Lucia started laughing. Antonio snorted as he hustled after them. “Sure, we can stop for coffee, Nonno. No skin off my back if you miss your flight. Hell, you want to swing by Carpucci’s and pick up one of those Italian subs you like, too, in the event you do make it to your gate on time? You can have it for lunch. I know how much you hate airplane food.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Antonio.”
The door closed behind them, and Caterina faced her sisters.
“I sure am going to miss him,” Marcella said.
Eliana wrapped her arms around her waist, hugged herself. “We all will.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Cat threw out. “There aren’t any guests in residence, so why don’t the three of us go out to lunch? We can go to Twining Vines.”
“Sounds good to me,” Marcella said, and glanced at Eliana. “You in?”
Eliana sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not that hungry. Maybe the two of you—”
Cat walked over to Eliana and took her hand. “She’s in,” she stated, and started walking toward the hallway, pulling El with her. She remembered how she’d tried to sequester herself after her breakup with Mitch. Her sisters had rallied around her, forced her to go on living with her chin up. They’d have to do the same with El, keep her distracted long enough that her heart had a chance to begin mending.
“Now,” she said, not willing to leave her sister alone to dwell on what she’d lost, “let’s all go upstairs, put on something pretty, and go have some sister time.”
“Fine,” Eliana said.
Marcella trailed behind them. “Do I have anything pretty?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Caterina said with a light laugh. “I’ll pick out something of mine for you.”
“Wonderful, I hate having to think about what to wear. Just make sure it covers more than a quarter of my body, will you? I don’t have the same comfort level you two do, dealing with men who think my eyes are located somewhere below my neck.”
CATERINA WAS IN the kitchen plating food for a family dinner party that evening. It had been Lucia’s idea to have one, and although no one said as much to Eliana, it would be a time for them to regroup, to point forward.
Liam was joining them. He was one of them now, hers in heart, and theirs because he was hers. Riley was spending the night at his brother Shawn’s, for a sleepover with her cousin, Spencer, which she always enjoyed.
A smile played over Cat’s lips. That meant she and Liam could have a sleepover of their own. Yes, they would have the entire night, long and lovely, to themselves. It seemed weeks since they’d last made love, and she craved the intimacy that physical connection gave them. She needed to love, to be loved by him, and to experience the pleasures of body and soul that only he could give her.
Vincenzo had said that Rosa told him Liam was her destiny. Cat didn’t know how her aunt could know such a thing. The woman was dead, after all.
She frowned. A year ago, she hadn’t believed in ghosts. She’d since discovered otherwise. What was destiny, really, she wondered. Something that’s meant to be? If one is lucky enough to find love with someone, a love that makes them so happy, so content, just to be with that person, then surely there are certain people who are right for each other—that fit better together.
Like her and Liam. She knew she’d never felt this way about anyone before. So maybe he was her destiny. And if he wasn’t, she didn’t care. She was keeping him, anyway.
“Hey, sis, the gang’s all here. Luch and El are trying to keep Antonio and Liam from filling up on appetizers. They sent me in here to see if I could help you get dinner out to the table while they’ve still got room for the main course. They’re threatening to tape their mouths with duct tape.” Marcella walked over and leaned against the counter.
Caterina chuckled. “Everything’s ready. Let’s start taking these plates out before they carry through on their threat. That stuff’s a bitch to get off without taking some skin with it, and I’d like Liam’s lips to remain intact for the private after-party I’m planning for the two of us.”
“All the information I need, thank you.” Cat’s twin picked up the two platters she’d just finished arranging—one of winter vegetables roasted in olive oil and rosemary; the other, Belgian endive with pecans, cranberries, and warmed goat cheese salads—and headed back out to the solarium where they’d set a cozy table for six earlier that afternoon.
Cat finished slicing the rosemary and fennel-rubbed beef tenderloin she’d had resting on the stove top. She fanned the slices in two overlapping semicircles on the round, deep cobalt-blue and white marbled serving platter that had been their mother’s, one that Caterina had always loved. Next to her mother’s platter, she placed the shallow crystal bowl she’d filled with a cognac and mustard sauce she’d been experimenting with the week before and added some bright-green parsley for garnish. Then, she quickly washed her hands before joining everyone else in the solarium.
Liam’s gaze warmed Cat all the way to her toes as she sat down next to him. Caribbean blue flames stole her breath away, because what she saw flickering in their depths confirmed her earlier musings. They belonged together.
Antonio, who sat to Caterina’s left, cleared his throat. Reluctantly, she drew her eyes from Liam’s, and looked at him. He held up a bottle of Bordeaux. “May I?” he asked with an amused smile.
Cat picked up her wineglass and held it toward him. “Yes, thank you. And don’t give me that look, mister. I’ve got a long memory. In case you’ve forgotten, I’d be happy to remind you of your own lovesick self a few months ago.”
“I was never lovesick,” he objected. “That’s purely a female trait.” Which made Marcella almost spit out her own wine.
Lucia jabbed him with her elbow and he looked at her. “You were saying, Antonio?”
He fought a laugh. “I was saying what a lucky man I am to have found such a wonderful woman.” Caterina marveled that, for a man so full of BS, he could manage to look so utterly charming.
“Oh, brother.” Marcella lifted some vegetables onto her plate and then passed the platter to Eliana.
“Okay, changing subjects,” Lucia said. “I was reading one of Rosa’s diaries last night. It was dated just a few weeks before she and Uncle Gino were murdered. I don’t know if her suspicion was correct, but she thought she might have been pregnant.”
“Why did she think that?” Caterina asked.
“She’d begun feeling tired more easily and had been experiencing some nausea. She wrote that she and Gino had been trying to have a child, and she hoped what she’d been feeling meant their prayers were finally being answered.”
Cat took a sip of wine. “Did you read any further entries to see if she was right?”
“Well, we know from going through them that she didn’t write in her diaries consistently. Sometimes she’d go weeks without updating them, but there were two more entries after that one. The last was from the night before she died. She said she’d told Gino her girlfriend was picking her up the next day, and the two of them were going into town to have lunch together. She’d also made an appointment to see the doctor while she was in town, but she didn’t tell him that part, because she said if she wasn’t pregnant she didn’t want him to be disappointed.”
“So, we don’t know, then,” Marcella commented.
Lucia shook her head. “No, just that she thought she might be.”
“That’s so sad,” Eliana said. “If she was. That’s just so sad.”
“I haven’t had as much experience with her as the rest of you,” Liam said, “but maybe that has something to do with why she’s still hanging around.”
Antonio nodded. “He might be right. Even if she found out she wasn’t pregnant, it sounds like she and your uncle really wanted a child. Lucia, I think I remember you telling me she was in her early thirties when they were murdered. If they’d been trying for a while, and she’d been dreaming of having a baby for a long time, maybe she couldn’t completely let
go of her life here…like it was still unresolved or something.”
“I guess that’s possible.” Lucia reached for a roll. “If so, I’m not sure what she’s resolved by hanging around, though.”
“Well,” Marcella ventured, “she’s got us.”
They spent a few more minutes postulating Rosa’s motives, but with nothing concrete to base anything on, the conversation soon moved on to other topics, with the noticeable exclusion of anything about Damien. No one was pretending he hadn’t happened in their lives; they just didn’t want to upset Eliana when her emotions were still so raw.
In the scheme of things, Liam hadn’t suffered any major damage because of Damien. He was being very pragmatic about the entire thing as it related to him and Riley. If anything, Liam thought Damien’s findings could only help his cause if Sylvie’s parents ever decided to try for custody. Hopefully, when he met with them tomorrow afternoon, he could talk some sense into them.
Eliana, on the other hand, was an innocent victim. Damien may never have intended to hurt her, but hurt her he had. She would need time, and the fewer reminders she had about Damien, the better.
“Marcella, would you choose a wine to go with dessert?” Caterina asked, when she saw that the bottle she’d just picked up was empty. “Eliana, you can help me bring them out. It’s chocolate mousse, with the homemade Baileys whipped cream you’ve been bugging me to make.”
“At your service, favorite sister of mine,” Eliana said, licking her lips, a glimpse of the El that Cat knew and loved poking through. “And to show my gratitude, I’ll even help clean everything up later.”
“Not necessary, Liam and Antonio are on cleanup duty.”
“What?” the two men exclaimed in stereo.
Cat gave them both an arched brow.
“Um, okay, sure.” Liam shrugged. “We can handle that, right, Antonio?”
Later that night, after they’d polished off dessert, two more bottles of wine, and everything had been cleared away and the kitchen restored to rights, Caterina and Liam sat in the library in front of a dwindling fire. The only other light in the room came from the candles flickering on the mantle and on the coffee table, casting a soft glow over everything.
Caterina rested her head on Liam’s shoulder. “Thanks for helping clean up tonight.”
“No problem. You worked your butt off all afternoon to make that amazing dinner.”
“Yes, but I enjoy cooking, and I especially enjoy cooking for people I care about.”
“Like me?” He tucked his chin, so he could look at her, and grinned.
God, he got her every time with that sexy, lopsided smile of his. She didn’t want to sit down here in the library any longer. She wanted to wrap her arms around his warm, hunky body and make crazy, wonderful, sexy love to him.
“Liam, are you ready to go up to bed?”
“Are you?”
Cat licked her lips and nodded.
His grin widened, and a spark lit his eyes. “Thank God. I didn’t know how much longer I was going to last down here before I hauled you up there and stripped you out of those clothes.”
“Why didn’t you just say something?”
“Like I said, you worked all afternoon. I thought you might want to sit and relax a while. I was trying to put my own selfish desires aside and be a gentleman.”
“I appreciate that, but you can stop trying to be a gentleman now. I’d much rather you give your selfish desires free rein, so you can satisfy mine.”
AS PARTICULAR AS she was about plans and schedules, everything having a time and a place, and Lord help whoever switched them up on her—Caterina made love to him with a passion and freedom that stole his breath. And he’d be perfectly content to lie under her luscious curves until he passed out from lack of air, as long as he knew her heart belonged to him.
And it did. Good thing, too, because it meant his plan stood a much higher chance of success.
“I’ve been thinking,” Liam said, his hands enjoying the journey they were taking over the smooth mound of her hips, gliding down the silken skin to the valley that was her waist.
“You do that a lot.”
“Yeah, well, we’re lying here, and since I need some time to recover before I can satisfy those raging desires of yours again, it helps pass the time.”
She smiled, and he felt it against his skin. “And what deep thoughts are helping you bridge that gap?”
Liam rolled her off his chest and turned onto his side, toward her. She had the face of a goddess, the body of one too. But it was the prickly control freak whom he’d watched strut around her kitchen island with his daughter; it was the woman who’d looked at him all those months ago, through vulnerable eyes, and asked what she’d ever done to make him dislike her so much—that he’d fallen in love with.
“Thoughts of you. Of us.” He searched her eyes. Their warm brown depths reflected what he felt for her. “I want more than a night here and there with you, when I can find a sitter for Riley, or she has a sleepover at her cousin’s. Riley’s crazy about you. And Riley’s dad’s kind of crazy about you, too. And I was hoping you might be crazy enough about the two of us, that maybe the three of us could all be crazy about one another together.”
Caterina stared at him. “What exactly are you suggesting, Liam?”
He wove his fingers through her hair. “I want us to be a family. You, me, Riley—it feels right. At least to me, and I hope to you, too. I don’t just want today and tomorrow, maybe next year with you…I want the rest of your life.”
“You sure about that? You do know that in my family that doesn’t necessarily end when we die.” She bit her lip. “Sorry, bad joke. You just caught me off guard. I mean, if I’d known we were going to have this conversation tonight, I would have planned it differently. You know, with candles, and a really good bottle of wine, and I’d have bought some special lingerie, and I’d have—”
“Caterina.”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course, I do. This has nothing to do with that.”
“It has everything to do with that.”
“Well, okay, maybe, but—”
“Cat.”
“Yes?”
“Just say you’ll marry me, and I’ll let you have complete control working out the details for our wedding.”
The corners of her lips curled impishly. “Promise?”
“I promise. Now, will you marry me?”
“Yes, since it was part of my plan to get you to ask me, Liam, I’ll marry you.”
He curled his fingers around the back of her head and kissed her. She would drive him crazy with all her lists and schedules, he had no doubt, but it didn’t matter. He loved his daughter so much, and she brought him such joy. But he hadn’t realized how much was missing from his life until Caterina sauntered into it in those ridiculous, spiky, Lord-how-he-loved-them, sexy heels of hers.
“I can feel you smiling against my lips, Liam. What are you smiling about?”
“I was just thinking about how far we’ve come from when we first met, and how you stormed into my life and stole my heart before I ever realized what was happening.”
He felt her smile as well.
“I love you, Liam.”
“I love you too.”
The night moon rose silently over the Blue Ridge, glinting off the craggy crests like flecks of gold set in the ancient stone, and as it did, Destiny smiled—two more of her charges had found their way—but her work was never done. She turned her gaze toward two others, two who had been on their intended path but had gotten derailed.
It’s time to get you back on track, Eliana, my dear.
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Patricia Paris lives in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland, which provides much of the inspiration for her writing. When not writing, she spends her free time exploring the bay, battling the weeds that insist on invading her gardens, or exp
erimenting with a new recipe in her kitchen. She is an unapologetic romantic, and loves to give her readers that happily ever after, every time.
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