by Marinelli, Carol; Hayward, Jennifer; Stephens, Susan; Anderson, Natalie
He slid the zipper down and then pulled the dress up and over her head. Her breasts were full and encased in lace, and he stroked them through the fabric, then tipped her forward so he could taste with his mouth.
His fingers unclipped it and with it hanging on her arms his mouth met her flesh. It was the touch of a tongue that could make her weep and the nip of teeth that could have her beg.
So wanting was she that her sex was on his hands as he dealt with his belt and zipper and then there was the giddy bliss of him guiding her on.
‘You and me,’ he said, but did not finish.
Not because he did not want to say things at night that would fade with the dawn but because his love, Bastiano was sure, was a toxic curse.
But when they were together, life seemed to work.
And right now they were together.
Sophie could feel the gentle guidance of his hands as he held her hips and the dig of his fingers in her buttocks as he fought to hold back.
Her thighs gripped him and she ground down, causing a shiver to run through her body, but it felt like fire as she met his eyes.
He thrust up into her softly engorged grip and she leant her hands on his chest. Now there was nothing to hold back, for he knew of her love and so she cried his name when she came.
And he moved her then at whim and shot high into her.
It was deeply intimate and the most intense climax of his life, laced as it was with her name.
They lay there afterwards with his hand on her stomach and she felt it roam across her bump.
‘It’s asleep,’ she told him, and soon so was she.
In the deep of night the baby awoke.
Sophie didn’t notice.
Bastiano did.
He felt the wave of movement beneath his palm and then an unmistakable kick and he knew he was holding the future.
Not just the baby’s but Sophie’s too.
And he would do all he could to give his baby’s mother the wedding she deserved.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘BUONGIORNO, SIGNOR.’
Bastiano did not answer the cheery greeting.
The best room in the best hotel in Casta was nowhere close to the twelfth floor at the Grande Lucia. The maid ignored the flick of his wrist to dismiss her and instead set about opening the drapes.
‘It’s a beautiful day to get married,’ she told him.
Thank goodness it was today!
Bastiano had been away from the Old Convent for two nights and he itched to get back.
Not literally.
The Casta Hotel wasn’t that bad!
He missed home.
Only that wasn’t right, because as soon as the wedding was over they were flying to Rome and he was looking forward to that.
It was being so close to the street that irked, Bastiano decided.
Bastiano had never missed anyone in his life, so he had not worked out yet that he simply missed his future bride.
The pall that had hung over him for months was back and surely it was not how a groom should feel on his wedding day.
A trophy wife would be easier, Bastiano thought as he showered in less than sumptuous surroundings. Yes, a nice trophy wife would have demanded a high-class wedding instead of the local church.
He pulled on black jeans and a jumper but found that he was grinning as he wondered how Sultan Alim and Gabi were faring down the hall.
Certainly this was no palace.
Though he had agreed to a low-key wedding, Bastiano had decided that Sophie deserved more than the basics.
Her family would be there but so to would Gabi and Alim.
And it would seem the entire valley would join them too.
Word was out and the joy at the upcoming nuptials was genuine.
As well as that, a couple of A-list guests at the Convent had applied for day leave.
It was turning into the wedding of the year and Sophie had no clue.
He took a walk down to the baker’s rather than think about why he was doing all this for her.
The church was dressed for the occasion with flowers and ribbons and, out of sentiment more than habit, Bastiano walked around the side to the cemetery.
Even if it was just a formality, it was, after all, his wedding day.
But as he turned the corner a man looked over and Bastiano felt his hackles rise.
Raul Di Savo.
Here, after all that had passed between them.
But this time Raul did not leap across tombstones to attack him; instead, he stood stock-still as this time it was Bastiano who made his way over.
‘I’m guessing that you’re not here for the wedding.’
‘No, I only just heard about that.’ Raul gave a tight smile. ‘Today is my mother’s birthday.’
‘Oh,’ Bastiano said, and his first thought was that Sophie might freak if she found out he had arranged that they marry on Maria’s birthday.
Bastiano hadn’t known, though.
He looked at the tombstone, just as he had many times, and sure enough Maria’s birthdate was etched there.
‘I hear you are soon to be a father,’ Bastiano said, and Raul nodded.
‘Lydia is back in Venice. She’s due in a few weeks.’
‘Sophie too.’
Bastiano turned and walked away and stood for a moment at his own mother’s grave.
There was no peace to be had here.
Had she even known she had a son?
Today it mattered, because a few weeks from now he would have a child of his own and there was a sudden need to put things right, to end feuds of old. He could hear the crunch of gravel as Raul walked off, and then the more rapid crunch of his own footsteps as this time it was Bastiano who strode towards him.
‘Raul!’ he called out, and watched Raul’s shoulders stiffen before he turned around.
‘Why did you refuse to hear my side?’ He stared at the man who had once been a friend. ‘Was it because I wasn’t family?’
For a moment Bastiano thought history was about to repeat itself, that he would again meet Raul’s fist, and he had a brief vision of trying to explain why he had chosen today, of all days, to confront his nemesis…
Except there would be no fighting today.
‘Not here,’ Raul said. Together, they walked up the hill and sat on the ground outside the convent, where as boys and young men they had wasted many days.
They sat at first in silence, but it was Raul who finally spoke. ‘I didn’t want to hear your side. It was easier to blame you…’
‘I guess,’ Bastiano said. He had learned from the cradle that family came first.
‘I always covered for her.’
Now the trees rustled, now the bird song seemed to fade as Bastiano learned there had been others.
Many others.
And beneath his feet the earth seemed to shift and then resettle as he chased the thoughts around his mind.
‘I know now you didn’t go there to seduce her,’ Raul said. ‘I just wasn’t ready to hear it at the time.’ And then he looked Bastiano right in the eyes. ‘I apologise. When I found out she had taken your ring…’
Bastiano was about to correct him, to say that she hadn’t taken it, he had given it to her, but that had been a trick of his mind. A trick Maria had played well.
‘If you love me you would want me to have nice things.’
It hadn’t been love.
Maria had told him that it was, and with nothing with which to compare it, he’d believed her.
‘My mother had many lovers. I don’t even know if Gino was my father,’ Raul admitted. ‘He married her just because she was pregnant…’
‘He did the right thin
g at least.’
‘No.’ Raul shook his head. ‘He resented the hell out of us. No one should marry because…’ He halted, perhaps unsure of Bastiano’s circumstances.
‘I love Sophie.’
He knew he should have told her first, but he had only just realised it himself.
Love did make you smile.
Because on the morning of his wedding, as he reshuffled the truths of his past, just the thought of her was a comfort. It was Sophie he missed, Bastiano knew, not the walls of home.
‘I’m sorry,’ Raul apologised again. ‘I wasn’t insinuating that you didn’t love. I was just saying how things sometimes—’
‘No,’ Bastiano broke in. ‘You’re right. I haven’t told Sophie.’ He looked over to the Old Convent and thought of her preparing for her wedding and not knowing how he felt. ‘In fact,’ he told Raul, ‘I told her that I never could love her.’
‘Then you need to call her now.’
‘Merda!’ Bastiano said as he tossed his phone, and they might have been teenagers again, for Bastiano had his foot in Raul’s hands and was trying to get a leg up to scale a wall, but there was glass and wire at the top—his security was good enough to keep out even the hungriest press. He had to get to Sophie.
‘You need to get changed,’ Raul said, when Bastiano had no choice but to give in. ‘You get married soon.’
To a bride who didn’t know he loved her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BASTARD!
Sophie sat in the back of the bridal car with her father and watched as the priest signalled for them to go around.
He was late for his own wedding!!
Perhaps that was why he had been calling, Sophie thought, trying to fight the tears that were threatening.
To call things off.
She took a deep breath as the car slowly drove up the hill and she wasn’t sure if it was the tightening in her stomach that made her gasp or the sight of a very dishevelled groom running towards the church with, Sophie was sure, his nemesis beside him.
The priest was now all smiles since the groom had arrived. But as she stepped out another pain hit.
Thankfully both her father and the priest thought it was nerves and that she was merely composing herself when she reached the church door and stood silent for a moment.
The church was full, that was all she saw.
And she was in labour.
If Bastiano could be late for his own wedding Sophie was quite sure he would be only too willing to call the whole thing off if he knew.
And she wanted to be married now, before the baby arrived.
Which meant she just had to grin and bear it!
The pains weren’t too bad, and they were ages apart; first babies took a long time, the doctor had told her.
So she walked down the aisle, and blinked as a very famous actress gave her an encouraging smile, and a rap artist too.
What was going on?
And there was Gabi and Alim, and her heart was on fire as she walked towards the man she loved and always would.
* * *
She let in the sun, Bastiano thought as she walked towards him.
Here, in this church, where there had been so much darkness and pain, it was awash with colours and smiles.
It was way too late for white, so her dress was cream, with pale mint-green edging, just like the tiny roses she wore in her hair.
She had chosen her dress and flowers as if all this time he had loved her and wooed her.
And so badly he did love her.
And when he said his vows they were heartfelt and right, and Bastiano knew he could never have made it with a trophy wife, for it would have been over with by now.
‘I will love you all the days of my life,’ he told her, and he stared deep into her eyes, but Sophie’s were slightly narrowed with suspicion.
‘I really do love you,’ he whispered, as he slid the ring on her finger.
Please, don’t lie, Sophie thought, for his words sounded heartfelt and she couldn’t bear the illusion, not on her wedding day. Her words were the same, though she paused midway as a pain hit and he gripped her fingers tight.
Bastiano knew.
He had seen her standing at the entrance and had read the pain behind her smile. His instinct had been to call off the wedding, but he knew how important it was to her.
‘Perhaps,’ he said in a low voice to the priest, ‘we can do the shorter form…’
It was indeed a quick service and the bells rang out in Casta as the bride and groom emerged.
The past was gone, Bastiano knew.
Almost.
He looked over to the cemetery where his mother lay and he wanted them out of the valley now and into the waiting helicopter.
There would be no cake for the bride and groom.
‘Look!’ Gabi was holding up a ring. ‘Look what I found in the gravel!’
Was it a sign?
His mother’s blessing?
Sophie certainly seemed to think so for she slipped the ring on her finger, and though he smiled and shook hands with the guests, Bastiano felt as if he had been drenched in ice.
‘We’ll go to the chopper,’ he told her, but Sophie shook her head.
‘I don’t think there’s time.’
‘Sophie…’ Fear clutched at his heart and all he could see was that damn ring on her finger, not the wedding band or the engagement ring he had given her but the one that meant death.
‘Why don’t you go to the infirmary and let them check her?’ Gabi suggested. She was used to drama at weddings and keeping things under control. ‘If they say there is time to transfer then you can go from there.’
‘Good luck,’ Raul said, and shook his hand. ‘You deserve it.’
A car drove them through the valley and the short distance to the infirmary but Sophie had plenty of questions on the way.
‘You were late.’
‘I was trying to get to you.’
‘How come Raul was your best man?’
Oh, how she wanted to know, but there was so much pain she gripped his hand tight and knew the world was going to have to wait.
The scent of the hospital made him feel ill.
They walked through the maternity unit and past the nursery where babies cried and to a very small delivery suite where it seemed a cast of thousands was gathered.
Well, actually, there were four, Bastiano counted, but he was not about to say what he had to with this audience present.
‘Could I speak to my wife alone, please?’
‘I’m having our baby here,’ Sophie shouted, because she was so pleased to see her salt and pepper doctor and his kind smile. ‘I don’t want to go to Rome!’
‘Signor…’ A midwife who introduced herself as Stella asked if she could have a word outside.
She was elderly and kind as she told him there was no question that Sophie be transferred.
‘She is soon to have the baby,’ Stella said. ‘Your wife is ready to push. You need to stay calm for Sophie.’
‘I am calm,’ he told her.
Bastiano was.
No one knew him.
No one really could.
For he had never allowed anyone to get close. It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation to want to draw Sophie close now.
Bastiano had accepted back in the car that their baby would soon be here and he was not about to add to the drama.
The midwife seemed to think otherwise.
‘Bastiano,’ Stella said, ‘I was here when you were born and so I understand why you are worried for Sophie, but there isn’t time to transfer her now…’
‘There is time for me to speak with my wife alone, though?’
/> ‘For a moment, yes.’
‘A moment is all I need.’
Sophie watched as he walked in and the doctors and nurses were called out and then Bastiano closed the door.
‘I love you,’ he told her.
‘Bastiano…’ she begged. ‘Please, don’t do this. You loved Maria.’
‘No, she told me that I did and I had nothing to compare it to, and so I believed her. You were right, I was seventeen, and I had no idea what love was.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Like I never have before or ever could another.’
He would never say such a thing to please someone else, Sophie knew that.
And so she knew it was the truth that she heard.
It was love, and she could feel its fierce embrace, a grip stronger than the pain that engulfed her.
Stella’s encouragement was needed, for despite Sophie’s slender frame it would seem that she grew big babies.
Bastiano’s support was needed too, so he looked not at an emerald and seed pearl ring on her finger but deep into her eyes and told Sophie, when she was sure that she couldn’t, that, yes, she could, and that with one more push their baby would be here.
‘Make that two,’ Bastiano said.
Yes, she grew big babies.
With broad shoulders and a long frame.
And Bastiano watched as his son unfurled and was delivered onto Sophie’s stomach, his lusty cries filling the room.
‘His father was the same.’ Stella laughed as their baby refused to settle. ‘I used to stay at the end of my shift to give him a cuddle.’ She smiled as she helped Sophie to feed her baby and then there was calm.
He was such a beautiful baby, with long lashes and straight black hair, and finally the shock of his early entrance to the world turned to peaceful slumber in his mother’s arms.
The hell of the last few months was gone.
‘Complimenti, Signora Conti,’ a domestic said as she brought in a very welcome meal.
‘I can’t get used to my name.’ Sophie laughed as Bastiano held the baby and she ate brioche and drank warm milk laced with nutmeg.
‘There are two names you have to get used to,’ Bastiano said, gazing at his son. ‘Have you decided on his yet?’
