by Tacie Graves
The bed might be cold, but the words warmed Mina’s heart.
“Couldn’t keep me away,” she said, and meant it.
She headed out the door and down the hall, her bare feet silent on the Oriental runner, and she looked around her with new eyes. It was a beautiful place, a contrast of dark woods and windows, and she understood Marco’s fondness for it, even though his childhood here hadn’t been ideal.
She descended the stairs lightly, and she realized she’d never been this comfortable in the house before. The weight of her uncertainty had made her an outsider, regardless of reality, and she hoped that it was gone for good. There would be days when she didn’t fit in, and there’d be a steep learning curve for dealing with Marco’s world, but it was her world too, now, and it would be a challenge she looked forward to.
The office was as bad as she expected. Papers were everywhere, a pen cup had been thrown across the room spilling its contents across the floor, but Mina couldn’t help but be a little embarrassed by the silent testimony of her clothes. She found her shirt and bra hanging on the back of an armchair, and her jeans in a crumpled pile beneath the desk. Her panties? Well, they were around somewhere, but…
“You are back.”
Mina raised up quickly from her search and hit her head on the bottom of the desk with a crack. Bianca Genovese was standing in the door, her back ramrod straight and an oddly curious look on her face.
“I will be honest, I doubted you would return.”
The embarrassment she’d felt at being caught searching for her underwear faded quickly as she confronted the woman who’d tried so hard to chase her out of Marco’s life.
“What is it they say? Climate is what you expect and weather is what you get?” Mina straightened the clothes in her arms. “Well, it looks like the weather has rained on your parade.”
The older woman looked at her for a moment, obviously trying to follow the English, and Mina wished for the millionth time she spoke Italian. It was much easier to yell in Italian.
“My parade. Yes. I think I understand.” She nodded and looked at the clothes in Mina’s arms. “I assume that Marco has returned as well?”
There was no anger in her voice, no accusation, and Mina nodded warily. “He brought me back.”
Bianca walked into the office. She walked across to the fireplace behind the desk and lifted a pair of black cotton panties from the poker handle. She held them out and Mina took them from her with an embarrassed, “Thank you.”
The silence between them was so thick you could spread it on toast, but Mina knew there was no advantage in arguing with her. Nothing she said would change this woman’s opinion of her.
“I do not expect that you like me very much.”
There’s a news flash, Mina thought. She nodded, a polite admission, but didn’t say anything.
“I wouldn’t like me very much either, if I were in your place.”
The admission was a surprise. Marco’s mother sounded almost apologetic, and that couldn’t be right.
“When Marco told me that he was handing the family’s heritage, the collezione, over to a total stranger I was furious. Then, when I realized he was using it as leverage to get into your bed, I was even more so.” A tight line developed around her mouth. “I did not raise my son to buy the attentions of women, and any woman who allowed herself to be bought, well…” she made a noise in her throat and Mina winced.
“As if it wasn’t enough for him to be sending his heritage off to some American museum, he had the nerve to bring you here. To his home. To me.” She turned away and stared out the window. “It was intolerable.”
Mina stood silently, every word hitting her like a little splash of alcohol in a paper cut. Superficial, but excruciating. A special kind of torture.
“I saw you and I knew you were a gold digging little puttana.” Finally there was anger in Bianca’s voice.
I knew she knew what a whore was, Mina thought bitterly.
“I called Serafina Mazza, the woman you saw in the office with Marco, and told her that he was back in the country. I told her that he wanted to marry, to settle down, and take up his family’s responsibilities here in Portofino.” Bianca gave a twisted little smile. “I thought it was better to have the devil I knew, instead of the devil I didn’t.”
Black eyes fixed on Mina, and she braced herself for another attack.
“I was wrong.”
It was so far from what she was expecting that she swayed on her feet, her resistance unnecessary.
“Wrong?” It wasn’t smart to ask--there were too many ways she could be hurt by this woman--but she couldn’t help herself. She needed to understand.
“I watched you that night. I saw the pain on your face, and I felt guilty that I had put it there, but I didn’t regret it. But then…” Bianca’s voice broke, something Mina had never heard before, and it took a moment for her to regroup. “Then I saw Marco.”
“He struck his brother. I couldn’t believe it. Never, not through their entire childhood, did he ever raise a hand to Gio. Gio was brilliant, and stubborn, and enough to drive a saint to madness, but Marco knew he was bigger and stronger.” She remembered something and laughed. “Oh they fought, cats and dogs those two, but it was never physical.”
“At first I thought it was temper finally catching up to him, Italian men are famous for it, but then I looked in his eyes. It wasn’t temper,” she looked at Mina, her face solemn, “it was fear. He was afraid of losing you.”
Mina swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, but she could find no words. She was stunned into silence by what she was hearing.
“That evening, after he figured out what Serafina and I had done, he turned on me as well. It was as if someone had replaced him with a caged animal, and at that point I was afraid of losing him.”
It was easy to imagine. Marco had always had something of the predator about him, but without something to stalk, without prey, what is a predator?
“So you lied to him.” The words were out before she could stop them. It was never wise to call someone a liar, especially someone like Bianca Genovese.
The woman didn’t seem to mind, though. She met Mina’s eyes squarely and nodded.
“Yes. I knew you would need time and space before you’d be willing to listen to what he had to say,” she said. “I know how it hurts when one you love betrays you, and you obviously felt betrayed.”
“And Marco was furious with you--blindingly, so. I didn’t realize until he explained later that you had walked away from him once before--yet another proof to me that you weren’t the woman I thought you were--and your leaving opened a wound in his pride that hadn’t yet fully healed. If he had found you that night, or even the next day, he would have yelled at you, pushed you harder than you could take. It would have ruined everything, so I sent him away. I pricked his ego, told him you never wanted to see him, knowing that would send him flying after you. Tale è l'uomo.” She gave a little Gallic shrug, as if the logic of it all was plain as day.
“Such is man, eh?” The voice from the doorway made them both jump. Marco stood there, barefoot and shirtless, jeans slung low on his hips and Mina’s was amazed again by how beautiful he was. “So it was all part of your plan? Send me halfway around the world, all the time knowing she was less than an hour away. Manipulating us, like you tried to manipulate me and Serafina? Didn’t you learn your lesson with that disaster?”
Bianca pulled herself to her full height and glared at her son.
“If it was a disaster and I was the cause, wasn’t it my place to fix it?” Her eyes glittered fiercely. “I wasn’t going to let you finish destroying what I had already damaged. So yes, I lied to you. I am not sorry, and I would do it again. It was for your own good, and I love you enough to suffer your anger if I know it will mean your happiness in the end.”
Mina’s head was spinning. She looked at the woman she’d blamed for everything and began to see her in a new light.
&n
bsp; “So you don’t mind that I’m back?” Her bravery tanks were less full than before, but with Marco standing beside her she felt she could handle the answer.
“No, Mina,” Bianca said her name for the first time, “I am grateful you have returned. You hold my son’s heart, and with him is where you belong.”
Marco stepped up and wrapped his arm around her waist. He looked across the room at his mother, and Mina could feel the tension still in him.
“I hope that in time, you will come to understand an old woman’s motivations. I only wanted what was best for him.”
The fight had gone out of the matriarch and she suddenly seemed old and frail.
“Mamma,” Marco started but Mina cut him off.
“Signora, I think I understand now. I would do anything to make sure the ones I love are happy as well.”
Dark eyes searched hers, looking for something. She must have found it because she nodded.
“I believe you would.” There was respect in her voice for the first time. “I am glad for that.”
Marco refused to be kept silent.
“I’m going to marry her,” he announced, and he and his mother shared a silent conversation.
Bianca nodded. “I am counting on it.”
Married? Mina twisted in Marco’s arms to look up into his face.
“Whoa! Hold on a minute there, Casanova, haven’t you forgotten something?”
Marco’s grip tightened on her as she squirmed and he shook his head.
“No, Amore, I remember everything.” He looked down at her, a fierce love on his face. “I swore I’d make my dream come true, remember?”
Mina remembered. The ring, the baby, the promise. She also remembered what it was like without him, and she knew that fighting him would be fighting her own happiness.
“I remember,” she said, turning and giving a wink to his mother. “It’s just that a girl doesn’t like to be taken for granted.”
Bianca gave a rare smile and waved a hand at them.
“I will leave you to resolve this argument on your own.” She looked at Marco and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think even you are talented enough to screw this up.”
She closed the door as she left and Marco turned Mina in his arms. The quiet in the room was no longer a space between them, and Mina buried her face in his shoulder, wondering at how she’d ever made it to this point.
“So,” Marco started.
“So?” she asked, knowing the question but wanting to hear it.
“Will you marry me, bellisima mia? Even with my manipulative mother, my Galahad brother, and my terrible need to have you all to myself?” His voice was carefully undemanding, but she could see the hope flaring in his eyes.
Mina’s imagination filled in years of family dinners, of yelling and making up, of children and grandchildren, and she couldn’t imagine a better world.
“Well, given the situation,” she kept her voice low and serious, and then when she saw a wrinkle crease his brow she took pity on him, “yes! A thousand times yes!”
Marco let out a breath, relief clear on his face, and his arms tightened almost painfully around her.
“I thought,” he started but Mina cut him off with a kiss.
“That’s a bad idea,” she said, her eyes glowing mischievously. “No more thinking. We work better when we just go on instinct.”
She kissed him again, instinct telling her that he needed proof of her love as much as she’d needed proof of his. Long minutes passed, and when they came back down to Earth Marco grinned, his devilish smile taking her breath away.
“Instinct?” He swept her up in his arms and made for the door, his long legs eating up the distance back to their bedroom. “I can work with that.”
Mina dropped the clothes she’d been clutching all this time and flung her arms around his neck.
So could she.
The End
About the Author
Tacie Graves isn’t schizophrenic; she just writes what the voices in her head tell her to. Living in the middle of the Midwest with her husband and two children, her days are spent in a whirlwind of activities that always somehow lead back to her writing desk and the sexy stories that come alive there (which can be difficult sometimes when she has to explain why she’s looking at the pool guy just so.) She writes erotica for every woman because we can all use a little extra spice in our lives sometimes. Oh, and because the voices told her to.
Making Mina: Compromising Positions. Copyright © 2013 by Tacie Graves. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or any other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used facetiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.