“No, wait.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “There’s something I want to explain to you. We’ll have coffee later.”
She swallowed. “Sure, if you like.” His hand was warm on hers. It felt good to be touched by him and she stared at the lean brown fingers she knew so well, fingers that knew how to make magic with her body. It was not a memory she wanted right now.
He let go of her hand and reached for the wine bottle. “Let’s finish this and sit on the sofa.”
He poured the last of the wine and they picked up their glasses and moved to the couch.
“What do you want to explain to me?” she asked, cradling the wineglass in both her hands.
He hesitated. “You just said you got to know Valentina well when you lived at the villa with us.” He looked right into her eyes. “But you didn’t get to know me very well, did you?”
She felt a nervous fluttering in her chest. “Not as much as I wanted to.”
“You asked me once why I didn’t want to think about the future, and I never answered you.”
“Right.”
“I’ve always felt guilty for not telling you about…” He frowned, clearly having trouble expressing himself. “Do you remember the time I came to see your apartment after your kitchen was done up?”
She nodded.
“Remember you asked me why I didn’t want to talk about my wife?”
She swallowed. The memory sprang up, vivid, alive. The anger in his face, his eyes, his voice. So much anger. And she remembered the night before she had left, when again she’d asked him why he didn’t want to talk about the future. “Yes, I remember.”
“I want to tell you about it now. I want you to understand why I let you go.”
She stared down into her glass, at the ruby-red wine, and felt an unexpected heat rush to the surface. He wanted her to understand why he let her go.
How generous of him! He wanted to tell her now? What difference did it make if she understood now?
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Massimo.” Her chest felt tight and it was difficult to breathe. She looked up to meet his dark gaze, intent on her face. “It doesn’t matter anymore. When it’s over, it’s over. That’s the understanding we had.”
Even if it went wrong for me in the end, she added silently.
He pushed himself to his feet, ran both hands through his hair. “Please, Charli, listen to me.”
He paced. Ripped off his tie. Raked his fingers through his hair again. Like a tiger in a cage. A tiger who wanted out.
“What I said was true,” he said. “I loved her.” He rubbed his face. “I thought she loved me.”
A stab of surprise. Her heart skipped a beat. She said nothing.
“She died in a car accident in Firenze—Florence, I mean. I’m sure Valentina told you that much, although I’m quite sure she doesn’t know the rest of the story.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Giulia had told me she was spending a week with her sister in Emilia, but I found out she’d never been there. She’d been in Firenze all along with her lover. He was driving the car. It was all over the papers and I had not the faintest notion what had been going on behind my back. She’d been with this man for over a year and I didn’t know.” Dark desolation in his eyes.
Out came all the pain and grief of his betrayal, of a marriage that had been a sham, of a woman who had not loved him.
“It was all a lie. An illusion.”
Charli’s anger had melted away. “I didn’t know,” she whispered, her heart aching for him. She was filled with regret for not understanding, for thinking she’d been competing with the memory of a loving wife.
He shrugged helplessly. “So, where does that leave me now? You asked me another question. Why are you so angry? Well, it came back to me and I kept asking myself, yes, why was I still so angry after all that time?”
He massaged his neck, as if rubbing away stress and tension. “In the beginning I was emotionally devastated because I had lost my wife. Then I became angry because…because my marriage was a lie.” He waved his hands. “My wife had been unfaithful to me and the woman I mourned had never even existed. I was mourning an illusion. Even my grief was meaningless. I blamed her for everything, for my unhappiness, for my distrust.”
His mouth curved down in a bittersweet smile. “You know what? I realized not long ago that I wasn’t angry with her anymore. I was angry with myself because I hadn’t seen what there was to see—I was so blind about her and about our relationship, and I had failed myself.”
He fell silent and Charli said nothing. She had no great wisdom to share. She’d been so blind about her own relationship, about the kind of man Richard really was. She had also failed herself by ignoring the signals and suppressing her instincts.
He sat down next to her. Elbows on his knees, he rested his head in his hands.
“I don’t trust my own instincts anymore,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands, yet she heard the despair in his tone.
She felt an upwelling of compassion, of understanding. Tears burned behind her eyes.
If he is the man you want, maybe you should fight for him, came Bree’s voice.
He looked up. “I think I’ve not always been easy on Valentina, not trusting my own instincts, either. I wanted to make sure she grew up with decent values. She’s beautiful and sometimes I worried that…that she might become like Giulia, breaking some fool of a guy’s heart.”
“Oh, Massimo. There’s more chance the other way around.”
His smile held a touch of self-derision. “Naturally, I’m concerned about that as well.”
“Naturally,” she said dryly. “But you allowed her to come here to go to college, so you’ve decided it’s time to let her try out being independent now, so you’re doing all right.”
He looked away for a moment, as if remembering something. “I suppose part of my problem is that I can’t give up the feeling that she needs me. Like when she was little. When my parents died.” He paused, staring blindly ahead. “But she’s no longer ten and she doesn’t really need me anymore.” He sounded so bleak, Charli felt her heart contract.
“That’s not true, Massimo. Of course she needs you. Just not in the way she used to. She needs to know you are there, that you are her family, that whatever happens she can turn to you because you will always love her and you will always be her big brother.” She swallowed at the lump in her throat. She stood up. “I’ll make coffee.”
She went to the kitchen, feeling the need to get away, feeling the words she had spoken taking on a life of their own, wanting those words for herself…you will always love me and you will always be the man in my life.
She rinsed the coffee pot, her vision suddenly blurred by tears.
She had never planned to fall in love with him, had never wanted this, but her heart had a mind of its own.
Tears ran down her face and she wiped at them, terrified he’d notice. She was facing away from him, but across the breakfast bar he could see her back. She put fresh water in the coffee maker. Wiped at her tears again. She took out a filter and inserted it, took the coffee can and scooped coffee into the filter.
Her throat ached with the effort not to cry. She took in a slow, deep breath, trying to stay calm. She slipped the pot under the filter and flipped the switch.
She heard him get up, heard him come around the breakfast bar. The coffee maker gurgled in the silence.
He stood behind her. Head bent, she blinked furiously, her heart beating fast. She stared into the sink, afraid to look at him, her body tense all over.
“Charli?”
She still didn’t look at him. “What?” Her voice sounded thick with tears. There was nothing she could do about it.
She felt his hands on her upper arms, felt him turn her around. She kept her head down but he put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. All she saw was the blur of his face.
“Charli,” he said softly, “you’re crying.”
The tone of his voice broke something inside her. She didn’t care about her pride anymore, about being strong and independent and brave. None of it mattered more than the terrible ache of loss and need inside her heart, the part that longed for him, for his arms around her, the soft whispers of his voice in her ear.
If he is the man you want, maybe you should fight for him.
“Charli, what’s wrong?”
“I miss you so,” she whispered.
For a fraction of a second after she heard herself say the words, Charli felt a flash of naked terror. What if he did not want to hear this?
He had to hear this.
With a low moan he wrapped his arms around her and pressed her close. “I missed you too,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
His words were like a balm to her raw nerves, and tears of relief flooded her eyes. A sob escaped her and he stroked her hair, murmuring words she didn’t understand. Then he withdrew a little and looked at her, but all she saw was a blur.
“Charli, letting you go was the stupidest mistake I ever made. I’m so sorry I caused you pain.”
She needed a tissue, couldn’t remember where there was a box. She reached for the paper towels instead and mopped up her face. She drew in a shuddering breath, tried to calm down.
“But it was what we agreed,” she said, her voice thick and unsteady. “When it’s over, it’s over.” His face was in focus again and she could see the emotion smoldering in his eyes.
“But it wasn’t over, cara.”
“I thought it was, for you.”
“I tried to tell myself it was. I don’t know what insanity possessed me, but I was doing the same thing I had done before.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I did it again. I was blind about our relationship as well. I was so frightened to ever love again and be cheated and humiliated again, that I did not see what was right in front of me. Here was true happiness staring me in the face and I did not see it.” He kissed her very tenderly. “I didn’t see it until after you had gone, and even then I tried to deny it for a long time.”
He looked into her eyes and she saw the truth. Her heart stumbled. “You didn’t come here to talk about Valentina, did you?” He could have asked her to look out for Valentina in an e-mail, or on the phone.
“No. I came to see you. To see if there was any hope left, if you still wanted me.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Charli, you are the real deal, and I know that does not sound at all like a romantic Italian lover speaking, but in English this is the only way I know how to express this. The real deal. You are the true love of my heart. I love you, I adore you.”
He kissed her, and her heart went soaring, and she kissed him back, and a thousand lights went on in her soul chasing the darkness and the emptiness.
She drew back and smiled up into his eyes. “You love me? Really?”
“Yes, really. Ti amo, ti voglio bene. I love you, I want you. I can see clearly now.”
“Oh, Massimo.” Tears threatened again. “I love you, too. I didn’t know I could love anyone so much. I was so miserable thinking you didn’t want me. That all I was to you was a temporary fling.”
He groaned. “Don’t say that. You were never a fling. What we had was real and good—I was just too stupid to see it.” He took her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m never, never letting you go again,” he whispered. “Mai!” he added with fervor, as if saying it in Italian made it more so.
“I’ll never leave you, Massimo.” She swallowed at the constriction in her throat.
“Is that a promise?” His voice sounded husky.
“Yes.”
“So you will marry me?”
She smiled. “Yes. If you want me to be your wife.”
A fiery love darkened his eyes. “I want you to be my wife. I want to be your husband. I want to have babies and be happy ever after.”
She smiled as tears welled in her eyes. “Me too.”
He kissed her again, as if he could not get enough of her, expressing with his mouth the love in his heart.
She clung to him, pressing herself into him, feeling the heat of his body. She smelled his clean, familiar scent, smelled Italy and the flavors of love, felt the sunshine and the warmth. Her body bloomed, her blood sang to his kisses and the caressing of his hands.
And then he said more to her in Italian, beautiful words and phrases not in the guidebooks.
“Non capisco,” she whispered.
“Show me your bedroom,” he whispered back, “and I’ll explain it to you.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1238-5
THE ITALIAN’S SEDUCTION
First North American Publication 2008.
Copyright © 2005 by Karen van der Zee.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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