“I realize it gets confusing here in Europe,” Fleurette said dryly. “But it is not necessary to marry a man simply because he got you pregnant. I know Italy looks medieval, but it’s still the modern world here too, no matter the age of the buildings. No one cares anymore if a child is born out of wedlock.”
“You don’t care,” Julienne corrected her quietly. “But that is not to say that others share your views.”
Fleurette rolled her eyes. “Do I need to remind you that neither one of us was born on the right side of the blanket? We don’t even have the same father.”
“You don’t know that. It’s as likely that we have the same father as that we don’t.”
“This is the difference between us, Julienne,” Fleurette said softly. Sadly. “You want so badly to believe there might be goodness in the world that you’ll sacrifice yourself on the off chance you might find it. I know better. A sacrifice is a sacrifice. All it means is that you lose something.”
And if Julienne could have, she would have bundled up her sister in cotton wool and made the world so good she would have no choice but to accept it—but that didn’t work. She’d tried. And yes, it had worked out much better than planned, but Fleurette never forgot what could have happened that night in Monte Carlo. What would have happened if Julienne had approached a different man.
Sometimes Julienne thought it haunted her sister more than it haunted her.
“I want better for my son,” Julienne said now. “I want to give him absolutely everything, and I don’t need you to try to make me feel badly about that.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel badly,” Fleurette said, her voice tight. “I came, didn’t I? I’m wearing a pastel dress that makes me feel dead inside. I’m perfectly appropriate and ready to applaud. But I’m also your sister.”
“Fleurette. Please.”
“And you once sacrificed yourself for me, so I think you can do me the courtesy of listening to me. I’m not asking you to hide in an alley and save yourself.”
Julienne met her sister’s gaze in the mirror. And it was there between them, the way it always was. That same dark night. What she’d been prepared to do. What Fleurette would have had to live with. The ghost of what could have been.
She found she couldn’t speak, so she nodded. Jerkily.
“I don’t think you’re doing any of this for the right reasons,” Fleurette said. Julienne said nothing, but rubbed her belly ostentatiously. Her sister rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m aware that you’re pregnant. But I think you want to wrap all of this up in a pretty little bow. You saved yourself for this man. You ranted on and on about bookends, and then you went out of your way to make it happen. I don’t want to speculate how you ended up pregnant.”
“The usual way, I assure you.”
Another eye roll. “My point is, we got a raw deal. We never had a chance. If you’d walked up to any other man in that bar, neither one of us would be standing here right now. We both know where we’d be, if not the precise street address.”
“Do you think I don’t think about that every day?”
“I know you do.” Fleurette’s voice and gaze were intense. “And I understand why you want this to be neat. Tidy. If you marry the man who saved us all those years ago, does it wipe the slate clean? If you have his baby, and live with him, do you wash all the sin away?”
“Because it can’t possibly be true that I love him.”
But Julienne’s voice sounded tinny and hollow, and there was a great weight deep in her belly that felt too much like a stone.
“Maybe you love him and maybe you don’t,” Fleurette said, her undertone something like urgent. “Maybe you’ve confused love with a sense of obligation. But none of that matters.”
“It matters to me quite a lot, actually.”
“Julienne, you deserve someone who loves you,” Fleurette said, scowling at her. “You deserve to be loved, full stop. You deserve someone who loves every single thing about you, always. Someone who does not require acts of sacrifice in return for simply not being disgusting in a bar ten years ago. You’ve spent a life surviving and sacrificing—for me, for us, for your baby. But what about you? What would happen if you lived for you instead?”
“I’ve never felt more alive in my life,” Julienne threw at her. “Ever.”
And she expected her sister to fight back, but she didn’t. She only held Julienne’s gaze for a long, long time, then nodded.
“Then I’m thrilled to be here to celebrate you,” she said quietly.
But Julienne couldn’t get those words out of her head. What about you?
Fleurette did not disrupt the wedding, as promised. And Julienne couldn’t have said why there was a part of her that found that disappointing. Did she want the excuse?
You want an enemy, came that voice inside, again sounding too much like the too-wise Fleurette. You want to fight your way into this marriage, and better still, have something to fight against.
And she found her hands were damp as she walked along the colonnade, and out to meet her fate. Her husband. With no enemies and no fights.
It was a quiet, simple affair, out on the terrace where Cristiano had gone down to his knees and kissed her baby. His baby.
Our baby, she thought fiercely.
It was quiet, simple, and fast. The priest intoned their vows, they both responded appropriately, and then Julienne watched as if from a great distance as Cristiano slid a pair of rings onto her hand. He provided her with one to put on his hand in return.
And then it was done.
She was married to Cristiano Cassara. Just as she’d always dreamed.
There was a small, pleasant dinner. Then Fleurette took her leave, and the sisters stared at each other. Neither one mentioning how strange it was that Fleurette had flown across the planet to witness a decidedly unromantic wedding ceremony and wasn’t even staying the night.
“I love you,” Fleurette said fiercely, and hugged her, hard. “Always.”
“I love you too,” Julienne replied.
She waited until she heard the helicopter blades begin to whir. She watched it rise into the air to whisk Fleurette back to an airfield outside of Florence, where one of the Cassara jets waited for her.
Then she went back into the villa, a married woman, to find her husband waiting for her.
She should have been dancing for joy. Or at least simmering with it, somewhere inside. She wore a lovely white dress. She had his rings on her finger. And when she came into the salon where he waited, staring down at one of those tumblers of whiskey he never drank, he gazed at her with a look on his face that she could only describe as possessive.
This was what she’d wanted.
Wasn’t it?
“I’ve taken the liberty of moving your things into the master bedroom,” he told her in his calm, certain way. “And now, wife, I think it is time we consummate this marriage. Unless you would like to take this opportunity to further debate my grandparents’ marriage.”
She wanted to smile, but her mouth felt funny. “I would not.”
Cristiano’s smile was not funny at all. It was savage. Erotic.
He swept her into his arms, lifting her as if she weighed nothing at all though she was seven months pregnant. He carried her through the villa, then bore her into the master bedroom, where he lay her down on the bed as if she was fragile.
And wasn’t that a funny thing, because she certainly felt fragile.
His mouth was demanding on hers, and it didn’t matter what oddities she felt in her heart tonight, because her body was his.
Always, only, and ever his.
His hands moved over her, as if he was learning her anew. As if the fact she was now his wife made her a stranger he needed to reacquaint himself with. Inch by inch.
She wanted to burst into tears, or let out a terr
ible sob she wasn’t sure would ever end. Instead, she poured it into her own kisses. She took it out on his body, peeling off the gorgeously tailored suit he wore to find the glory of his flesh beneath.
And this time, he lifted her to straddle him and then watched her as she rode them both toward that bliss, his eyes a fierce claiming all their own.
She sobbed all right, passion and that odd stone inside her together making her too raw to do anything but let it out. Again and again and again.
And she loved him. And she was married to him now. And somehow, she had to come to terms with what all of that meant.
Because it wasn’t what she thought it would mean, back when she’d fantasized about things like this. About him.
He poured himself into her, and then they lay there together. They both fought to catch their breath as the breeze came in through the windows smelling of jasmine, the deep green of growing things and the dark brown earth, and the faintest touch of rosemary.
She thought about bookends. She thought about that dark, grim life she and Fleurette had escaped in the hills of France. She thought about that awful bus ride down into Monte Carlo with the last of their euros, the stolen dress and the longest walk of her life into that hotel bar.
“You deserve to be loved,” Fleurette had said.
And maybe, just maybe, Julienne also deserved to ask for more. Instead of simply accepting what came her way and thinking that was the height of what life had to offer. She understood his grandmother, that was the thing. She understood the decision to live as she liked, to be alive, even if it meant living all alone in exile and scaring children while she did it. Just because most women didn’t make that choice didn’t mean she couldn’t feel the temptation of it, like another bit of jasmine in the air, blooming just for her.
“Cristiano,” she said, as much to the dark ceiling above her as to the man who lay beside her. The man who had married her in haste, despite the fact everyone knew how that went, traditionally. But would he be the one doing the repenting? Or would she? “Husband.”
“Wife,” he said, as if in agreement.
She shifted to look at him, propping herself up on her elbow and wishing her belly didn’t make her feel quite so ungainly.
“Why do you look so serious?” he asked. “Everything is settled now. You and me. Our son. If you truly wish it, I will introduce you to my grandmother, though I will have to insist you maintain a reasonable distance. You never know if she’ll throw things.”
“I love you,” she said, and she could hear the foreboding in her own voice. The worry. But she said it, and that startled, thunderstruck look on his face didn’t make her take it back. “I love you, Cristiano. I always have. I loved you when I was a teenager you happened to save, and I loved you as a businesswoman who sought your good opinion in the office. I loved you when I came to you in that hotel six months ago, and I loved you even before you recognized our son. I have loved you a thousand ways already, and I imagine I will love you in a thousand more before we’re done.”
And she wasn’t surprised when all he did was stare at her, his expression arrested. Frozen, almost.
Hurt, yes. But not surprised.
“You deserve someone who loves you,” Fleurette had said so fiercely.
“There’s no need to talk of love,” he said, sounding as if he was being strangled.
“Of course there’s a need,” she said, and it was hard to keep her voice soft. To keep her gaze on his, when he looked very nearly horrified and her heart ached the way it did. “Love is the entire point, Cristiano.”
“No,” Cristiano said in a low voice. And this time, when he broke her heart, it was a devastation. “Cara. Julienne. Don’t do this. Surely you, of all people, must know that love is a lie.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FINALLY EVERYTHING WAS going according to plan.
Cristiano might not have originally planned to marry and have children, but now that one was done and the other imminent, he found he rather liked the surprising peace of domesticity. It was far better than being haunted. And the new plan made sense.
He gave up his sleek, modern penthouse and moved back into the house he’d once given to Julienne and her sister. It was a home, not a bachelor’s residence, and he liked the idea of his son playing in the garden, or tearing up and down the stairs. Especially once he bought the attached house next door and began making plans to create one, far better home for his family.
His family.
He liked that word, even if he only admitted that to himself privately.
But then, he liked having Julienne there, in his house. With him. He particularly liked her in his bed.
Even if she did have a terrible habit of speaking about love. Of all things.
He could not have picked words to describe the things he felt and if he did, he would have chosen other ones. That terrible, wrecking tenderness that swamped him when he touched her, or when he thought of the baby she carried. The weakness he felt in him at the sight of her.
“Of course your father loves you,” his mother had told him when he was still small, but old enough to know better. “He loves both of us. He struggles to show it, that’s all.”
What was love but a tiny word that served as a gateway to despair?
Their wedding night, she’d stared at him with those eyes of hers he liked to think of as the precise shade of Cassara’s finest toffee. Though that night, there had been a shine to them that had trickled into his gut, kicked around in there and made him...edgy.
“Imagine if your father had loved your mother,” she’d said. “And if your grandfather had loved your grandmother. Who would you be now, do you think?”
“I respect you,” he had growled in return, shifting closer to her so he could put his hands on her body. And once again, speak to her in terms they both understood completely. “I want you. I will raise our son the way my grandfather raised me.”
“To be happy?” she had asked in her quiet way. “No matter who it hurts?”
“To be good,” he had retorted, feeling unaccountably challenged.
But he had handled it the way he dealt with all things involving Julienne.
With his mouth, his hands. With the near inexpressible pleasure of burying himself deep inside of her.
And as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.
He moved them back to Milan, installing her in his house. His bed. Right where he wanted her—with the added bonus of it being her. Julienne Boucher, the most formidable of all his vice presidents. Cristiano rather liked that he could come home from work and actually discuss it with her, because her opinion was always learned, careful and most of the time, right.
The research that Massimo had provided him, on pregnancy, parenthood and everything else he knew he would have to contend with, and soon, suggested that a woman’s preferences might change once she became a mother. Then again, they might not. He was happy enough to let Julienne do as she pleased, but he couldn’t help hoping that what would please her most would be—after an appropriate amount of leave—to join him at the Cassara Corporation again.
“Because it is not nepotism if we’re already married?” she asked one night, as she sat in the bedroom that was now theirs. She was rubbing lotion into her enormous belly in an attempt to control her stretch marks, a job that Cristiano sometimes took upon himself, because there was no part of her he didn’t find beautiful. Marks and all.
Tonight, he only watched. His wife and the son he would meet soon enough. Sometimes the sight of her so close to giving birth made his heart careen about dangerously in his chest.
Appropriate anxiety, he assured himself. It was what anyone would feel.
“Nothing inappropriate happened between us while you were my subordinate,” he said, with a shrug. “And I would be a fool indeed not to take advantage of the fact that one of the grea
test minds that has ever worked for the company has returned to me.”
“To you, Cristiano,” she said, in that mild way she always used these days. That cool, calm voice while something too dark for comfort gleamed in her gaze. “I came back to Italy to tell you that you are to be a father. Not to concern myself with bolstering your corporate profile.”
He didn’t like her tone. But he only gazed back at her. “I fail to see why it cannot be both.”
She stopped rubbing the lotion into her skin, and put the top back on the jar of the thick salve she was using. He couldn’t help but think that her movements were jerky.
“Surely the benefits of marrying a man of your wealth and consequence is that I need not concern myself with work.” And though there was no hint of temper on her face, he felt it in the air between them, anyway. “If I, for example, wish to do nothing at all but welcome our son into the world by loving him fiercely, wholeheartedly and with singular focus, that should be fine, shouldn’t it?”
“I wasn’t aware that you had to choose between the two,” he replied. “That is the true benefit of marrying me. You don’t have to choose a thing. You can have it all, whatever you like.”
“Not quite whatever I like.” And her eyes were on him in a way that made him...distinctly uncomfortable. “You don’t believe in love. Why pretend you can offer me things you can’t, Cristiano?”
She launched herself from the bed, one hand going to support the small of her back as she moved, and then she swept out of the bedroom. Leaving him there.
To think about her obsession with love.
And that was not the first inkling he’d had that all was not quite as rosy for his new wife as he’d imagined. But it was most direct.
Julienne never denied him. At night, their passion only seemed to grow, wilder and hotter, even as they moved into her final stage of pregnancy. And she always cried out his name in that same perfect song.
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