by Lucy Monroe
However Luciano’s actions weren’t as easy to explain, at least not in a way that didn’t seem too far-fetched. Luciano di Valerio wanting to marry Hope Bishop? Not likely. Yet, that is what he had implied. Then he had gone out of his way to warn David off.
Put together, those two items were enough to prevent relaxed slumber over the next four nights.
Hope woke up feeling cranky and out of sorts the day they were scheduled to tour Pompeii. This was their fifth day in Italy and Luciano had not made another appearance. He’d managed to find her in Greece, but now that they were in his home country…nothing. And Naples was not exactly the other side of the world from Palermo. The man was a billionaire. He had a helicopter, not to mention a jet.
If it were important for him to see her, as he’d implied, wouldn’t he have used one of them?
David had gotten over his snit by the time they arrived in Rome and apologized sweetly for his accusations. They’d agreed to resume their friendship and had toured the Vatican together. Their relationship wasn’t as free and easy as it had been. She was careful to avoid his casual touches, afraid Luciano had been right. In allowing it, perhaps she had encouraged David to think she wanted something from their friendship that she didn’t.
She yawned behind her hand as she entered the hotel dining room. If she didn’t start getting some sleep soon, she was in trouble, but her dreams were filled with a tall Sicilian man and her waking thoughts were tormented by his comment about marriage.
“You are tired, tesoro. This tour is perhaps not such a good thing for you.”
Her head whipped around and there he stood.
“Luciano, what are you doing here?” As greetings went, it was not original. She excused herself with her fatigue and shock at seeing him right when she was thinking of him.
“Surely you are not surprised to see me.”
“But I am. It’s been almost a week.”
His brow rose in mockery. “And you expected me to show up before this?”
“No. Well…” She didn’t want to lie, but she wasn’t handing it to him in his lap either.
“I was called to New York on a business emergency.”
“You could have called. Grandfather has my cell phone number.” He was the one, after all, who had said she was different.
“I did not think of this.” He looked chagrined by the admission.
She felt a smile spreading over her face. “That’s all right then, but why have you come today?”
“I desire to escort you around Pompeii.”
“I’d like that.” Nearly five days had been enough time for her to realize that if Luciano wanted to pursue a relationship with her, she would be the world’s biggest fool to deny him.
A love that had not abated in five years was not going to go away. If she wanted a chance at a husband and a family, she accepted it would be with him, or not at all. If nothing else, her renewed friendship with David had taught her that. She had no desire to pursue anything personal with him and had not been the least bit jealous when another woman on the tour had begun flirting with him.
They were together now, at a table for two.
Luciano proved his gaze had followed hers when he said, “So, he accepted he could not have you and has transferred his interests.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to his room that night,” she chided.
“You did not yet recognize you were mine, but I made certain he did. It was necessary to avoid complications.”
She sighed. It was no use arguing with him about it. What was done was done and she couldn’t say she was sorry.
“No comeback?” Dark brown eyes pinned her own gaze with probing concentration.
She shook her head.
“You are mine?”
“Are you asking me?” That was new.
“I am asking if you accept it.”
If she denied it, she would be lying to both of them.
He hadn’t meant to hurt her with his rejection on New Year’s Eve and she had to trust him not to hurt her now. She had no choice. She wanted him beyond pride or reason, so she took the plunge. “Yes.”
CHAPTER SIX
LUCIANO dismissed the emotion he experienced at her acknowledgment as natural relief that his plan was back on course. The sooner Hope became his, the closer he would be to regaining control of Valerio Shipping.
“At last, we progress.”
She grimaced at his choice of words, but did not demur.
Smiling, he took her arm and led her to a table. Her acquiescence now was in marked contrast to her vehement protest a week ago when he had been forced to practically kidnap her in order to secure her company for the evening. He helped her into her seat brushing a light kiss against her temple as he did so. Startled pansy eyes took him in as he crossed to sit on the other side of the intimate table for two.
Even after the intimacies they had shared, she still acted surprised when he touched her.
He liked the shyness.
He had already ordered breakfast for them, but he waved the waiter over to fill her coffee cup. “You do look tired, piccola mia.” Her eyes were bruised and her complexion pale from an obvious lack of sleep. “Perhaps we should put the tour of Pompeii off for another day.”
She hid a yawn behind one small hand. “I can’t. Today’s our last day in Naples. Tomorrow we fly to Barcelona.” “I do not wish for you to leave Italy.”
Her violet eyes widened, but she did not fly at him in anger as she had done before when he told her he wanted her to leave the tour. “I have two weeks left of my European visit.”
“Spend them in Palermo with my family. Mamma wishes to meet you and Martina is home from university. She will enjoy the companionship of someone closer to her own age.”
“You told your mother about me?”
“Si.” She would have been very hurt if he had sprung a bride on her out of the blue. She was not overly pleased that Hope was American rather than Sicilian, but the prospect of grandchildren outweighed even that drawback.
“What did you tell her?” Hope was looking at him as if he’d grown donkey ears.
“Why the shock?” He had told Hope his intentions. “I told Mamma I had met a woman I wanted for mi moglie, my wife.”
“I know what the word means.” She took a gulp of coffee and then started coughing.
He was around the table in a moment, pressing a glass of water into her hands. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. It was too hot.”
“Be more careful, carina. If you burn your mouth, how can I kiss it?”
She blushed and set the glass of water down with a trembling hand as he resumed his seat.
“I wasn’t sure you were serious, about marriage I mean.” Again the charming blush.
“I am.”
She nodded, the soft chestnut curls around her face bouncing. “I can see that, but it’s such a shock.”
To him as well. He had not been anticipating marriage just yet, particularly to a shy American virgin. “Life is not so easily predicted.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“So, will you come to Sicily with me and stay in my home with my mother and sister?”
“I don’t know.”
He stifled his impatience. She was skittish, like an untried mare. He did not want to spook her when his plans were finally working out as he had originally expected. Perhaps the emergency in New York had been a gift from the good God because it had given her time to make up her mind to him.
“What makes you hesitate?” he asked, allowing none of his impatience to show in his voice. “Are you concerned for your virtue? Mamma will act as sufficient chaperone surely.”
“I’m not worried about that. I’m twenty-three years old. I don’t need your mother’s protection.”
He smiled at her feistiness. “What then?”
“Grandfather might not like it.”
“I have already spoken to your grandfather.”
“You have
?” Once again she looked like a doe startled by an unexpected sound.
“Si. It is only natural I should speak to him when I wish to marry his granddaughter.” He said nothing of the fact Reynolds had been the one to instigate the meeting. That was not relevant to Luciano and Hope. He wanted to marry her. That was the only issue she need be concerned with.
“How can you say that so calmly?”
“Say what?” he asked.
“That bit about wanting to marry me. I mean we haven’t even led up to it and suddenly, boom, here you are saying you want to marry me like it’s a foregone conclusion. You haven’t even asked me.”
Nor had he courted her and a woman deserved to be courted to marriage. But…“Have we not led up to it? The kiss we shared on New Year’s Eve, the kisses we shared last week, they lead to bed and bed with a virgin means marriage for this Italian male.”
Her pale skin took on a fiercely rosy hue. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Do you still deny the way we kissed gave me claim to you?” He had thought they were past that.
“No, but marriage is not necessarily the next inevitable step.”
“It is.”
“Come on, Luciano. Like I’ve said before, you can’t tell me you marry every woman you kiss passionately.”
Had he ever shared a passion so volatile with another woman? He did not think so. “I have never kissed another virgin.”
“Hush!” She looked around, her expression almost comical. “This is not the place to discuss my sexual experience, or lack thereof.”
“I agree.” It was exciting him to think of introducing her into the pleasures of the flesh. He wanted to be able to walk when they left the restaurant, but if they didn’t change the subject he wasn’t going to be able to.
“Come to Palermo and let me convince you.”
“You mean like a courtship?”
“Si. Exactly.”
“I didn’t think men still did that.”
“It is a ritual that will continue through the millennia, whatever you choose to call it. Men will pursue their chosen mate with whatever means at their disposal.”
“And your means are a couple of weeks in Palermo with your family?” She sounded bemused, shocked even.
“Si.”
“All right.”
Hope stretched lazily beside the pool. Rhythmic splashing told her without having to look that Luciano’s sister was still swimming laps. Martina was a sweet girl. Three years Hope’s junior, she was very Sicilian in some things, but the influence of her years at American university was unmistakable.
She didn’t defer to her brother as if he were a deity and she had no desire to marry a man solely to secure her future.
Smart and independent, Martina had made life in the di Valerio household bearable for Hope. Not that Luciano’s mother was unbearable. Quite the opposite. She was kindness itself, but she took the marriage of her son and his American girlfriend as a foregone conclusion. Just yesterday she had completely unnerved Hope by insisting she be measured for a wedding gown.
When Hope had mentioned this to Luciano, he had merely smiled and complimented his mother on her forward thinking. Evidently, neither he nor his mother had any doubt as to the outcome of Hope’s time in Palermo. The prospect of a lifetime married to such a confident male was more than daunting, it was scary.
Because Hope wasn’t that confident.
She should be. He made his desire to marry her very clear as well as his pleasure in her company. In short, he was doing exactly as he said he would do and courting her. While he had to work several hours each day, he spent some time each morning and the evenings with her, either taking her out or having his friends in to meet her.
None of them seemed to find it as odd as she did that he’d chosen a little peahen for his proposed bride rather than a bird of more exotic plumage. But then Italian men of Luciano’s income bracket didn’t always consider their wives to be the one for show-off potential. They left that job to their mistresses. Did Luciano intend to have a mistress? Did he have one now?
It was a question she had to have answered before she could marry him, but she was afraid to ask. She spent an inordinate amount of time convincing herself she didn’t need to. Sometimes it worked. Why wouldn’t it?
She had a room that resembled a romantic bower because of all the flowers he had given her, but flowers were the least of his offerings to convince her she wanted to marry him. He gave her gifts practically every day. The bikini she was sunbathing in had been yesterday’s present.
He was spoiling her rotten with both time and gifts.
But he said nothing of love and had not kissed her again since her arrival in Palermo. He had said her virtue was safe, but she had not thought that meant all physical attention would cease.
He avoided touching her which bothered her because she’d come to see that Luciano was a tactile man. He hugged his sister frequently, kissed his mother’s cheeks coming and going and was very Italian in his dealing with his friends. Only she was left out of the magical circle of his affection.
Should it be that way when a man wanted to marry a woman?
While she grew more aware of his physical perfection each day, she worried he had lost interest in her body. Yet, would a man as virile as Luciano contemplate marriage to a woman he didn’t want? The answer had to be no. Unless he planned to have a mistress. But then why get married at all?
Her mind spun in now familiar patterns.
“What are you thinking about so hard that you didn’t hear me calling you?” Martina stood above Hope, her Italian beauty vibrant while she toweled the wetness from her long black hair.
Hope sighed. “Guess.”
“My brother.”
“Got it in one.”
“You are going to marry him, aren’t you?” Unexpected anxiety laced Martina’s voice.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? The man is besotted. He gave you that totally naff book of Italian poetry.”
“I can’t read Italian.”
“You’re learning.”
She was. Her very rudimentary knowledge of the language was growing rapidly. And because of that she was absolutely certain Luciano had never said a single word about loving her, or being besotted even, in either Italian or English.
Martina settled on the lounger next to Hope. “You love him.”
“I’m not saying anything on the grounds it could incriminate me. It’s the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, you know. Even nosy little sisters can’t bypass fundamental rights.”
Martina laughed. “I don’t need you to confirm it. Every time you look at him, you about swallow him alive with your eyes. You are too sweet, not to mention deep, to have a simple lust infatuation for my brother. With a woman like you, desire is linked to love or it wouldn’t be there.”
And her desire was obvious to even Luciano’s sister. No wonder both Luciano and his mother were so sure of her. “A woman like me?” What made her so different? “Are you saying you’re capable of wanting a man to make love to you that you don’t love?”
She’d never felt free talking about this sort of stuff with her girlfriends at school. She’d always been too shy, but Martina had steamrolled right over her reticence and they had become confidantes.
Martina giggled. “Maybe not make love, but I have kissed a few.”
Hope’s heart twitched. She could not say the same. She’d hardly ever been kissed and never like Luciano kissed her except by him. She’d never wanted it with another man. “I suppose it must be love.”
“I knew it.” Martina clapped her hands. “You are going to marry him. Mamma’s sure of it, you know.”
“I know.” How could she miss it having been fitted for the wedding gown, for Heaven’s sake?
“She’s just dying for grandbabies.”
“What if I don’t want to get pregnant right away?”
“I don’t think Luciano would like that,” M
artina said candidly, concern in her voice.
Hope secretly agreed. She was becoming more and more convinced that the reason he was considering marriage now, with her, was for those bambini every Italian male supposedly wanted.
“Well, it’s a nonissue at the moment. Your brother hasn’t actually asked me to marry him. Until he does, this is all conjecture.”
“Because you’re not sure he’s going to or because you’re still trying to convince yourself you don’t know if you’ll say yes?”
“Santo cielo! Had I known the swimsuit was so revealing I would have bought another one.”
“Ciao, Luciano. I think Hope looks smashing in the bikini, but you’re right. It shows a lot more of her than the one-piece she brought with her.”
Hope looked up at Luciano and smiled. “You’re both being silly. It’s very conservative for a bikini.”
And it was. The tank style top showed the barest hint of her cleavage and the hip-hugging short bottoms didn’t reveal anything like the thongs she’d seen on the local beaches, or even the high-cut brief bottoms. On her smallish figure, it was perfectly decent.
“Not conservative enough,” Luciano muttered in a driven undertone.
“If it bothers you so much—” she began to say.
“Don’t offer to change it. You must start as you mean to go on,” Martina exclaimed. “If you let him dictate your clothes now, it will never end.”
Dark flags of color accentuated Luciano’s sculpted cheekbones and warning lights blazed in his deep brown eyes.
“I was going to say, no one was forcing him to look, Smarty Pants.” She smiled up at Luciano. “You’re back earlier than expected.”
“Si. We have been invited to a pool party at the DeBrecos’. My friend is celebrating the close of a business deal that has given him some trouble.”
“Marco is having a pool party?” Martina’s interest was definitely piqued.
“He is.”
“Am I invited?”
“Of course.”
She jumped up from her lounger. “I’ll go get ready. When do we leave?”
“In less than an hour, sorella picolla. Do not make us late applying makeup and effecting an elaborate hairstyle your first dive in the pool will wash away.”