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

Which only went to show that he had to become serious about getting their relationship back on track.

Or he would have to let her go, and that was not something he wanted to do.

The craving he felt to hear her voice filled him with anger at himself along with a sense of helplessness he refused to give in to. He had been fighting the urge to sleep all night with her since the beginning. Never before had he been tempted not to be home in the morning for his son to wake up to because of a woman. He’d known giving in would come with a cost, but he had not expected it to be his sanity.

It had felt right taking her to his bed in the family home. Too right. Now he questioned his intelligence in doing so. For that insanely stupid choice had come at an emotional cost, as well, one he had no right to pay.

If he were a truly honorable man, he would let her go completely. He’d told himself so over and over again while in New York. What did it say for his inner strength that he could not do it?

Certainly it was nothing to be proud of.

Physically distancing himself from her was not the same as regrouped emotions, he had learned. His need to see her grew with each day even as he fought it. He might have won, but he hungered for not only the sound of her voice, but the shiver of her laughter and the feel of her skin. He was like a drug addict shaking for his next fix.

It would be a couple of days at least before he could go to her, too. Agonizing days if those in New York were anything to go by. But Gio had missed his papa and had to be Valentino’s first consideration.

Of course, if he left when his son was sleeping, Gio would be missing nothing.

The thought derailed from its already shaky tracks as he recognized the melodious laughter mingled with his mother’s voice coming from the terrace. He stood frozen, uncharacteristically unsure of what to do. No doubts about what he wanted to do. He wanted to see Faith. But what should he do?

His decision was taken from him by his mother’s voice. “Valentino, figlio mio, is that you?”

“Si, Mama. It is me.”

“Come out here.”

He had no choice but to obey. He might be thirty years old, but a Sicilian man knew better than to dismiss a direct command from his mother. It would hurt her and cause her distress. Hurting those he loved was something he avoided at all costs. Even when it was his peace of mind at stake, like now.

Walking out onto the terrace, he found not only his mother and Faith, but his father and Giosue as well.

His son jumped up from where he’d been dangling his feet in the water beside Faith and came running full tilt at Valentino. “Papa, Papa … you are home!”

“Si, I am home and glad to be here.” He swung his son high into his arms and hugged the wiggling, eight-year-old body to his.

“I missed you, Papa. Zio Calogero should not call you to New York.”

“Sometimes it is necessary, cucciola. You know this.”

His son ducked his head. “Papa! Do not call me that. It is a name for little boys, but I am big. I am eight!”

“Ah, but a man’s son is always his little one,” Rocco Grisafi said as he came and hugged both Valentino and Giosue. “Welcome home, piccolo,” his father said, emphasizing his point with a humorous glint in eyes the same color as Valentino’s.

It had been decades since his father had last called him that and Valentino laughed.

Giosue giggled. “Papa is bigger than you Nonno, how can he be your little one?”

Valentino’s father, who was in fact a head shorter than he, winked at his grandson. “It is not about size, it is about age, and I will always be older, no?”

“That’s right,” Valentino agreed. “And I will always be older than you,” he said as he tickled his swimsuit-clad son.

Giosue screeched with laughter and squirmed down, running to the pool and jumping in, his head immediately coming up out of the water. “You can’t get me now, Papa.”

“You think I cannot?”

“I know it. Nonna would be mad if you got your business clothes wet.”

That made everyone laugh, including Faith, drawing Valentino’s attention like a bee to a rose. Damn, damn, damn. She was beautiful, wearing a bright green top and matching pair of Capri pants she had rolled up above her knees so she could dangle her feet in the water of the pool. Her gorgeous red hair fell loose around her shoulders and her sandals were nowhere to be seen.

Even his mother’s hug and greeting got only a portion of his attention as the rest of him strained toward the woman he wanted to take into his arms and kiss the daylights out of.

“So, I hear from my grandson that you and my dear friend are well acquainted already,” his mother said, finally garnering his whole focus.

Well versed in how his mother’s mind worked, he immediately went hyperalert to any nuance and ultracautious in his own reactions. She was on a kick to get him married and fathering more grandbabies for her. His argument that it was time for Calogero to do his duty by the family was met with deaf ears.

His mother wanted more grandchildren from Valentino. Full stop. Period.

And now she’d discovered he was friends with Faith.

He had to be very careful here. If his mother even got a hint of the intimate nature of his relationship with Faith, Agata Grisafi would have her oldest son married off before he could get a word in edgewise. “We’d met before, yes.”

“You’d met? I am sure your son said you were friends,” his mother chided with a gleam in her eyes, confirming Valentino’s worst fears.

He simply shrugged, confirming nothing. Denying nothing. Sometimes that was the only way to deal with his mother and her machinations. Deflection wasn’t a bad tactic, either, when he could get away with it.

He’d long ago acknowledged he never wanted to face his mother across a boardroom table. She made his toughest clients and strongest competition look like amateurs.

“More interesting to me is your friendship with her,” he said. “You rarely mention Faith.”

“You are joking me, my son. I talk about my dear friend TK all of the time.”

“Yes, but what has that to do with Faith?”

His mother’s eyes widened and she flicked a glance to the woman in question. Faith was not looking at them, but her shoulders were stiff with unmistakable tension. This grilling had to be causing her stress as well.

“You are not good friends, are you?” his mother asked, in a tone that said she no longer had any doubts about the superficial nature of their relationship.

Relieved, but unsure what had convinced her, he simply said, “We know each other.”

“Not very well.”

He shrugged again, but had a strong urge to deny what felt like an accusation. Though the words had been spoken in his mother’s normal voice, his own emotions convicted him.

Mama shrugged, looking smug, her expression that of a woman who knew what he did not. “Faith Williams is TK.”

“Your artist friend?” he asked in genuine shock. “I thought he was a man!”

“No, she is very much a female, as you can see.” The laughter lacing his mother’s voice did not faze him.

The memory of Faith saying maybe the woman in the statue on his dresser was letting go did. She was the artist of that particular piece of art. When she’d made the comment, she could have been hinting, but more likely she was exposing the true inspiration behind the figure.

Which meant what? That she had a son? “You did not tell me you had a child,” he said to her.

She stood up and faced him. “If you will recall, the father is holding the child,” she said, proving once again that their thoughts traveled similar paths.

“What is that supposed to signify?”

“Figure it out for yourself, Tino. Or better yet, ask your mother. Agata understands far more than you do and knows me much better.”

He couldn’t believe she was being so argumentative in front of his family. His mother was bound to realize there was more between them than a casual friendship if Faith kept this up. Hell, if he had to explain what they were talking about, things would get dicey. The statue was in his bedroom, after all. How could he explain Faith—his not so good friend—seeing it?

“It’s not important,” he said, in an attempt to put sand on the fire of his mother’s curiosity.

“No, I don’t suppose it is.” Faith turned to his mother and gave her a strained smile. “It’s time for me to be going.”

“But I thought you would stay for dinner.”

“Yes, do not let my arrival change your plans.” He wanted to see Faith, even if it meant being judicious under the watchful eye of his family.

He knew it was not the smartest attitude to take. He was supposed to be cooling down their relationship, but seeing her brought into sharp relief just how hard that had been over the past weeks. How much he had missed her.

“I feel the need to create.” She hugged his mother. “You know how it is for me when I have a fit of inspiration. You are not offended, are you?”

“Will you let me see the results of this inspiration?” Agata asked. “I am still waiting to see the pieces you made while Rocco and I were in Naples.”

Faith’s hand dropped to her stomach, like she was nervous. “I’ll let you see them all eventually. You know that.”

“You promise? I know how you artists are. Especially you. If you think a piece is not up to standards, you will pound it back into clay.”

That strained smile crossed Faith’s beautiful features again. “I can’t promise to keep something I hate, but you should be used to that by now.”

His mother gave a long-suffering sigh, but she hugged Faith warmly. “I am. You cannot blame me for trying, though. You have spoiled me, allowing me access to your work before you do others.”

Faith’s laugh was even more strained than her smile. “You are my friend.” Even though he was wet from the pool, she hugged Giosue goodbye, as well. “I will see you next week in school.”

Her leave-taking of his father was the usual kisses on both cheeks. But she simply nodded at Tino before turning to go. Though it fit in with the facade of casual friendship he had tried to create, he felt the slight like a blow to his midsection.

He understood being careful in front of his parents, but this went beyond that. Had it been deliberate? Or was she simply doing her part to allay suspicion? Unfortunately, he could not ask her, nor could he request a more warm goodbye without looking suspect himself. They would have to talk about how to act in front of his family, as it was clear that was going to be an issue in the future. He was only surprised it had taken so long for the matter to arise, now that he knew how close she was to his mother and son.

That was secondary as he watched Faith walk away, and he had to fight everything in himself not to go after her.

“And you worried your mother was developing a tendre for TK,” his father said with a big, amused laugh.

“Never say so!” His mother shook her head. “Sometimes, my son, you are singularly obtuse.”

“But he is good at business,” Giosue piped in, as if trying to stand up for his deficient father and not knowing exactly what to say.

Apparently everyone else in his family knew Faith’s life more intimately than he did.

He was determined to rectify that ignorance. Starting now. “Mama, what did she mean by saying that the father was holding the baby in my statue?”

It was one of the reasons he loved the piece so much. It showed the father having a tender moment with his child as well as his wife.

His mother’s pause before answering gave him time to realize what a monumentally stupid question that had been to ask. He had just gotten through admonishing himself regarding this very topic and here he was drawing attention to it.

No doubt about it. Faith Williams messed up his equilibrium and made mush of his usually superior brain function.

There was nothing wrong with the way his mother’s brain was working, however. “Do you mean the statue that I bought you? The one that you keep on the bureau in your bedroom, Valentino?” she asked delicately like a cat licking at cream.

“Yes, that is the one,” he said with as much insouciance as he could muster under his mother’s gimlet stare.

He offered no explanation and, surprisingly enough, she did not demand he do so. He could read the speculation in her eyes as easily as a first-year primer.

She looked down at her hands as if examining her manicure, which was incidentally perfect as usual, before looking back at him. “I’m not sure that is something she would care for me to share with you.”

He wasn’t about to be deterred after the huge gaffe he’d committed to get the information. “Mama,” he said with exasperation. “She told me to ask you.”

“Si, well, I suppose. You know she lost her husband to a car accident six years ago?”

“I know she is a widow, yes.”

“She lost her child in the same accident.”

“How horrible.” It had nearly destroyed him to lose Maura; if he had lost Giosue as well, he did not know how he would have stood it.

“Just so.” Mama reached out and hugged her wet grandson to her. “She sells her artwork under TK as a tribute to them. Her husband’s name was Taylish and her son would have been named Kaden.”

“Would have been?”

“She was pregnant. And from what she said, that was something of a minor miracle. Her life has not been an easy one. She was left an orphan by her mother’s death years earlier. She never knew her father—or even who he was, I believe.”

“Life has enough pain to make joy all the sweeter,” his father said with the same pragmatism he spoke the well-used Sicilian proverb, cu’ avi ‘nna bona vigna avi pani, vinu e linga.

He who owns a good vineyard has bread, wine and wood.

The Sicilian people were a practical lot. The fatalism of their cultural thinking reflected in the fact that Sicilian vernacular had no future tense. Just past and present.

Regardless of his pragmatic heritage, Valentino found it almost debilitatingly painful to discover that his happy-go-lucky Faith had such a sorrow-filled past. Her optimistic nature was one of the things he found most attractive about her. She made him feel good just being around.

To discover that her attitude was in spite of past agonies, not because she had never had any, was so startling as to leave him speechless.

“I think Signora Guglielmo wanted to be a mama very much,” Giosue said. “She loves all the children at school, even the bratty ones.”

His son’s observation made Valentino chuckle even as it made him sad for the woman who had to find an outlet for her nurturing nature with other people’s children.

He remembered her once telling him that she believed she was not meant to have a family. He had assumed that meant she thought she was not cut out to be a mother. He had not minded knowing that at all, as it assured him she would not expect marriage and children someday down the road. Now he saw a far more disturbing meaning behind the words.

When Faith had said she wanted more from him, she truly had meant more. She wanted what she had thought she could not have. A family.

And the only way he could give it to her was to break a promise that for him was sacred.

It was not an option.

But neither was letting her go so she could find that with someone else.

CHAPTER SIX

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.