“Okay,” Luca pulled out a chair for Calli and remained standing behind it. He motioned Gia into another. “What’s going on? Who is threatening you and why?”
Giovanna appeared calmer now that she was in a safe place, though she still looked paler than when they’d seen her earlier at the salon. Her eyes darted back and forth between him and Calli as she seemed to struggle with what to say. Her gaze settled on Luca for a few moments before the color rushed into her face and then drained away just as quickly.
Luca’s hand settled on Calli’s shoulder, and his thumb absently stroked the side of her neck beneath her hair. Gia continued to regard him cautiously, and then bit her lip. Finally, she took a deep breath and reached for Calli’s hand.
“Before I begin, I owe you an apology, Callista. Mi dispiace, I truly am sorry. What I did this morning…it was petty and hurtful. My only excuse is that I was angry and afraid. I hope you can forgive me, though I understand if you cannot.”
“I used to be a bit impulsive, myself, Giovanna, so I can understand an error in judgment. I’m willing to overlook it. Once.” Calli did not deliver her response unkindly, but her tone made it clear she would not tolerate a repeat performance.
Gia nodded. “Grazie. It is more than I deserve after the way I behaved.”
“Let’s forget about it for now. You said you were afraid…what are you afraid of?”
“Of losing Luca,” she blurted. “But not for the reasons you think,” Gia hastened to add. The woman’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe I should start at the beginning.”
“Perhaps that would be best,” Calli agreed.
“Do you have anything to drink, perhaps? This story requires a little something.”
“There should be some wine in that cabinet over there,” Calli directed Luca before turning her attention back to the other woman. “I’m afraid Luca and my brother finished all of the Moretti last night.”
“Grazie.” Gia sighed as Luca plunked a glass and the bottle on the table in front of her.
“We could have offered you some lovely limoncello if Calli hadn’t wasted the bottle by breaking it over a Fallen’s head,” Luca said in a mock mournful voice.
Calli wrinkled her nose at him. “Lucky for you.”
“If it pleases you to believe so,” he winked.
Giovanna nearly choked on the wine.
Luca threw a glance in her direction. His eyes narrowed as he correctly interpreted the question on Gia’s face. He nodded. Yes, this woman truly meant something to him. Giovanna took an even larger gulp of wine and swallowed hard, no doubt contemplating her earlier behavior at Calli’s expense and thanking her lucky stars Luca hadn’t decided to wring her neck.
He didn’t return to his position behind Calli’s chair, but he did pull his chair close to hers and rest a hand on her thigh.
Calli felt the heat of his palm like a brand through the denim of her jeans and decided the feeling was not unpleasant. At all. In fact, she found the heat seemed to be spreading from her thigh to an area just north of there and that new and strange sensation felt even more divine. It even made her feel a little naughty. She experimentally laid her hand on top of his larger one and was rewarded by a squeeze. Then he linked his fingers through hers and curled their hands together. They were home, they were protected by sigils, she was safe. He hardly needed to sit so close to her and hold her hand. She assumed he did it because he wanted to. She might still have a lot to learn, but Calli decided, then and there, that she liked the freedom of this new century. She liked it a lot.
“Luca and I had known each other for some time,” Giovanna began at last. “He would come to visit me whenever he was in Rome. Our relationship was not a secret.” Her eyes met Luca’s briefly and quickly looked away. Calli’s fingers tensed in Luca’s, and he readjusted their hands so they were linked palm to palm, and ran his thumb soothingly across the racing pulse along her inner wrist. “Shortly after the news of Callista’s rescue became common knowledge, two men came to see me. Two animorti. They didn’t say who sent them. They said Jacques Rapier had an object of great power, and they demanded I use my relationship with Luca to get to Callista and discover where to find it.”
“The Ring of Aandalena,” Luca growled. “Well, they’re too late. It’s been returned to Michael.”
“It isn’t a ring. They never mentioned a ring. It’s a book.”
Calli opened her mouth to speak, and Luca squeezed her hand. “Go on,” he encouraged.
“I told them to go away. I told them if they hurt me, you would hunt them down and kill them,” she looked at Luca who nodded.
Calli knew that whatever their differences, Gia assumed correctly. Luca would have taken it personally. An attack on someone close to him would have him turning Rome upside down.
“They told me they wouldn’t hurt me if I refused to cooperate, but they couldn’t guarantee the safety of Zio Enrico.” Tears coursed down Gia’s lovely face unheeded. “He isn’t my blood, Luca, but he is the only family I have.”
“Of course you would protect your family, Gia,” Calli’s free hand reached to cover the other woman’s. “Whether by blood or by bond, family is family.”
“You really are a kind woman, Callista McAllister,” Gia offered a watery smile. “I can see why you are so beloved. And Luca, you are wondering why I didn’t come to you sooner.”
Calli glanced at Luca. An almost imperceptible clenching of his jaw was his answer.
“I thought I could handle them. What do I care about some book? I thought I could get the information they wanted, and they would go away and leave my uncle alone. I thought…it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was a fool. After all of you returned to Rome, they watched me constantly. I never saw them, but I always felt them nearby.”
“I felt them, too.” Luca’s voice echoed in Calli’s mind. “Every time I visited Gia. In fact, I swear I feel a faint sizzle right now.”
“But that makes no sense.” Calli glanced at him with a frown. Luca merely shrugged.
“After you left the other night, they came to my door. I was…distraught. I told them our relationship was over, and I couldn’t get them the information they wanted. They beat me…badly.”
Calli gasped and Luca clenched his jaw so tightly it audibly cracked. He might not be in love with Giovanna, but any woman being brutalized would not sit well with him. She almost felt sorry for those men when he discovered their identity. Because he would, and then he and the Defensori would ensure the fools paid dearly.
Giovanna glanced up when Calli gasped, then returned her gaze to her lap. “Please don’t worry on my account. I’m fine. It was…unpleasant, but Earthbound heal quickly, no?” Physically, at least, Calli thought. “Then, late this morning, Monte came into the shop. I was getting ready to close, as I really did have a salon appointment. He insisted rather…emphatically, on driving me there and, on the way, told me I must discover the whereabouts of this book. If not from you, then from Callista herself. You being at the salon was an unlucky coincidence, and I did the first thing that came to mind.” She raised her head and her expression was anguished. “I’m not proud of it, but I…Dio, Luca, Monte has Enrico.”
Luca rose and walked around the table to where Giovanna was pouring the last of the wine into her glass.
“Gia,” Luca’s voice was hesitant. “The men who beat you...did they…take other liberties, as well?”
A shudder wracked Giovanna’s body and the curtain of her dark hair shielded her expression as she lowered her chin to her chest. She nodded. Once. Callista cried out in distress and jumped from her chair. She started moving around the table but Luca held up a hand to stop her.
“Gia, I-I’m so sorry, there’s no easy way to say this, but I have to ask. I feel the presence of Fallen. It’s very faint, but is it possible you carry the child of a dark one?”
The woman’s shoulders began to shake. Luca laid a hand on her head and looked at Calli with a helpless expression. Callista clenched
her fists and pressed one against her lips as tears streamed down her cheeks in the face of Gia’s obvious despair. The woman finally raised her head and Calli was stunned to see Gia wasn’t sobbing, but laughing, a harsh, humorless laughter bordering on hysteria.
“Oh, Luca, caro mio, if only that were the worst of it,” she cackled bitterly. “No, I don’t carry the child of a dark one. I am the child of a dark one. Jacques Rapier was my father.”
Chapter Nine
Callista opened her eyes to Luca’s face hovering inches from her own. He forced his tense features to relax into a relieved smile when she blinked and looked around. She struggled to sit up and he pressed her shoulders back onto the sofa.
“Easy, carissima. How do you feel?” He brushed a wayward tendril from her face and peered at her intently.
“Mortified,’ she grimaced. “I can’t believe I did that. I never faint. Well, sometimes when Giselle laced my corset too tightly, but thankfully, those torturous contraptions are a thing of the past. You can let me up now, I’m fine.”
“Just take it easy for a minute, cara.” Seeing her crumple into a still, silent heap on the cold tile floor took years off his life. At this rate, he would be an old man long before his time. He put his arm under her shoulders and assisted her into a sitting position, reassured by the soft, warm feel of her in his arms. Tipping her chin up with a forefinger, he searched her face.
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Perfectly, though I’m sure I’ll be sore. Terracotta is quite unforgiving.”
Luca regarded her for a minute more, then no longer able to resist, he dragged her across his lap and dropped a quick soft kiss on her slightly parted lips. She tasted even better than he dreamed, and when she melted into him like butter, what started as a brief peck, quickly became much more. When he finally lifted his head, they were both trembling. He was nearly undone by the slumberous passion darkening her brilliant blue eyes. Handing his heart into someone’s keeping terrified him. In the past, it had always been a precursor to pain. Deep down, he knew it was too late. His heart was already lost. Maybe it always had been. He held his breath and waited for the fear to hit. But it never came. Instead, he discovered a feeling that had been so long absent from his emotional repertoire he barely recognized it. Peace.
“Took you long enough,” she whispered, echoing the sentiment she’d voiced the day he rescued her from Rapier. He guessed she referred to the kiss, but it felt as though she’d read his mind. Of course, that was impossible. His shields were stronger than the vaults in St. Peter’s grotto.
“Yeah, I guess it did. Callista McAllister, are you trying to seduce me?” Not that she had to try. The feel of her soft, warm mouth left him so painfully hard he feared he’d explode if she twitched her heart-shaped little bottom in his lap just one more time.
Her cheeks burned and sudden tears pricked the back of her lids. Seduction. He had all of the practical experience in that department, didn’t he? She had nothing but book smarts. She’d worked hard to convince herself she was a modern woman, ready to share his bed if that was all he had to offer. Now she doubted she could survive the loss if they made love and he walked away from her as he had all the others. She sat up straighter and pushed against his chest to climb out of his lap and get to her feet.
“I must have a concussion after all.”
He tried to tug her back, but she stepped away out of reach.
Luca rose to his full height and looked down at her with concern. “A concussion? Are you dizzy? Nauseated? How many fingers am I holding up?” He buried his hands in the thick mass of her hair, his long fingers massaging her scalp as he felt for injury. She grabbed his wrists and tugged his hands away, struggling to assume a matter-of-fact demeanor.
“I was being facetious, Luca,” she sighed. “I’m fine. Now where is Giovanna? Can you believe she’s Mariana’s daughter? She must have been the one asking questions.”
When she wasn’t otherwise occupied in Luca’s bed. Calli swallowed hard as the afterthought immediately leapt into her mind. She pressed a hand to the sharp and unwelcome pain searing her chest. So this was jealousy. There was a phrase in twenty-first century vernacular she’d come to understand, and it perfectly fit the bill in this case. This totally sucked.
“I sent her up to the guest room to lie down for a while,” Luca dropped his hands to his sides. “You’re right, she was the one asking questions. It appears the people Mariana relied on to raise her baby weren’t exactly the good Samaritans they portrayed themselves to be. They raised Gia as little more than an unpaid servant, told her that her father murdered her mother, and the friend who’d been entrusted to raise her, namely you, dumped her on their doorstep at the first opportunity.”
“What kind of people would do that to a child?” Calli’s eyes sparked with rage. “If I had suspected for an instant, I would have kept that baby myself no matter what anyone said.”
“I know you would have kept her, cara,” He rubbed his big hands briskly up and down her arms. “I told her as much. Anyway, I guess it’s a little more understandable why she wanted to hurt you today. She saw you as the woman who abandoned her, and then as the woman who took me away. I’ve explained to her what really happened that night. I think she believes me, but it takes time to trust and unlearn the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime. Believe me, I know.”
The hint of regret in his voice tugged at her. “You do?”
He nodded slowly, looking directly into her eyes.
“And what is it you’ve distrusted for so long?”
“My heart. It isn’t easy to believe in something you’ve learned to be so suspicious of.”
“But not impossible?” Calli watched him carefully, trying to read his face. He hesitated and for a moment, she thought he wouldn’t respond. Then he stroked a finger along her jaw and turned her toward the stairs pushing her along with a hand at her back.
“No, not impossible,” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “But, maybe that’s a conversation we should have later. We have other things to worry about at the moment. Like what we’re going to do with Gia. She can’t go home, and she can’t stay here. Then we have to figure out where Enrico is and get him back. Somewhere in there, I’ll have to take care of the bastards who hurt Gia, too. Then we have to figure out what they’re looking for and make sure they don’t get it.”
“Quite an ambitious schedule.” Callista stopped on the first stair and turned back to him. He seemed different, lighter somehow. She would very much have liked to continue their conversation right here, right now, but he had a point. They had to consider other priorities. “Why can’t she stay here? It’s safe enough and there’s plenty of room.”
“I feel badly for what she’s been through, carissima, and I promise someone will pay, but she deliberately hurt you and that’s something I can’t abide. Just because she knows the truth now doesn’t mean she’s been able to let go of all of the hurt and anger. I won’t permit her to take it out on you.”
“I can take care of myself, you know,” Calli straightened to her full height, which fell far short of Luca’s even though she now stood on the second step. But a small part of her thrilled at his words.
Luca chucked her under the chin with a crooked grin. “I know you can, la mia tigre. But you don’t have to. You have me to do it for you.”
Calli rolled her eyes, spun on her heel, and stomped up the stairs. His Tigress! She might not understand very much Italian, but he was making fun of her, she just knew it! Well, Luca Fiorelli had better watch his step. Tigers had very sharp claws and hers were freshly manicured.
All this tenderness and talk of trusting his heart. Was it possible he might actually care for her? She dared to feel a flicker of hope. Yes, she felt badly for what Gia had suffered. However, she wasn’t sure she could cohabitate for any length of time with a woman who had known Luca so intimately, a woman who obviously wasn’t ready for that intimacy to end. Luca was right. It was probably much
better for everyone if they found her another place to stay.
Calli raced to the far end of the hall and rapped on the door of the guest suite. When she received no response, she cracked open the door and peered in. The bed remained neatly made and, at first glance, the room appeared empty. Then she saw her. Giovanna sat in a small, overstuffed chair gazing out of the long window overlooking the back garden. There wasn’t much to see out there at this time of the year, but she appeared fascinated by the view all the same. Her chin rested on her pulled up knees. Her eyes were red, but at the moment, they were dry. With her hair scraped back and twisted into a clumsy knot and her face scrubbed free of makeup, Calli could clearly see the resemblance to Mariana. A sharp and familiar ache pierced her heart as it did whenever she thought of her lost friend. In repose, Giovanna exuded nothing of the assertive, manipulative woman who’d confronted them earlier today. Calli’s heart went out to the frightened, vulnerable child she now saw before her.
“May we come in?” Calli asked quietly.
Giovanna’s eyes remained fixed straight ahead. She shrugged. “It’s your house.”
Calli’s step faltered at her hard, unwelcoming tone. Well, what had she expected? Gia needed their help earlier and was willing to play nice to get it, but apparently she hadn’t really done an about face despite learning the truth. In Earthbound years, Giovanna was still quite young. She might be an experienced woman of the modern world compared to Callista, but for now, it seemed she’d chosen to revert to the sulky immaturity of a teenager. Calli guessed she would have to be the grown up. She straightened her spine and spoke to Luca without turning around.
“Could you excuse us for a few minutes, Luca? I think Giovanna and I need to have a little talk.”
“Cara, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Why don’t we all go downstairs and decide what to do next?” Luca whispered close to her ear, his warm breath ruffling her hair and tickling her neck. “I think it might be a bad idea to leave you two alone. A very bad idea.”
Angel Unbound Page 9