She couldn’t help but smile as she made it to the dining room. But to her surprise, the table was not set. The housekeeper stood there instead, and nodded diffidently when she entered.
“Mr. Cassara requests the pleasure of your company on the west terrace,” the housekeeper said.
Julienne wanted to argue. She wanted to demand that Cristiano come to her, and that they continue this tradition that she’d put into place when he’d left her here. Because maybe she wanted to play at being the lady of the manor—the lady of this manor, anyway.
His lady, something in her whispered.
She made herself smile at the waiting housekeeper, which was better than crying at her own foolishness. “We wouldn’t want to keep Mr. Cassara waiting.”
And she followed the housekeeper around to the west side of the villa, through one pretty, airy salon after the next. Eventually they walked out onto a stone terrace surrounded by wrought iron, also festooned with flowers and greenery. The terrace sat up above a slope of vineyard that rolled down into the valley below. It was not quite dark, and the light was magical, making the red rooftops of the villa’s outbuildings and guest cottages gleam, while the marching pairs of cypress trees along the estate’s winding lanes seemed to head straight for the setting sun.
She told herself the light was the reason Cristiano looked the way he did then, standing at the rail with all that soft gold licking over his strong, gloriously perfect body.
The body she knew better now, having refreshed her recollection of him last night.
And it amazed her that she could still blush after the things they’d done, but she did. Hard and hot. She hoped he would mistake it for another trick of the light.
He turned at her approach. And though his face was cast in shadow, then, she could still feel the impact of his intense gaze.
And everything felt fraught, suddenly. As if that intensity that emanated from him was part of the silky Tuscan golden light between them. And it was all around her, too, pressing in tight. Until she wasn’t sure which one of them might burst.
She didn’t know what to do. And the baby was kicking, her face was aflame and she could feel the way he looked at her, all that hunger and hope. Not that she imagined he’d admit that last part. She flexed her hand again, then she walked to him because she couldn’t think of a single other thing to do.
And her heart stuttered as she drew close, because he reached out his hand and took hers.
Of his own volition this time.
And then, stunning her, he pulled her close.
“I thought we would eat here,” Cristiano said, sounding formal and stuffy and delicious. And the way he gazed down at her, she was not entirely certain what sort of meal he meant. “To take advantage of the view.”
Her head was tipped back so she could look him full in the face, though she had no memory of doing that of her own volition. “I like the view,” she said softly.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she felt everything inside her shudder to life. Then bloom, in a riot of sensation and need.
But he did not kiss her.
“Thank you,” Cristiano said instead, his voice like gravel. “I cannot describe to you what it was like to see the baby.” That look in his gaze, as stricken as it had been earlier, sharpened. “My son.”
And Julienne could blame her hormones all she liked, because it hardly mattered when the end result was the same. Her eyes welled up, then spilled over.
“Our baby,” she whispered. “Our son.”
And for a moment, there was nothing but the deep red and thick gold of the setting sun, his hands on hers, and the new life they’d made between them as they stood, not quite kissing.
Finally, she thought, a dangerous hope careening around inside of her.
Because she’d imagined this moment, but she’d never thought it would happen. Never.
And as if he knew they were discussing him, the baby kicked. Hard.
Julienne took Cristiano’s hands in hers, then slid them down onto her belly. She pressed them in, smiling up at him as she waited. Then smiled even wider when the baby kicked.
“He’s saying hello,” she whispered. “To his father.”
Cristiano jolted. Julienne could feel the electric charge go through him. And then his face changed. She saw a flash of wonder. His dark eyes lit up, and in that instant, he was...unguarded. Disarmed.
The baby kept kicking, and Cristiano’s hands molded to her belly. She could feel all their heat and strength. She could feel the baby kicking. And she had the indescribable joy of watching a smile creep its way across Cristiano Cassara’s austere face.
She could feel how wet her cheeks were, and it didn’t occur to her to wipe them dry. Julienne could have stood where they were forever, and she wanted to—lost in this moment that felt as old as the hills and fields around them. A man and a woman and their coming child. She felt ancient. Connected to the earth, the seasons, every woman who’d come before her and all the women who would follow.
Julienne had understood that she’d gotten pregnant, of course. And she’d understood how. She had been overwhelmed by what that meant, for both of them. And apprehensive about his reaction.
But it was not until now, with only the soft, golden sunset in Tuscany as their witness, that she truly understood what it meant that she and Cristiano had made a new life together.
She felt her heart break open inside her chest, but it wasn’t a heartbreak in the classic sense. It was more love, not less. It made more of her heart to go around, suddenly. All the shattered pieces fused back together, better than before.
More, not less.
“We did this,” she whispered now. “You and me.”
“This feels like a miracle, Julienne,” he replied, his voice a mere thread of sound.
And then he broke her heart into pieces all over again, then stitched them back together in the same breath, as he sank down to his knees before her.
Julienne couldn’t believe that any of this was happening. That she was here, with him, and that look on his face. That Cristiano was looking at her—or her belly, anyway—with so much tenderness. So much obvious, astonished delight. He spread his hands out to cover as much of her bump as he could, and then he leaned forward and placed a kiss there where his thumbs nearly met.
She couldn’t stop crying, and she had never been quite so far from sad in all her life.
He looked up at her, this beautiful man, his eyes so bright they blocked out all that Tuscan gold. Like another miracle, right here on this terrace.
“We will marry,” he said, a gruff command. “We must marry.”
“I will marry you,” she replied. “Of course, I’ll marry you.”
But it wasn’t until she’d said it that she realized he hadn’t exactly asked.
“He will be one of the good ones,” Cristiano said fiercely. “I will see to it personally.”
“He will be absolutely perfect,” she agreed, because this was their son. And there were no curses, no poisoned blood. And the life inside her would turn into a boy who would never know the vile things others might predict about him. She would be his mother, and unlike her own, Julienne would make sure of it.
Cristiano stood then, this man she had loved for as long as she’d known him. First as a teenage girl with a crush, then as a hopeless employee he never once saw as a woman. And now, she knew all too well what it was like to have his mouth between her legs, his hands on her breasts, and best of all, the hardest part of him deep inside her, again and again.
And she loved him more.
Julienne wished that she could go back in time and tell that terrified sixteen-year-old how it would all turn out. That Cristiano would save her from the Boucher women’s fate. That she would love him. That they would make a son together.
And then he would become her husband,
and a father, and if there was a happier version of ever after, Julienne knew that neither she nor the teenage version of herself could possibly imagine it.
He led her over to the table she hadn’t even seen, so lost was she in him. In this. He sat her down so she could look out at the vineyard, and the hills that rolled into forever, as the sun finally inched its way below the horizon.
This is everything you ever wanted, she kept telling herself, waiting for it to feel believable. Or real.
Beside her, Cristiano kept touching her belly, and even began speaking sternly to her bump, man to man.
She was so full to bursting, that it wasn’t until later, when they’d eaten their dinner, and were sitting, enjoying the mild evening, that she realized one crucial thing was missing.
Cristiano had talked of parenting, and of marrying. He’d told her his plans of how it would be between them, and Julienne had agreed, but he had never once mentioned the most important thing of all.
Love.
CHAPTER TEN
“WE WILL MARRY at once,” Cristiano announced the following morning, watching Julienne as she settled herself across from him, wearing nothing but the sheet they’d kicked off the bed early. His wife, he thought, with a stamp of possessive fire. The mother of the son he nearly hadn’t gone to see—and had, in the end, because of that tenderness that only she brought out in him. It only made him more determined to move quickly now—before the realities of life as a Cassara set in, as he knew they would. They always did. And before that tender thing he could not put into words curdled and died like everything else he touched. “I will have a special license and priest here by nightfall.”
“How romantic,” she said dryly, and there was a flicker of something he couldn’t say he liked in her toffee-colored eyes.
He studied her a moment, telling himself he was imagining things. This was the woman who had cried, she was so happy. And then cried for entirely different reasons in his bed all night.
“These are practicalities, Julienne,” he said, aware that there were landmines here, though he couldn’t understand why. “The sooner they are dealt with, the less we need speak of them.”
“And, naturally, our only purpose here is to be practical.” She shifted the sheet she’d wrapped around her, hiking it higher over her breasts. Cristiano wondered if she knew how very much she looked like a Roman goddess, toga and all. “While also having sex.”
“Is that a complaint?”
She was looking out at the scenery, the rolling hills and the thicket of rosebushes. “I wouldn’t dream of lodging a complaint. Besides, you don’t care for my methods. Too scandalous.”
“I thought we were in agreement,” he said, mildly enough.
She looked different this morning, though he couldn’t have said why. It wasn’t the sheet or the fact she was sitting here on his private terrace, though that was certainly new and different. She had her hair up again, but in haphazard sort of pile instead of the sleek chignon that he recalled from the office. Maybe that was it. Maybe she no longer bothered with sleekness, which made him wonder why any woman did. When the other side of it was this—all soft woman, rosy cheeks and clear toffee eyes.
“I said I would marry you, yes,” she said, and he realized after a beat that she was mimicking his own excessively mild tone. Exactly. “But there’s no rush, surely. The world will not be ending at nightfall.”
“I see no reason to wait.”
“I cannot marry without my sister present.” She shook her head at him, but at least that meant she was looking at him instead of out into the distance. “And don’t you have a grandmother? Right here in Tuscany?”
Cristiano did not frown. Because he ordered himself not to frown. “Technically. But my grandmother would have no interest in attending my wedding. I’m not sure she would bother to attend my funeral, and of the two, it would likely bring her far greater joy.”
Julienne laughed, but when he didn’t join in—and, in fact, only stared at her implacably—she sobered. “You can’t be serious.”
“I know you have decided she is a sympathetic figure, Julienne, but my grandmother is an unpleasant woman. She takes pride in it. When I was a child, I was convinced that every fairy tale involving a witch and the forest was about her.”
Julienne’s gaze cooled, and too late, he remembered what she’d told him about the way the women in her family had been treated in France. And the way she had already come to his grandmother’s defense. “You will forgive me, but can you really trust any stories you heard about her? Your grandfather was hardly an objective source.”
Cristiano felt he should have received commendations for remaining calm in the face of such provocation. Medals, at the very least. But none appeared forthcoming, so he pinched his nose and wished for strength. “You are basing this on the letters you read, is that it?”
“The letters, yes, and the long-term marital affair that was celebrated in each and every one of those letters.” Julienne’s brows rose. “As the person you decided should marry you tonight, you should perhaps take note. I don’t like cheaters or liars. And if my husband treated me the way your grandfather treated your grandmother, I would not waft off into the nearest forest and make myself into a fairy tale. I would burn him down.”
He felt his gaze narrow. “Noted. But has it occurred to you that my grandfather was not the villain of this tale?”
“I understand why you want to believe that.” Her throat worked, but it took her a moment to speak. “Then again, this is how men tell stories about women they can’t control, isn’t it? Whores. Witches.”
“Wives?” he supplied, sardonically. Then regretted it when she turned that dark glare on him. He sighed. “Life is not black-and-white, especially when it comes to marriages. People are not all one thing or another.”
“But in the case of your grandparents, one of them carried on an affair that went on for decades. The other lives by herself in a cottage, cut off from the world. One was considered a great man and celebrated internationally when he died. The other is loathed even by her own grandson.” She shrugged. “It feels black-and-white, doesn’t it?”
Cristiano studied the flush on her cheeks, realizing belatedly that it was temper. “Do you have grandparents too?” he asked. “Is that what this is about? Or is this something more prosaic than a sudden, deep concern for a woman you’ve never met...like second thoughts about a wedding, for example?”
Not that he would entertain her second thoughts.
“They say my grandmother died of shame,” Julienne said, with a certain starkness that tore at him. “Not long after I was born. My grandfather had died when my mother was still young, which everyone agreed was a great blessing. Because he never had to know what became of her.”
“And what of your father? Your father’s family?”
“The man I think was my father also died, but no one is quite certain where he came from. Or if he left any family behind him. I’ve heard theories that his accent was Parisian by way of Marseille. But then again, some argued that he was very clearly not French at all. Who can say? All I know is, he overdosed when I was twelve, and I have never known how to feel about it, because I hardly knew him.”
“I know my grandmother very little,” Cristiano said, because every story she told him about her past was worse than the one before. And wasn’t that the point of this? They would make something new. They would make it all better. “But it is enough.”
“Is she a heroin addict?” Julienne asked, dryly. “I had heard many parts of the Cassara family legend, but not that.”
Cristiano wanted to snap back at her, the way he would at an underling, but she no longer worked for him. Failing that, he wanted to get his hands on her and use the language they were both far more fluent in.
“I do not understand this intriguing take on a woman you’ve never met,” he said, fighting to k
eep his voice calm. And not sure that he succeeded when her eyes flashed. “Surely you can allow for the possibility that I might be the expert on her motivations here? Since of the two of us, I’m the only one who knows her.”
“Maybe your grandmother loved your grandfather to a distraction,” Julienne said softly, and her pretty face was unreadable. “So much so that it drove her crazy when he met someone else. Have you ever stopped to think about that?”
“There will be a special license and a priest here by nightfall,” Cristiano told her evenly. “Unless you have some further objection? Preferably not one that is based on your imaginary version of my grandmother?”
And when Julienne looked away, she did not look back for a very long time.
“I cannot marry without my sister here,” she said again. “I won’t.”
“Then, cara, I would suggest you stop arguing about my grandparents’ marriage and get her on a plane,” Cristiano said silkily. “Because the wedding will happen. Tonight.”
* * *
Fleurette arrived that evening, grumpier than usual, but with the same giant chip on her tattooed shoulder.
Julienne was so glad to see her, it hurt.
“You know you don’t actually have to marry him, right?” Fleurette asked as she sat in Julienne’s bedchamber in the guest suite with her, watching balefully as Julienne smoothed out the bodice of the dress that had appeared on her bed, as if by magic.
Not magic, she knew. Cristiano.
Cristiano, who could go to the trouble to pick out a beautiful dress for her to wear to what would no doubt be a beautiful wedding, but couldn’t love her. Didn’t love her.
Does he love anything? the voice inside her asked, sounding entirely too much like her sister. Can he?
“Why wouldn’t I marry him?” Julienne asked, catching Fleurette’s gaze in the mirror’s reflection. And choosing to keep her thoughts on love to herself. “He’s the father of my child. And as you’ve pointed out to me repeatedly over the past ten years, I have been hopeless about him from the start.”
The Italian's Pregnant Cinderella (Passion In Paradise Book 8) Page 11
