by Lucy Monroe
“I need some time alone,” she said again. The tears she’d fought since first looking at him, washed into her eyes. “I want to call my grandfather. I don’t understand how he could have done this to me.”
Luciano’s hand lifted and fell, as if he wanted to touch her but knew she would reject him again. “We will talk again after this?”
She didn’t see how they could avoid it. “Yes.”
He nodded his head jerkily, his normal confidence for once shaken. “I will leave you to make your call.”
He turned to go and she had an insane urge to call him back, but she didn’t.
She had meant what she said. She needed time to determine if their marriage could survive its conception.
Luciano walked from the room feeling like a dead man inside. His beautiful wife hated him. It had been in her eyes: hatred, disgust, disappointment. Soft pansy eyes that had once looked on him in love now despised him.
She would talk to her grandfather, discuss the sordid events surrounding their marriage. And what would that accomplish? He hoped that time apart would calm her down enough to discuss their future, but an equally strong possibility was that in speaking to the old man, she would lose whatever vestiges of faith she maintained in their marriage.
Luciano had screwed up so badly. He was not used to messing up and knew his apology had not gone off the way he wanted. He had left so much unsaid. Words he found it impossible to voice, words that expressed emotion he had a difficult time admitting he was even feeling. To admit his feelings made him vulnerable and that was the one thing he abhorred above all others. Vulnerability.
But he would say anything, do anything to keep his wife.
He could not even contemplate the empty black hole he would fall into if she left him.
Hope waited impatiently for her grandfather to answer the phone. It was early morning in Boston, but he was already at work.
His voice came on the line. “Hope?”
“Yes, Grandfather, it’s me.”
“Did you find out what was going on with Luciano and those dinners in New York?”
“Yes. I know everything now. Everything,” she reemphasized.
“He told you about the deal?”
“You mean about your blackmailing him into marrying me? Yes, Luciano told me.”
Hope swallowed tears while her grandfather cursed.
“How could you do that to me?” she asked.
“I wasn’t doing anything to you, girl. I was doing it for you. Only one thing you really wanted. I realized that on New Year’s Eve. Luciano di Valerio. You’ve had a thing for him for years, but I didn’t notice until then.”
She didn’t deny her grandfather’s words.
“Figured after the way he kissed you that he wanted you too, but he was going to marry some traditional Sicilian girl and leave you in the cold.”
“He was engaged to someone else?” she asked, horrified.
“No, but it was only a matter of time. I baited the trap and he fell into. With the passion between the two of you, I figured propinquity would do the rest.”
“But he doesn’t love me!”
“Bah! Men like Luciano don’t admit to tender emotions. Just ask me. Only told your grandmother one time that I loved her. The day she had our baby girl. It’s the way we’re made.”
Hope felt sorry for her unknown grandmother. Marriage to Joshua Reynolds could not have been easy. “Well, I wanted to marry a man who loved me and was capable of saying so.”
“You wanted Luciano.”
“Not trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey! Do you have any idea how humiliated I’m feeling right now? I hurt, Grandfather, all the way to my toes.”
“What’s that boy done?”
Momentarily disconcerted at having her ultra-alpha husband referred to as a boy, she waited a second to answer. “It’s not what he’s done. It’s what you did. You set me up.”
“I set you up all right, I set you up with Luciano.”
“You set me up to be rejected by a man whose pride had been stomped on by your ruthless arrangement. You can’t force a man like Luciano to do something so personal as get married and expect it all to work out in the end.”
“Don’t see why not. He had to get married someday. Why not to you?” Joshua didn’t even sound sorry.
“Because he doesn’t love me,” she fairly shouted across the phone lines.
“No reason to yell, missy. I may be old, but I hear just fine. The man wants you and for him, that’s probably as close to love as any woman will ever get.”
She curled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. Could her grandfather be right?
“You should not have done it.”
“Hope, you wouldn’t take anything else from me.”
“I didn’t want anything, just your love.” That was all she’d ever wanted from the two most important men in her life and the one thing she was destined not to get. “I’ve got to go.”
“No, wait, child.”
“What?” she asked with a lackluster voice.
“I do love you.”
Four words she’d longed to hear since she was five years old and lost both parents. They touched her now, healed some things inside her, but could not soothe the pain from Luciano’s rejection and her grandfather’s part in it.
“I love you, too,” she said nevertheless.
He cleared his throat, the sound harsh. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I can see that.”
They hung up, her grandfather sounding not quite his normal confident, gruff self.
She decided to take a walk and slipped her feet into a pair of sandals. Once she was beyond the formal gardens surrounding the villa, she let her feet wander where they would.
So many things were tumbling through her mind, she couldn’t hold a single thought for longer than a second.
Luciano had been blackmailed into marrying her. She had no right to hold him, even less chance at securing his love. How could he come to love a woman he associated with the pegging down of his pride?
He’d forgotten about getting her pregnant, but now that she was, he wanted to stay married. She’d been humiliated to realize her marriage was the result of little more than a business arrangement between two powerful men, but this made it worse. For him to stay with her, to want her only for the life she carried inside of her was a total denial of herself as a woman.
Luciano had believed she was part of the plot and felt made a fool of because of it. So he had hurt her. He was sorry now and both he and Zia denied having slept together. Hope believed them. She remembered how sexually hungry Luciano had been his first night back from New York. He was hopelessly oversexed anyway, but that night, he had been desperate for her. That was not the response of a man getting all the sex he wanted from his ex-girlfriend.
Where did Hope’s love for him fit into all this? She was pregnant with his child, but was that enough to keep a marriage that was nothing more than an arrangement together?
No.
But her love and his sincerity might be.
He was right. They’d spent too much time alone lately. If he was serious about trying, she didn’t see that she had much choice because to contemplate life without Luciano was to contemplate a pain she did not want to bear.
She headed back to the house, determined to find Luciano and finish their discussion.
She found him on a lounger by the pool. He hadn’t changed clothes and his expression was bleak.
“Luciano.”
He looked up.
“We need to talk.”
He nodded. “Where?”
He was asking her? “Can we go back to our room? It’s the only place we’re sure not to be overheard by your mother or Martina when they get back from shopping.”
He stood up and took her arm. She didn’t fight his touch now and some tension drained from him, not all, but some.
When they reached their small sala, he led her to the sof
a where he sat and pulled her down beside him.
“What have you decided?”
“Tell me again why you were with Zia.”
“I wanted you to believe I was having an affair.” He took her hands in his, his grip crushing. “But I swear this is not true. I want no other woman, have not since New Year’s Eve.”
Was he saying he’d been celibate for six months before his pursuit of her? “No other woman…at all…since then?”
“None,” he confirmed.
That meant something, but she wasn’t sure what yet.
“You wanted me to think you and Zia were back together because you wanted to get back at my grandfather and me?”
He shook his head. “I was devastated by the belief you had been part of the blackmail scheme. Hurt. When I hurt, I lash out. I did not think it through, I just did it. By the time I came back from New York, I knew I did not want you to believe I had broken my promise.”
“But you neglected to tell Zia, so when I called and she answered, she played it up,” Hope guessed.
Luciano nodded, his mouth twisting. “Much to my detriment.”
“I want to believe you.” She ached to believe him.
“But,” he prompted.
“You broke your other promise. The one about treasuring my love.” She tried to pull her hands away at the painful memory, but he would not let go.
“No, I did not. In my heart, I always treasured your love and when you stopped saying the words, it hurt more than I wanted to admit. I made love to you frequently to assure myself that if nothing else, the passion between us was real and honest. That you wanted me even if you did not love me.”
The words sounded so like the way she’d been feeling that she choked on her next question. “So, I wasn’t just a convenience you used to assuage your strong sexual appetite?”
Suddenly she found herself on his lap, his arms wrapped tightly around her, his face close to hers. “I never thought of you that way. I was hurting and the only place I could connect with you was in bed.”
“We connected pretty often.”
His sculpted cheekbones turned dusky. “Si.”
“Do you want me to stay only for the baby?”
His face contorted and he buried it in the hollow of her neck. “No. I want you to stay for me. I cannot live without you, cara. Do not go away from me.”
He punctuated the words with tiny kisses that made her shiver.
“But a marriage without love has little hope of surviving.”
His hold was almost bruising now. “I know you have stopped loving me. I deserve it, but I love you, amore mia. You are the air that I breathe. The only music my heart wants to hear. The other half of my soul. I will make you love me again. I can do it. You still want me,” he said as one hand cupped her breast with its already tight peak.
She turned her head and cupped his face between her palms so she could see into his eyes. “You love me?”
“For a long time. Since before New Year’s Eve I think, but to admit it would have been to admit the end of my independence. Fool that I was, I thought that mattered. Without you all the freedom in the world would be a tiny cell in a prison of loneliness.”
Her jaw dropped open. She couldn’t help it. Not only had he said he loved her, but he’d gotten positively poetic about it. “Those are pretty mushy sentiments.”
He shrugged, his Italian nature showing stronger in that moment than she had seen before. Emotion warmed his eyes and his body radiated heat just for her. “I feel mushy about you.” He kissed her softly until her lips clung and then gently pulled away. “Tell me you will stay and let me teach you to love me again.”
“I’ll stay, but I can’t let you make me love you.”
His expression was devastating and much too painful to witness for her to keep up her teasing.
“I already love you. I will always love you and therefore you cannot make me do something I already am…doing that is.”
She wasn’t sure that made sense, but she didn’t care because he looked like dawn was rising in his eyes. “My beautiful Hope! I love you. I adore you.” He went into a litany of Italian phrases as he divested both of them of their clothes.
They made love on their bed, both saying words of love and need they had held back before.
When it was over, she cuddled into his side. “So, I guess this means, you really are fabulously happy about the baby.”
“I am.” His smile would have melted the polar ice caps.
And just to show her how much, he made love to her again, this time touching her stomach with reverence with his hands and mouth and whispering words of love to the bambino growing inside her.
Some time later, she was lying on top of him sweaty and sated. “Luciano.”
“Si, amore mia?”
“You really do love me?”
He sprang up, tumbling her into his lap and grasping her chin so their eyes met. “How can you doubt it? I love you more than my own life.”
“It just seems so unreal. You married me because my grandfather forced you into it.” Would she always remember that?
“He played matchmaker in the most unconventional way, but had I not wanted to be caught, I would not have been.”
She sighed and said nothing.
“It is true. You realize I do not wish to pursue revenge on him now? I am grateful for his interference even if I was too proud to acknowledge it before.”
Could she believe him? Knowing what a shark her husband was capable of being, she shivered a little with relief on her grandfather’s behalf. “I’m glad.”
“To hurt him would hurt you and I will never again do that.”
“Sicilian guilt is stronger than the vendetta.”
He turned very serious. “Not guilt. Love. This Sicilian’s love.”
She so desperately wanted to have faith in his love, but perhaps that was why it was so hard to do so. He had been forced into the marriage. How could he love her like she loved him? “Grandfather didn’t really leave you an out.”
He shook his head. “You do not believe me, but it is true. I had repurchased most of the stock by the time of our marriage. I did not need half of your shares to control Valerio Shipping.”
“But you said…”
“I told you a plan I hatched in hurt and anger, not the truth of my heart, cara. I did not need the shares.”
And that truth was burning in his sexy brown eyes.
“You wanted to marry me,” she said with awe.
“Si. So much, I was in despair you would not believe me about Zia and leave me. I was terrified of losing you.”
The concept of him terrified seemed unbelievable, but the aftereffects lingered in his expression. “That was before you knew I wasn’t part of the blackmail plan.” Understanding washed over her in a wave and with it came unstoppable love and belief in his love. “You wanted to make our marriage work believing I had colluded with my grandfather to force you into it.”
That fact had gotten lost in her pain and confusion, but no Sicilian male as strong as Luciano would have come to that point without being very much in love.
“I could not lose you.” His hold tightened. “You are the other half of myself. Without you, I am not a man.”
“I love you, Luciano.”
His eyes closed and he breathed deeply as if savoring the words. “Say it again.”
“Ti amo,” she said it in Italian.
His eyes opened, burning into hers with purpose. “Always.”
“Yes.”
“And I will love you forever. I am going to make you feel like the most loved woman that ever walked the face of the earth.”
As goals went, it was a big one, but he could do it. All he had to do was keep looking at her like he was doing right now.
And she would love him like no other woman could.
Luciano looked into his wife’s soft pansy gaze, his precious Hope. Her love was worth more than his pride, more than his company, more than
anything else in the world to him and he would never let her forget it.
ISBN: 978-1-55254-867-7
THE SICILIAN’S MARRIAGE ARRANGEMENT
First North American Publication 2007.
Copyright © 2004 by Lucy Monroe.
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