Latin Lovers: Hot-Blooded Sicilians: Valentino's Love-Child / The Sicilian Doctor's Proposal / Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride
“You could put it that way.”
“I just did.”
“Si.”
“Don’t play with me, Tino.” He closed the distance between them but did not touch her. “I am not playing. I want you back.” “As your mistress.” “And my friend.”
“That’s not what you told your mother.” “I explained that.”
“And I found your explanation lacking.” “Faith—”
Lucky for her, because she really didn’t want to get into this right now—or ever really—Giosue came running up. “You two are too slow. Nonna said we could swim if you wanted, signora.”
Faith moved toward Gio, putting distance between herself and his father once again. “Actually, I think it is time I returned home.”
There was that look, the disappointment Faith hated to see, but Gio did not attempt to cajole her. He simply nodded and looked down at the ground.
And it was more effective than any type of whining might have been.
She grabbed his hand and said, “Maybe just a short swim. All right?”
He looked up at her, eyes shining. “Really, signora?”
“Yes.”
“We can play water ball. Zio Calogero sent me a new net.”
Faith had seen the basketball net attached to the side of the pool on a short pole. “That sounds like fun.”
“Yes, it does.” Tino took Gio’s other hand. “Your papa will join you as well. Provided I am invited?”
“Of course, Papa.” Gio’s voice rang with joy.
And why shouldn’t it? This was exactly what her favorite pupil wanted—the three of them together. Faith had wanted it, too, but she couldn’t fight a ghost.
Tension filled her as she contemplated the next thirty minutes. She hadn’t counted on Tino joining them in the pool, but she would have to deal with it. She wasn’t about to renege on her promise to Gio. Though, for the first time in her life she was seriously tempted to back out on a commitment she’d made to a child.
Fifteen minutes later she was desperate enough to do so.
Tino had been teasing her, touching her under the guise of the game. A caress down her arm. A hand cupped over her hip. An arm around her waist, ostensibly to stop her from going under. But the final straw was when he brushed his lips over the sensitive spot behind her ear and whispered that he wanted her.
She shoved herself away from him and climbed out of the pool in the space of a couple seconds.
“Signora, where are you going?”
“It is time for me to leave.” She tried to keep the frustration and anger she felt from her voice. It was not Gio’s fault his father was a fiend.
“But why?” The little boy’s eyes widened with confusion. “We were having fun.”
“Si. I thought we were having a great deal of fun,” Tino said with a purr.
“Really?” she asked—this time making no effort to hide her displeasure. “I’ll leave it to you to explain to your son why I need to leave, then.”
It was Tino’s turn to look confused and he was the mirror image of his son in that moment, only older. Would their child take after him or her? What was she thinking about? This was not the time to consider whether the baby in her womb would resemble its father. Not when she wanted to bean the man.
Without another word, she spun on her heel and stormed to the cabana where she changed back into her clothes. A shower would have to wait until she got home.
She left moments later after hugging Agata and a hastily dried Gio. Rocco had gone to check on something in the wine cellars.
Her goodbye to Tino was perfunctory and verbal only.
Valentino stood outside Faith’s apartment in Pizzolato, uncharacteristically hesitant to knock. The evening before had been an exercise in frustration for him. Every time he got a step closer to Faith, she took two backward. And he did not understand why.
He’d used their time in the pool to remind her of what they were both missing. Valentino was sure it had been working, too. Faith’s breath had shortened, her nipples growing hard under her one-piece swimsuit. Heaven above knew he’d been hard enough to drill through cement. But then she had pushed away from him with the clear intent to reject and climbed from the pool, saying she had to go. She didn’t back down, either, not even when Gio looked heartbroken.
She’d left him there to explain her precipitous departure to his upset son.
What the hell was going on with her?
It was not like her to be so unfeeling. But the look she’d given him could have stripped paint.
It had been weeks since they made love in his family home, but it was not merely her body he craved. He missed her. Like an ache in his gut that no medication could take away. Which was why he was here right now, ready to make it right.
Whatever it was.
He gave the closed door a glare. What was he? A wimp? He did not think so. Not Valentino Grisafi.
He knocked on the door. Loudly.
His mother had told him that Faith got caught up in her work and didn’t hear the door lots of times. That she worked whenever the mood struck her, the hour of the day not a deterrent no matter how late or early. She’d said a lot more about Faith.
Add this knowledge to everything she’d told him previously about TK, and Valentino had a completely new picture of his lover, an image that convicted him about how little he’d known before. Not that it should have mattered, but with Faith it did. Their relationship would be a year old in two more weeks, and he didn’t want to spend the anniversary of their first date grieving her loss.
Taking a deep breath, he knocked again.
“Coming,” came from inside.
A few seconds later the door swung open. “Agata, I wasn’t expect—”
“My mother is at a fundraising meeting for Giosue’s school, I believe.”
Faith looked at him with something like resignation and sighed. “Yes. That’s what I thought she was doing.”
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“Will you go away if I don’t?”
“No.”
“Why do you want to come in? You’ve never stepped foot in my building, much less my apartment. I didn’t think you even knew where I lived.”
He hadn’t. He’d had to ask his mother, but Faith didn’t need to know that. “I want to see where you work.”
She grimaced, but stepped back. He followed her into the apartment. It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small, either. She’d converted the main living area, which opened to a glassed-in balcony, into her studio. The half-glass ceiling bathed the room in the glow of natural light, and he could easily see why she’d picked this location to work.
Although the area was clearly a working studio, she had created a conversation area in one corner with a love seat and two chairs around a low table decorated with traditional Sicilian tiles.
He settled into one of the chairs after declining a drink. “Is my mother the only person who visits you here?”
“No, a couple of the teachers from the school have been by, as well, but since the school day is not yet over …” She let her explanation trail off.
“What about other artists?” He was trying to get a picture of her life, but it was still pretty fuzzy and that bothered him.
She gave a half shrug. “I’m a private person.”
“You always came off as friendly and outgoing to me.”
She wiped at a spot of clay on her hand with the rag she held as she took the seat farthest from his. “Yes, well, maybe I should say that TK is a private person. I have some friends in the artistic community, but none of them live close enough to drop in during the middle of the day.”
He considered this and what she had said about other teachers coming over sometimes, which he read to mean rarely. “You’re a very solitary person, aren’t you?”
She shook her head, not in negation, but as if she couldn’t think what to say. “Why are you here, Tino?”
After last night she could ask that?
“I miss you.” There. The bald-faced truth.
“I don’t see why you should.” She stiffened, drawing herself up into a ramrod sitting posture. “You still have your hand.”
Shock struck him like a bolt of lightning, making it hard to breathe for just a second. “That is crude, and implies our relationship is nothing but mechanical sex.”
“We no longer have a relationship.”
He did not accept that, but to say so would violate their initial agreement. He decided to change the subject instead.
“Are those the pieces my mother is salivating to see?” he asked, referring to several cloth-covered shapes around the room.
“Yes. I told her she could see them when they are finished.”
Sharp curiosity filled him. “She likes to see your work in progress.” He wanted to see Faith’s work. “Not this time.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want her to see them before they are cast and glazed.”
“You are using the clay as models?”
“For some. There will be a numbered series cast before I break the mold for several, but some will be fired as is and be one-of-a-kind pieces.”
“I know very little about your process.” Even less than he knew about her.
“True.” She didn’t look inclined to elaborate.
But didn’t most people enjoy rhapsodizing about their passions? From the way her work took over her home, he assumed her art was Faith’s biggest passion. “Perhaps you would care to change that now?”
“I don’t think so.”
Her negative response stunned him. Though why it should, in the face of the way she’d been behaving, he didn’t know. He kept expecting her to go back to acting the way she had until a few short weeks ago. “You don’t feel like talking about your work?”
“I don’t feel like talking to you.”
“Don’t be like that, carina.” He didn’t want to examine the way that made him feel, but it was not good. “We are friends.”
“That’s not what you told your mother.”
Must she keep harping on that one moment in time, an answer to his mother’s questioning he was past regretting and into mentally banging his head against a wall? “I was protecting myself, I admit it. But I was trying to protect us too, Faith. What would you have had me tell her?”
“The truth?”
“That we are lovers?” He did not think so.
She glared, her eyes snapping with anger and something akin to disgust. “That wouldn’t be true, though, would it?”
“We are lovers, perhaps on hiatus, but still together.”
“You are delusional. We are not and never were lovers.”
“Now who is being delusional?”
She stood up, her hands fisted at her sides. “You have to give more than sex to be considered someone’s lover. We were sex partners. Now we are past acquaintances.”
“That is not true. We have more than sex between us.” After all, that “more” had cost him the sleep of several nights.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, our friendship.”
“Again, let me refer you to that afternoon by the pool at your family home. You told your mother we were not friends.”
“I made a mistake.” There, he had said it. “I am sorry,” he gritted.
“That was really hard for you, wasn’t it?” He just looked at her.
“Admitting you were wrong isn’t your thing.” “It doesn’t happen very often.” “Being wrong or admitting it?” she asked with dark amusement.
“Both.”
“I don’t suppose it does.”
He too stood, taking her by the arms and standing close. “Let me back in, Faith. I need you.” Those last three words were said even less frequently than an apology by him.
Tears filled her eyes. “I can’t, Tino.”
“Why not?”
She just shook her head.
“Tell me what is wrong. Let me make it right.” He felt like he was drowning, but that wasn’t right. He did not want this thing between them to end, but if it did, it shouldn’t be this wrenching.
“You can’t make it right.”
“I can try.”
“Can you love me? Can you make me your wife?” Something inside him shattered. “No.” “Then you can’t fix it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
FAITH spent the next few days in a borderline state where the numbness of loss fought the tendrils of hope each day her pregnancy continued. She missed Tino. She wanted him—both emotionally and physically. She craved his touch, but not in a sexual way, and he didn’t want her to give him anything else. She wanted to be held, cuddled and comforted as her body went through the changes pregnancy brought. She wanted someone to talk to in the evenings when she found herself too tired to create but too restless to sleep.
She had not realized how much his presence in her life staved off the loneliness, until he was gone. She found herself in a pathetic state of anticipation every time she spoke to Agata, hoping the Sicilian woman would drop news about her oldest son.
Faith’s morning sickness had gotten worse the past few days, but she was more adamant than ever she would not give up her job teaching. She’d lost Tino. She didn’t think she could stand to lose her only contact with his son, as well. When had the little boy become so important to her? She didn’t know, but she could not deny that the love she felt for the child growing inside her was in equal intensity for the emotion she felt toward her former lover’s son.
One evening, almost a week after Tino had left her apartment, she got a phone call from Agata.
“Ciao, bella. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“You were not home today.”
“No, I went shopping in Marsala.” She’d needed to get out. To be around other people. There were moments when she felt she was going mad from loneliness.
“I stopped by hoping to have lunch.”
“Oh,” Faith said with genuine regret. “I’m so sorry I missed you.”
“Yes, well, I would only have begged you to show me your work.”
Faith laughed. “Soon.” She knew just how she was going to announce her pregnancy to her dear friend, but not until the risky first trimester was past.
How she was going to tell Agata that the baby was Tino’s was less clear however.
“I would like that.” There was an emotional note in Agata’s tone that surprised Faith, but maybe it shouldn’t have.
She’d never known another human being as connected to her art as the older woman. Not even Taylish had understood the emotion behind the pieces the way Agata did.
“So, how about lunch tomorrow?” Agata asked.
“That would be lovely.”
They rang off and Faith turned to face her empty apartment, wondering if her newfound evening nausea would allow her to eat an evening meal.
Valentino’s mother took the seat beside where he watched his son frolic in the pool with his papa.
The worried expression on her face concerned Valentino. He knew she had planned to call Faith. “Mama, what is the matter?”
His mother twisted her hands in an uncharacteristic display of nerves but did not answer.
“Mama.”
She looked up as if just realizing he was sitting there. “Oh, did you say something, son?”
“I asked if there was anything the matter.”
“Nothing bad. Well, there may well be ramifications, but I’m in a quandary and do not know what to do.”
“About what?” he asked with some impatience. Was this about Faith?
His mother sighed heavily. “I did something I should not have.”
“What?”
“I do not think I should say.”
Valentino waited patiently. He knew his mother. She would not have said anything if she did not want to confess to someone. Apparently, he was that someone. And if it was related to Faith in any way, he was glad.
Not that he should be pining over the woman who dumped him like yesterday’s garbage. She’d thrown down her ultimatum and he had refused terms. She’d been unwilling to negotiate—that should be the end of it.
Still, he waited with uncomfortable anticipation for his mother to speak.
She sighed again. Fidgeted some more and then sighed a third time. “I have a key to Faith’s apartment.”
“Ah.” But he didn’t feel nearly as insouciant as he sounded. His mother had a key to his lover’s apartment, but he did not. Nor did Faith have a key to his apartment in Marsala. Why not? Why was it that his mother had spent more time in Faith’s studio than he had?
They were friends. They did not limit their time together to sex. So, why had he never seen any of her works in progress? Why had he not known she was the highly successful sculptor TK?
“I stopped by today. Unannounced.”
“I see.” Though he didn’t.
“I let myself in, you know, thinking she might be back soon.” Mama shuddered. “I did a terrible thing.”
“You are not the criminal type. I doubt what you did was terrible.”
“But it was, my son. I wanted so badly to see Faith’s newest work.”
“You peeked.”
“Yes, and that is bad enough—but in looking at her work, I revealed a secret she is clearly not ready to share.”
“A secret?” What kind of secret? Had Faith been making clay tiles of the fifty states because she missed her homeland? What?
“Si. A secret. I have betrayed my friend.”
“Mama, whatever it is, I am sure it will be fine. Faith loves you. She will forgive you.” If only Faith was as tolerant of her lover.
“But a woman has the right to determine the timing of when she will share such news with others. I have, what is that saying your brother uses—oh, yes—I have stolen her thunder. I cannot pretend not to know when she tells me, for that would be a lie. I cannot lie to my friend.” She grimaced. “I did tell her I still wanted to see her work and I do. I stopped looking after the first one because I knew. I knew what it meant.”
Valentino ground his teeth and tried not to glare at his mother with impatience. “What what meant?”
“The statue. It is so clear to see. You could not miss it,” she said, as if trying to convince Valentino.
“I am sure you are right. What was the statue of?” he asked without being able to help himself.
“It is just that I am so worried. If it means what I think, and I’m sure it does—and there is no father in sight. Things are going to get difficult for my friend.”
“What does a priest have to do with Faith?”
“A priest? Who said anything about a priest? Faith is Lutheran. They have pastors, I believe.”
“Mama, I don’t understand. You said ‘father.’”
“Yes, the father of her child.”
“Child? Faith has no children. Her unborn baby died in the accident with her husband.”
“The baby inside her now, Valentino.”
Valentino’s chest grew tight. Although he knew he was breathing, it felt like all the oxygen had disappeared from the air. “Are you saying you believe Faith is pregnant?”
“Of course that is what I have been saying. Weren’t you listening? I should never have snooped. Now when she tells me, I will have to admit I already guessed. She will be let down.”
His mother continued to talk, but Valentino did not hear what she said. He had surged to his feet and was trying to rush across the brickwork of the patio. But his movements were uncoordinated and jerky as his mother’s words reverberated inside his head like clanging cymbals in a discordant rhythm.
Faith was pregnant?
His Faith? The woman who said she did not want to see him anymore. The one who had ended their relationship, such as it was.
He shook his head, but the blanket of shock refused to be dislodged.
He was going to be a father again? Now? When he had thought never to remarry, when he had believed Giosue would be his only child. It was unreal but not. Part of him accepted the news with an atavistic instinct of rightness. He had no doubt the baby was his. Dismiss him though she had tried to do, Faith was his. She had been since the moment they met. Hell, a primal part of him claimed she always had been—even before they knew each other.
Even the most rational part of his mind accepted that she was his now. She had been with no one else since their first time together, and probably for a long time before that.
He yanked open the door of his Jaguar and climbed inside, slamming it again as he started the car with a loud roar of the engine, and then tearing out of the drive.
How was she pregnant?
They used birth control. Religiously. Rather, he did. Still, there had only been a handful of times that their protection had not been one hundred percent. After each slip, he would be beset by guilt, and work extrahard in future to make sure they were covered.
With a sense of inevitability, he realized one of those times had not been too long ago.
He’d taken Faith to dinner at a favorite trattoria. Instead of sitting outside, so they could watch people on the street—as Faith was wont to do—Valentino had asked for some privacy. They had been given a table in the back corner, the restaurant lighting barely reaching into the shadows that surrounded it. The light from the single candle in the center of the table set a romantic mood.
At least, he’d thought so.
Faith frowned as he helped her take her seat. “I know our relationship isn’t common knowledge, but do we have to hide in the dark?”
He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “I thought we could entertain ourselves over dinner, rather than finding our amusement in watching other people.”
The embarrassing truth was that Faith liked people-watching—sometimes too much. She paid more attention to the ones surrounding them than to him, and he did not like that. Tonight he was determined to have her entire focus. If it took seducing her publicly, so be it.
And that is exactly what he did, starting with a kiss just below the shell of her ear, using both teeth and tongue as well as his lips.
She was shivering and had made a small whimpering sound by the time he finished and took his own seat across the small table from her.
“Considering what you apparently have planned for our entertainment, I now understand why you asked for a table hidden away from curious eyes.” Faith smoothed her top, accentuating the way the silky fabric clung to her breasts and exposing hardened nipples, despite two thin layers of fabric over them.
“You think you can survive one evening without people-watching?” he asked, his voice husky with the desire sparking his senses.
“I have a feeling you can make it worth my while.”
“You must be psychic,” he teased. “For I plan to.”
“Call it an educated guess. I’ve been at the receiving end of your tender mercies too often to discount their effect.”
“Good.” He had every intention of lavishing those mercies on her tonight.
They teased each other over dinner, working their desire to a fever pitch. He was tempted to find an even darker corner and bring them both to completion right then and there. He refrained, determined to make the night a memorable one for his beautiful lover.
Her peacock-blue eyes were glazed with passion, her lips swollen as if they’d been kissed, and her breathing was shallow and quick. Her nipples were so hard they created shoals in the fabric over them and she’d squirmed in her seat more than once.
“Having trouble, carina americana mia?” He meant his voice to be joking, but it came out deep and sensual instead.
A competitive glint shone in her gaze along with the passion. “I think no more than you.”
She’d definitely done her utmost to turn him inside out, and she had succeeded.
He reached across the table and brushed her cheek in a rare public display of affection. “I think it is time to make our way to my apartment.”
“Yes.”
Back in his apartment, they wasted no time in disposing of their clothing, but once they landed naked on the bed, he forced a slowing of the pace. It wasn’t easy, he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her wet, silken depths, but there was more to making love than reaching an orgasm.
There was the element of driving your partner out of her mind.