by Eden Butler
Mr. Kempt pulled me to the side to ask what I thought Vi would say to taking her off for the weekend to the Cape.
I wasn’t fucking touching that one.
By the time I found Maggie, she was at the back of the restaurant, standing in front of the large bay window in the dining hall my folks reserved for larger parties. The light from the streetlamps outside was distilled by the thick fabric around the windows, but Maggie still looked like a fucking angel against that glass, her entire face profiled and flawless as I watched her.
She’d been like this Christmas Eve, months back, the first night we met. She’d been scared then, upset too. And I’d stood in front of her saying shit that had no business coming out of my mouth. But hell, I’d wanted her and Christ did she need to cut loose a little.
Now I loved her. She loved me and she needed to hear my apology for being an asshole.
She was still scared.
Felt guilty too.
How the hell could I take that shit from her for good?
“You’re beautiful,” I told her.
Maggie only bent her head, shifting it in my direction without looking at me.
I could live a million damn lives and find her just from the way she moved because she drew me to her. The slip of her fingers through her hair. The quirk of her eyebrow when she tried not to smile. The glorious fucking rock of her hips when she moved across a room.
She was the flame.
I was the suicidal moth aching to die for her.
“You’re strong,” I continued. “And smart.”
“Dimitri…” She shook her head, one gesture, one name that warned me, but I never was good at warnings.
“You got no reason to feel guilty,” I told her, moving to lean against the window. It felt like someone had shot me again when I caught the tears swimming in her eyes. “Baby…” I reached for her and she tried to fight me, but I’m a selfish, stubborn man and brought her close. “Don’t you get it?” I pulled her face up, kissing her once. “I’d take a thousand bullets for you and Mateo. Body shot, head shot, wherever. I’d give up everything I have if it meant you were safe.”
“Don’t say that…”
“Why the hell not?” She pulled away from me and I held her back, my arms on her waist, her back to my front. “It’s what you do for the people you love.”
“Let me go.”
“Bella,” I said, wrapping my hands in her hair, pulling on her to catch her chin and turn her mouth toward me. “That is never going to fucking happen.”
She took my kiss, hesitating for only a second before she caved, curling her body toward me, spinning in my arms to give me back the kiss I’d stolen from her.
Maggie fit against me like a puzzle.
We were two damn parts that shouldn’t fit, but we did.
Made for each other and no one else.
“There’s no one for me but you. There’s no one for you but me. You feel me on that?’
She opened her mouth, light glistening on her bottom lip had me wanting to take her lips again, but Maggie’s soft sweet voice distracted me. “I feel you and I love you.”
“I don’t apologize easy…” Her skin was soft, smooth when I moved my thumb over her cheek. “But I’ll never hurt you on purpose.” It took everything in me to man up and say the thing I needed to. “I can’t be sorry for what I did because it meant we’re here right now and you and my boy, all of us are safe and together.”
She blinked, giving me the agreement I was looking for.
“But I’m sorry you feel guilty about it and…I’m sorry I was an asshole joking about it.”
Maggie laughed, kissing me back. “You’re an asshole about a lot of things …”
“Not to you…not anymore,” I tried, liking how she smiled at me, wanting to do whatever I could to keep that smile on her face. I had ideas how to do it.
“No,” she said, that smile stretching. “Not so much anymore.”
Yeah, I had big damn ideas.
Something had happened to Dario since the night of my talk with him. I’d left him in the park, hoping my advice about remembering who he was had hit home. Then, we’d been distracted by what had gone down with the baby being taken.
But as I watched the man walk around the restaurant, watched how he carried himself, how others responded to him, I picked up on the fact that my kid brother had changed.
Scratch that.
Dario hadn’t changed.
Dario was back.
There was a swagger in his step that I hadn’t seen in five damn years.
There was a smug fucking grin on his face as the cute servers approached him, offering him drinks or food or, God help him if Ma saw, themselves, and the bastard waved them all away.
He settled into one of the leather wingback chairs near the fireplace, his right wrist on the arm rest, the left holding a tumbler of whiskey. He took in everything around us—the crowd, our family, me, Maggie, the baby, Dante and Antonia drinking together at the bar, my boys and, especially, the clang of the bell over the door and the long-legged redhead that walked through it.
“Ah, Ava,” Ma said, walking right toward the woman with her arms open.
Around us, the crowd turned, their laughter dying as the woman entered the restaurant. Smiles froze on faces, eyebrows got lifted and moved in surprise.
The woman had been in town for months, but she’d kept to herself and hadn’t made any attempts to be friendly with anyone but the staff she hired to help run her bakery.
Except, of course, my men, who would only compliment her baked goods.
“So, this is her?” Maggie asked me, bringing the sweet smell of lilacs with her as she leaned in to whisper in my ear.
My grip stiffened on her thigh. I had to remind myself that I couldn’t take her right here in front of the whole fucking town in my folks’ restaurant. “I suppose it is.”
“You said she was tall.”
I glanced at the redhead, quirking my eyebrows at how Ma doted on her, how the woman and my mother hugged each other like they were old friends.
How my father grinned at her, kissing her hand as he wrapped his arm around my mother.
“And,” my woman continued, “you said she got under Dario’s skin.”
“Yeah. So he said. Why?”
Maggie nodded across the room, to where Dario had spent the past half hour schooling his expression behind a tumbler of whiskey. But there was no hiding what he thought of the redhead being here or our folks welcoming her.
“Madonna…”
My kid brother’s eyes went dark, steely and when Ma brought this Ava woman farther into the restaurant, introducing her to family, then to some of her friends, Dario stood, downing what remained of his drink, looking ready to pounce.
“Dimitri, he’s going to cause a scene, look at him.” Maggie sat up straighter, her hand clenching my wrist. “It will embarrass your mama.”
I shot a look toward my mother, then back to Dario, whose attention was on Ava. He marched toward her, his expression bunched up, his mouth drawn down. The composure he’d kept for the past weeks, that slick calm he’d always been able to maintain seemed to split apart at the seams. The closer he got toward the redhead and as Maggie’s grip squeezed harder, I realized she was right.
That asshole was about to embarrass our whole family in front of the town.
“Do something,” Maggie said, her voice a whisper.
I slipped a glance to her, loving her even more as she widened her eyes, and that panicked, worried expression moved across her face. She wasn’t a Carelli, but she understood what Dario embarrassing us would mean to our family.
“Okay, bella,” I said, kissing her temple before I stood. “Everyone,” I called, lifting my voice, my hands up to get the crowd’s attention.
My mother stopped speaking, her eyes rounding when I nodded to her.
“Everyone, please, give Dimitri your attention. He has something to say!” Dario stood behind her but stoppe
d his approach toward the redhead when Ma spoke up. She nodded him back to his seat and waved Ava toward the table next to Mrs. Phillips.
Crisis averted, but now I had the room, and something needed to be said. Something I probably had been thinking about for two straight weeks but couldn’t find the motivation for until tonight.
Hundreds of eyes on me.
Waiting. Watching. Expecting.
Big damn gestures.
All women wanted them, right? At least, that’s what my sister claimed.
Hope mine didn’t make me look like an asshole.
“So, ah, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came out tonight to wish me well and a…congratulate us on getting through…” I waved my hand, feeling stupid. But Maggie took hold of my fingers, kissing my knuckles and some of that embarrassment left me. “Getting through that…mess. It means a lot, all your support and help, so thank you.” I nodded, sending smiles of gratitude to the gazes I caught, then turned, taking Maggie’s hands in mine. My throat closed up a little when she stared up at me, tilting her head when I only watched and didn’t speak for several seconds.
“I…don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” I told her, “standing here in front of all these people when all I really want to do is take you and our boy home and just…be.”
Her smile was small, sweet and it killed me, how her eyes went wet. In the back of my mind, I thought about how many times I’d seen her that way and how I hoped I’d never be the cause of it.
It wasn’t ever a great feeling.
“Dimitri…”
“I’ve never wanted that before, you know? To be with someone and shut out the world. To walk away from all the shit I thought was so important.”
The moisture in her eyes got thicker, dotted in her lashes and her grip on my fingers was so tight I thought she might cut off the circulation, but I had to have my say.
“Turns out, nothing in the world is except you and the kid. Not to me. For me, being with you is all the happy I’m ever gonna want.” I shook my head, thinking that didn’t sound right. “No, that’s not it. Being with you, seeing what else there is with you, seeing all the happy we can get together, baby, that’s all I’m ever gonna want.”
Maggie’s face was wet now. Her eyes red-rimmed and swollen. She’d never looked more beautiful to me. She seemed to hold her breath, watching my face, like me, blocking out the still, silent room.
I slipped my hand in my front pocket and pulled out the ring my mother had waited my whole life to hand over to me. “In front of all these people and my family. In front of God and total strangers, Maggie, my bella amore, I’m making an ass out of myself…” I knelt in front of her, ignoring the gasps and noise that moved around the room. “Because I love you…and our boy. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you and just…be. So…you…wanna marry me?”
The ring was heavy in my hand. Ma had told me my whole life that Nonna Theresa had hidden it from the Germans when they escaped Italy during the war. It was a gold band with a large diamond and scrollwork around the sides. It had been given to her by her husband and to him by his mother and all the way back for four generations.
Sometimes women handed down jewelry not because they wanted their daughters to look nice, but because it might mean the difference between life and death. Hunger and starvation. Nonna Theresa Antonia never had to sell this ring, but to me, it still came down to life and death as I waited on Maggie’s answer.
“Bella,” I said, looking up at her, unable to breathe as she stared at the ring.
She glanced at me, swiping at her eyes, then to Mateo when he laughed behind me as Antonia held him.
“Dimitri…I…”
“I promise, baby, I swear…I’ll love you, I’ll never stop, and I won’t ever let anything…”
She shut me up with her lips on mine, her hands on my face, her soft, warm tongue teasing my mouth before she pulled away. “You don’t have to convince me. I’ve been yours a long time.”
“Yeah?” I asked her, wiping at her wet face, ignoring my folks as they asked us for an answer no one could hear yet.
“Si, of course,” she said, kissing me again.
“Son?” Pop said, his voice breaking through the rising questions of the crowd. “What did she say?”
I kissed her again, my heart feeling like it might explode before I stood us up, pulling Maggie to my side. “Yeah, Pop. She said yeah.”
“It’s about time!” Ma said, and in an instant, we were crowded by our family and the people around us.
Somewhere between the well wishes and toasts from everyone in our family, from Vi crying on Maggie’s shoulder and Antonia’s drunken apology for bitching at me, Maggie finally circled back to me. I was able to sneak her away from the crowd and into a quiet corner of the restaurant.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, sitting on my lap as I finally slipped the ring onto her finger.
There’d been too many people, too much activity before.
“It was my grandmother’s. And a dozen others’ before hers. Been in my family forever.”
“Now it’ll be in ours.” She snuggled closer to me, her breath against my neck as I wrapped my arms around her. “Maybe,” she started, a smile stretching against my skin, “maybe one day we can give it to one of our kids.”
I didn’t hesitate, liking the idea instantly. “Mateo could give it to his wife one day.”
“Or…if we have other children…”
I looked down, crinkling my eyebrows. “You trying to tell me something?”
She laughed, her head falling back against the chair. “Dimitri, no. Not yet.”
“Yet. Hmm,” I moved her closer, nipping her neck. “That means practice. I like when we practice.”
“It’s my favorite thing.”
Then Maggie took my mouth, rubbing her tongue along my bottom lip, nibbling along the skin there. I gripped her ass, wanting her so much just then, grabbing her closer, moving from her lips, to her jaw, then stopping when the sound of someone’s voice coming too close killed the mood.
“I don’t know what your problem is, Mr. Carelli,” the redhead was saying, walking into the vacant area of the restaurant, several feet from the alcove where Maggie and I hid.
“That’s the problem. You not knowing enough about boundaries.” Dario’s voice was thick with anger. I recognized his temper flaring, but the warning was laced with the same tone I’d heard him use a half-dozen times when he was trying to convince a girl to come home with him.
“No fucking way,” I whispered, shutting my mouth when Maggie covered it with her hand. I moved my eyebrows up, asking her a silent question, and she nodded toward my brother and Ava, telling me with one gesture that she wanted in on the gossip.
“Boundaries?” Ava said, a laugh thick in her voice. “Seems to me you need a lesson on boundaries as well.”
“I’m not the one disobeying the rules…” The woman laughed outright, but Dario continued, “Or, coming into places she’s not welcomed.”
“For your information, your mother invited me, and no matter what you think of me, I never go where I’m not invited.” She started to walk away, her heels clicking on the hardwood.
“Then you must get bored in this town.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” The heels came closer, and when she spoke again, Ava’s voice held a tease. “Trust me when I tell you there are invitations. Lots of invitations that have nothing to do with sweet Italian women and their nice restaurants.”
“Name one.”
“Why would that interest you, Mr. Carelli? You interested in where I lay my head at night?”
Maggie looked at me, sharing the same grin I gave her, but when Dario released a low, frustrated grunt, I saw the problem heading our way.
This isn’t good, I mouthed.
Sounds damn good to me, Maggie replied.
“Ava,” Dario said, taking in a breath and doing something I couldn’t see that made the woman gasp. “Where you lay
your head doesn’t matter to me, until you’re laying it on my lap with your mouth around my cock.”
I shut my eyes, knowing what would happen next, not surprised when the sound of a slap fractured the quiet in the small alcove.
“Fuck,” Dario said, as the sound of those heels got quieter, and then my brother walked off in the other direction.
I helped Maggie stand and followed behind her, pulling her back when she started toward the dining room.
“What do you think will happen?” she asked me, releasing a small yelp when I leaned her against the wall.
“Dario’s troubles are his own. I’m not fighting his battles anymore.”
“You want him to do his own time?” she said, smiling. I’d almost forgotten I’d told her that.
“Yeah, I’d rather do mine...” I kissed Maggie, working my lips over hers, teasing like she liked, “with you.”
“I don’t think I’d mind so much doing hard time with you, Dimitri.”
“No?” I inched closer, lifting her leg up. “That’s a forever kind of sentence and I’m a dangerous man.”
“I know,” she said, inhaling when I nuzzled her neck, taking her ear between my teeth. Maggie held my face, bringing my attention back to her. “But you’re my dangerous man.”
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A secret smile.
A haunting kiss.
Life – Interrupted.
Keilen Rivers was the best Lily Campbell never had. He was the promise she didn’t let herself keep. After all, nothing in life seems meant to last, and love is no exception.
When Lily’s life takes an unexpected and tragic turn, she leaves behind both her island home and the boy she could have loved to protect the only family she has left.
But sometimes life takes without giving. Sometimes you cannot bend, only break. And when her career spirals out of her control, Lily can only watch as everything she worked for falls to ruin.
