Mistress To a Latin Lover: The Sicilian's Defiant Mistress / The Italian's Pregnant Mistress / The Italian's Mistress

Her lips tugged, emotions sharp, too intense. “I know the difference,” she whispered, thinking that the past seemed light-years removed, their volatile relationship part of someone else’s life…someone else’s experience, and even though the good feelings seemed so far away, she knew there’d once been good feelings in this relationship.

She looked at him, seeing his dark beauty, the hard lines and edges of Maximos Guiliano. Tall, powerful, authoritative. A Sicilian man who didn’t compromise.

Her heart squeezed inside her chest. If only he’d compromised for her…

“I loved how I felt when I was with you,” she said after a moment. “I loved how I felt when I looked at you. You gave me joy. You gave me peace. When I was with you I wanted nothing else, nothing more. Every moment was precious, every moment meant so much to me.”

“Yet you never saw us in the future. You never saw us growing old together.”

She looked at him strangely. “Why do you say that?”

Lines formed on either side of his mouth and for a moment he didn’t answer. Then his head shook, his features tightening. “I know I wasn’t good for you, and I know I—and our relationship—had hurt you.”

The relationship had hurt. After awhile. After the limitations had become too narrow, too restrictive, too binding.

“You didn’t give me a future.” She couldn’t look at him anymore, the heartbreak back, the feelings so sharp and bittersweet. “You didn’t allow me to dream. You made it clear from the start it was sex, and I tried to be content with sex.”

She exhaled hard, and drew another breath, the air hot, aching inside her lungs. “But I fell in love with you anyway. I couldn’t help it. You’re not like anyone I’ve known before.”

“You’ve been pursued by many successful men.”

“It’s not your success that makes you fascinating. It’s you—your darkness, your complexity, your sharp edges. You’re… dangerous, Maximos. And I know it. I’ve always known it.”

“Danger’s that attractive?”

She looked out over the deep blue water, trying to think of an appropriate answer, but all she saw was the ad campaign Italia Motors had hired her to do for their European market. The ads had been dark, moody, sexual. Nothing light or playful in the Italia Motors branding and she’d gotten that directly from Maximos herself.

One look at him and she wanted to slide out of her clothes and into close contact with him.

One night alone with him and she’d wanted every night with him.

“You’re that attractive,” Cass answered, ruefully. “You’re that man every woman dreams about—the dark handsome stranger, the forbidden—and I wanted that.”

“Forbidden.”

She shrugged. “There’s always an appeal to that which is out of reach, to that which we can’t have.”

“But you did get me. You did have me.”

There was something in his voice, in his tone, that reminded her of how she used to feel when alone with him—desired, sheltered, adored. God, how she’d loved being with him, being loved by him. It was the best feeling in the world. “And I just wanted more.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t.

Maximos’s forehead creased, deep lines furrowing between his strong eyebrows and silence stretched between them, the silence stretching so long that Cass shifted. “I obviously shouldn’t have wanted more,” she added after a moment. “Me asking for more was the kiss of death, wasn’t it?”

“There was nothing wrong with you asking for more.” His voice was low, harsh. “I know you wanted more, needed more. I gave you very little.” He hesitated, glanced at her, features savage. “I gave you virtually nothing.”

He’d known.

Cass felt a flicker of pain, like the sharp edges of a palm frond brushing her heart, simultaneously cutting and caressing. He’d known.

She couldn’t see, the sudden sting of tears blinding her vision and Cass gripped the railing, her head so full of words and emotions that she didn’t even know where to begin.

How could love be so complicated?

As a child love had seemed so very simple. Emotion had been simple. You loved, you laughed, you hoped, you feared. Emotion had just been that—emotion. And you made your decisions based on honest emotion.

Then you learned.

You grew up.

You changed.

Love stopped being simple, direct, uncomplicated. Love became difficult. Dangerous. Complex. Love became something one could lose, something elusive and negotiable.

It became about behavior.

It became a reward.

It even became a punishment.

And for a moment Cass wanted nothing more than to be a child again with a child’s innocence and the pure heart of one still young, still trusting. Because love was better like that, when one trusted, when one didn’t worry and fear, when one didn’t anticipate pain. When one didn’t fear scrutiny never mind rejection.

Did anyone manage to grow up unscathed? Unscarred?

Did anyone reach adulthood—maturity—still trusting? Still centered? Still optimistic?

She wished she had. She wished she was more like the image she projected, the one with impeccable suits, flawless hair, dazzling success. On the outside she looked like the perfect woman. But the perfection stopped there. Because on the inside she wanted so much more.

On the inside there was a woman who’d never felt secure, never felt loved, and she’d picked Maximos to love her because if he—difficult, untamable Maximos—should love her then she was truly valuable. Lovable.

“Can I just interrupt for a moment?” Annamarie, Maximos’s middle sister, asked, joining them. She was cradling her infant daughter against her shoulder, one hand raised protectively to shield the baby’s head and neck from the sun.

“Of course,” Maximos answered, reaching to take his young niece from his sister. “I’ve wanted to say hello to this beautiful bambina all morning.”

Cass couldn’t watch Maximos with the baby. It was the last thing she wanted to see and she turned toward his sister who was looking at her with the strangest expression—surprised, as well as intrigued.

“I’m Annamarie,” his sister said, introducing herself. “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to meet you earlier. I think there was a misunderstanding—”

“It’s okay,” Cass interrupted, knowing what Maximos’s sisters thought, and as it was what they were supposed to think, the last thing Cass wanted from any of them was an apology. “I understand.”

“You’re an American?” Annamarie asked.

“Yes.”

“But you’re Italian is excellent. I can hardly detect an accent.”

“I hope so. I’ve lived in Europe for ten years now, five of those in Rome.”

“You like Rome?”

“Very much so,” Cass answered, tucking another loose strand of hair behind her ear. The yacht was moving at such a clipped speed that the deep blue water frothed with white foam. “It’s become home.”

“And Sicily?” Annamarie persisted. “Do you like it here?”

“It’s my first visit.”

“Your first visit? You mean Maximos has never brought you to his own country, to meet his own people before?”

“She’s going to Catania and Aci Castello now,” Maximos said calmly, gently patting the baby’s back.

“But what about Agrigento, Palermo, Mount Etna?” Annamarie protested. “Those are all important to our culture. You can’t possibly say you’ve visited Sicily if you haven’t seen more.”

“And I’d like to visit them,” Cass said, wanting to change the subject, nearly as much as she wanted to escape. She couldn’t handle seeing Maximos with the baby. It was too painful, too vivid of a reminder of what she’d lost. “Unfortunately I don’t travel as much as I’d like. I tend to get preoccupied with work.”

“Ah.” Annamarie nodded with a glance at Maximos. “Another workaholic. I’m always saying to Maximos, don’t work so much. You need to rest more, play more, but Maximos is very driven.” Annamarie shot her brother another reproving glance. “He is not very good at taking things easy.”

Cass smiled but she wouldn’t meet Maximos’s eyes. Instead her gaze dropped to the baby he was holding in his arms, the infant curled so contentedly against his chest, Maximos’s powerful hand cupping the back of the baby’s head, holding the infant easily, comfortably, cradling her as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Her chest tightened with heartache. She and Maximos hadn’t just had sex. They’d created life. They’d made a baby.

Their baby.

Cass watched Maximos return his niece to his sister, and the baby, dressed in a small pink outfit, crawled up Annamarie’s shoulder, tiny hands grabbing at her mother’s sparkly teardrop earring, studying the earring intently.

For a moment Cass couldn’t breathe, pain shooting through her, a lance of white-hot heat. That could have been me, she thought, that could have been me with our daughter.

“What’s wrong?” Maximos asked Cass as Annamarie walked away, excusing herself so she could feed the baby.

Cass looked at Maximos, but she didn’t see him, just the ultrasound, that first glimpse of the daughter that wasn’t meant to be. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing.” Because it was nothing now. Nothing she could do. Nothing she could change.

Even if she wanted to.

“You’re not very comfortable with kids, are you?” he asked.

Turning her head away, she stared out at the horizon of blue, trying not to scream at the injustice of it. “I like kids.”

She’d been thrilled she was pregnant. She’d been thrilled she was going to be a mother. Nearly thirty, it had felt right in a way she couldn’t explain…not even to herself. She was ready to be a mother, ready for this next step in her life. Maybe she was too strong, too independent to make a good wife, but she knew how to love and her baby would be loved.

Then came the ultrasound.

She had a daughter.

And her daughter wasn’t healthy. Nothing had come together quite right, limbs didn’t attach correctly—a hole in her tiny heart.

Cass had been dumbstruck. The doctor talked. Cass stared at the sonogram. Her daughter—her daughter—wouldn’t survive.

Sitting there in her robe, the cold gel drying on her stomach, time came screeching to a stop. After the doctor finally finished talking, she sat silent, her head buzzing with numbing white noise. And then the cloud cleared in her head and she was herself again. Tough. Determined. The fighter.

“How can I help her?” she’d asked.

The doctor’s brow creased. He didn’t speak. His expression grew more grim. “You can’t,” he said at last.

But it wasn’t an answer she accepted. This was her daughter. Her daughter…and Maximos’s. “There must be something.” She strengthened her voice, and her resolve. “Procedures done in utero.”

“It’s unlikely she’ll even survive birth. If she does, she won’t survive outside of the womb.”

Cass shook her head, furious. She wouldn’t accept a diagnosis like that, and she’d stood then. Brave, fierce, undaunted. “You’re wrong.” Her voice didn’t waver. “She’ll make it. I’ll make sure she survives.”

But Cass had been the one wrong. Two weeks later she woke up in agony. Rushed to the hospital, she miscarried that night.

“Do you want a family?” Maximos asked, ignorant that each of his questions were absolute torture.

“Yes.” Her eyes burned but she wasn’t going to cry, couldn’t cry about the devastating loss. Some pain went too deep, some pain caused insurmountable grief.

Losing Maximos had hurt—badly, badly—but losing their child had broken her heart.

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?