And yes, there was that, too. Sharing a bed. Seeing her naked in the tub. Touching her in the privacy of their room, with lamplight casting golden shadows over her cool, smooth skin. Losing himself in her soft, warm folds, under cover of night.
The mere thought was enough to leave him hard and aching.
A sound penetrated the night; a thin, pitiful wail drifting down from one of the bedrooms behind him. Leaving his glass on the stone balustrade, he raced inside to investigate.
He was halfway up the stairs when he heard it again, coming from Gina’s room, at the end of the upper hall. The door to his parents’ suite remained closed, a sign that his mother had managed to fall asleep, after all, but Caroline’s stood ajar. Following the thread of light spilling over the floor from the room next to hers, he found her bent over Gina’s bed, attempting to gather the child into her arms and soothe her.
“Hush, darling,” he heard her murmur. “It was a bad dream, that’s all. You’re safe now.”
But Gina was inconsolable. “I want my mommy,” she sobbed.
“Mommy’s gone to heaven, but you have me, precious,” Caroline crooned. “You’ll always have me. I’ll never leave you, I promise.”
For a moment, he thought Gina was going to accept her. Just briefly, she rested her tearstained face against her aunt’s shoulder. Then she saw him standing on the threshold, and she pulled away, stretching out her arms to him, instead.
“Go away!” she cried to Caroline. “I don’t want you, I want my Zio Paolo.”
Caroline recoiled as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. Without a word, she rose from the edge of the bed to make room for him, and started toward the door.
“Don’t leave, Caroline,” he begged, catching her by the arm as she passed. “Let’s do this together.”
But, “You heard her,” she said. “She wants you, not me.”
“She wants her mother, cara mia, and her father, too. I’m her third choice only.”
“And I’m nothing,” she muttered brokenly, tearing free from his hold, and ran blindly from the room.
He let her go because there was misery enough in the atmosphere at that moment, and Gina needed comfort. But once the child had settled down again, he stopped outside Caroline’s room and knocked.
She didn’t answer, but she’d left it too late to pretend she was asleep. He’d already noticed the seam of light showing under her door, and heard her crying softly.
“You might as well answer, Caroline, because I’m coming in, anyway,” he said.
After a second of heavy silence punctuated only by an occasional sniffle, she spoke, her voice still muffled with tears. “What for? To rub my nose in the fact that my niece would rather deal with the devil himself, than with me?”
“Let me in, and we’ll talk about that,” he replied, not about to engage in any sort of discussion with a closed door between them.
She cracked it open an inch. “What’s the matter?” she inquired bitterly as, taking advantage of the moment, he lost no time stepping quickly into the room and closing the door securely behind him. “Afraid you might be seen fraternizing with the enemy?”
“Yes. The last thing either of us needs just now is for one of my parents to show up. My mother has enough to deal with, and my father would jump to the wrong conclusions. He has rather old-fashioned ideas, one of them being that unmarried female guests do not entertain men in their rooms, at least not when they’re staying under his roof.”
“That must have cramped your style over the years. No wonder you were so fond of the cabana on the beach.”
If he hadn’t known he’d only make matters worse, he’d have laughed at the picture she made. She stood there defiant as a child, hurling insults at him in an effort to stave off another onslaught of tears. She held a wad of sodden tissues balled in her hand, her eyes were all puffy and pink, and her dainty little toes peeped out from beneath the hem of a white embroidered nightgown she’d surely inherited from some oversize Victorian ancestor.
“Caroline,” he said mildly, careful not to betray so much as a smile, “I am not your enemy, nor do I consider you to be mine. This evening, I asked you to marry me, and I’m not here to tell you I’ve changed my mind. Rather, I hope that you now see the wisdom of accepting my proposal.”
“Actually I don’t,” she hiccuped, her words interspersed with a volley of ragged sobs. “Gina hates me, and so does Clemente. They’ll hate you, too, if you make me their stepmother.”
“But I cannot take care of them alone, cara. I need your help, and whether or not you believe it, so do they.”
“They need their mommy,” she insisted, an observation he’d have thought was plain enough for anyone to see, but which, for some reason, brought about an even more violent outburst of tears from her. Turning away from him, she retreated to the bed, collapsed in a heap on the rumpled covers, and buried her face in her hands.
He made a fatal mistake, then. Moved beyond words, he went to her. Lowered himself next to her on the mattress. And unwisely chose to cradle her in his arms.
Her tears splashed warm and salty against his neck, leaving his shirt collar damp. Her hair teased his senses with the fragrance of sweet-smelling shampoo. Her slender frame shook uncontrollably against his chest. And he was lost, all his honorable intentions to give her space and time to consider his marriage proposal, reduced to smoldering dust.
She was a woman in need of a man. And he was not a man to turn away from a woman in need—especially not when her name was Caroline Leighton.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE could have tolerated anything else Paolo threw at her—mockery, scorn, disgust—used it to bolster her battered spirit, and thrown it back at him in kind. But his humanity completed the crushing despair Gina had begun with her rejection.
To Caroline’s acute embarrassment, she found herself sobbing with the abandonment of a child. Past the point of caring how he might view such weakness, she collapsed in his arms and let go.
The floodgates opened. The tears flowed without end, accompanied by convulsive, almost primitive gasps of animal pain. Throughout, he said not a word. Instead he anchored her to him, and waited patiently for the storm to pass.
Just as well. Her senses were numbed to anything but the terrible morass of misery threatening to engulf her. Without his solid strength, she’d have descended too far into hell ever to find her way out again.
At last, though, the spate of tears slowed to a dribble, with only an occasional hiccup to fill the silence. Weak as a newborn lamb, she sagged against him.
His shirt was soaked, but he didn’t seem to mind. Beneath the soggy fabric, his heartbeat, tireless and invincible, marked the passing seconds, its driving energy hers to use for however long she might need it. In a world gone increasingly crazy, he alone offered the haven she craved.
Eventually he said, “Feeling better, Caroline?”
Sounding like a woman with a serious adenoidal condition, she sniffled, “I suppose. It’s just so hard to accept that Gina wouldn’t turn to me for comfort. I understand it, up here.” She rapped her knuckles against her aching head. “I’m practically a stranger to her, after all. But my heart can’t seem to get the message.”
He stroked her hair; long, sweeping caresses of the kind a man might employ to soothe a frightened mare. “You do know you overreacted to her just now, don’t you? That this is about more than just the children?”
“Yes,” she admitted, perilously close to being swept under by another tidal wave of self-pity. “Every time I think I’ve accepted Vanessa’s death, it jumps up and bites me in the face all over again, and the least little thing sets me off. I’m an emotional wreck.”
“You’re allowed to be. We all are. Just because we’ve paid our last respects to those we love, doesn’t mean we’re over losing them.”
“But it’s not good for the children to see adults unable to cope. It frightens them.”
“Exactly. They need a return to stability.”
His hand stilled briefly, and when he spoke again, his voice was laden with a huskiness she couldn’t quite decipher. “They need us in harmony, cara mia.”
She was beginning to think she needed him, far more than she’d ever have guessed. For reasons that defied logic, the man who’d once torn her life to pieces seemed to be the only one who could make her feel whole again. “Do you really believe we can make a go of marriage, Paolo?”
“Yes,” he answered, without a second’s hesitation. “I absolutely do.”
Trying to maintain a thread of common sense, she argued, “But apart from our both being committed to the children, what else do we have in common?”
He drew his hand down her face and cupped her cheek in his long, elegant fingers. “How about the fact that I find myself wanting more and more to stand between you and anyone who tries to hurt you, my lovely lady? That when I see you cry, I want to take your sadness and turn it to laugher? And if those are not reasons enough to convince you, then what if I tell you that, despite everything that has gone before, I trust you and want very much for you to know that you can trust me.”
“Trust takes time, Paolo,” she countered. “Like respect, it’s something that has to be earned.” And as long as I keep the secret of the twins’ paternity from you, I deserve neither your trust nor your respect….
“Some things a man has to take on faith, Caroline,” he said, his dark, beautiful eyes scouring her face.
Her heart pinched in guilty pain. “And you believe it’s worth it, to give up your single life for a woman you barely know?” she asked, struggling to turn a deaf ear on her conscience. She had to be sure, before she told him, she reasoned. Spilling out the truth prematurely could hurt their chances of making the marriage work for reasons other than convenience.
He’d suggested a trial period of one year, but she was still looking for a happy ending to last a lifetime. Crazy though she might be, she’d fallen in love with him nine years ago, and realized she loved him still. All that foolish business to do with her legal rights to the children—what had that been about, really, but a desperate attempt to defend herself against his hurting her again?
She had come prepared for a battle that had never taken place, she realized, and that she’d entertained, even for a minute, the idea of using the children as a weapon, left her sick with self-disgust.
His mouth curled in a faint smile. “If you’re asking me, will I be faithful, I give you my word it will be so. The reason I’ve not taken a wife sooner is that I was not willing to make a promise before God that I knew I couldn’t keep.”
Although it hurt to say the words, the question begged to be asked. “Yet you are now, with a woman you’ve admitted you don’t love?”
“Yes,” he said, with a candor that dealt a savage blow to her romantic fantasies. “Much has changed recently. Tragedy has struck and turned us all, particularly you and me, in a new direction. Suddenly we have children to consider. They must be our first priority. That much we owe them.”
“And what of the rest?” Common sense told her not to press the point, but she couldn’t help herself. “By themselves, children aren’t enough to hold a marriage together, and I ought to know. Despite having two young daughters and a wife who needed him, my father walked out on my mother and left her to bring up Vanessa and me on her own.”
“Then your father amounted to less than a man. To sire two children, then abandon both them and their mother is despicable.”
He took stock of her again. “Listen to me, Caroline, and believe me when I tell you, I will not desert you.”
“Then why bother to include the option to dissolve the marriage after one year?”
“Because I hoped it would make you feel less coerced. I am not so blinded by duty that I expect you to remain in a union you find intolerable. But let me make this much clear: if our marriage doesn’t last, it will be because you decide to end it.” His voice dropped suggestively. “And I intend to make it very difficult for you to arrive at such a choice.”
If the way his arm tightened around her shoulders hadn’t warned her of his next move, the sexy, smoky note in his threat did. Starting with her forehead, he skimmed his mouth from her eyes to her jaw in a string of kisses that ended at her lips.
Such a mouth should be against the law, she thought, all the reasons she should call a halt to his behavior evaporating. If, in the course of their marriage, he never did more than simply kiss her, she could die a happy woman.
But he was bent on more erotic pleasure. With a low murmur of approval, he eased her down on the bed—not that he had to expend much energy to do that; already, she was limp with pleasure. Then, with the unhurried expertise of a man who’d had much practice, he unfastened the row of small pearl buttons running down the front of her nightgown, and parted the fabric to lay bare her breasts.
Still not satisfied, he continued dispensing with the garment. It yielded to his efforts, sliding down her torso in a soft sigh of surrender until it puddled around her waist. Another tug, and he had it past her hips and down her legs until not an inch of her was spared his inspection.
She had carried his two children practically full-term, and although her body had weathered the experience far better than most, the signs were there, if he cared to look for them. Plagued by a belated attack of nervous modesty, she tried to curl away from his gaze. But to no avail. Shaking his head in reproof, he manacled her wrists in the tender steel of one hand and imprisoned them above her head.
Helpless as a butterfly pinned to a collector’s mat, she gave up the struggle and submitted to his absorbed scrutiny. His breath sifted over her, warm and light as a summer breeze.
“Magnifica…incredibile…!” he whispered, his sultry gaze scorching her flesh. “Venero, la mia bella!”
She’d studied enough Italian to know what his murmured words meant, but even if she’d been unfamiliar with the language, she’d have guessed that he liked what he saw. Only when his emotions ran high, be it from anger or, as now, from passion, did he lapse into his mother tongue with her.
What seduced her completely, though, was not that he eventually stopped looking and put his mouth everywhere on her, but that he did so with the reverence of a connoisseur examining a rare, exquisite work of art. Touches so fleeting they caressed her like a benediction.
Had he shown her the same tenderness the first time he’d seduced her, she’d probably have thought the melting delight he induced now was reward enough for giving him her virginity. But he’d taught her too well. She knew this was but a preface to much more explosive pleasure, and so did her body. The faint humming along her nerve endings, growing in volume until they buzzed, was evidence enough of that.
“Paolo…!” she sighed, squirming to free her hands from his grip. “Let me touch you….”
“Patience, my lovely,” he breathed in Italian, settling his mouth again at her throat. “We have all night to enjoy one another.”
“Not if your father finds you here.”
She wished she hadn’t reminded him. Abandoning her without a second’s hesitation, he rose from the bed and strode to the door. “Indeed not. He would awaken the entire household with his outrage.”
Regret leached away all the lovely anticipation building in her blood, and left her aching with disappointment. No point trying to delude herself that she’d feel differently in the morning and be glad she’d called a halt to things. She wanted him with a deep and vital yearning that had its roots in something far more enduring than the temporary release of good sex. She wanted to belong to him in every way that counted: physically, emotionally, spiritually.
She’d grown up without a father, or uncles or brothers. Of course, she had a son, as well as a daughter, but even for them, she had Paolo to thank. At the end of the day, he was the only man ever to have left an indelible impression on her soul.
At last accepting that it was something that neither time nor circumstance would ever change, she tossed aside the last of h
er pride and begged, “Paolo, please don’t go!”
“I must,” he said roughly, and before she could repeat her plea, the door had closed behind him.
Desolated, she gathered a fistful of sheet, and crushed it against her mouth to silence the wave of anguish threatening to erupt. To have come so close to heaven, and then, with a few ill-chosen words, to lose it all, was beyond cruel. It was inhumane, torture of the worst kind, and she wanted to howl at the unfairness of a world which would allow such suffering.
Then, miraculously, the door opened again, and Paolo was there again. Stunned, delighted, grateful, she said, “I thought you’d left and weren’t coming back.”
“Not coming back?” Locking her door, he tossed the key on the nearby dresser, and began to remove his clothes. “Caroline, my angel, I couldn’t stay away, even if I wanted to.”
By the time he reached the bed again, he was as naked as she was. And, like her, he’d changed over the years. The younger playboy son of the almighty Salvatore Rainero had matured into a man of impressive stature, and she was mesmerized by the magnificence of him.
He’d always been classically tall, dark and handsome, but at twenty-four there’d been a hint of softness in his build, an indication of too much fast living, coupled with a distinct lack of self-discipline. He’d worn too much jewelry. A heavy gold chain hung around his neck. Diamonds rimmed the dial of his gold watch. Another diamond graced the signet ring on his little finger. Smitten though she’d been at the time, she’d found such a conspicuous display of wealth somewhat tasteless.
Now, he wore only a slim gold watch which he discarded along with his clothes, and a simple chain that glimmered softly against his deep olive skin. His chest had deepened, his shoulders broadened with muscle more cleanly defined than before. His limbs were strong, his flanks lean, his belly flat and hard. And his masculinity…?
The Italian s Convenient Wife Page 8
