At first, she’d felt certain that she would keep the shop exactly as Chris always had. But in the two weeks since she’d taken possession of the shop and the rest of her inheritance, she’d decided that she wanted to find a way to make it her own now, while still honoring the way it had been his.
Chris’s personality had been more downbeat than hers, and the shop reflected that. It was in one of the older buildings in Quiet Cove, with heavy, low ceilings and wide-plank wood floors. Chris had covered the floor with mismatched estate sale oriental rugs, all of them dark and threadbare. The plaster walls hadn’t been painted in as long as he’d had the shop. They were dingy and unadorned. She’d always thought it cozy, but once Bev started looking at it with a more critical eye, the place was downright gloomy.
She was using the life insurance money for a remodel and to pay Katrynn’s salary until they reopened. With the season ending, she’d decided to keep the shop closed until the spring. That would give her time to learn the business and make it her own. She wanted to keep the cozy but lose the gloom. Katrynn agreed.
But first, they needed to make sense of the stock. And the books. And today, after hours and hours of going through the thousand and one different, seemingly random ways Chris kept his records, Bev was beginning to think burning the place down was the only reasonable plan.
“Anything I can help with?”
Bev sighed and frowned at the screen. “No. I’m going to have to sit down with Luca and see if he can help me connect some dots. Right now, it’s giving me a migraine.” She looked up. “Anything cool in those boxes?”
Katrynn shook her head and reached back to retie her blonde ponytail. Bev had noticed that was a tic of hers—she retied her ponytail three or four times an hour, whether it was loose or not. “Pretty basic stuff. There is a box of old kids’ books. Really old. Dick and Jane readers and stuff like that. Oh—and a stack of Playboys from the 70s.” She snickered and plopped in the ratty armchair in front of the desk. “Okay, yeah. There’s some cool stuff in there. Hey—I was thinking…”
“Yeah?” Bev closed the laptop. She couldn’t look at indecipherable numbers for another second. She’d just call Luca and see if he could make sense of Chris’s nonsense.
“You know how you were saying you didn’t want to lose the flavor the shop had when your friend owned it? Well, how about turning the side stockroom into a reading room? There’s plenty of unused space in the back, and that room is small and awkward for backstock anyway. Call it the ‘Chris Mills Room’ or something. Shelve the kind of books he liked best in there, and set up that old green chair and some floor lamps.”
Bev swallowed back the lump in her throat. “I like that idea. I like it a lot. Thank you.”
Katrynn beamed. “No problem. Thank you for the job. I love it. I’m having a blast. When we reopen, it’s going to be amazing.”
“I hope so.”
Lady Catterley jumped back up on the desk, sat on the closed laptop, stretched one furry, white leg into the air and began to lick her butt.
~oOo~
It was late when Bev got home. She was tired and dirty, so she walked past Nick’s door and went to her own. She needed a shower.
It had been almost three weeks since he’d asked her to marry him, and though they were more or less okay, they hadn’t talked about the future. That unanswered question hung between them because Nick refused to engage in any conversation that might lead to its answer. He seemed to have decided to live in limbo rather than get an answer he might not like.
But she wanted to give him the answer he wanted. When he’d asked her to marry him, her first feeling had been a joy that had filled her to her toes. It had felt like karma’s apology for letting her get raped and maimed. The word ‘yes’ had leapt onto her tongue and done a pirouette. And then she’d thought about kids. She wanted children, a lot of children, at least three, and she had absolutely no idea if he did. He was a lot older than she was. If he’d wanted kids, he probably would have had them by now. Or maybe not. She didn’t know.
He went to church every Sunday, and he liked her to go, too. She was spiritual, not religious. She had no idea how he felt about that difference between them. Seeing his family arrayed at Sunday Mass, filling up two whole pews all the way across the church and spilling over onto another pew, she thought he would expect their children to be Catholic. But she didn’t know.
They didn’t live together. She knew he didn’t really like her apartment—there was too much pink and purple and flowers. She liked girly things. His apartment was bigger and nicer, but not her taste any more than hers was his. And she didn’t want to live in a condo forever. She wanted a house with a real kitchen. And a yard with a garden. Maybe he planned to live in the condo forever. She didn’t know.
She still didn’t know. Because he wouldn’t fucking talk about it. They’d had that painful exchange at Carmen and Theo’s wedding, and he’d told her he was having a ring made for her. She’d said she needed to talk, and then he seemed to have flipped a switch or something. Or rewound a tape. She’d gone to him that night, and they’d slept in his bed. In the morning, he acted like the previous hours hadn’t happened at all.
And that’s where they still were. He’d become inscrutable to her again, and that scared her. And pissed her off. Alternately. Sometimes concurrently.
When she got out of the shower, she towel-dried her hair and pulled her robe on, not bothering to cinch it closed. She’d get dressed and go down to his apartment. Since the wedding, they’d been spending more time at his place. That felt portentous, too.
He was standing in her kitchen, leaning against the far counter, his arms crossed. Though he usually came in whenever he wanted, she jumped when she saw him.
“God! You scared me.”
Not surprisingly, he didn’t apologize. “You didn’t stop by.”
“I was dirty from digging through backstock all day. I wanted to shower first.” She closed her robe.
“Is this what you working is going to be like now? Not home until after nine, don’t even say hi, don’t return my calls? That’s not how I work. I don’t sit around and wait.”
Anger was taking its turn. “Then don’t.”
He stared at her, and she stared back. “What are you saying, Beverly?”
“I don’t know. Pussyfooting around you is exhausting. If we’re not going to talk about what happened at Carmen’s wedding, then maybe we don’t have anything to talk about at all.” As soon as she said those words, fear squeezed in and made anger step back.
“Answer the question I asked, and then we’ll talk.” He stepped forward and put his hands flat on the nearer counter.
“Jesus! Nick, come on! Why? Why can’t we talk first?”
“Why can’t you just fucking trust me?!” He slammed his hands down on the granite tile.
Bev nearly leapt backward. Nick had never yelled, not once ever, not at her or at anyone else that she’d ever seen or heard.
Once the shock had ebbed, though, she wasn’t afraid. She was moved and sorry—she’d really hurt him. She crossed the room and stood on the other side of the counter, between the two chairs that were her dining area. “I do trust you.”
He shook his head. “Not if you need me to fill out a questionnaire first. Not if you don’t know I’ll make you happy.”
“Kids, a home—that stuff is important. What if we don’t agree? Why can’t we talk first?”
“Are you saying if we don’t want exactly the same things right now, you don’t love me enough to find a compromise?”
Bev blinked. That wasn’t what she was saying at all—or it wasn’t what she’d meant. But Nick wasn’t a compromising man. She was afraid that she’d end up living the life he wanted for her instead of the life she wanted.
But why, exactly, was she afraid of that? In fact, he’d made all sorts of compromises for her. He’d been gentle and patient with her. He’d practically lived in her girly apartment for months because she was m
ore comfortable here. He was helping her with the bookshop, even though he didn’t want her to work.
He was right. She was hesitating over things that were supposed to matter, not things that actually did. She was trying to wedge their real love into her adolescent fantasy of what her married life would be. She’d choked, was what it came down to. And she’d fucked up a beautiful moment and the weeks that had followed it.
So had he, though, with his cold way of pouting.
Walking around the counter into the kitchen, she stepped behind him and circled his waist with her arms. He dropped his head. “Nick, I love you. I know you’ll make me happy. I want to make you happy. So my answer is yes. I’m so sorry I didn’t say it right away. I should have.”
“Yeah, you should have.” He turned in her arms and took her face in his hands. “Don’t fuck with me like that again.”
“I wasn’t fucking with you. I was just scared.”
“Why? Of me?”
“No. Of losing myself again. I just got myself back.”
He stared into her eyes as his thumbs caressed her cheekbones. “I’ll never let you get lost again. I love you, bella.” With a quick peck to her lips, he pushed her away. “I’ll be right back.”
With that, he went around the counter, through the room, and out her door. Bev, expecting a much deeper kiss and also not to be alone, stood where he’d put her, dazed.
He was only gone a minute or two, and when he was back, he had a small box in his hand. He came into the kitchen and led her out to sit on her sofa. She loved this white sofa. Without it, she might not have been sitting here with Nick Pagano on his knee in front of her.
“I’ll say it in Italian, since you like it so much when I do. Bella, con te voglio passare la mia vita. Sei tutto ciò che voglio. Il mio cuore è solo tua. Sei il mio sole. Sposami.”
Italian was so pretty. She didn’t know most of the words—though she heard the one about being his sunshine many times and loved that above all—but she knew what he’d said was beautiful.
He opened the box. Inside were two rings. The band of the engagement ring was delicately ornate, slender twists of rose gold rather than a solid band. Tiny diamonds were scattered around it. A large diamond solitaire in a tall setting dominated the center, and around it, in a separate setting, a ring of small diamonds. Like a halo around a bright sun. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The wedding band seated next to it was a similarly delicate band of diamonds.
She looked up and met his eyes. “Si is yes, right?”
He grinned. “Si.”
“Then I won’t say yes. I’ll say si. Si, si, si. Ti amo.”
~oOo~
Much later, they lay naked and sweaty in her bed. With her head pillowed on his broad chest, Bev listened to the steadying thrum of his heart and let herself drift. He was playing with her new ring, his fingers caressing hers around it.
“I want kids with you, bella. But if you do, there’s something you should know.”
She stopped drifting. She thought she’d even stopped breathing.
“I’m not an only child. Not really. I had an older sister and a younger brother. They both died on the days they were born. From the same thing. Anencephaly.”
Bev rose up onto her elbow. “Oh my God, your poor parents. Your poor mother! Anencephaly…that means—”
“Their brains didn’t develop. It nearly destroyed my mother, especially after my little brother died. It fucked my parents’ marriage up for a long time. I knew more about that than a kid should, because my father told me once when he was weepy and drunk that my mother wouldn’t sleep with him anymore. Ma is devout, and they didn’t use birth control. She knew she wouldn’t survive it happening a third time, so she turned him out of her bed. He kept a comare for the rest of his life.”
“Are you saying it’s genetic? That could happen to us, too? But you’re okay.”
“I am. I’ve done some research. It’s not supposed to be genetic. Everything I read says that it’s very rare that it happens at all. That it happened a second time to my mother is unheard of. But I don’t know. Maybe it is genetic, and they just don’t have a test for it yet. You should know that before we decide to have kids.”
Bev lay back down on his chest, and he began to caress her arm, making long sweeps up and down with his big hand. “Whatever you decide, bella.”
She thought. He wanted children. They could make a family. But what would she do if she lost a child in such a way?
That was borrowed trouble, though. What she knew was that he was a strong, smart, big, gorgeous, physically perfect man who loved her. They would be married. And the odds were bright that they would make a perfect family. If she was wrong, then that was a trouble for then.
“I want children. A house full. And I want a house. I want a garden. What do you want?”
“To make you happy.”
She rose back up on her elbow. “No—stop that. What do you want?”
He grinned and rolled over, putting her on her back beneath him. “I want as many children as you can pop out. I want to watch you be a mother, and I want to lift children I made with you onto my shoulder and show them the world. I honestly don’t care where we live, as long as it’s in or near the Cove and I’m not surrounded by pink walls and lacy cushions. I’d like a style compromise. If you want a garden, that’s great. I want a cellar with a screening room and a pool table. I like pool. Actually—I do care where we live. I want to be close to the beach. I like to watch the water.”
“Oh. Wow.” He was describing a perfect life. “What about religion?”
“Catholic. Baptized. Not negotiable.”
She knew that one, and it didn’t matter to her. From her point of view, Catholicism seemed as cultural as it was spiritual, and asking Nick to let his children not be Catholic would be tantamount to asking him to let them not be Italian. She wasn’t deeply invested in any particular way of expressing her own faith, so she wouldn’t mind if their children expressed his.
There was one cultural marker that did scare her and might be a deal-breaker on the parenting front. It seemed strange to bring it up now, when he was lying on top of her and she could feel his erection pressing into her skin, but he’d started the conversation.
She was going to make him angry, though. There was a good chance.
“I don’t…I wouldn’t…” She sighed and started over. “I’d have trouble if our sons…” She couldn’t say it, so she gave up. Closing her eyes, she ducked her head against his shoulder.
But he knew where she’d been going. “I would never have married an Italian woman. Do you know why? This is a question you can ask about my business.”
She peeked up from his shoulder and looked sidelong at him. “Why?”
“It’s a tradition in my world that only full-blooded Italian men can rise in the ranks. Half-blooded men can be made, but they can’t rise above soldati—soldiers. I thought someday I’d change that, but I won’t. So not even a Pagano could rise within the Pagano organization if he was half-blooded. I want my sons to find other paths. I don’t want this life for my children.”
Feeling giddy and weepy at the same time, she hugged him close and kissed his chest. “I love you so much.”
He laughed. “See? Was that so hard?”
She reached between them and wrapped a hand around his big, beautiful cock. “No. But this is.”
Spreading her legs to settle him more squarely between her thighs, she guided him close until he took over and pushed into her. She was still a bit sore from earlier, but it was one of her most favorite feelings, that shift from tender soreness to intense pleasure. As he began to thrust, staring down at her, she brought her legs up and around his waist and hooked her hands over his shoulders.
“Marry me soon, bella, he groaned.
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes,” she panted before pleasure and joy made speech impossible.
~ 23 ~
On the November morning of their wedding, Nic
k woke feeling buoyant. He rolled over, intending to pull Beverly close and sleep a little longer. Or push her over onto her stomach and take her. Yeah, that was a much better idea. One more time before she was his wife.
But she wasn’t in bed. Disappointed, he sat up, and then he smelled coffee and something baking. Bread, maybe—no, something sweeter. He tossed the comforter back and grabbed his boxer briefs off the floor.
Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) Page 30
