Latin Lovers: Hot-Blooded Sicilians: Valentino's Love-Child / The Sicilian Doctor's Proposal / Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride

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.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LESS CERTAIN OF HER ABILITY to withstand Tino’s company unscathed than she had been in the safety of her art classroom, Faith rang the doorbell of the big villa.

The door opened almost immediately, making her heart skip a beat. However, it was only Giosue on the other side.

Relief flooded her, making her smile genuine. “Good evening, Gio.”

“Bueno sera, signora.”

She handed him a small gift.

“What is this?” he asked, his voice tinged with anticipation mixed with confusion.

“It is traditional to give one’s dinner host a gift. I forgot yours when you invited me before, so I’ve brought it tonight along with one for your grandmother.”

“Because this time she invited you?”

“Exactly.”

Gio looked at the present and then up at her, his eyes shining. “Wow. Can I open it now?” She nodded.

He ripped the package apart with the enthusiasm usually reserved for the young and sucked in a breath as he saw what was inside. They were leather gardening gloves made to fit a child’s hands.

“I didn’t know if you already had a pair … “

“I do, but they are made of cloth and not nearly so nice. Come, I want to show Nonno.”

She smiled, glad her gift had gone over so well, and followed Gio to the lanai, Agata’s favorite place to entertain. When they arrived, she saw both Agata and Rocco, but no Tino.

Relieved at what she was sure would be only a temporary respite, Faith watched Gio run to his grandfather to show him the new gloves.

Agata smiled in welcome and hugged Faith, kissing both her cheeks. “It is good to see you.”

“Come, Mama, you speak as if it had been weeks rather than a few days since the last time you saw your friend.” There was an edge to Tino’s voice that Faith could not miss.

She wondered if Agata noticed, but the older woman seemed to be oblivious.

Shaking her head at her son, who had just arrived, she said, “Faith is a dear friend I would see every day if I could. She is good for Gio too.”

“Save your matchmaking attempts for someone susceptible, Mama. I do not believe Faith likes me at all.”

Oh, he was in fine form tonight. Faith refused to rise to the bait and show her chagrin at his words.

“Nonsense. You’re my son, what is not to like?” Agata demanded.

Faith could make a list, but she forebore doing so for Agata’s sake. See? She could handle this. She would handle this.

Her desire to strangle Tino for his leading comment morphed to unwilling concern as she saw how haggard he looked. Oh, he was his usual gorgeous self, but there was a certain cast to his skin and lines around his eyes that were not usually there—all of it bespeaking a bone-deep exhaustion.

“You look tired,” she blurted out.

“Si, this one has been working too many hours. Like a man possessed, he returns to his office after our little Gio goes to sleep and works into the early hours before returning home.”

“I told you, I have some things going on that require extra attention right now.”

Agata frowned. “You say that to your father and maybe he will believe you. Men! But I am your mother and you are behaving much the same as you did after Maura’s death. I do not understand it.”

“There is nothing to understand. I am not grieving, I am working.” He said it with so much force, Faith couldn’t help believing.

Agata did not look so convinced. But then, she was a mother and tended to see the softer side of her child, even if such a side did not exist.

“Is the new venture going well?”

“Yes.” Tino’s voice was clipped and the look he threw his mother was filled with frustration. “Regardless of what my family thinks, I am damn good at my job.”

Rocco had joined them and was shaking his head. “Of course we know you are a success. How could you be anything else? You are my son, no? And I am the greatest vintner in Sicily. Why should you not be a businessman of equal talent? You are a Grisafi.”

Faith was tempted to laugh, but knew Rocco would not take it well. He was serious. Of course. But Faith had no problem seeing where Tino got his arrogance from.

“He is that,” Agata said with asperity. “Which means that in this home, he is my son, not some bigshot businessman. And you are my husband, not the maker of the best wines in the country.”

“Yes, of course.” Rocco did not look the least cowed, but sounded more than willing to be compliant.

Agata shook her head. “Men!”

It was a word she said often over the next few hours, with the same slightly exasperated and amused tone. Faith was gratified that despite the stress of being around Tino, she found the evening highly entertaining and surprisingly comfortable.

So long as she avoided direct contact with her former lover, that is. It wasn’t easy in such a small group.

And Tino wasn’t helping. He had to know she found being around him difficult, but he engaged her in conversation, and she barely avoided sitting beside him at dinner. In that, Gio was her unwitting accomplice.

However, once dinner had been eaten, it was clear that Gio and Agata both intended to see that Faith and Tino spend as much time together as possible.

Right now she was being given a tour of the vineyard, ostensibly by Rocco. Only, the old man and Gio often moved ahead, or lingered behind, leaving her alone with Tino for brief spurts of time.

“You never answered my mother’s question,” Tino said during one of those moments.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“She asked what there was about me not to like.”

“She’s biased. She’s your mother.”

“Si, but that’s not the point.”

“And what is the point?” “That you never answered her question.” “She didn’t seem bothered by that.” The older woman had not brought it up again. “Perhaps not, but I am.”

“That’s too bad. I’m not here to visit with you, Tino.” “My family will be disappointed. They are matchmaking.” “In vain.”

“Yes, but won’t you tell me why?”

He was insane. He was the one who refused to consider marriage. Ultimately, wasn’t that a far more effective deterrent to his family’s attempts at matchmaking than her supposed dislike of him?

“You’re arrogant.”

“I am a Grisafi.”

“So, it comes with the territory?”

“Definitely.”

She rolled her eyes.

“What else?”

“I never said I didn’t like you, Tino.” And she couldn’t do so now in honesty. He’d hurt her, but she did like him. She loved the callous lout, but yes, she liked him, too. Just not some of his attitudes.

“You said you never wanted to see me again.”

“I said our affair was over.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Visiting your family, Tino. Not you!”

“You could have arranged to come a different night.”

“Why should I?”

He laughed, the sound too sexy for her peace of mind. And highly annoying. “Ah, proving me wrong, Faith? Making sure that I know I don’t matter enough for you to avoid dinner in my home?”

“I told you I wouldn’t give up my friendship with your mother or son.”

“You wanted to see me, or you would not have come tonight.” He brushed her cheek with his hand. “Admit it.”

She jumped back from the gentle touch that felt like a brand. “If I hadn’t come, your parents would have suspected something was wrong between us. I would think you would have realized that and tried to avoid it. You could have made arrangements to be gone tonight without causing suspicion.”

“I had no desire to do so.” He shrugged, looking scarily determined.

“I don’t see why.”

“You have refused to answer my calls for the past week.”

“That should have given you a message.”

“It did. Something is wrong and I want to know what.”

“I told you.”

“You want more or nothing at all.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot give you marriage, Faith.”

“You would be surprised at what you are capable of giving in the right circumstances, Tino.” Why she said it, she didn’t know.

The need to challenge him?

“What circumstances would those be?”

She shook her head, absolutely not going there right now. “Just leave it alone.”

“I cannot.”

“You have to.”

“I know about your lost husband and child. I am sorry.

If I could take that old pain away, I would. But I cannot fill the gap they left in your life. That is not in my power.”

Did he really believe that? And here she’d thought he was smart. “You have your own past tragedies to deal with,” was all she said.

He did not get a chance to answer because they caught up with Gio and Rocco. Faith was given a fascinating description of what happened to the grapes once they were picked. She found it difficult to focus on, however with Tino a brooding presence beside her.

They were once again on their own as Gio and his grandfather had hurried back to the house much too quickly for Faith to keep up in her high-heeled sandals. “How did you find out about Taylish and Kaden?” she asked, posing the question to Tino she could not get out of her mind.

“My mother.”

Stunned, Faith stopped walking altogether. She could not imagine Agata sharing Faith’s confidences without a prompting to do so. Not even in the effort to matchmake. “You asked her?”

“Yes.” Tino stood only a couple of feet away, but the moonlight was not strong enough to illuminate the expression in his eyes.

She could feel its intensity though.

“Wasn’t that dangerous?”

“In what way?”

She rolled her eyes, though she doubted he could see it. “Don’t play dumb. It showed a more-than-passing interest in me.”

Something he’d said he didn’t want his mother to get wind of.

“It was worse than that, even,” he said, sounding rueful, but not particularly bothered. “I allowed it to slip that we had discussed the statue in my bedroom.”

Did he have any idea what he was revealing of his inner thoughts? Tino—Mr. Certainty, the man who never changed his mind and always knew best—was acting as if he did not know his own mind. Acting in direct opposition to his stated purpose. Maybe he had a deeper insight into the long-term effect of his words than she did.

She shook her head. “You’re kidding.”

“Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me.” He did not shrug, but the negligent movement was there in his voice.

“I guess,” she said with emphasis. “I don’t see your mother making a list of wedding guests as you feared.”

“She is matchmaking, but being surprisingly low-key about it.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“That she is matchmaking?”

“Yes.” What the heck did he think she meant?

“So long as she maintains subtlety and does not make it into a family argument of dramatic proportions, no.”

Maybe she understood his insouciance better now. “In other words, as long as it’s easy for you to avoid the outcome she is looking for.”