by Natasha Tate
“And what choice was that, Raf?” she demanded while her free hand lifted to tip his chin. “To survive?”
“To leave,” he answered as he lifted his head from her fingers. “When I should have stayed to protect him, I left.”
“I’m sure you would have stayed if you could have.” Her gentle hands returned to his face, denying him his retreat as they tracked faint, soothing caresses along the tense lines of cheek and jaw. “You’d never willingly allow harm to come to someone you loved,” she told him. “If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that.”
The statement was so patently untrue that Rafael almost laughed. If he weren’t so wretchedly miserable, he probably would have. As it was, the breath merely huffed in his chest while he stared helplessly at Sophia. “Until your father brought me here,” he confessed mercilessly, “I was a thug. A criminal. I lived to steal, to scavenge and hide and hurt strangers who’d done me no harm at all. I was incapable of goodness.” Seeing Sophia’s clear blue eyes fill with sympathy made his throat tighten. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said hoarsely.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like I’m worthy of saving.”
“You are.”
He inhaled sharply through his nose. The forgiveness and acceptance he read in her eyes eroded his control, threatening to undo him altogether. But he couldn’t be weak. Not again. “I’m not.”
She clucked softly, concern notching faint lines between her brows. “Of course you are.”
He shook his head against her palm, her misplaced faith in him making his gut twist in painful denial.
Both hands cupped his face, stilling his denial. “You’re the best man I know, Rafael Chaves. And anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t deserve to know you.”
“The only decent thing in my life was Paolo. And I … I let him die when I should have been there to help him.” He swallowed and then forced himself to continue.
Her hands slid to his nape and she jostled him gently. “It’s not your fault. You were a child.”
Unwilling to hide behind her unfounded excuses, he plowed forward. She deserved to know the soulless thief who’d taken her with such clumsy, desperate abandon. He owed her the truth. And even though he knew she’d never look at him the same way again, he forced the words past his closing throat.
“I wasn’t,” he insisted. “I was fifteen. A selfish brute more interested in his next mark than in the welfare of his brother.”
“You were a boy who’d never known love. Or softness. Or caring. A boy doing his best to survive.”
Appalled by the blinding desire to lose himself in her acceptance, to halt his reckless confession so she’d keep loving him, he forced the wretched, unvarnished truth past his lips. He spewed out all the horrific details of his depraved existence, telling her of the crimes he’d committed and the beatings he’d endured, the cage he’d slept in, the rotten scraps he’d been forced to consume when his daily take had been too low. He told her of all the humiliations he’d withstood, and how each degradation had brought new layers of darkness to his soul. He told her he was an animal, a minion of a demon who’d allowed his little brother to die a brutal, painful death.
“And what about Paolo?” she murmured softly, her hand still gentle against his rigid neck. “Was little Paolo a minion as well?”
“No,” he choked out. “He wasn’t. He didn’t deserve anything that monster did to him.”
“While you did?” she gently admonished. “How does that make sense?”
“It does,” he persisted, lifting his hands between them. “I didn’t just allow Paolo to die. I murdered a man. With my bare hands.”
“I’m sure you were simply protecting yourself and a brother you loved.”
“No. Paolo was already dead. I wanted revenge,” he insisted, his tone pitched low with self-loathing. “I fought that diablo until he fell, until his face was a bloody mess and my knuckles were split down to the bone. I can still hear the sound as he hit the floor, can still feel the rush of victory when he didn’t rise again. I watched him die, and I didn’t care. I was glad. Glad. So I’m no better than that monster, and yet I dare to touch you, to act as if I’m worthy of even one—”
“Hush,” she interrupted. Both her hands lifted to mold around his rough fingers and she waited until he met her eyes. “You are worthy, Raf. Of everything you could possibly wish to claim.”
“I’m not.” Anguish shredded his tone. “I can’t be. I have no conscience, no honor, and beneath this civilized veneer I hide behind, I have no soul. You’re the only reason I’ve even tried to pretend otherwise.”
“You’re wrong.” Her face, angelic in its compassion, showed no evidence that she’d even heard all the horrible things he’d divulged. “The fact that you survived so many atrocities despite the world’s efforts to kill everything that is good in you speaks to your resilience and your strength of character. You have a core of goodness that can’t be destroyed, Raf, a rare, beautiful soul, and I won’t accept you maligning it.”
“You didn’t listen to me,” he insisted. “If you heard anything I said, you’d know I—”
“I did hear. I just choose to interpret the evidence differently than you.” She brought the tips of his fingers to her lips and then lowered their joined hands to her chest. “You survived a childhood that should have destroyed you. You emerged strong, honorable and brave. And I love you even more, now that I know.”
“You can’t,” he said thickly. “You deserve much better.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of what I deserve?” she declared as her hands tightened about his.
When he didn’t answer, she leaned to wrap her arms around his tense shoulders. They were quiet for a long time, her face pressed against his neck while his pulse beat unsteadily beneath her warm weight. “Do you know I loved you from that very first day?” she eventually asked. “Wild, wounded and angry boy that you were, I recognized the goodness in you. I wanted to absorb your pain and make you smile. I wanted to make you happy. Did you know that?”
He closed his eyes and nodded against her soft hair. She smelled like she’d always smelled, a sweet, heady combination of innocence and stubbornness and courage. He wanted to lay her down and worship her until the past disappeared and the future spread out before them, clean and bright and new.
“I knew you wanted to scare me away,” she said. “But I also knew you would never hurt me, so I kept trying no matter how many times you snapped at me.” Her fingertips traced small circles over his back, until sensitive shivers chased down his spine.
A forlorn smile brought a sting of regret that he’d treated her so poorly. “You always were too trusting.”
“While you didn’t realize I thrived on the challenge of taming you until it was too late, did you? Poor, wounded man, you never learned how to fight against love.”
Unwilling to resist any longer, he allowed himself to embrace her, to wrap her softness within his arms. “You’re right,” he answered in a low, muffled voice. “But it wasn’t from lack of trying.”
“Are you still going to push me away now?” she asked.
He hauled in a deep breath. “I should, but I can’t. Even though I don’t want to hurt you, you’re the only good thing in my life and I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”
She leaned back to look into his eyes. “You don’t have to, Raf. Ever. You’re part of me and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Did you know I thought you were an angel that first day? I woke up and saw you and thought I’d somehow ended up in heaven. And it didn’t make any sense, because I’d expected hell.”
“Is that why you snarled at me?”
“I snarled at you because what I felt for you scared me. I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want to ruin your innocence or pollute you in any way.” He stroked a palm down her warm back, pressing her again to his chest. “I told myself every day to stay away from you, but I couldn’t do it. I craved you
like the earth craves the sun. I lived for the time we were together, for the sweet torture of your nearness. And even though I know I can’t ever deserve you, I can’t let you go.”
She tipped her head back to gaze wetly up at him. “Then don’t.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said as he traced a finger over her swollen eyelid and blotchy brow. “And I’m sorry I made you cry.”
“You’re forgiven,” she said with a soft, trembling smile.
“I love you, Sophia.” His chest hurt with the confession he’d held inside for so long. “So much so, I don’t know how to contain it all.”
“Then don’t,” she whispered, leaning forward to brush her lips against his. “Just love me and trust that I want everything you have to give.”
He kissed her then, tasting her mouth and her sweetness and her forgiveness, and wondered how he’d ever thought he could live without her. She made him whole. She healed him. And he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Loving her.
“I dreamed of this, you know,” she said as she angled back to touch her fingertips to his mouth. Her eyes were wet again and she looked so beautiful it made his throat hurt. “Every day and every night for as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of you telling me you loved me.” A rueful smile caught at her mouth as her gaze slid down to her wrinkled T-shirt. “Except in my dreams, we weren’t in a cellar and I was dressed in something a little more romantic.”
“I love you no matter what you wear,” he told her as he brushed his thumb beneath her eye.
Her eyes spilled over and she sniffed through her smile. “Say it again.”
“Marry me,” he said instead.
“Marry you?” she repeated while sunlight dawned in her blue eyes.
“Yes. I want you to be the last thing I see each night and the first thing I see each morning. Always. I want to kiss you and hold you and make love to you and watch you when you sleep. I want to make you breakfast in bed, rub your feet when you’re tired and marvel as your belly grows heavy with my children. And I know I don’t deserve you and I know I’ll probably—”
“Children?” she interrupted breathlessly.
“Or not,” he amended hastily. “I want whatever will make you happy.”
“You make me happy.” She reached to wrap her arms around his neck and tipped her head back to stare up at him. “Deliriously, gloriously happy. So yes, Rafael Chaves, I will marry you.”
Relief flooded his chest and he bent to press a kiss against her upturned mouth.
She pulled back with a smug smile and then burrowed against his chest. “But only if we name the first of our many sons after Papa. He’s the one who brought us back together, you know.”
A surge of gratitude toward the man who’d saved him and brought Sophia into his life made Rafael’s throat thicken. “He did, didn’t he?”
She murmured her agreement and cuddled even closer. “I think he’d be quite pleased with how his little scheme worked out. His favorite surrogate son, his wayward daughter and his winery, all together and making plans for babies. What could make him prouder?”
He couldn’t seem to stop the wellspring of joy that rushed through him at her words. The scent of her skin, the feel of her pressed against his chest, filled him with a happiness he’d thought permanently out of reach. Dipping his forehead to hers, he stared at her until the darkness of his past disappeared in the sunny depths of her eyes.
“I want to make love to you,” he told her in a ragged whisper.
“Here?” she asked him with a coy smile.
“Everywhere.”
EPILOGUE
A MERE ten months later, Sophia and Rafael lay facing each other on her narrow hospital bed, their beautiful son nestled between them. A pastel cap of blue and green covered a startling amount of black hair, curled fists lay temporarily still alongside perfect ears and a miniature mouth worked in silent sucking motions.
He was perfect.
“He has your brows,” Sophia observed before running a single fingertip down their child’s downy cheek to the center of his tiny chin. “And Papa’s stubborn jaw.”
When Rafael didn’t answer, Sophia lifted her gaze to find her husband staring at her, his heart in his eyes. “Do you know how amazing you are?”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she whispered as happiness filled her heart to brimming. Though there’d been a few moments when the nurses had been more concerned for Rafael than for her pending delivery, he’d rallied. She’d needed him, and he’d been there every step of the way. He’d fed her ice chips, rubbed her back and counted through her contractions when it felt like they’d never end.
“You’ll never have to,” he said. “Not as long as I live.”
“I know.” When she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d fretted that he’d revert to his overbearing, protective role, and that he’d hobble her with a confinement wrought by fear. But he’d been amazingly calm. It was if unburdening himself of his past, of his guilt and pain, had left him more willing to fully engage in the present and trust in the future.
Each time he’d touched her, his warm hands possessive and gentle against her swelling belly, she’d felt their connection strengthen and his faith in their future grow. Sharing the miracle of their baby’s first kick, walking hand in hand through their thriving vineyard while autumn transformed into winter and then spring, they’d learned to embrace the second chance at happiness that life had provided them.
And as impossible as it seemed, it felt that her love for Rafael grew with each passing day. Joy permeated their interactions and underscored their days. It was as if the walls Rafael had built between them had ceased to exist, replaced by love and hope and trust.
She still had to pinch herself at times, just to ensure that it was real. That the life they’d built together was more than just a dream.
Against all odds, they were happy. Complete. She’d become less impulsive and more grounded. Rafael’s serious intensity had softened and an irrepressible lightness had replaced the edge of anger that had dominated his interactions for so long. He laughed now, teased and joked and smiled. The crew, who’d always respected him, truly loved him with an adoration that bordered on worship. He’d become the touchstone for them all, and rather than being weighed down by the responsibility, he’d thrived.
They all had.
Sophia smiled into her husband’s eyes and reached to cup his whisker-roughened face. Unwilling to leave her alone once her contractions had begun, Rafael hadn’t been home or slept for over twenty-four hours. But even with fatigue drawing shadows beneath his eyes, he looked content. Exhausted, but content. “I’ve been thinking about what we’ll name him,” she told Rafael.
He cocked his head drowsily, a proud smile curving his mouth as he shifted his focus to their slumbering infant. Rafael’s big, brown hand curved possessively over their son’s capped head, his thumb tracing the knitted edge of blue while his throat worked with his swallow. “Dante?”
“For Papa, yes.” She dropped her hand atop Rafael’s and waited until his eyes returned to her. “But I thought we could name him for Paolo, too. Paolo Dante Chaves.”
Rafael stared at her without speaking for a moment, his dark eyes turning suspiciously bright. “I think he’d have liked that.”
She smiled at him through a sheen of tears. “I’m glad.”
“I love you, Sophia Chaves,” he said in a voice gone rough with emotion.
Her tears spilled over, whether from hormones or a happiness that was too big to hold inside, she couldn’t tell. “I love you, too.”
Then he leaned over their sleeping child and kissed her tears away.
Read on for a sneak preview of Carol Marinelli’s
PUTTING ALICE BACK TOGETHER!
Hugh hired bikes!
You know that saying: ‘It’s like riding a bike, you never forget’?
I’d never learnt in the first place.
I never got past training wheels
.
‘You’ve got limited upper-body strength?’ He stopped and looked at me.
I had been explaining to him as I wobbled along and tried to stay up that I really had no centre of balance. I mean really had no centre of balance. And when we decided, fairly quickly, that a bike ride along the Yarra perhaps, after all, wasn’t the best activity (he’d kept insisting I’d be fine once I was on, that you never forget), I threw in too my other disability. I told him about my limited upper-body strength, just in case he took me to an indoor rock-climbing centre next. I’d honestly forgotten he was a doctor, and he seemed worried, like I’d had a mini-stroke in the past or had mild cerebral palsy or something.
‘God, Alice, I’m sorry—you should have said. What happened?’
And then I had had to tell him that it was a self-diagnosis. ‘Well, I could never get up the ropes at the gym at school.’ We were pushing our bikes back. ‘I can’t blow-dry the back of my hair …’ He started laughing.
Not like Lisa who was laughing at me—he was just laughing and so was I. We got a full refund because we’d only been on our bikes ten minutes, but I hadn’t failed. If anything, we were getting on better.
And better.
We went to St Kilda to the lovely bitty shops and I found these miniature Russian dolls. They were tiny, made of tin or something, the biggest no bigger than my thumbnail. Every time we opened them, there was another tiny one, and then another, all reds and yellows and greens.
They were divine.
We were facing each other, looking down at the palm of my hand, and our heads touched.
If I put my hand up now, I can feel where our heads touched.
I remember that moment.
I remember it a lot.
Our heads connected for a second and it was alchemic; it was as if our minds kissed hello.
I just have to touch my head, just there at the very spot and I can, whenever I want to, relive that moment.
So many times I do.
‘Get them.’ Hugh said, and I would have, except that little bit of tin cost more than a hundred dollars and, though that usually wouldn’t have stopped me, I wasn’t about to have my card declined in front of him.