She leaned back. “I’ll sleep like the dead.”
He smiled. Another actual emotion displayed. Progress? She could only hope.
He cupped her face with both hands and pulled her in close. She absorbed the warmth of his hard body, her curves pressed against his lean muscle, his scent intoxicating her. He leaned down, as she arched onto her toes, deciding to allow him only one kiss. Then she’d pull free.
He kissed her like she was made from spun sugar, and she’d crumble under the feathery pressure. He kissed her like a man in love, and she melted against him.
With a moan, she opened, needing him to taste her. Needing more. His tongue slid into her mouth, and she was lost. The world was spinning. Her temperature spiking. Her fingers threaded through the soft, dark hair at the base of his neck.
When he grew hard against her belly, her body responded with a hungry ache of its own. If she didn’t stop him soon she wouldn’t be able to.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t make this decision based on sexual chemistry alone. She wanted to do this the old-fashioned way. She had to pull back like they’d never tasted each other, like they’d never made love. She should get to know him better first. Only if she agreed to be his wife would she allow Joel access to her aching body.
She untangled her fingers from his hair. With every ounce of will-power she possessed, she yanked free.
Unfortunately, his potent magnetism called to her, and her body responded. She wanted to lean back and surrender and invite him in. Their love making was the most exquisite pleasure she’d ever experienced.
But if she invited him in, she’d be too influenced. His love making was a drug, if she allowed him into her bed, it was possible, she’d say, yes, to feed her addiction. That wouldn’t be smart.
And her child would be impacted if Ava made the wrong choice, one based on physical desire. Her rational brain needed to be the one to decide.
Joel watched her for a moment while they both struggled for air and recovered.
“There will be plenty of time for that tomorrow, on the beach,” he said.
He zeroed in on her lips, and her mouth dried. Her heart galloped, and her fingers itched to stroke over his strong, rippled body. “No. No, Joel. We won’t be making love until I make my decision.” She held up her hand in front of him, like a stop sign.
“Then I better convince you fast.” He grabbed her hand, swirled his tongue over her palm until her knees weakened before releasing her. “Sleep well, my Ava, and dream of me, the beach, and saying yes.”
The villa had everything, including stables with horses of all different breeds. Ava watched with fascination as. Joel greeted each horse by name. Even though Ava knew Joel hadn’t been to Sicily in over a year, the horses hadn’t forgotten their master. Not hard to believe.
She watched as he spoke to one stallion and stroked its neck, giving her proof that Joel took loving care of what belonged to him. If she married him, she would be no different. She and her child.
But it was easy to see, Joel loved the horse. While he’d promised he’d never love Ava.
What about the baby?
She chewed her lower lip as she considered her question. Yes, he’d love the baby. She knew that deep in her soul, and every baby deserved his father’s love, the way she’d deserved it as a kid and had been deprived. Could she deprive her own child of what she’d coveted most as a girl? A father’s love. Would that be fair?
Maybe if she could get Joel to confide in her. If she could learn his dark secrets, then she’d marry him. Because that would prove she wasn’t making the same horrible mistakes her mother had made. Then she’d know she was giving her child the best and that she could trust Joel to do what he’d said he would.
“Have you ridden before?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I think it would be best that we walk then, especially since you’re pregnant. I won’t do anything to risk the baby.”
After a thirty minute hike, they found the beach and unpacked the blanket and picnic lunch Joel’s staff had prepared for them.
The spot they picked was lovely. She couldn’t imagine working in New York if she had this paradise waiting for her. Joel was lucky. A private Caribbean island waiting for him and now this, a family villa in Italy, a short walk from a dazzling beach. The sand was baby powder under her feet. The water was a bright aqua and the sky, cloudless, sunny and inviting.
Even Joel acted more human out here. Everything seemed more welcoming as she dug into the picnic basket to find freshly baked bread, a variety of meats, cheeses, olives, and garden grown tomatoes. She drank grape juice while he was lucky enough to sip wine made from a local vineyard.
During lunch Joel entertained her with stories of his brothers and his poor picked-on youngest sister. His tales made her laugh and made him seem approachable. He gave her hope that maybe Joel was letting her in.
“I can’t imagine growing up here. Horses to ride, a beach to swim, hills to climb. Must have been heaven for a boy.”
“It was. I had an incredible childhood.” He leaned in and popped a tomato slice into her mouth. “But it wasn’t all play. I was the oldest, therefore, I was the one groomed to take over the business. My father had me working at an early age.”
“How early?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Six, maybe seven.”
“Working in the business at only six? Responsibilities that early?”
“I didn’t see them as a bad thing. I loved to learn, and my father loved to teach me. Being one of four kids, and having alone time with him was an incredible gift. He challenged me. God knows my tutors and teachers never could.”
She’d thought of Joel being forced to stop playing with his siblings to work. But he’d said he liked it. Maybe it had been a good thing. Joel had been given the gift she’d always wanted. He’d had his father’s undivided attention and his love.
Thinking about love made her wonder about his parent’s relationship. “Were your parents in love?”
He nodded. “Yes, Mom still loves my father. She will until the day she dies. My grandparents were the same way. My grandfather mourned my nonna’s death for ten years, until his heart gave out, and he joined her in death.”
She sighed at the perfection of true love and devotion beyond the grave. Too bad Joel didn’t pick that up from his father and grandfather.
Or had he? Had Joel fallen into that forever kind of love, and the accident took his one-and-only? Would Joel be in love with a ghost until the day he died? Ava’s throat tightened.
Joel must have sensed the gloomy direction her thoughts had taken because he sought to lighten her mood by taking her hand and squeezing her fingers. “Let’s walk on the beach.”
They wandered the coastline together for the next hour, the cool wet sand squishing between their toes, the hot sun sinking into their skin, the rush of the cresting water in their ears.
It was a perfect day. Gorgeous countryside, a picnic lunch on a pristine beach, Joel finally sharing some of his past with her. Now they were strolling on the sand, holding hands and she felt her skin tingle and her tummy buzz from their connection.
If she wasn’t careful, she’d say this felt like a real date. The kind of date that could lead to a future. But she had to remind herself this was Joel Stanfield, the man who isolated himself from others.
But he’d been letting her in. True it had been a slow process. But slow was better than nothing. Maybe this hope bursting in her chest wasn’t crazy. Maybe she could marry Joel.
A few minutes later they picked a spot of soft sand to sink into, and let the surf lap at their toes. This time Joel had released her hand, only to wrap his arm around her shoulder and snuggle her against his warm, rippled body. She laid her head between his shoulder and neck and drank in the sandalwood scent of him.
“Ava, I know after spending hour after hour with you as my assistant, I like you. After taking you to my bed I know we’re sexually compatible.
I promise to make a good life for you and our child. Marry me.”
She lifted her face from where it nestled, so she could read his expression. His eyes were dark and serious.
He lifted a blue Cartier box, and flipped it open to expose a gargantuan diamond of flawless color and quality. Simple yet stunning. The kind of ring any woman would covet.
And he was the kind of man any woman would desire, and oh, she wanted to fling her arms around his corded neck and say, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
But he hadn’t said, “I love you.” And he hadn’t shared his grim, secret past. Because he hadn’t, she had to assume he didn’t want to be as close as she needed in order to trust him.
And if he didn’t trust her with his past, he’d never trust her with his heart. Joel hadn’t changed his mind about falling in love with her—he still wouldn’t.
“I need more time to know you.” She should have said no, but she wanted the impossible and prayed more time would make it happen.
Joel frowned, shoved the ring into her hand, and let go of the box. She was forced to either hold it or let the priceless jewel fall to the sand to be swept out to sea. She held it with trembling fingers.
“We have been talking about me all day. You’ve said nothing about yourself, yet I’m willing to marry you. I can trust you. Why can’t you do the same?” he asked, his tone getting harder, huskier.
If she didn’t know better, she’d almost say her answer hurt him. But Joel didn’t allow anyone close enough to feel pain. That was their biggest hurdle. “What do you want to know? See, unlike you, I let people in. I don’t let past secrets block my future.”
“Okay. I know you have a brother and a match-making sister. But you’ve never talked about your mother or father. I assume you had a mother and father?”
“I did.”
“And you’re going to tell me nothing? You say I don’t let you in, yet I’ve spent the entire day letting you dig into my past, and all I get from you is ‘I did.”’ His tone was a challenge.
He was right, she hadn’t told him anything, because talking about her mother and father opened old wounds. But since she’d already told him she didn’t have secrets and she let people close to her, she felt compelled to tell him something.
Before she could speak he filled in the silence, “There are other ways to get to know to me.” His eyes glinted as he released her arm, and with one finger he lifted her chin. He held her gaze until the world, with its picture-postcard beach, faded.
Did his eyes have to be so dark and dreamy? After seconds ticked by, he moved his hungry gaze to her lips, and her breath caught. She knew what came next. If she didn’t reveal her past, he was going to kiss her and she was going to let him. If that happened, soon they’d be making love, here on the sand, in the middle of the day. And she’d say yes to his proposal because she’d be thinking with her needy body and not with her analytical, planning mind.
“Fine, you win. Ask away.” Her tone was huskier than intended, their sexual chemistry heating her skin.
“Were your parents in love?” he asked.
She swallowed. “No.”
“I see. Again with the elaborate answers.”
“Like I said, if you ask a question, I’ll answer.”
“Okay. When did you know you’re parents didn’t love each other?”
“There wasn’t a time I didn’t know. My father was never there for birthdays, holidays, or weekends. He slept at our house. That was all he did. Then he went back to his better, more important life...”
“What’s more important than family? Was he in love with his job?”
“No, my father wasn’t a workaholic. He just had trouble balancing his family or rather families. My father had two families to support, mine and his lover’s.”
“What?” He raised his brows. “You’re kidding?”
“I wish I was. I wish I’d had a father like you had, one who was always in my life and made me know I was special.”
He nodded. “You deserved that. Every child does.” His gaze drifted down to her flat, exposed stomach. She knew what his eyes were promising, that their child would have a father who cherished him.
“When did your mother leave your father?” he asked.
“Never. She was religious, not skilled in the workforce, and she had three children. She did what she thought was best—she gave us the fancy house, the ballet lessons, the good schools. She assumed that was what it meant to be a good parent. To her, sacrifice was more important than happiness or love.”
“But you don’t think that. You think she should have left him?”
“I think it would have been wonderful if she could have found her own legs to stand on. Then maybe she could have found a man who truly loved her and put her first.”
“Like your father never did.”
She nodded. “Like my father never did.”
“So your parents are still married?”
“My mother died of cancer four years ago, and my father died long before, on the day after my high school graduation. He had a heart attack in his lover’s bed.”
Joel scowled and squeezed Ava’s shoulder, pulling her into his heat and strength. “Must have been hard.”
“It got harder. After his funeral, we found out my father left his entire fortune to his lover and her two children. You see, he felt guilty he didn’t spent enough time with them, in life, so in death he evened the scales. In the end, my father gave his money to the people he really loved. The ones he would have preferred to put first, if he wasn’t doing the so-called right thing.”
Joel rubbed his chin with his free hand. “You’re telling me he left you, your mother, and siblings with nothing? No money, no assets?”
“Just the house, and that was heavily mortgaged. Apparently it takes a lot to support two wives and two sets of children.”
“Rotten bastard!” He added some colorful, Italian curses Ava couldn’t begin to interpret before saying, “You must have put yourself through college.”
“I did. It was hard, but I did it. I paid off my last student loan a year ago, thanks to the exorbitant salary my previous employer paid me. The man was overly generous.”
Joel smiled at her compliment. “The man never wanted to lose you.”
Something warm slid over Ava’s heart and squeezed. For a long moment he held her close, nuzzled against her head.
With a deep breath he said, “That explains why you haven’t jumped at my proposal, why you think love has to be part of marriage. That’s why you don’t trust me to care for you and our child. Because you had a bastard of a father who did everything wrong.”
She chewed her lower lip. “I want something better. We never knew about the other woman or the children he’d fathered, but we always knew something was wrong. We finally learned his terrible secret after the will was read. On that day everything changed. The man who I thought was my father was different. You see, I can’t marry a man with secrets. I have to be able to trust, and you’re not telling me everything. If I marry you, eventually you’ll have my heart. You could hurt me. I won’t be stupid like my mother.”
“I’m nothing like your father.”
“Then tell me your secret. What happened in that accident?”
Chapter Twelve
Joel watched the clouds drift over a darkening sky. He waited a few, tense heartbeats before answering. “Ask me something else. Everything else is fair game.”
“Of course you won’t talk about it. It’s important, and you’ll do anything to keep me and everyone else away from you.” Ava pulled from his embrace and bounded to her feet, arms wrapped around her midsection. “For a second there, I thought I could actually marry you.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders to prevent her escape and spun her until she faced him. “Everyone wants to go back to the past and relive it. What’s the point? Nothing can be changed. I can’t be changed. Every day I wake, it’s the same damn life. What happened is over. Can’t you let it be over?�
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“No! It’s another dreaded secret.”
“It is not.” His fingers dug deeper into her shoulder blades. “I won’t go into the livid details, but that doesn’t make it a secret that’ll hurt you.”
“How can I know that, if you won’t tell me anything?”
“If you marry me, you’ll have my present and my future. The past shouldn’t matter because I’ve learned to deal with it.”
“How? By shutting off your emotions? By staying isolated from people who want to love you? What if I start to love you? What if our child loves you? Will you pull away from us the way you pull away from your own family?” Her hands fisted against her ribs as she hugged herself tighter, fingers still clenching the velvet ring box. Knowing she had to let the prized solitaire go.
If she married him, Joel would be just like her father had been. Secluded. Untouchable. She couldn’t live like that again and would never allow her child to be subjected to those same worthless feelings that came from having an emotionally distant parent.
“I promise no matter how hard it is, I’ll be there for you and our child,” he said.
“You make it sound like the ultimate sacrifice. Why is it hard for you to be there? You should be happy to have a child. Why aren’t you? What happened to you?”
“Let it go.” A muscle leaped in his cheek. “Mind your own damned business.”
“If I accept your flippin’ ring, it will be my own damned business. Your business will be mine. At least it should be.”
She sighed out a long irritated breath. Why was she wasting her time? Did she really think she had the ability to crack his walls when Claudia after half a year and an engagement ring never had? After none of his family had?
He would never draw her near enough for her to feel like a part of his life the way a wife should. If she married Joel Stanfield, she’d never be his true partner. Did she really want to do that for desperate, needy hormones?
“I know there was an accident, and you lost someone. Did you love her, will you at least tell me that?” she asked, softening her tone.
He worked his jaw for a long ticking moment. “Yes.”
A Weekend Temptation Page 9
