BWWM Club 2: 6 Top Selling BWWM Romance Stories Bundle In 1

by BWWM Club

  Marco’s family were fairly devout Catholics, she knew. She used to go to church with Marco once in a while. That was one of the reasons why she had stopped going to church at all. Her mama had been so disappointed. Janet had a beautiful voice and had been in the church choir, but one day, she had declared that she would not be singing anymore, and that had been that.

  Lunch break came and went. Janet was glad that she had thought of an imaginary stomach bug. That, and the indulgence of the night before, combined, seemed to be a perfectly good excuse for missing lunch. Of course, the real reason was that the butterflies in her stomach had given way to a stampede of bulls that seemed to want to trample her to death from the inside out.

  What a gruesome idea, thought Janet, and shuddered.

  She couldn’t seem to focus on work. By four, she had given up. It was only a twenty-minute drive to Galavan’s. At least they had excellent pasta and the house wine was fairly good. She would need it. There went her detox, she thought with a wry smile.

  Though, of course, Marco would probably try to soften her up by plying her with wine. There was no reason to make it easier for him. She could just stick to water, and then she would see what Marco could do. She would trump his every move. No, counter his moves.

  God, she was losing her mind!

  By four thirty, she had watched the clock, quite literally, for twenty minutes, while her mind wandered. Thankful that she could finally leave, she gathered up everything she needed, and a great deal she would probably not need, and left.

  In the car, she decided to freshen up her memory of the last meeting and plugged in the recording of the meeting. As soon as Marco’s voice filled the car, Janet realized that had been a horrible mistake. Suddenly, she could hear everything he had said to her, eleven years ago, the day before he had left her behind.

  *****

  They hadn’t had much choice when it came to spending time together. It was always either his rather beat-up old Chevy or under supervision and one of their homes. More often than not, they decided that the Chevy was the better option.

  Janet thought Marco was perfect. He was handsome, of course, and all the girls thought she was lucky. She could understand why. She didn’t think she was particularly beautiful. She was a bit too chunky, especially around the hips and thighs, and she knew Marco could have had anybody. The pale, blonde beauties and the dark, seductive young women had all vied for his attention. But he had chosen her.

  Every time she looked at him and saw his dark eyes warm, the wavy length of his hair, the hard young body, she wondered why he had wanted her. She wondered why he had chosen her.

  To Marco, Janet had been the one ever since he set his eyes on her. He had moved to the neighborhood a year ago, seen Janet, and that had been that. He didn’t see the chunky, plain girl Janet saw in the mirror. He saw a curvy young woman who would grow up to be a goddess. He saw the luminescent dark skin, the beautiful smile, and those lovely eyes. He could drown in those eyes.

  They could usually never keep their hands off each other. They had never gone all the way. Janet wasn’t ready for it, and Marco knew it. There was a part of him that had already decided that he would marry Janet, and the same part of him wanted her to be pure and perfect, a virgin on their wedding night, as he would be.

  He had never said that to Janet, of course. It sounded silly. They were teenagers. The idea of getting married was so far away in the future. But as soon as he could get a job and save enough money, he planned to ask her. He didn’t really think they would be virgins on their wedding nights, not seriously. But he did want to wait until they were both completely ready. He knew it would be magic, anyway.

  But that night, Marco was unusually tense.

  “Marco, what’s wrong?” asked Janet, running her hand through his hair. She loved how his hair felt. She loved feeling close to him.

  “Nothing, nothing’s wrong.”

  Janet looked at him steadily.

  “Marco, you know you can tell me anything,” she said softly.

  Marco smiled at her and Janet felt her heart lift, swell, as if it were ready to burst. He was so handsome, so beautiful. His eyes were so beautiful, and she could see in them that he loved her. That was all she had ever wanted. She wanted Marco’s love.

  “Janet… Janet, I love you.”

  His words had been intense with a tinge of despair that she hadn’t heard as they turned to each other. His arms were around her, and his lips were on hers. So young, so passionate, so full of faith, she clung to him, giving him everything he wanted. She thrilled when his hands touched her, and she knew that she wanted to belong to him. She wanted to belong to him forever.

  “No matter what, nothing will ever keep me away from you. Nothing. Janet, you’re mine. You will always be mine. Always.”

  “I’ll always be yours, Marco. I want to be yours. It’s all I want.”

  Janet had already given him her heart and soul. She would have given him her body, too, if he had wanted. But he had never asked, and she was too shy to offer.

  When they finally said good night and he drove her home, he kissed her at her doorstep with a desperation that she thought was just desire. She held him as close as she could and kissed him back with an innocent passion that was too pure to ever be corrupted.

  When he said goodbye that night, Janet never, not for one second, thought that she wouldn’t see him again for eleven years. She thought that they would be together the next evening, as they were every evening. She had fallen asleep dreaming of his kisses. She had fallen asleep thinking of making love to him. Her heart had raced and her body had heated as she thought of being Marco’s lover.

  But she had never seen him again.

  Until yesterday, thought Janet, coming back to the present.

  She turned the recording off with trembling hands and pulled over to the side of the road to calm down a bit. She hadn’t expected those memories to return with such clarity, with such intensity.

  She pulled her compact out of her bag and looked at herself in the tiny mirror. She could see the tiny lines on her face that were barely noticeable, but hadn’t been there eleven years ago. She could see a cynical wisdom in her eyes that had definitely not been there eleven years ago.

  The past was gone, she told herself, and she willed herself to believe it. It was gone. She had been hurt enough by Marco Graziani. She would not give him the chance to do it again. She would not. This time, she would be in control. She would call all the shots.

  When she thought she was reasonably calm again, she set off, determined not to give even half an inch.

  Bess had been right about the surprising lack of traffic that day. Janet made it to Galavan’s in twenty minutes, even with the little pit stop she had made to calm down a bit when she had been ambushed by memories she no longer wished to acknowledge.

  Good, thought Janet as she walked in and found a corner table again. She was a regular there, so she got her garlic bread as soon as she sat down. Methodically, she set up everything she needed, including the recorder, in case she couldn’t predict her own reactions again.

  Janet considered it a good sign that she was early. It meant that she considered the meeting to be all about business. If she had had any personal interest, she would’ve been late as usual. If there was a lurking doubt that she was early for a meeting with personal interest for once because, despite everything, there was a part of her that yearned to see Marco, she quashed it immediately. That was just yet another thing she wouldn’t acknowledge, even to herself.

  Even after she tried to calm herself, she could feel her heart slowing down, almost to a stop, when Marco walked in. It wasn’t fair that he looked so good, thought Janet resentfully. She knew that every woman in the place, and probably quite a few men, too, had turned around to stare at him as he walked in. He was just magnificent.

  He wasn’t wearing a tie. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. He was wearing his jacket, but that was open, too. The midnight blue shi
rt looked wonderful on him. The gray, perfectly tailored jacket and trousers fit him like a dream. He looked like every young woman’s fantasy. Or any woman’s fantasy.

  She watched him smile at the hostess, and knew that he had complimented her. Even used to customers’ compliments and lines, she saw her blush just a bit. Marco was ushered over to her table.

  He moved with a grace that made her want to just lap him up, thought Janet.

  She didn’t want to react to him like that. She didn’t want to watch his hands and wonder if they would still set her body on fire. She didn’t want to look at him smiling at her and wonder if he could still say those words and make her heart flutter.

  He had lied. She had to remember that. He had left her.

  “Good evening, Mr. Graziani,” said Janet, stiffly.

  Marco looked at her steadily, then sat down across her at the table for two.

  “You might as well put all this stuff aside, Janet. You know as well as I do that I didn’t ask you to come over here to talk about business.”

  Janet’s eyes flashed.

  “Then we have nothing more to say.”

  “But,” went on Marco as if she hadn’t said a word, “officially, this meeting is being billed as business. So why don’t you relax and have a conversation with me, Janet. I promise you, you won’t regret it.”

  Janet settled back, a defiant look on her face.

  Fine. He wanted a conversation? She would give him a damn conversation. She would give him a bloody damn conversation he could remember for the rest of his life.

  Chapter 3

  Marco saw how Janet’s eyes flashed and glittered, and he was glad. He wanted a response from her. Any kind of reaction other than the professional coolness he had seen the day before. He had wanted to take her hand and try to explain, try to make her understand why he had had no choice in any of what had happened. But Janet had been in no mood to listen. He had realized that.

  He wasn’t particularly proud of using his business leverage to get her to meet him, but he honestly hadn’t seen another choice. She had convinced herself that she had closed her heart to him.

  He hadn’t expected to react to her so strongly, either. She hadn’t been the only one who’d been taken by surprise. He had known that he would be meeting her, but he hadn’t thought that all those feelings from so long ago were still so alive, waiting to wake up and remind him that once, he would have died for her. He had wanted to live for her. He had wanted to know if she was still the person he remembered. But that storm that woke inside him had taken him by surprise.

  So now, if Janet wanted nothing to do with him, well, tough. She would just have to deal with it. He had to resolve his feelings for her. He had already decided, the night before, that he would have her. He had been meant to have her all along. She wanted him, too. He had spent the night torturing himself with memories of their time spent together, the idealism with which he had carefully restricted his roaming hands.

  That idealism had been left behind with the first blush of youth. Now, he knew more about how the world worked. He was sure that Janet did, too. He had made discreet inquiries and found out that Janet was currently single. Well then, they were two single, unattached, attractive people with unresolved feelings for each other. He wanted those feelings resolved. He had a feeling they would both enjoy that process very much.

  Janet was fuming, of course. He could see that. Grinning, he sat back and looked at her.

  God, she was beautiful. So sexy! She had a body that could fill a man’s arms and cloud a man’s mind. He felt as if she had already clouded his mind. He was putting a business deal that would be beneficial for their most important product on the line on the back burner just to spend time with this woman.

  But she had got under his skin over a decade ago, and he had never been able to get her completely out of his mind. He had been engaged to a beautiful Italian woman once. Maria'd had everything most men would dream of. But he hadn’t been able to go through with it because he had begun to dream of Janet. When he slept, he felt her seep into his mind and fill his heart. Those dreams had made his body burn.

  So he had wanted to see her and convince himself that he was holding on to a fantasy that didn’t exist. He was thinking of a young girl with all the sweetness and shyness in the world who had looked at him like he was everything. That person did not exist. So he should have been able to move on.

  Instead, he found himself intrigued and captured by this cool, collected, beautiful woman who was looking at him quite disdainfully, as if he couldn’t possibly be worth her time. She was looking at him as if even for a worm, she found him severely lacking. It amused him. It made him admire her.

  Just look at that smug look on his face, thought Janet. She wanted to wipe that smirk off his face once and for all. She wanted to kiss those lips until she could make the desire that was churning in her disappear, once and for all.

  “What do you want, Marco?” she snapped.

  Marco’s grin only widened. He had definitely got under Janet’s skin. Good – he didn’t want to be at a disadvantage. Now they were both uncomfortable with the situation and their feelings for each other.

  “I want to get to know you, Janet,” he said simply.

  Janet’s mouth opened and shut as if she was about to say something she’d regret and she had thought the better of it.

  “You knew me,” said Janet, and looked away.

  Marco was shaken. In that split second, he had seen more than anger. He had seen hurt. He didn’t want to think of how much he had hurt her. He didn’t want to acknowledge how much he regretted it, or how far he would be willing to go to make things right.

  Janet looked back, meeting his eyes, before he could say anything. Now, he saw anger and courage in her eyes. She had always had expressive eyes, he thought. He had always known what she felt. Now, he saw that she had learned to mask her emotions, except during those rare moments when they flashed fire.

  “That was a long time ago. You knew me then. Now I’m all grown up and I’m not particularly interested in knowing you. Or in letting you know me,” she snapped.

  Marco grinned again, making her feel like she was ten and prone to smacking kids who irritated her again. If anybody needed a good smack, it was Marco.

  “But I want to know you, Janet. And I do hold the cards here. It isn’t such a big price to pay, is it? It’s just one evening, with great food, really good wine, and hopefully, as the evening wears on, tolerable company.”

  Janet held her tongue. It would have been far too easy to make a sharp remark about the company. She hated stating the obvious.

  Marco had apparently ordered for both of them, because a cheese platter, a cold selection, and a carafe of white wine were placed in front of them.

  “I might not have wanted wine,” pointed out Janet.

  “Well, would you like something else?” asked Marco.

  Janet really liked the wine there, and her stomach had, strangely, settled once she saw Marco.

  “I’ll have the wine now that it’s here,” she said with bad grace.

  Smiling, Marco poured for both of them, having thanked and complimented the waitress fluently in Italian.

  Hearing him speak Italian made those butterflies start again in her stomach, with a vengeance. But it wasn’t nervousness now. It was lust. Hearing those lilting words roll off his tongue had always turned her on. It had always made her want him. Now, she had a sudden impulse to just rip his clothes off and devour him to satisfy herself.

  She shook the image out of her head and took a big gulp of wine to hide her embarrassment.

  He was still looking at her. He was beginning to make her feel tongue-tied. What was she supposed to say now? She didn’t know.

  In that moment of sheer panic, the only thing that popped into her head was out of her mouth before she could stop it. It was the truth, and it was what she had always sworn she would never ask Marco if she ever saw him again.

  “
Why did you leave me?”

  The question was enough to leave him undone. All the glib charm he had acquired over the years washed away, and all that was left was that boy from eleven years ago – the boy she had loved so desperately, with all of her heart and soul.

  “Janet,” he whispered.

  His voice was tortured. The hurt that she had seen in her own eyes far too often was in his, too. He wasn’t hiding it. Seeing it made Janet’s heart soften, whether she wanted it to or not.

  “It’s all right, Marco,” she whispered, and in that moment, she meant it. She knew herself well enough to be sure that she wouldn’t be feeling so generous in a few hours, but in that moment, she had seen the boy she had loved in pain, and she had wanted to wipe it away. Nothing else had mattered.

  “No, it’s not all right. I know it wasn’t. I… I acted badly, Janet, and I have many explanations, but I have no excuses.”

  Somehow, his hand was on hers, gripping it, and she couldn’t make herself pull her hand away. He was gripping her hand as if it was his lifeline.

  The candor with which he had made no excuses touched her, even if she told herself that she was being foolish.

  But she could think of nothing to say. She waited for him to say more, for it was clear that he was trying to find the right words.

  She would give him the evening and the chance to find peace, decided Janet. She might finally find peace, too, and she owed that to herself.

  Marco’s eyes were on her face as if he were searching for answers. But she didn’t have any answers. He had them. She only had questions. So she waited until he spoke again.

  “You know that the business hadn’t been doing very well here. There was the restaurant, but it wasn’t making enough money. So when my father found investors in Florence, we had to move back,” said Marco, as if he were reciting something he had prepared.

  Janet glanced at him.

  “I know why you left, Marco. I want to know why you never told me you were leaving until you left. You called me from the airport and said goodbye, Marco. You called me once after that, after you got to Florence. Then I never heard from you. I didn’t have an address, nothing. I asked everybody if they had a way to get in touch with you. Do you know how humiliating it was? Everybody knew that I was in love with you. They all knew that you had discarded me and left. Everybody knew that I was pining for you. They all either laughed at me or felt sorry for me. I don’t know which was worse, Marco. I think I preferred the derision to the pity.”