He kissed her gently. A brief brush of his mouth over hers. "That's never going to happen, amore mio."
She loved the feel of his lips. Soft but firm. Demanding and commanding. Warm and then hot. She could kiss him forever.
"Stop or we'll be right back in bed."
She couldn't help but laugh softly. "Is that a bad thing?"
He shook his head. "Never, but I was a little rough last night. And the night before and all the nights before that. I think your body needs a little time. Besides, I want to spend time with you outside of bed, and you need to eat. You skipped breakfast." That was an accusation.
She shrugged. "I work at a deli. I can always eat there."
"I'm changing. Since we're staying in, I'll go for comfortable. And don't think I didn't notice that you said you can always eat there, not that you do."
She laughed and wandered into the kitchen. She liked to cook and she could just as easily fix eggs as call down an order to the hotel kitchen. She had two omelets nearly made when he entered the room in a pair of soft blue jeans and a T-shirt that stretched tightly over his chest. She drew in her breath, allowing her gaze to drift possessively.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking in the awesome sight that is mine." She pushed the omelets onto a plate and carried them to the small, much more intimate table than the one in his dining room. She'd already set it with utensils and napkins.
They ate breakfast together and she found herself enjoying every moment with him. It was easy being with Stefano. Out of the public eye, he was different. He lost his aloof, arrogant demeanor and appeared softer and relaxed. He smiled often and laughed occasionally. He always made her feel as if she was his entire focus. They played chess--he won three games. He worked with her in his training room, teaching her to break out of a choke hold and get away when a very strong man grabbed her wrist. They practiced for an hour, and then he made love to her right there on the floor.
They spent time just talking and then listening to music, dancing together in the living room. His siblings came over and they trained with her watching, shocked at the violence and speed as well as how good they all were. She found their martial arts training to be fascinating and beautiful to watch. She liked that Emmanuelle kept up with her brothers.
They ate together before his family left, and that was fun. Emmanuelle and Ricco helped her make pasta and salad. It was fun and easy, much more so than Francesca ever thought it would be. There was a lot of laughter and teasing, mostly between the siblings, but they weren't shy about including her.
After his family left, Stefano made love to her twice more, both times very gently, once on the floor by the fireplace and the second time on the couch in the living room. In the end, she found herself draped over him, skirt and blouse back on, but her panties and bra nowhere to be found.
She started to move, to look for her underwear, but Stefano pulled her down on top of him, so that she sprawled on his chest and he rolled slightly, tucking them both against the back of the long, wide couch. He caught up the remote and turned on the television. She wasn't much of a television watcher, but she decided that didn't matter. Lying on top of Stefano, surrounded by his unique masculine scent and his incredible, very hard muscles, his fingers playing in her hair, she decided, was the best.
Francesca closed her eyes and let herself drift. Her ear was over his heart. He was warm and his hands in her hair felt soothing. She may have fallen asleep for a time, but she woke when she heard the newscaster's voice on the television set. No, it hadn't been the voice that woke her. Stefano's muscles had contracted, rippled beneath her in reaction, just for a moment, but she was so in tune with him she felt the difference, the alertness immediately.
"In local news, a group of schoolchildren out on a field trip stumbled across a gruesome scene. The body of thirty-four-year-old Scott Bowen washed up onshore. His neck was broken. According to the chief medical examiner, Dr. Aaron Pines, Bowen could have broken his neck when falling into the river." The voice droned on but Francesca was focused on the photograph flashed on the screen. She recognized him immediately. He was the man who had put a knife to her throat. She would have known him anywhere.
"Stefano?" Her hand crept defensively to her throat. She didn't know what she was asking. The two muggers had disappeared, he'd said so, and the last she'd seen of them, Emilio and Enzo were putting them into a car. They'd done the same with Bowen. Now he was dead, his neck broken. She couldn't help herself; she shifted her body weight, intending to slide off of Stefano.
His arms tightened. "Don't. Don't be afraid of me, Francesca. Not ever."
"Did you kill him? Did Emilio or Enzo?"
"No." He was silent a moment, stroking soothing caresses down her spine. "Let me tell you a little about Bowen and his friends before you go shedding any tears for him. They've robbed countless people and each robbery has become more violent than the last. They've put several people in the hospital, people who cooperated with them. It was only a matter of time before they killed someone. No one has been able to stop them, not the police, not even us, and we talked to them. They just kept getting worse."
"So you knew about them before they tried to rob me." She lifted her head to look into his eyes. There was no guilt. No remorse. No expression of any kind. Just cool honesty.
"Yes. But, Francesca, sooner or later, we would have had to deal with them. Someone needed to stop them. They put their hands on you. They put a knife to your throat. That made it sooner."
Her heart skipped a beat and then began to pound wildly. She turned his declaration over in her mind. He had done something to Bowen. To Bowen's friends.
"Bottom line, dolce cuore, that's who I am. When the cops can't do something to protect citizens, it's my turn. You have to decide if you can live with who I am. The real me." His arm was an iron band around her waist, but his hand was gentle as he continued to stroke caresses along her spine.
She heard the note in his voice. Uncertain. He wouldn't change for her. He couldn't. And he was asking her to accept him. Every part of him. She closed her eyes and pressed deeper into his chest. On some level she'd known all along, but still the admission caught her off guard. Could she live with that? With a man who took the law into his own hands? He was always loving with his family, with her, with his neighbors. Over-the-top protective. A little scary. Arrogant. He wanted a home, a wife and children, and she knew absolutely she'd be the center of his universe. She didn't doubt that for a minute.
"You asked me to help a seventeen-year-old girl last night. You knew what that would mean. You knew what you were asking me to do."
She started to protest, but then remained silent. She did. She knew. She'd been a victim of a man, the same man who had murdered her sister. She had no doubt that Barry Anthon would have murdered her if Cella hadn't dropped her cell phone in the mail before she'd returned home. She wanted justice for Cella and the cops would never give that to her. Only a man like Stefano Ferraro.
She took a deep breath and turned her head to press a kiss into his throat, closing her eyes. She'd already committed to him. In her heart, in her soul. Almost from the first moment she'd met him, she'd been mesmerized by him. Once she got to see him, once he'd let her into his world, she'd fallen hard and fast. She'd just known.
There was that first moment she'd been aware of their shadows touching. It sounded crazy but, from the time she'd been a child, if her shadow touched someone else's shadow, she "felt" them. With Stefano that knowledge had been deep and instantaneous. The chemistry had been off the charts. Most of all, she'd known he was a good man in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. She'd fallen and there was no going back.
"I'm in love with you, Stefano," she said softly, "so I live with whatever it is you have to do."
That declaration earned her his body again. This time he started out slow and ended up fast and rough. It was perfection.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next two weeks passed in a flurr
y of activity. Francesca felt as if she'd been swept into a wild wind. Somehow, Stefano had gotten it into his head that her acceptance of him meant they were getting married immediately. To him, "immediately" meant as soon as the paperwork was done. She had no idea how it all happened, only that each day she went to work, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon and sometimes even the morning, Pietro would get a call and she'd find herself in the car with Emilio, Enzo and their sister, Enrica, going to some crazy fitting or consultation.
Emmanuelle and her cousins, along with Eloisa, seemed to be planning the event of the century, something Francesca wasn't at all comfortable with. She tried to talk to Stefano, but he shook his head and just kissed her senseless. Finally, realizing she wasn't going to be able to keep her job and not have poor Pietro calling in substitutes every morning, she gave in to the inevitable, giving her notice, telling herself Stefano hadn't really won that round, even though she knew he had.
In the evening, after a particularly grueling day looking at flowers and talking about colors and ice sculptures, she was grateful to just work in their kitchen, preparing the shrimp pasta Stefano requested. She hadn't seen him for most of the day. He'd been at work and when he came in, he looked tired and unsettled--something she was beginning to recognize when he didn't like a particular report on something. He sat down at the table, taking the chair close to hers, something he always did because his knee could touch her thigh and she was in easy reach.
"You do realize that we're being snowballed into a church wedding and they're planning to have it in another couple of weeks," she began. "Your sister and Eloisa have gotten this thing together so fast my head is spinning."
"Leave it, dolce cuore--there's no way in hell to stop them. Just let them do their thing. We'll show up, get married, party and everyone will be happy. They don't mind doing the work--in fact they want to do it, so if we don't care, let them."
She hadn't thought of it like that. Still. "I thought we'd just go to the courthouse or something."
He kissed her knuckles and then picked up his fork to eat the shrimp pasta. "Not a chance. Not in our family. Why are you nervous, Francesca? I'll be waiting for you at the end of the aisle."
She ducked her head, unable to meet his eyes, torn between smiling at his arrogance, and crying because he had no way of understanding. He had an enormous family. There would be no one sitting on her side of the church. "I'll be walking up the aisle by myself and will probably fall on my face, especially if Emmanuelle has her way and I have to walk in four-inch heels."
His head came up alertly. His gaze slid over her face like the stroke of fingers. Loving. Gentle. Tender even. "Long dress, bambina, that means you can wear any fucking thing you want on your feet. Or go barefoot. As for walking you down the aisle, Emilio asked for that privilege. You don't want him, any of my cousins will be happy to oblige. Enzo and Emilio arm-wrestled or something and the winner asked me. If you prefer Pietro or someone else, just say so."
The idea that Emilio and Enzo had arm-wrestled for the duty of walking her down the aisle made her suddenly want to weep. She had grown very fond of them both. To cover up the emotion threatening to choke her, she changed to the subject that worried her the most.
"What happened at work? There are shadows in your eyes, Stefano." She willed him to answer. She'd already accepted what he did to protect others and she didn't want him to shut her out.
Stefano sighed and reached back to rub at his neck. "The girl I told you about a couple of weeks ago."
"The teenager?" Francesca put her fork down and picked up her napkin, suddenly afraid. Please, please don't let him say she was dead.
He nodded. "Her name is Nicoletta Gomez. The investigations were completed and it's far worse than I originally thought. I'm going to have to leave tomorrow, Francesca. If I wait too much longer, she might not survive the next attack."
"Then go. Of course you have to go." She stood up and moved behind his chair, sinking her fingers into his tight neck muscles in an effort to ease the tension out of him. "I want you to go."
"Dio, bella, that feels good. But you should know . . ." He trailed off when the elevator door pinged in warning.
Ricco and Taviano entered a couple of moments later. Ricco sniffed the air and went straight to the kitchen, dished himself and Taviano a large bowl of pasta and dragged chairs closer to the table. "Dig in before the others come. We might have a chance at seconds." He grinned at her. "Hey, Francesca, looking good for a bridezilla. I figured your head would be spinning around at this point."
She continued kneading the tight muscles of Stefano's neck and shoulders. "I feel like a bridezilla. I really understand the concept of eloping, but Stefano doesn't get it."
"I always thought the woman wanted the big white wedding and the man was all for eloping," Taviano said, shoveling a heaping forkful of pasta into his mouth.
The elevator pinged again, and this time it was Giovanni, Emmanuelle and Vittorio. Francesca had come to realize that where one sibling was, more were close by. She was glad she'd made a healthy amount of pasta, although there weren't going to be any leftovers for lunch the next day.
Once they were all seated around the table and eating, pouring glasses of wine, she looked closely at their faces. "So what's wrong?"
Giovanni raised an eyebrow. "Why would you think something was wrong? Other than Emmanuelle's really bad taste in lunch dates."
"I didn't have lunch with him and certainly didn't go on a date," Emmanuelle snapped, glaring at her brother. "I ran into him and it was polite to speak, that's all. Stop with the teasing. He annoys the crap out of me."
Francesca knew instantly they were talking about Valentino Saldi. The brothers disliked him on principle, and Emmanuelle disliked him because he was always sarcastic with her. She really hated being called princess and Valentino apparently did it at every opportunity. Emmanuelle sounded annoyed, but a faint blush stole up her cheeks and when her eyes met Francesca's there was pleading there.
"Stop teasing Emme. It isn't distracting me. I know you all didn't show up here for the pasta, so something else is up," Francesca said. "Just tell me."
There was a small silence. Her fingers curled into Stefano's shoulders, holding on for the inevitable blow, because just by the silence, she knew it was coming.
"Barry Anthon is in town and he's on his way here," Ricco announced, his voice calm and matter-of-fact.
Francesca's heart stuttered. Instantly her stomach churned. She pressed one hand to her stomach and the other to her mouth, afraid she'd be sick right there with Stefano's family all sitting around the table, pretending they weren't watching her closely. For a moment her vision actually began to fade and her legs went weak.
Ricco was up instantly, nearly knocking over his chair, his fingers strong on the back of her neck, pushing her head down. "Just breathe. Don't panic on us. Don't give the bastard that."
Stefano's chair scraped and he crouched down beside her, holding her long hair out of her eyes while he examined her pale face. "He can't hurt you, bambina, not ever again. Whatever he says, and he'll be very, very careful, knowing you're my fiancee. He knows I'm not the kind of man to allow him to make implications or innuendos about my woman. He'll be on his best behavior. So will we. We're going to be all smiles and politeness."
She forced air through her lungs, ashamed of her weakness. Stefano's brothers and sister had dropped what they were doing to support her. "I'm all right now. I'm sorry. I just . . . He's . . ." She sighed as she straightened slowly.
Ricco and Stefano both kept a hand on her as she stood. Of all the brothers, Ricco was the one she felt kept himself locked away, his eyes permanently shadowed, as if something terrible had happened to him, but he refused to share, to lighten his burden. He was very much like Stefano in that he was scary, maybe even more so. A dark, dangerous man seeking an adrenaline rush all the time. He was the most unpredictable and yet, he was careful of her. Gentle even. All of the Ferraros were so nice to h
er.
"He murdered her. All those stab wounds. The blood. I see it nearly every time I close my eyes. He would hurt any one of you just because he thinks he can. He's made himself untouchable. I don't know if I can sit across from his smiling face and not pick up a knife and stab him just as many times." She made the confession in a rush, needing them to understand she wasn't afraid of Barry so much as for all of them--or of what she might do.
"But you won't," Stefano said. "Because you believe me when I tell you we're handling this. Barry Anthon will pay the price for murdering your sister and destroying the life you had."
"I can give you Cella's phone," she offered. "I don't know why I didn't before."
Taviano laughed. "Little sister, that's rich. You don't need to give it to us. We've already seen it."
"That's impossible. It's in a safety deposit box under Joanna's name. You'd need the key."
"She keeps it in her top left-hand drawer," Vittorio said. "I made a copy when I had my little chat with her, and then Salvatore went to the bank and retrieved it. Don't worry. It's back in the box. He returned it once they made a recording. We needed the evidence for the investigation."
Francesca didn't know whether to be annoyed or impressed. "What investigation?"
"We always make certain of all facts, little sister," Ricco said, sitting back down to eat more of the pasta. "We don't make mistakes."
"Thorough," Giovanni added. "It can take a while, but we know we're right before we make a move."
Francesca threaded her fingers through Stefano's. "That's why you waited on the girl, isn't it? You had to make certain."
Stefano nodded. "Our solutions tend to be permanent. We can't afford mistakes."
She liked that. The fact that they took their time to make absolutely sure, even if they wanted to move on something--as Stefano clearly did with Nicoletta Gomez--made her certain she was right to trust Stefano.
"I was about to tell you that I have to go out of town tomorrow. Giovanni and Taviano will go with me. It will appear that only the two of them will board the plane and I've stayed here with you. Emmanuelle, Ricco and Vittorio will be with you at all times. Barry Anthon won't get close to you, but if you need me here, Francesca, now that you know Anthon is close, I'll delay the trip."
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