Читать книгу Latin Lovers: Hot-Blooded Sicilians: Valentino's Love-Child / The Sicilian Doctor's Proposal / Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride - Люси Монро, Люси Монро, Catherine Spencer - Страница 10

FAITH drove like an automaton toward Pizzolato. They’d met? They knew each other?

Each word Tino had used to answer his mother’s innocent questions had driven into her heart with the precision of an assassin’s dagger. And the wounds were still raw and bleeding. As they would be for a very long time.

How could he dismiss her as if she meant nothing to him?

But she had the answer to that, an answer she wanted to ignore, to pretend no knowledge of for the sake of her lacerated heart. She only wished she could do it—that she could lie to herself as easily as she had deluded herself into believing things were changing between them.

He could dismiss her as someone of no importance in his life because that was exactly what she was. She was his convenient sex partner. Nothing more. Friends? When it was convenient for him to think so, but that clearly did not extend to times with his family.

They’d met. The words reverberated through her mind over and over again. A two-word refrain with the power to torture her emotions as effectively as a rack and bullwhip.

She did not know why he had slept with her that night in Marsala. She had no clue why he had taken her to his bed in his family home, but she knew why he hadn’t called her for two weeks and had ignored her calls to him.

Perhaps he regretted that intimacy and was even hoping to end their association.

The pain that thought brought her doubled her over, and she had to pull to the side of the road. Tears came then.

She never cried, but right now she could not stop.

She sobbed, the sounds coming from her mouth like those of a wounded animal, and she had no way of stopping them, of pulling her cheerful covering around her and marching on with a smile on her face. Not now.

She had thought maybe it was her turn for happiness. Maybe this baby heralded a new time in her life, one where she did not lose everyone who she loved.

But she could see already that was not true.

She had lost Tino, or was on the verge of doing so.

Her body racked with sobs, she ached with a physical pain no one was there to assuage.

What if Tino’s rejection was merely a harbinger of things to come?

What if she lost this baby, too? She could not stand it.

The first trimester was a risky one, even though her doctor had confirmed her pregnancy was viable and not ectopic. The prospect of miscarriage was a dark, scary shadow over her mind.

Falling apart at the seams like this could not be helping, but she didn’t know if she had the strength to rein the tears in. How was she supposed to buck up under this new loss?

The pain did not diminish, but eventually the tears did and she was able to drive home.

She had not lied when she told Agata she felt the need to create, but the piece she did that night was not one she wanted to share with anyone. Especially not a woman as kind as Tino’s mother.

Faith could not make herself destroy it, though.

Once again it embodied pain she had been unable to share with anyone else.

It was another pregnant figure, but this woman was starving, her skin stretched taut over bones etched in sharp relief in the clay. Her clothes were worn and clung to the tiny bump that indicated her pregnancy in hopeless poverty. Her hair whipped around her face, raindrops mixed with tears on the visage of a mother-to-be almost certain not to make it another month, much less carry her baby to term.

The figure reflected the emotional starvation that had plagued Faith for so long. She’d tried to feed it like a beggar would her empty belly in the streets. Teaching children art, sharing their lives. Her friendship with Agata. Her intimacy with Tino, but all of it was as precarious as the statue woman’s hold on life.

Faith had no one to absolutely call her own and feared that somehow the baby she carried would be lost to her as well.

She could not let that happen.

Valentino called Faith the next day. He’d tried calling the night before several times, after Gio had gone to bed, but she had not answered. He’d hoped to see her, but she had been ignoring the phone.

It was the first time she had done so during their association. He had not liked it one bit and had resolved not to avoid her calls in the future.

This time however, she answered on the third ring, just when he thought it was going to go to voice mail again.

“Hello, Tino.”

“Carina.”

“Do you need something?”

“No ‘How was your trip?’ or anything?”

“If you had wanted to tell me about your trip, you would have called while you were away … or answered my calls to you.”

Ouch. “I apologize for not doing so. I was busy.” Which was the truth, just not the whole truth.

“Too busy for a thirty-second hello? I don’t think so.”

“I should have called,” he admitted.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“If it offended you, it does.” Of course it had offended her.

He would not have cared with any of the other bed partners he had had since Maura’s death, but this was Faith. And he cared.

“I guess you didn’t have time for phone sex and saw no reason to speak to me otherwise,” she said in a loaded tone.

He had already apologized. What more did she want? “Now you are being foolish.” They had never engaged in phone sex, though the thought was somewhat intriguing.

“I seem to make a habit of that with you.”

“Not that I have noticed.”

“Really?” She sighed, the sound coming across the phone line crystal clear. “You must be blind.”

Something was going on here. Something bad. Perhaps he owed her more than a verbal apology for avoiding her as he had done. It was imperative they meet. “Can we get together tonight?”

“For sex only or dinner first?”

What the hell? “Is it your monthly?”

She was usually disconcertingly frank about that particular time of month and did not suffer from a big dose of PMS, but there was a first time for everything. Right?

She gasped. There was a few seconds of dead air between them. Then she said, “No, Tino. I can guarantee you it is not that time of month.”

Rather than apologize for his error yet again, he said, “It sounds like we would benefit from talking, Faith. Let’s meet for dinner.”

“Where?”

He named a restaurant and she agreed without her usual enthusiastic approval.

“Would you rather go somewhere else?” he asked.

“No.”

“All right, then. Montibello’s it is.”

She was early, waiting at the table when he arrived. She looked beautiful as usual, but gave a dim facsimile of her normal smile of welcome.

He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Did you have a good day?”

Looking away, she shrugged.

This was so not like her he really began to worry. Was she ill? Or returning to the States? His stomach plummeted at the thought. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Not particularly.”

Right. He was not buying that, but obviously she was hesitant. Maybe they could ease into whatever was making her behave so strangely by talking about other things. “There is something I think we should discuss.”

“Fine.” The word came out clipped and infused with attitude.

Okay, then. Reverse was not a gear he used often in his professional or personal life, so he went forward with the original plan. “We need to come up with a strategy for how we behave around my family.”

“You really think that’s going to become a problem?” she asked in a mocking tone he’d never heard from her. “We’ve been sleeping together for months and have only been around them together twice in all that time. The first instance would not have occurred if you had known I was your son’s teacher, and the second could have been avoided if I had known you were due to return a day earlier than expected.”

“Nevertheless, the occasions did happen and I feel we should develop a strategy for dealing with similar ones when they happen again.”

“I think you handled it already, Tino. Your family is under the impression we are something between bare acquaintances and casual friends.” Her hands clenched tightly in her lap as she spoke.

He wanted to reach out and hold them, but that would be pushing the boundaries of what he considered safe public displays. Both for his sake and hers. He did not hide the fact that they saw each other, but he did not make it easy for others to guess at their relationship, either.

Marsala was a big enough city that he could take her to dinner at restaurants where he was unlikely to run into his business associates. Even less probable was the possibility of being seen by family. However, there were still some small-town ideals in Marsala, and Faith, as a single woman, could not afford to have her reputation tarnished if she wanted to continue teaching art at the elementary school.

“Did my saying that bother you?” Surely she understood the implications if he had reacted differently.

“Does it matter? Our relationship, such that it is, has never been about what I was comfortable with.” Her eyes were filled with a hurt anger that shocked him.

“That is not true. You were no more interested in a long-term committed relationship than I was when we first met.”

“Things change.”

“Some things cannot.” He wished that was not the case, but it was. “We do not have to lose what we do have because it cannot be more.”

“You spent two weeks ignoring me, Tino.”

“I was out of country.”

It was a lame excuse and her expression said she knew it. “You forwarded my calls to voice mail.”

“I needed a breathing space. I had some things to work out,” he admitted. “But I have apologized. I will do so again if that will improve things for you.”

She flicked her hand as if dismissing his offer. “Did you work out your problems?”

“I believe so.”

“And it included treating me like a nonentity in your life in front of your family?” she asked with a definite edge to her voice.

“If I had not, my mother would have gotten wind of our relationship. She knows me too well.”

At that moment, Faith’s eyes reflected pure sorrow. “And that would have been a catastrophe?”

“Yes.” He hated giving the confirmation when she looked so unhappy about the truth, but he had no choice.

“It would not be appropriate to have my mistress visiting with my family.” “I am not your mistress.”

“True, but were I to try to explain the distinction to Mama, she would have us married faster than the speed of light. She likes you, Faith, and she wants more grandchildren from her oldest son.”

“And the thought of marriage to me is a complete anathema to you?”

No, it was not, but that was a large part of the problem. “I do not wish to marry anyone.”

“But you would do so.”

“If I was absolutely convinced that was what was best for Giosue.” Only, he would not marry a woman he could love, a woman who could undermine his honor.

Faith nodded and stood.

“Where are you going? We have not even ordered.”

“I’m not hungry, Tino.”

He stood as well. “Then we will leave.”

“No.”

“What do you mean?” Panic made his words come out hard and clipped.

“It’s over. I don’t want to see you anymore.” Tears washed into her peacock-blue eyes.

For a moment they sparkled like grieving sapphires, but she blinked the moisture away along with any semblance of emotion from her face.

He could not believe the words coming out of her mouth, much less the way she seemed to be able to turn off her feelings. It was as if a stranger, not the woman he had been making love to for almost a year, stood across from him. “Because I needed some space and neglected to call you for two weeks?”

“No, though honestly? That would be enough for most women.”

“You are not most women.”

“No, I’ve been a very convenient sexual outlet, but that’s over, Tino. The well is dried up.” A slight hitch in her voice was the only indication she felt anything at all at saying these words.

“What the blazes are you talking about?” The well? What bloody well?

She talked like he’d been using her this past year, but there relationship had been mutual.

“You wanted me just as I wanted you.”

She shrugged. Shrugged, damn it. Just as if this conversation wasn’t of utmost importance.

“Along with agreeing that this thing between us wasn’t some serious emotional connection, we also agreed that if it stopped working for either of us, we were completely free to walk away. No harm. No foul. I’m walking.” Her voice was even and calm, free of her usual passion and any feeling—either positive or negative.

“How can you go from wanting more to wanting nothing?” he asked, dazed by this turn of events.

“You aren’t going to give me more, and nothing is a better option than settling for what we had.”

“There was no settling. You wanted me as much as I wanted you,” he said again, as if repeating it might make her get the concept.

“Things change.”

He cursed loudly, using a word in the Sicilian vernacular rarely heard in polite company. “You promised.” “What did I promise?” “To let me walk away without a big scene.”

Damn it all to hell. He had, but he had never expected her to want to walk away. “What about my mother?” “What about her? She’s my friend.” “And my son?” “He is my student.”

“You do not intend to ditch either of them?”

“No.”

“Only me.” “It’s necessary.” “For who?” “For me.”

“Why?”

“What difference does it make? You won’t give me more and I can’t accept less any longer. The whys don’t matter.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Not my problem.”

“I did not know you had this hard side to you.”

“I wasn’t aware you could be so clingy.”

Affronted at the very implication, he ground out, “I am not clingy.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Goodbye, Tino. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Wait, Faith …”

But she was gone and the maître d’ was apologizing and offering to move their table, asking what they had done to offend. Valentino had no answers for the man. He had no answers for himself.

In a near catatonic state of shock, Faith stood beside her car outside the restaurant. The coldness she had felt toward Tino at the table had permeated her body until she felt incapable of movement.

She had broken up with him.

Really, truly. Not a joke. Not with tears, or hopes he would try to talk her out of it, but with a gut-deep certainty the relationship they had, such as it was, was over.

She hadn’t gone to the restaurant with the intention of breaking up. Had she?

She knew her pregnancy hormones had her emotions on a see-saw and she’d been trying to ride them out. She laughed soundlessly, her heart aching. A see-saw? More like an emotional roller coaster of death-defying height, speed and terrifying twists and turns.

She didn’t just teeter from one feeling to the next, she swooped without warning.

It hadn’t been easy the two weeks he had avoided her calls, but it had been even worse since Tino had denied their friendship to his mother. Faith had realized that what she believed was affection had only been the result of lust on his part. He wanted sex and she gave it to him. Only, she couldn’t do that anymore.

She wouldn’t risk the baby.

The doctor had said normal sexual activity wouldn’t jeopardize her pregnancy, but then he didn’t know her past, how easily she lost the people who meant the most to her. She’d known she would have to put Tino off from being physically intimate for at least another few weeks, but she hadn’t realized that somewhere deep inside that had meant breaking things off with him completely.

It had all crystallized when he said he wouldn’t marry her—at any cost. Once he knew about the baby, that attitude would change, but the underlying reasons for it wouldn’t. She knew that. Just as she knew that a marriage made for reasons of duty and responsibility was the last kind she wanted.

It was one thing to marry someone knowing you loved them and they only liked you and found deep satisfaction in your body. But to marry someone you knew did not want to marry you and did in fact see something so wrong about you that they would marry someone else over you, that was something else entirely.

She wasn’t sure she could do it.

But could she take the baby from Sicily, from its family and raise it alone, knowing it could have a better life in its father’s home country? She didn’t know. Thankfully, that decision did not have to be made right this second.

She forced her frozen limbs to move, and slid into her car, turning on the ignition.

She drove toward her home while those questions and more plagued her. Plagued by a question she told herself did not need an immediate answer. Her mind refused to let it go, the only eye in the storm of her emotion being that she had no intention of revealing her pregnancy until she was through the more-dangerous first trimester.

At that point she would have to have answers.

Though she normally saw the older woman at least once a week, Faith managed to avoid showing Agata the pregnancy statuary. Faith promised Tino’s mother she would be the first to see all the pieces for the new show she was putting together for a New York gallery. Faith had sent pictures of the pieces she’d been doing to a gallery owner on Park Avenue who loved TK’s work. The woman had called Faith, practically swooning with delight at the prospect of doing a show for the fertility pieces.

Like her emotions, Faith’s work swung between hope and despair, touching on every emotion in between. It was the most powerful stuff she’d done since the car accident that had stolen her little family. As much pain as some of the pieces caused her, she was proud of them all.

An art teacher had once told Faith’s class that pain was a great source of inspiration, as was joy, but that either without the other left an artist’s work lacking in some way. Faith was living proof both agony and ecstasy could reside side by side in a person’s heart. And she had no doubt her work was all the better for it, even if her heart wasn’t.

Tino tried calling Faith several times, but his calls were sent straight to voice mail every time. He left messages but they were ignored. He sent her text messages that received no reply either.

He could not believe his affair with Faith was over.

He wouldn’t believe it.

She wasn’t acting like herself, and he was going to find out why. And fix it, damn it.

Morning sickness was just that for Faith, with the nausea dissipating by noon. While that did not impact her ability to work much, it did make it more difficult on the days she taught. She’d considered canceling her classes for the first trimester, or withdrawing all together. She doubted they would want an unwed pregnant woman teaching art to their children; it was a traditional village. However, she saw little Gio only on the days she taught and she could not make herself give up those visits, brief though they were.

She loved the little boy. A lot. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to see him as something more than a pupil, something like family—until she broke things off with his father and contemplated not seeing the precious boy again. She simply could not do it.

He was as sweet as ever, showing he had no idea she was now persona non grata in his papa’s life. He hung back after class to talk to her and she enjoyed that. Today, though, he was fidgeting.

“Is something the matter, sweetheart?”

He grinned. “I like it when you call me that. It’s like a mama would do, you know?”

Suppressing the stab of pain at his words, she reached out and brushed his hair back from his face. “I’m glad. Now, tell me if something is wrong.”

“Nonna said I could invite you for dinner.”

“That is very kind of her.”

“Only, Papa said you probably wouldn’t come.”

“He did?”

Gio looked at her with pleading eyes only a heart of stone could ignore. “Why won’t you come again? I thought you and Papa were friends.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t come.”

“So, you will?” Giosue asked, his little-boy face transforming with the light of hope.

“When does your nonna want me to come?”

“She said this Friday would be good.”

“It just so happens I am free this Friday.”

Gio grinned with delight and gave her a spontaneous hug that went straight to her heart.

Perhaps it was foolish to agree, but she couldn’t stand to see the hurt of disappointment come into Giosue’s eyes. Besides, Faith had told Tino that she had no intention of giving up her friendship with his mother and son. And she’d meant it.

Being pregnant with Giosue’s sibling and Agata’s grandchild only made those two relationships more important. Tino wasn’t going away and she needed to work on her ability to be around him and remain unaffected. The dinner invitation was an opportunity to do just that.

Her unborn baby deserved to know his or her family and Faith would not allow her own feelings to stand in the way of that.

Besides there was a tiny part of her that wanted to show Tino he was wrong and that she could handle being around him just fine.

Just a small part. Really.