and he said he knew it was hard to accept, to face…’
A moan of horror escaped his mother’s lips…a sound of such pain that Luca started with concern. She had always been silent, even when being beaten, but she was moaning in pain now, a pain he didn’t understand, her eyes frantic and urgent and loaded with tears when they met her son’s. ‘To accept and face the truth that Leo is your real father…’
It was as if the sun had gone out. Everything suddenly went dark, as if the bed had been pulled from under him, as if the floor had just given way. Every rock, every foundation collapsed beneath him, yet he never moved, never moved a muscle,
his mother’s voice seeming distorted from a distance as his mind frantically tried to process the words.
‘I thought you knew,’ Mia pleaded. ‘Leo thought that you knew, that you had finally guessed…’
As he looked back on their conversation with the knowledge the other man held, Luca closed his eyes. And as he did so, he felt the guilt, the shame, the fear truly unravel at last, and when he opened his eyes it was to a world that was brighter, safer. His only regret was that it was a world without Emma.
‘Devo sapere,’ Luca said. ‘Tell me.’ There was a flash of anger then. ‘Did he know, did Leo know how he was treating you?’
‘Never!’ Mia sobbed. ‘Only you, my son, only you know my pain. I was always promised for your father— our two families were friends. I knew I would marry him, but I did not like to think about it—sixteen seemed a long way off. Always I liked Leo—he was so clever, we all knew he was destined for better and sometimes, when he came home in the holidays, I felt his eyes on me. One time we kissed…’ She sighed and then visibly shook herself and continued her story.
‘I worked in the baker’s, my marriage was two weeks away. The village was celebrating because Leo had passed his exams and was going to study medicine in Roma; he would return a doctor. I was sad. My wedding was soon and your father had slapped me, he had pushed me, he had made me do things that shamed me…’
‘He is not my father,’ Luca corrected her, and how good those words felt!
‘Rico had hurt me.’ Mia nodded in acknowledgment. ‘We closed early one day and I was walking home and I met Leo. He was leaving the next day and he said he was sorry he would not be at my wedding…then he admitted he was not sorry. That it would hurt to see me marry another. We went to the river and I nearly told him…’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Luca asked.
‘How?’ Mia asked. ‘Leo was a good man, even as a teenager he was a good man, a man who cared for me. He would not have gone away to get his medical degree.’
‘He could have taken you with him.’
‘His family would have been shamed and would not have paid for his education. After all, I was another man’s bride-to-be, and this town would have never forgiven that. How, in one conversation, could I change his life when neither really knew how the other was feeling?
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