A Shocking Proposal In Sicily (HQR Presents)

by Rachael Thomas

  He’d thought he’d got it all sorted. Thought he was doing the right thing—for Kaliana—the woman he loved. He’d thought he was setting her free. She still loved Alif and he couldn’t compete with a man who wasn’t able to stand there and face him. Not that he’d been able to compete with Enzo, but this was different. This was real. His love for Kaliana was real and he couldn’t compete with the memory of Alif. For her love. He had to let her go. Set her free to make her own choices. If what they’d shared since that first night in London meant something to her, there was a chance she might choose him.

  He’d intended to stand back and wait, allow her time to adjust to her freedom from the need to marry anyone. But now? Everything had changed. All he’d sorted with Enzo and Emma, with his father and Kaliana’s father, had all been in vain.

  Kaliana was having his child. A child he didn’t even know if he could be a good father to. His doubts crept in like a dark shadow. He’d done it all wrong, let Kaliana down.

  ‘Rafe?’ Kaliana questioned, dragging him brutally from his thoughts, pain and fear in her voice. Damn it, he wouldn’t let her down. He wouldn’t.

  ‘Pregnant?’ It was all he could say. He couldn’t move to her, couldn’t take her in his arms and tell her it would all be okay even though he wanted to. Because he didn’t know if he could make this okay. He wanted to tell her he loved her, wanted her to tell him the same.

  She was carrying his child. He had to marry her now. He couldn’t live with himself if he turned his back on her—on his baby. After a fleeting glimpse of freedom, they were now back where they’d started.

  ‘There was that one night,’ she said in a whisper. ‘We woke and made love...’ She left the rest of the explanation unsaid and memories of that night rushed back at him, of how it had felt to make her his without anything between them. For that short time, he’d been certain there hadn’t been any emotional barriers and neither had there been any physical ones.

  ‘Without any protection.’ He inhaled deeply. Damn it. This was his fault. He should have protected her, protected them both. Whatever the mood of the moment, he should have protected her. Once again, he’d failed.

  She closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’ Her pained whisper slashed at his heart.

  He walked towards her, wanting to reach for her, wanting to hold her, to inhale the scent of her hair as he pressed a kiss onto her head, but her rigid regal stance warned him off. ‘This changes things.’

  She sighed, a look of resignation sweeping into her eyes, taking the sparkle from them. The sparkle he loved so much. ‘I thought it might.’

  He searched her face, desperate for a hint of something more than resignation. But nothing. Cool, regal indifference shone back at him from her eyes. He knew, just as she did, that as Princess of Ardu Safra she couldn’t be an unmarried mother.

  ‘You can’t expect me to turn my back on my child and I’m certain that your father will not tolerate you raising his heir alone. Unmarried. There is only one thing we can do and that is to marry as arranged.’

  She looked up at him slowly, as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying. ‘What about the deal with my father?’

  Was that all she could think of? Pain slashed at him like a whip to his flesh. If she had any feelings for him, if she had even the smallest bit of love for him, wouldn’t she say it? ‘I will honour my deal with your father, just as I will honour my duty to you—and my baby.’

  His annoyance at himself, at falling in love—again—with a woman who didn’t love him back drove him on, made his words sharp and brittle.

  ‘No.’ She backed away from him. ‘No, Rafe. I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ The question snapped from him like a firecracker.

  ‘Both.’

  He looked at her, seeing the pain in her eyes, in the furrows of her forehead, in the single tear which had slipped from her eye to run down her pale cheek. His heart wrenched. His gut clenched.

  ‘Kaliana, the baby.’ He could scarcely breathe. He was losing Kaliana—losing the woman he loved—and he didn’t know how to stop it happening.

  ‘When I saw you with Emma...’ Kaliana looked down as if afraid to speak, then she looked back up, full of confidence, full of fire ‘... I knew we couldn’t marry. I knew I’d have to return to Ardu Safra and marry Nassif. The deal you’ve made with my father will save me from that and I appreciate it, but the baby makes no difference. I can’t marry you.’

  ‘You appreciate what I have done?’ What the hell was going on? Where was the woman who’d loved with passionate abandon in Rome? The woman who’d brought him slowly but surely from the darkness he’d been in since losing Emma? He’d been too stubborn to hold onto Kaliana at the party, to tell her then what he felt, and that stubbornness had given her the chance to walk away from him.

  She reached out, placing her hand on his arm. ‘Yes, Rafe. For that I am so grateful, but I can’t marry you. Now more than ever.’

  He drew in a sharp breath, turning from her, striding to the other window, looking out at a landscape that was so alien to him. As alien as the love which filled his heart—for a woman who didn’t want him. Didn’t love him.

  He clenched his jaw as her words replayed in his mind, finally able to form his own words. ‘Why not? You are carrying my baby! You are a princess. You can’t have a baby alone.’

  ‘I can have this baby alone and I will. I want to marry for love, Rafe.’ Her voice was like a strangled cry and he turned to face her, the distance between them small but insurmountable. ‘Not because of a deal. Or the baby. I want to marry for love.’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Yes. I want the man I marry to love me. I want to marry him for no other reason than he loves me.’

  ‘You don’t want to be loved, Kaliana. You’ve had your love. Isn’t that what you told me?’ Anger surged through Rafe. Anger for a man who’d made it impossible to reach the woman he loved. Or had that man been him? He had to put his heart on the line, tell her he’d fallen in love with her, deeper, harder than he’d ever loved any woman. But how could he when she was still in love with Alif?

  ‘We are good together. We had something special.’ Desperation and frustration fuelled his words like nothing he’d ever known. ‘You can’t walk away from that, just as I can’t walk away from the duty to my child.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  KALIANA COULDN’T UNDERSTAND what Rafe was saying. First, he’d told her she was free of their deal. That he’d made arrangements with her father, a deal which meant she didn’t have to marry anyone. The pain of realising he’d done that because he didn’t want to go through with their marriage slashed at her face like tiny grains of sand in a cruel desert wind.

  He’d made that deal because he didn’t want to marry her. Didn’t want to have children. Now that she’d told him she was carrying his child, he was telling her she couldn’t walk away. She dragged in a sharp breath of despair. How could he say she didn’t want love after everything they’d shared, all those passionate nights in Rome?

  Because, for him, each time they’d made love had been nothing more than lust and desire. He hadn’t felt love growing for her as she had for him.

  She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, inhaling deeply, nausea battling with confusion and heartbreak. ‘I do want love, Rafe. I want to be loved, but for me, because of who I am, not anything I can give a man.’

  She turned her back on him. This was pointless and she couldn’t bear the anger in his eyes. Her heart was breaking, and he’d done little to heal it since he’d arrived. If anything, he’d made it worse. It was duty which forced him to tell her she couldn’t walk away from him. Duty to his unborn baby. The child he didn’t want.

  ‘You’ve shut love out of your life, and I get that.’ She spoke more calmly now, but she couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to see the annoyance on his face.

  �
�But, unlike you, I’m beginning to realise I can’t shut it out. That I want to be loved. That I want to love.’ The admission was torn from her in a tortured whisper.

  She could feel him moving closer. Feel it with every nerve in her body, but she still couldn’t look at him. Silence lingered, tense and full of expectation. Her breathing was rapid and shallow as she waited for him to speak. Waited for him to tell her again that he couldn’t love anyone.

  ‘Then don’t walk away from me, Kaliana. Don’t shut me out.’ His voice had become a hoarse whisper, full of pleading. She frowned, unable to turn to him, unable to allow the small glimmer of hope to spark into something bigger. Something that would let her down. Break her heart. ‘Look at me, Kaliana. Look at me.’

  She took a deep breath, turning to face him. In just a few minutes his expression had changed. Gone from that of a man totally sure of himself to a man walking into territory he’d never explored. An expression of uncertainty.

  That glimmer of hope inside her flickered, rising a little higher.

  ‘You are the one who has only just arrived here, Rafe. You are the one who has been absent, without even a message, for the last five days.’ She couldn’t allow herself to hope. Couldn’t allow herself to read more into this. ‘What else am I supposed to think after our conversation, other than you don’t want our deal? Don’t want me.’

  ‘I couldn’t come to you.’

  ‘Or even send a message? Call me?’

  ‘That is what lovers would do.’ There was a trace of shame in his voice. ‘And we are not lovers.’

  Anger surged forward, making her thoughts irrational. ‘We were portraying lovers.’

  Rafe drew in a long deep breath. ‘I was setting the deal up with your father so that you didn’t have to marry me—or Nassif. I had nothing to tell you. But it seems you had plenty to tell me.’

  ‘It was only this morning I knew for certain about the baby,’ she defended herself hotly. How dare he turn this on her? ‘You could have told me what you were doing, Rafe. I could have spoken with my father.’

  ‘I wanted to present you with a done deal.’ He moved a little closer and her heart hammered in her chest. ‘I wanted to set you free.’

  The flicker of hope dimmed. ‘I could never marry Nassif,’ she whispered.

  He moved, the light from the sun streaming in behind him, leaving him in the shadow of the thick palace walls, reminding her of their last conversation in Villa Casella. ‘I know.’ His expression hardened slightly. Or was it the shadows? ‘Just as I know you can’t marry me, but we have made a baby together, Kaliana. A child. A child that changes everything. Even the deal you put to me in Palermo. The baby changes everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘The baby changes everything.’

  ‘So, what is the problem, cara mia?’ Why did he have to call her that? Why did he have to soften her now? When she was trying to be so strong. What would he do if she told him the truth? Told him she loved him.

  ‘I loved Alif,’ she said, suddenly needing to explain it all. Tell him everything which she’d kept hidden—even from herself. ‘I loved him so much.’

  He nodded. ‘I know. And you lost him and believe love will never be yours again, that you don’t deserve it.’ The impassioned words rushed from him and she frowned. He’d never been this emotional before. Practical. Strong and resilient. But never emotional. The barriers around his emotions had never lifted like this. She could see it in his eyes. Hear it in his voice. He was letting her in, so shouldn’t she allow him past her barriers?

  ‘I did believe that,’ she said softly, unable to help herself from walking to him, the need to be closer to him, to see if she could cross through that barrier around him too great. ‘Until a few weeks ago.’

  He looked into her eyes, the darkness of his filled with concern. Confusion. ‘What happened a few weeks ago?’

  He had no idea. No idea she’d fallen in love with him. That every caress, every kiss they’d shared in Rome had come from her heart. That every time they’d made love she’d fallen a little more in love with him. But then, she hadn’t even seen it herself. She’d tried valiantly to deny it.

  Could she tell him? She looked into his eyes, seeing them bare of that barrier. If she didn’t tell him now she would have to walk away and never look back. Never wonder What if?

  ‘I fell in love.’

  The air stilled around them, as if the soft wind of the desert had eased, waiting to see what would happen. The heat became even more oppressive as his eyes held hers, going deep into her soul. Her heart.

  ‘Fell in love?’ The deep and husky whisper reminded her of how his voice sounded after they made love. When he held her in his arms, making her feel as if she was the most precious thing in the world.

  ‘With you, Rafe,’ she whispered, holding that electrifying connection between them, not daring to let it break. If she did, she might never get this chance again. Never be able to slip beyond those barriers and barricades. ‘I fell in love with you.’

  * * *

  For the second time in as many minutes the floor dropped away from beneath Rafe’s feet. The world lurched and spun. Kaliana loved him? The woman he loved, the woman for whom he’d changed everything to enable her to have the freedom to live and love as she wanted, loved him? The woman who was carrying his child.

  But could he believe it? Could he allow himself to hope, when she’d just told him she was expecting his child? He hated himself for doubting her, but what if she was just saying it because of the baby?

  ‘Why did you walk away from me the night of our engagement party?’ The hurt from that night, the pain of believing that he didn’t deserve her love, rushed forward, making every word he spoke sound bitter.

  ‘I saw the way you looked at Emma.’ Kaliana’s voice was as brittle as ice, her eyes full of fear, pain. ‘I saw the way you touched her, Rafe, and I guess I made my own deductions.’

  Kaliana looked down, a blush rushing prettily over her face, and he smiled. He shouldn’t be happy with that explanation, with that reaction, but he was. It proved she felt something for him. Proved it was deep enough for her to be put out, even jealous, of the friendship he and Emma had carved out of the mess that was their brief love affair.

  ‘I loved Emma once,’ he said, his heart flooding with hope as she looked up at him, pain in her eyes, her expression. ‘But now only as a friend. A sister. I’m happy for her—and for Enzo. Happy they are making a go of their marriage, that they are adopting a child. Emma always wanted to be a mother. Enzo felt he’d failed Emma, so did everything he could to push her away. But their love was too strong.’

  It was a trait he shared, he acknowledged, looking at Kaliana, her expression changing as she processed all he’d told her. All he should have told her long ago.

  ‘And the child they adopt will be enough to save the Casella inheritance? Save the family name?’ She moved a little closer, as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she too was hanging onto a fragile thread of hope.

  He took her hands in his, keeping her close. ‘Yes, their child will become the next Casella to inherit the family fortune.’

  ‘So you really don’t need to marry me?’ Her voice wobbled, her eyes filled with unshed tears and his heart broke. The heart that loved her so much. ‘Or have a child?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Her shoulders dropped and her hands felt limp within his. ‘But I want to. I want to marry you.’

  She shook her head, the denial confusing him, knocking down the confidence to say those three words aloud. To tell her he loved her. ‘Just because I’m pregnant? I can’t, Rafe.’ She pulled her hands free of his, pain in her voice. He had to tell her, had to knock that final barrier down before he lost her for good.

  ‘Kaliana, stop,’ he said, gently holding her face between his hands, looking deep into her eyes.

  She closed her eye
s. Shut him out. Damn it, he wasn’t going to be beaten. She couldn’t keep him locked out like this—when he’d dismantled almost every barricade he’d ever erected. But there was one more remaining. The one which kept him from saying he loved her. The one he intended to obliterate right now.

  ‘Kaliana, look at me.’ He breathed her name in a whisper, waiting until she opened her eyes, needing her to see the love for her in his. ‘I love you, Kaliana. I want you to be my wife. I want you to be the mother of my children.’

  * * *

  Kaliana looked at Rafe, unable to think, to speak—or even breathe. He loved her? He’d spent the last five days ensuring she could be free of the need to marry anyone. Because he loved her.

  She placed her hands either side of his face, mirroring his need to hold her, make her look at him, see deep into his eyes. Beneath her fingers she felt the uncustomary hardness of his stubble. She smiled and took a deep breath, inhaling the evocative scent that was Rafe. The man she loved. The man who had just admitted to loving her.

  ‘You set me free? Because you love me?’ she whispered, moving so close she could almost press her lips to his. Almost kiss him. And she wanted to, so much.

  ‘Sì...’ He stumbled from Italian to English. ‘Yes, I love you, but I want you to be happy—even if that isn’t with me.’

  ‘The only way I can ever be happy is with you, Rafe.’ She looked into his eyes, saw the questions slip away, saw the sparks of happiness brushing them aside. Slowly she pressed her lips to his, closing her eyes as that contact sparked the usual fireworks in her body.

  When he kissed her back a tear sprang from beneath her eyelid, rushing down her cheek, wetting his. He moved back, looking intently at her.

  ‘You are crying.’

  ‘Tears of happiness,’ she said as another tear tumbled down her cheek. ‘I have everything I could ever want. A man who loves me, a man I love with all my heart, and his baby.’