Читать книгу Mistress To a Latin Lover: The Sicilian's Defiant Mistress / The Italian's Pregnant Mistress / The Italian's Mistress - Кэтти Уильямс, Jane Porter, Cathy Williams - Страница 15

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS early afternoon when the picnic at Aci Castello ended with many of the Guiliano guests scattering to either explore the castle ruins or the beautiful beach at the foot of the castello.

It was hot, temperatures soaring for mid-September but Cass stayed with Maximos and his sisters who were stretched out on the blankets, their conversation light, teasing, punctuated with much laughter.

And Maximos teased his sisters as much as they did him. She’d never seen Maximos like this. She’d only ever known the proud Sicilian, the lover and warrior, never the man who cherished his family and was adored in return.

He lay not far from her now, propped up on his elbow. His body was powerful, muscular, beautiful. She tried not to stare and yet she couldn’t not look.

His hand briefly touched his knee, his skin darkly tan, the hair on his thigh even darker, a crisp curling of hair on toned muscle, on taut bronze skin. She’d never met another man put together the way Maximos was. The ease with which he sat, he stood, he moved.

The shape of his head.

The perfect nape.

The broad palm, the strong hand absently stroking his knee.

Just looking at him made her remember last night, made her remember how it felt…skin on skin…his hand on her thigh…his hands everywhere. Watching him now she felt almost sick inside.

“Have you enjoyed today, Cassandra?” Adriana asked, sitting up and stretching.

Suddenly everyone was looking at her, and Cass, caught in the middle of thinking private thoughts, blushed. “I have, thank you.”

It was true, too. She’d enjoyed her city tour of Catania, Sicily’s second largest city, particularly the Roman Theatre uncovered in the 1860s as well as the Piazza Duomo dominated by the Cathedral, Town Hall and Seminary’s exquisite Baroque architecture. But what fascinated her most, was the violent relationship Catania shared with the nearby volcano Mount Etna.

Since Catania’s inception, it had been flooded with lava, rained on with ash, and completely destroyed in 1693 from a cataclysmic earthquake. When the city was rebuilt in the eighteenth century following the earthquake, most of the buildings were constructed from Etna’s black lava.

“I just wish there was more time to explore. I’d love to visit Mount Etna itself,” she added, and glancing up she saw that Maximos was watching her. He wasn’t smiling, either. He looked hard. Focused. Intent.

What was he thinking? There was obviously something on his mind.

“What you must do the next time you come is take the Circumetnea Railway,” Adriana said, cutting a wedge of cheese and snagging a small bunch of red grapes. “It’s not a short trip, about five hours I think, but the train takes you on Etna’s slopes through lava fields as well as vineyards.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Cass answered.

“So when do you think you’ll come back?” Adriana asked, with an innocent look at Maximos.

“She hasn’t even left yet,” Maximos answered, extending a hand to Cass. “But it’s probably time we all packed up and headed back to Ortygia.”

Maximos helped Cass to her feet and after folding several blankets Adriana told Maximos that she and the others could finish up and so Maximos and Cass began a leisurely walk back toward the harbor.

“You’re good with your sisters,” Cass said as they left the others, walking through the tall sun burnt grass surrounding the ruins.

“Aren’t most brothers?”

She shot a swift side glance. He looked calm, unflappable and perhaps that was the secret of powerful, aristocratic Sicilian men. Men like Maximos appeared impervious to storm, war and danger. Men like Maximos appeared to lack nothing and need no one. Men like Maximos were strong, forceful, invincible because they didn’t let themselves feel, and they didn’t expose themselves emotionally, physically. Risks were always anticipated, weighed, calculated. “I don’t know. I was an only child.”

“I never knew that.”

She shrugged. “We never talked about our personal lives. Never discussed childhood, or our families.”

They passed the castello, the sun drenching the stones of the ruins, the intense sun playing over the lava rock, patterning the stones shades of gold and bronze.

“Your parents?” he asked now.

“Divorced. They separated when I was fairly young.”

Cass drew a sharp jagged breath, breathing in the warm air fragrant with sweet dry summer grasses. “Your father passed away a number of years ago, didn’t he?”

“Thirteen years ago. I’d just turned twenty-five.”

Cass glanced up at Maximos. “Were you close?”

“Yes.”

Maximos’s dark, watchful gaze rested on her face. “Were you close with your father?”

She hesitated a split second, trying to see her father’s face, trying to remember something of him other than her mother’s tears when he left. “No.” She tried to smile, the grown-up smile of one coming to terms with the past, but it wasn’t easy. Even now, after all these years. “He left us when I was still in school. He never came back. I…” She drew a breath and pressed on. “I never saw him again.”

Maximos stopped walking. “You’ve never seen him again?”

She felt that odd pucker of pain in her heart, the kind of pain that’s old, not fresh, a pain that has been part of you so long it’s merely a scar you remember your old self by. “No.”

“How could he leave you?” Maximos asked so gently, so quietly that tears pricked her eyes.

You did, she almost said, but she bit back the words, looked away, gazed out at what was left of the castello.

You could almost feel the ghost of the past here, she thought, stepping up onto a fallen stone. The air felt thick, saturated by time and the civilizations come and gone. The weight of time made her realize how insignificant she was. She might want to feel big and important, but no one lived forever. Not even the great leaders and philosophers lived forever.

She’d be gone before she knew it, that they’d all be gone and maybe this was the secret of places like Sicily, maybe this was what allowed the Sicilians so much passion and intensity. You only had today. So you had to live today.

“You’re so good with your family,” Cass said, her voice faint in the warm breeze. “Didn’t you ever want to get married?”

Maximos’s expression was shuttered. “You don’t have to be married to be happy.”

“Did I ever make you happy?”

“Yes.”

“But you were afraid of committing to me?”

“I was never afraid of a girl like you,” he answered, his voice deepening, his features hard, chiseled.

“A girl? I’m thirty, Maximos!”

“You might be thirty, but you’re still a little girl on the inside.”

His words made her heart ache. He made her remember who she’d been as a child, how she’d tried to assume the role of the adult, the parent, for her mother’s sake. Her mother had never been able to cope after her father left and it was Cass’s job to patch things up, to get things done.

“I can see the little girl in your eyes,” he added, and the gentleness in his voice nearly undid her. “You’re waiting for someone to come home.”

“Please,” she whispered, looking away, “I don’t—” She broke off, licked the inside of her lower lip, her chest heavy with emotion. “I’m not. Not anymore.” She turned her head, fixed a steady gaze on him. “I’ve learned.”

“Learned what?” he asked, studying her just as intently.

She remembered the last six months, the sorrow at losing Maximos, the grief over the miscarriage, the deep sadness that didn’t seem to go away. She’d fall apart, repair herself, patching herself together to get to work, accomplish a few things, but before she knew it, she’d be falling apart again, sitting at her desk with the glorious view of Rome and be fighting for survival.

Struggling to not drown.

Battling to keep her mind sane.

She didn’t know how not to miss Maximos. Didn’t know how to stop loving someone who’d become the only family she’d known in years.

When he left her it was like death but he hadn’t died. If they’d been married, people would call it a divorce. But she wasn’t his wife.

She was nothing. And she became nothing. And she’d learned nothing from the pain but not to want or need anyone again.

“Learned what?” he repeated.

She gave her head a slight shake, trying to chase away the dark clouds in her head, the memories that never got easier. “All things are possible.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, met his gaze calmly, praying he didn’t see the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I can bear all things.”

He swore softly and reached for her, wrapping an arm around her, bringing her firmly forward until she was against him. Hip to hip, knee to knee, he completely dwarfed her, his body taller, bigger, stronger. And standing so close, she felt the tension running through him, as well as that thread of hot emotion, the emotion he didn’t like, didn’t want, but couldn’t seem to control now that it was loose.

His head dropped, and she turned her face up to his even as his face dipped, his lips brushing hers. From anybody else the kiss would have been so brief she would have said it was nothing, but that slight caress of his mouth on hers was hot, sharp, fierce and her stomach tightened, legs trembling a little at the shock of it all.

His gaze followed the path of his lips, the fiery dark depths touching her lips, and then the pulse at the base of her throat. “That’s a terrible lesson to learn,” he mouthed against her throat, his voice deep, rough, a husky edge that made her feel far too much.

She wouldn’t cry. There was no reason to cry now. “But practical.”

“Practical.” He said the word as if it amused him. “Practical, sensible, Cassandra. No wonder you’ve been so incredibly successful.”

Cass stepped away from his arms. The warmth of his body weakened her defenses. She was far better standing apart from him, on her own two feet and swiftly she dropped her sunglasses back onto the bridge of her nose, concealing her eyes. “Sensible?”

“It’s not a bad word.”

“No, but…” Her lips pursed as she considered the past several years, her history with Maximos, and she shook her head regretfully. They might know each other’s bodies, but they didn’t understand each other’s minds and hearts. “When have I ever been sensible?”

“At work. With your accounts.”

Cass laughed softly. “You don’t know me very well, do you?”

He plucked the sunglasses from her face, pocketing them. “Better than most, I’d say.”

“Then if you know me so well, you should know I’m anything but sensible.” She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. “What makes me good at work is that I’m daring, not sensible. I don’t play it safe, Maximos. I never have. I’ve won awards because I’m not just creative, I’m a risk-taker. When other people pull back, I go for it. Where others play safe, I aim for the jugular.”

She lifted her hand to shield her eyes, the sun reflecting brilliantly off the rocks of the ruins. “But I thought you knew that about me. Thought that was one of the things you—” and she drew a quick breath “—liked about me. But along with other things, I’ve discovered I was wrong.”

“Not that wrong.”

A brutal lump filled her throat. “Yet you didn’t like me. Not as much as I’d thought.” She fought hard to swallow.

“You’re wrong about that, too.” His mouth curved, the corners lifting in a crooked, self-deprecating smile. “I liked everything about you.”

I liked everything about you.

Undone, she averted her head, the warm breeze lifting a loose tendril of her hair, blowing it across her face but Cass couldn’t be bothered to tuck it behind her ear.

If only she could go back in time. She wanted the old Cass back, the one that was firm, strong, decisive. That Cass would know what to do now. That one would be able to handle all these conflicting emotions.

What had changed her so much? What had shattered her confidence?

Slowly, unsteadily, she tucked the loose tendril of hair behind her ear.

She had wanted more, so much more from him, and she didn’t even know how to ask for more—she’d never asked for more from anyone—and he never volunteered it.

The truth was, at work she was aggressive, she knew what she wanted, she went after what she wanted, but at home…it was something else entirely. At home she wasn’t sure about the rules. How did one get more? How did a woman get what she needed?

Was she to ask? Demand? Was it overstepping her boundaries to express what she needed?

“You say that now,” she said, trying to keep her tone light, trying to cover what he did to her. And her heart.

“But facts disagree.”

He shot her an assessing glance. “Maybe you never had all the facts.”

“And what are those facts?”

Maximos regarded her for a long silent moment, the hot sun beating down overhead, the dry grass of the field biting at Cass’s ankles. “I was a fan of your work for three years before you were signed to handle Italia Motors’ new European ad campaign. I hand-selected you to manage our account, and was determined to have you no matter what the cost.” He hesitated, his dark gaze settling on her face. “And I loved your mind before I even knew you had a face and body.”

She said nothing, not knowing what to say.

“I can tell you about your biggest campaigns before we signed you,” Maximos continued. “The campaign for PUMA and Tag Heuer. The stunning ads for GC distillery, they were my favorite—so bold, so dramatic and yet emotional. Your vision and ability to deliver won me over.”

He paused, expression shuttered. “And then I met you, and you were even more incredible in person. I never had any intention of sleeping with you. But that night we finally met in New York I knew I’d never meet anyone like you again. You were…perfect.”

Her eyes burned. She ground her teeth together. She wanted her sunglasses, needed her sunglasses, needed to cover her face because she felt completely exposed. “So perfect you left me when I told you how much I loved you.”

“No. So perfect I knew you would be much better off without me.”

“That’s bullshit.” Anger rushed through her. Anger and hurt and defiance. “That’s a cop-out. You don’t care for someone and then push them away because they’re what…perfect? Christ, Maximos! You broke my heart. You broke me. Why? Because I was so perfect?”

She walked away from him as fast as she could before the tears could have a chance to well up. She wasn’t going to fall apart, not now, not any more.

Maximos was one of those men who for whatever reason couldn’t commit. One of those men who loved but was afraid to risk, afraid of being hurt. He was the kind of man who’d always find a reason why things couldn’t work out.

She didn’t want that, didn’t need that.

And all of a sudden she understood. All of a sudden she knew.

It was so simple. It made so much sense.

She’d only come here this weekend to prove a point. Not to him. But to herself. Her. Oh my God. How ridiculous was that?

Cass dragged a hand through her hair, shocked. She’d come to Sicily determined to get Maximos back, determined to win him over despite the hurt, the rejection, the pain because she needed to prove she was lovable.

She needed to prove she wasn’t easy to forget.

Needing to prove she wasn’t her mother, and wasn’t going to be left like her mother, and wouldn’t be destroyed the way her father had broken her mother, or misled by her mother’s lover who behaved as if he were single but actually had a family stashed away elsewhere…

Cass, the pragmatic kid who’d taken charge of her mother’s shattered world, who believed she’d be smarter than her mother, and stronger, had in the end been her mother. In love. Out of love.

She’d picked a man that was nothing short of unavailable—and maybe he wasn’t married like her mother’s lover, Edward—but here she was, trying to make Maximos want her…need her…love her…even when it was obvious he couldn’t.