Mediterranean Men & Marriage: The Italian's Forgotten Baby / The Sicilian's Bride / Hired: The Italian's Bride

She turned and stared at him. “What shall we do?”

He shrugged. “I could walk in and give myself up.”

“Or?”

“Or go home with you and wait until tomorrow.”

“They might check my place.”

“You think so?”

She thought it over. “Not tonight,” she said, shaking her head. “Their investigations tend to last a long, long time, because they get to do so few of them. So they savor the moment, so to speak. I bet they won’t come out until tomorrow.”

“Well, then…”

“Oh, why not just go on in there and tell them what happened? Get it over with. Sheriff Joe’s a good guy. I could explain to him. I’m sure he’d understand.”

Marco considered that for a moment, his head to the side and his eyes narrowed. “If you were the one on the hot seat, I have no doubt he’d listen to reason. Something tells me he won’t be so accommodating for me.”

“No, Joe’s okay, really.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know this?”

She shrugged. “Joe’s been trying to date me since I got to the island, and…”

“And you’ve turned him down?”

“Yes.”

He threw up his hands. “There you go. Now we’ve added jealousy to the mix. I’m out of here.”

“Marco…”

“Let’s go. I can’t risk being tied up in jail for too long. I’m going sailing early with Gigi. I got things I want to get done tomorrow.”

She frowned. “Maybe you’d better not go on that.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I have to go. This isn’t just for fun, Shayna. I’ve got something I really need to accomplish.”

She looked at him, perplexed and not sure what he was talking about. Something to do with re-creating his plans, she supposed. “Well, I didn’t sign that note, but they will probably find out we’re connected at some point and be pounding on my door in the morning.”

He nodded. “And in the meantime, we might as well go there and get some sleep.”

She sighed. “I suppose so. Everyone is still at the luau. I’m surprised the cops weren’t there, too.”

“So we should have this side of the island to ourselves,” he said lightly. “We’ll have a sleepover.”

“You,” she said pointedly, “can sleep on the couch.”

He grinned and put his hand over his heart. “You wouldn’t be so cold to a lonely soul about to be sent off to jail.”

“I would,” she countered. “And gladly.”

She turned the scooter toward her home, and they were off.

They were hungry. It had been a long day filled with strange experiences and they needed a little food, a little drink, to help them unwind. Shayna made a shrimp salad and garlic toast and then poured golden liquid into two wine glasses—Chardonnay for Marco, sparkling cider for herself. They ate on the lanai with a candle as their only light until the moon came out. They could hear the surf in the distance. The air was cool and fresh and full of promise. The scent of plumerias wafted in the air.

They sat without speaking for a few minutes, then Marco turned and looked at her. “You know what we didn’t remember to do?”

She turned and smiled at him, enjoying the slight lilt to his language. “What’s that?”

“Dance.” He looked at her with a strange, sensual longing in his eyes. “I want to dance with you.”

Her heart beat quickened. There was something in that look of his…She shivered. Don’t do it, Shayna, her better counsel warned. If you do it, you know very well what might happen.

She shouldn’t do it. She should be stern and cool and keep control of the situation. She took a deep breath and prepared to tell him so.

“Hold on, I’ll turn on some music” came out of her mouth instead but she didn’t regret it.

Moments later, she was in his arms and they were swaying to soft sounds and dancing across the lanai in the moonlight, floating on blissfulness. And it was even better than she’d hoped it would be. There was something so lovely about being held close by a large, strong man that you were crazy about, and yet not in the throes of passion, but in the structure of music. So near and yet so far. Temptation balanced with form.

“How did you get to be such a good dancer?” she asked him dreamily.

“I was a child prodigy,” he teased, then relented. “Actually, I had a sister who needed someone to practice with. And I found I liked it.”

“You’re a natural,” she said with a sigh, thinking of her own brother. He would have preferred a dirt sandwich to a day of dancing. Her smile was bittersweet. It was at odd times like this that she missed him most.

She sighed and leaned a little closer against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair, taking in her scent.

“Where did you come from, Shayna?” he asked her softly. “What are you doing here on this island?”

She sighed, closing her eyes. “Why do you want to know?” she murmured.

“At first, looking at you, I thought you were a naturalborn child of the tropics. You seemed to be part of the exotic beauty of the place.” He dropped a soft kiss on her forehead. “But now that I know you better, I know that’s a posture of sorts. You’re no more a native than I am.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said groggily in a pathetic challenge.

“You’re a transplant. But where from? What for? What made you come hide away on this island?”

Her head snapped around at the phrase hide away. He’d finally gotten her goat and she pulled back to give herself a little space from him.

“What are you talking about?” she said crossly. “What makes you think I’m hiding something?”

“We’re all hiding, Shayna.” They were barely swaying together now, not really dancing, and he had grown philosophical on her, a trend she wasn’t sure she liked.

“You know, I think if you want to be analytical about all this, I’m probably hiding things, too. I’ve been thinking about my memory loss and what could have caused it. I probably let myself go those two weeks while I was originally here. I’ll bet I became free and natural in ways I hadn’t done in years. Maybe like I’d never been before. And perhaps my psyche couldn’t take it. Maybe my more rigid self had to blot it out. Maybe I just had to come back to it slowly and digest it and assimilate it with the rest of me.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then rolled her eyes as she pulled herself out of his embrace.

“Oh, brother,” she said, turning toward the table. “I think I need another glass of sparkling cider.”

He followed her and took over filling both their glasses with the shiny golden liquid. Each caught the moonlight and seemed to glow with its own light.

“To islands,” he said, raising his glass for a toast.

“To islands,” she echoed. “And the people who hide away on them.”

He laughed, enjoying her again, and she bent forward to kiss his lips.

It was a simple gesture, and she’d meant it to be a quick salute, an expression of light affection, but once her lips touched his, a fire that had been smoldering seemed to burst into flames. She meant to pull away, to back off, and go back to her drink. Somehow the kiss lingered and then his hand came up, cupping the back of her head and holding her there. Her mouth softened, opening to his tongue, and her arms came up and circled his neck.

“Oh,” she gasped, coming up for air, but he didn’t give her a chance to retreat. He kissed her again, and again, and their kisses became deeper and more urgent. Now her fingers were digging into his hair and his hands were sliding up under her shirt, leaving a trail of fire as they found her breasts. Her nipples were erect and so sensitive that she cried out when he touched them. Her hips began to press against his as she melted into his body. The fog of passion clouded their minds and smoothed the way toward an appetite for love. They both knew it. But the sensation was so intoxicating, they didn’t want it to stop.

And then Shayna knocked over her glass of cider.

She pulled away, panting, and stared at the spilled liquid. Then she looked up at Marco. “Wow, that was close,” she said, and he laughed. Giving him a look, she went to the kitchen to get a cleaning rag. He watched her with regret, but he knew better than to try to resume the activity.

Meanwhile, he poured her a fresh glass of cider.

“Shayna, you’ve been quite wonderful to me,” he said. “You didn’t have to be so accommodating this second time around. As I understand it, the first time ended in acrimony. So I want you to know I appreciate the way you’ve tried to help me this time.”

She caught her breath and glanced away, feeling a little guilty. After all, she had her motives that he knew nothing about. It wasn’t as though she’d done it all out of the goodness of her heart.

“Why not?” she said lightly. “We’d been pretty friendly the first time, for the most part.”

He nodded, looking at her searchingly. “We did seem to spend a lot of time together, you and I.”

She nodded. “We did.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, then reached out and took a handful of her hair, letting his fingers sift through the shiny strands. “We did some kissing.”

She drew in her breath. Where was he going with this? “Yes,” she admitted. “Yes we did.”

“And?”

She blinked at him. “And what?”

His shrug managed to be incredibly sensual, but she supposed that was the Italian in him.

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