The Romano Brothers Series

by Leslie North

  “Do you think we could go skiing?” Stella asked in a small voice.

  “Huh?” he asked, shifting his attention to her.

  “I noticed that some of the ski slopes were still open. I never imagined that they’d be open this late in the season, and I’ve never been.”

  “You want to go skiing?” Leonardo repeated. He still felt numb and didn’t know how he should respond to her simple request. It seemed easy enough. Spend a day outside in the sun with a girl who had once captured his heart.

  “The past is behind us, you’re right. I agree, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse to sit idly while my life passes by. I”—she took a deep breath—“I want to live every moment.” She laid her hand over his and curled her fingers over his palm. His mind considered forcing his body to pull away, but his hand overruled it when he gave her fingers a squeeze.

  “Skiing sounds nice,” he said, smiling, “but first we’ve got to get you some proper clothes.”

  12

  Stella

  Stella squealed in gleeful delight as she hurtled down the ski slope at a ground-eating pace of four miles an hour. She hadn’t worked out the mechanics of stopping yet, and she opened her arms wide to lose herself in a giant bear hug from Leonardo. But, unlike all the other times they’d tried this maneuver, this time her feet kept going and she fell backwards to the snowy ground and pulled Leonardo down on top of her.

  She laughed so hard that tears threatened to freeze at the corners of her eyes. “Oh, that was fun!” she exclaimed, looking up into Leonardo’s smiling face. His brilliantly blue eyes were crinkled, and he seemed a completely different man than the person she’d known in Sicily. He was lighthearted, carefree and happy. He still liked to be in control on matters that he thought important, though, a fact shown by how he’d dressed her in thickly padded winter clothes that made her feel as if she were a walking marshmallow.

  Leonardo rested his weight on one elbow as he stretched out beside her. On the kiddie slopes that they were on, there was very little risk that anyone would come crashing into them.

  Stella titled her head back to open herself to Leonardo’s kiss as he dipped his head to capture her lips. She curled her gloved fingers into his coat and would have curled her toes, too, if her boots would have allowed for it. They’d spent the better part of a week together so far, sharing every waking moment, but the tingles that the man gave her every time he touched her hadn’t gone away. They hadn’t even diminished, and not for the first time Stella wondered if she could have finally found love. But despite that, and regardless of what Leonardo had said about the past being behind them and having no place in their present or future—or the fact that she’d agreed with him—Stella didn’t feel good about leaving parts of her past unfinished. She knew that the Romano del Mare could be restored to the grand resort it once was while still honoring the unique beauty of its heritage. She wasn’t ready to give up, and she had to figure out how to convince Leonardo that it was still a battle worth fighting.

  “Let’s do dinner at home tonight,” Leonardo said, rubbing the tip of his nose back and forth over hers. “I’ll cook for you.”

  “Only if we can have dessert first,” Stella teased, wiggling her brows suggestively and then laughing when Leonardo gave her bottom lip a little nip.

  The drive back to the cabin was as picturesque as anything Stella had ever seen. Even though she was from America, she’d never visited the West and had certainly never been to the Rocky Mountains. They were grander than anything she’d ever imagined, but by the time they reached the cabin, all of her attention had shifted to Leonardo.

  “Stay,” Leonardo ordered as he got out of the driver’s side and walked around to her side. Opening the door, he scooped her up into his arms. It never ceased to surprise her how strong he was. She felt safe and secure resting against the wall of muscle that was his chest, and she kissed and nibbled his ear as he carried her into the house, doing her best to stroke his ego as she tried to distract him with her feminine wiles. But the only thing she managed to do was elicit a low growl from him.

  Letting her feet swing to the ground, he pressed her against the wall. Without hesitation, Stella began pulling his open coat off his shoulders as Leonardo worked to release her from hers. In under a minute, his discarded coat was joined by his shirt, and Stella dragged her nails down his thick pecs, earning her another growl from him before he captured her wrists and pinned them above her head against the door.

  Stella titled her head to the side as Leonardo’s lips traced a blazing trail down the side of her face to her neck. She moaned softly when he kissed and nipped her delicate, tender flesh.

  He was the most delicious man she had ever known, not that she’d known many. But the quiet man she was falling so hard for had an intensity beneath his quiet waters that she delighted in coaxing to the surface.

  She wiggled her hands above her head where Leonardo held them in place with one of his massive hands, leaving the other free to roam her body and to strip open her shirt before unlatching the front hooks of her bra with a twist of his fingers.

  Cool air tickled and teased her nipples before Leonardo’s thumb circled and then traced over one. But his touch there didn’t linger. Instead his hand trailed down her stomach to the top of her thick snow pants. He unfastened the top button and then took his time peeling the zipper down while Stella’s breath came faster and faster. The way he touched her always made her head feel dizzy and floaty, as if her body couldn’t contain the amount of pleasure he gave her.

  Then with the front of her pants open, what happened next came as no surprise to Stella, and yet she gasped and then whimpered as Leonardo slid his hand inside of her panties. His fingers parted her folds as she opened her stance for him. He explored the folds of her lips, tracing her core until she was trembling and panting with need. Lifting his head from where he’d been nuzzling her neck, he locked her gaze with his as his exploring fingers plunged into her depths.

  She gasped, arching her chest, and he met it with his own as he pressed himself against her and stole the breath from her mouth in a kiss that mimicked the thrust and touch of his hand below. But what started off rough softened into a steady teasing that made her insides ache to be filled in a way that only he could do. She needed him, wanted him, but he was taking his time. Then, suddenly, his mouth was gone and Leonardo was on his knees in front of her. His strong hands pulled her ski pants off her hips and down her legs until finally he freed one foot from her shoe and pants alike. She thought that would be the end of it, that he would shift his attention to freeing her other leg and foot, but he didn’t. Instead, he threw her knee over his wide shoulder and kissed his way up the tender skin of her inner thigh as she sank her fingers into his hair and held on.

  It didn’t take him long to reach her center, where his tongue swirled around her swollen nub as the tips of his fingers once again traced her lips around her core. The moment his mouth closed on her in a suctioned kiss, his fingers slipped inside of her again.

  “Leo…” she whimpered on the faintest of sighs. How she had gotten so involved with him, she still didn’t know. It had started as a fling for both of them, she was sure, but when did a fling become an actual relationship? He made her laugh and added happiness to her life more and more with each passing day, and now she couldn’t imagine giving it up… especially not when he was doing what he was doing to her.

  Her hands tightened in his hair as she pulled his face harder against her sex. She needed more than just his fingers inside of her. Rippling spasms were traveling through her core but his fingers couldn’t give her what she needed. She needed him, his thickness, his heft. She needed to be opened by him as he pushed his full, hard length inside of her.

  “Leo, please!” She didn’t know what she was begging for. She certainly hadn’t said the words, she only knew that she was in a desperate state of want. “I need you! Please!”

  Even though she’d asked for it, in her own way, she
almost cried out complaint when Leonardo’s mouth abandoned her throbbing, swollen clit and his stroking fingers slid free of her core. But a second later he was standing before her in all his glory with his own pants pushed off his hips. He stepped on her pants and pulled her other leg free of its entangled trap when he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and a second later the round tip of his hardness pressed against her softness.

  She felt herself part for him, felt him push into her, and it was the most exquisite sensation of her life. A feeling of fullness permeated her. A contentment that came with being where one belonged. She belonged with Leonardo. She was sure of it, and as he thrust himself into her depths, she didn’t fight her body’s need to let go. She accepted all that he had to give her and took him not only into her body but into her heart and soul as well.

  It was an hour later before the two lay sated in front of a crackling fire in the middle of the grand room. Leonardo had laid out a plush wool rug that was nearly as thick and cushioned as laying on a thin mattress pad yet insanely more luxurious.

  With her head on his shoulder, she traced invisible designs on his chest with her fingertips.

  “I see you thinking,” he said as he ran his fingers over her arm.

  “Mmmm,” she said, smiling as she propped herself up on her elbow in order to better see him. “I was just thinking about how amazing it is to be here with you.”

  “Did it surprise you, cara? Because it surprised me.” Leonardo chuckled.

  “And to think you were willing to leave me behind without a glance back,” Stella teased.

  Leonardo shrugged. “Sometimes it is best to cut your losses.”

  Stella waited for Leonardo to say something more to soften his words, but nothing came. She stared at him laying with his eyes closed as he rested, and thought that maybe he hadn’t meant to be so dismissive of what they almost hadn’t had together. She liked spending time with him… and she liked him, maybe even a little bit more than “liked” him. He had a piece of her heart now that she was never going to get back, and for her, her heart was a precious thing indeed.

  “Cut your losses, like with the Romano del Mare?” She waited to see if Leonardo’s body would stiffen as his muscles tensed with unexpressed feelings at the unfinished business that had been left behind, but he didn’t. He stayed completely relaxed. Could he really have simply let it go as if it had never mattered? The thought gave her a chill. If he could shut off his feelings about the landmark property that had galvanized the Romano name with international fame, a property that had been in his family for generations, then how easy would it be for him to shut his feelings for her off? After all, he’d already done it once. He’d walked away from her with plans to never see her again without even so much as a word goodbye or a chance to let her explain herself. She’d never even considered that he could do it to her again… that he could leave her again with the same ease and emotional theatrics as quietly closing a door.

  As she sank back down to rest her head on his shoulder, Leonardo’s arm wrapped around her to snuggle her into his side, but Stella didn’t feel its warmth. It had gone cold to her, just as Leonardo’s once warm heart had done.

  Leonardo wasn’t the man she’d imagined he was. She’d made a mistake. Again.

  13

  Leonardo

  Leonardo walked barefoot through his house with a glass of bourbon in each hand. Whenever he was in the states, he always opted for bourbon rather than wine, choosing to go with a famous drink native to the country he was in. Ever since their night together in front of the fireplace a couple of days ago, Stella had cooled to him. He could feel the distance between them even when they were in the same room together, and he needed to know why. If she was homesick, all she needed do was say so and, if she wanted him there, they could relocate together to her place in Connecticut to finish out his vacation. It didn’t matter to him where they were, he simply enjoyed being with her.

  Glancing around the great room, he didn’t spot her but then he noticed a glow coming from his cracked open office door on the far side of the room. Instead of calling out to her, he padded silently over the hardwood floor and then tapped on the door to his own office. Even though it was his space, he had no intentions of intruding, but what he saw stopped him in his tracks.

  Stella was sitting at his L shaped desk with her laptop open and its screen visible from the doorway. When he knocked, she gave a startled jump, and then immediately tried to close the various windows she had open before finally giving up and closing the laptop’s lid altogether.

  “What’s that about?” Leonardo asked. The words “Romano del Mare” had burned themselves into his retinas from the glaring computer screen within the dimly lit room, not so much because they had been so bright but because he was determined to put that part of his life behind him. Everything about it was like an open wound to him. He had failed that monastery so many times over. As the eldest grandson, he wished that his grandfather had entrusted him with the resort’s management instead of signing it over to a management company, one that ultimately ran it into ruin. Then, when he realized that something wasn’t right about the way the property was being handled, he should have put aside his own pursuits to build a Romano chain of hotels and turned his attention to the place he’d visited so many times as a child under his grandparent’s care. His father had died young and his mother had been absent in his life, but the old monastery and his grandparents had always been there. It sliced like a dagger in his stomach that he had failed it.

  “Why can’t you leave that alone?” Leonardo challenged, his voice coming out harsher than he had intended. But it was a true testament to the anger that roiled inside of him. “You agreed, it was best left in the past.”

  Stella’s lips thinned and she crossed her arms over her chest as she slouched down in his office chair. She seemed unmoved by his demand to know why she couldn’t leave the past in the past.

  “What’s been up with you? You’ve barely spoken to me in two days… now this. I thought we were having a good time here.” Anger was quickly turning into the bitterness of betrayal. He’d come here to get away from all of that. She was the one who had invaded his privacy, his sanctuary, and now she felt justified to sit there and… what, judge him? How could she even begin to understand the loss that he was struggling to come to terms with? The only way he could find peace within it all was to give himself the space he needed to let go of what was beyond his control. Some battles cost too much to fight regardless of whether you won. Couldn’t she see that? It was better to walk away.

  “This”—Stella motioned to her closed laptop—“is why I came here. The Romano del Mare needs people! If it gets closed down to be some empty, dusty ruin for people to walk past and view behind velvet ropes, she’ll never be the glorious place that she once was. I see it now. I get it. I didn’t understand it before when I was sitting at my desk halfway around the world writing that cease and desist argument. I did this. I messed things up, and I have to try to fix it! I don’t want ten or fifteen years to slip by with my biggest regret in life being that I stood by and did nothing when there was still a chance to set things right!”

  Leonardo shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So this”—he waved a hand in the direction of her computer—“was what it was all about. You didn’t come here to see me or to be with me, you just needed to soothe your own conscience. It was never about me. It was only about using me.” Bile wanted to crawl up his throat and coat his mouth with the extreme distaste he felt for Stella within that moment. “I’m not doing this, not again. I told you that within minutes of you showing up—uninvited—on my doorstep. I told you that I was putting it all in the past. Nothing has changed! There comes a time when you have to cut your losses and walk away, and the Romano del Mare has reached that point! It’s a lost cause!”

  Stella stood from Leonardo’s desk chair. She was tiny before him, but her spirit was bold. He hated that—even
then—he found her undeniably to be the most beautiful woman he had ever known. But she’d used him again. The first time was when she tried to seduce him into letting her have her own way with the resort’s design, no doubt to further her own career. And then this time she’d tracked him down halfway around the world to rub salt in the wounds that she herself had created.

  “It’s not a lost cause,” Stella said in a voice that was both pleading and confronting. “I wrote the argument that was used to rezone the Romano del Mare, and I can build an argument to refute it. I know I can, but I need your help.”

  “No, no way. Go back to your boss. Tell him the game is up, whatever it is that you two are trying to play. It’s done. It’s over. I quit. You’ve gotten your way, now it’s time to move on.”

  “Boss? There’s no boss. There hasn’t been since two weeks before you turned your back on everything. He wanted me to move forward with the cease and desist weeks ago, but I refused. I made excuses to delay at first, then finally he told me to do it or I was fired.” She shrugged. “You can figure out the rest… All of this. This work, this effort, it’s been to protect you and to protect the Romano del Mare. I knew that if I could get you to make concessions toward the Preservation Society’s design plans that it would make it harder for them to take any action against you or the resort. But,” she shrugged, “when you decided to stay with your original design of covering up almost all of the natural elements within the monastery, I knew it was throwing the door wide open for their lawyers to win whatever case that they wanted to push.” She shook her head. “Leonardo, I’m sorry. I tried to tell you. I tried to help you, I just didn’t know how to get you to consider a way that might have worked for everyone involved.”

  Leonardo couldn't believe what he was hearing. That she couldn't see past the resort and her own agenda was proof that she operated by only what was in front of her face, and that was a luxury he didn't have. Too many lives depended on every decision he made. Every time he said yes or no to anything pertaining to Romano International, his mind reeled at the real-life implications for people he might only meet once or twice in his lifetime. They were unseen but not forgotten, not by him. “Do you really think everything is that simple, that the only people that exist within this situation are me, you, the resort and the Preservation Society? Are you that naive? By going with your plans the Romano Hotels were poised to lose millions all around the world. I wouldn’t have liked that. My brothers wouldn’t have liked it. But the people who would have been devastated by it are the career employees who have been working for me and my family for years. People would have lost their livelihoods, Stella, and sometimes in areas of the world where there weren’t any better jobs around. Your short-sightedness almost cost hundreds of people more dearly than you could ever know.”