Passionately Ever After

“You obviously weren’t thinking at all. If you had, you’d know that I would never do anything to harm my baby.”

“Our baby,” he corrected.

She didn’t comment, simply turned her attention back to the fire. “Anyway, I left Boston because I needed some time by myself so I could figure out how I’m going to handle things.”

“You mean how we’re going to handle things, don’t you?” Steven asked because he fully intended to be a part of her and their baby’s future.

When his question was met with silence, Steven took the poker from Maria’s fingers and set it aside. Then he turned her around so that she was forced to look at him. But one look at her face and he realized she was under even more strain than he’d first thought. Tear streaks stained her pale cheeks and there was a sadness in those big brown eyes that ripped at him. He wanted to take her in his arms, kiss her and tell her not to worry. That he would handle everything. That he would take care of her and their baby.

Yeah right, Conti.

Considering that mile-wide independent streak of hers, he’d be damned lucky to even get the words out before she tore a strip off of him. And then she’d be even more determined to deal with everything on her own. Well, Maria wasn’t the only one with a stubborn streak. He had one, too. And he had no intention of letting her call all the shots. Besides, he reasoned, Maria was under way too much stress—which couldn’t be good for her or for the baby. Somehow he had to convince the lady to marry him if not for their sakes, then for the baby’s sake. “I think it’s pretty obvious what we need to do first.”

“You mean we should get married.”

Ignoring the fact that she’d made the idea sound as about appealing as having a tooth pulled, he said, “That’s right. And I think the sooner we do, the better.”

“I knew that’s what you’d say,” she accused and pulled away from him. “It’s the reason I didn’t tell you about the baby in the first place. Because I knew the moment you found out you’d start pressuring me to marry you.”

“I didn’t realize that you’d find the idea of marrying me to be a fate worse than death,” he countered, his ego smarting.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then why don’t you explain what you did mean?”

She sat down on the hearth in front of the fireplace and clasped her hands together. After a moment, she looked up at him. “I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than being married to you. And I think the woman who’s your wife will be a lucky lady.”

Feeling somewhat mollified and also relieved, Steven stooped down before her and captured her hands. “I’m the lucky one,” he told her and smiled. “Not only am I getting you for a wife, but a baby, too.”

Maria pulled her fingers free and stood. She moved to the other end of the hearth. “I wasn’t talking about me, Steven.”

“I was,” he informed her. He shoved up to his feet and followed her to the opposite end of the hearth. This time, he moved in, crowded her space. “There’s only one woman I plan on marrying, Maria Barone, and that’s you.”

She shook her head. “We can’t. Think of what it will do to our families, of the problems it will create.”

“We’ll deal with our families. And we’ll handle any problems that come up,” he insisted. “The important thing is that we’ll be together. I love you. I don’t want to sneak around to see you and keep our relationship a secret. I never did.”

“I know.”

“Then you should also know that I want to be able to wake up with you in the morning and go to sleep with you in my arms every night. I want to make a dozen more babies with you. I want to grow old and gray with you, Maria Barone. Marry me,” he pleaded.

“Steven, don’t,” she cried and started to move away.

He blocked her path. Capturing her hands in his own, he looked down into those big doe eyes. “Marry me. Say you’ll be my wife.”

“Oh, Steven,” she sobbed and pulled her hands free. “Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you even try to understand? A marriage between us would never work.”

“How do you know it won’t work unless we try?” he demanded, exasperation making his voice harsher than he intended.

“Because I know. Marriage isn’t the answer.”

“As far as I’m concerned, marriage is the only answer,” he spit out the words.

“Don’t be obtuse.”

How in the devil could someone so small be so stubborn, he wondered. Maybe the cavemen had had the right idea, he fumed. Because right now he was sorely tempted to toss Maria over his shoulder, drag her off somewhere and make love to her until she agreed to marry him. Surprised by the primal feelings she aroused in him, he swiped a hand down his face. Right, Conti. You go ahead and try that stunt and Maria will cut you off at the knees.

“You know very well what I’m talking about. Our families hate each other.”

“That’s their problem. Not ours.”

Maria stared at him as though he’d grown two heads. “Are you going to stand there and tell me that the bitter history between the Barones and Contis doesn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not to me and you. The feud between our families has nothing to do with us.”

“How can you say that—especially with everything that’s going on right now?”

“Easily,” Steven said, although he knew it was much more complicated than he cared to admit at the moment. “If our families want to keep the feud going, let them. We don’t have to be a part of it.”

“No? What about the fact that your family suspects my cousin Derrick of kidnapping your sister?” And before he could respond, she continued. “What if they’re right? What if Derrick is the one responsible? Can you honestly say that it doesn’t affect us?”

Steven clenched his hands into fists at his sides. Acid churned in his stomach at the reminder of his sister Bianca’s abduction. Unlike Maria, who had a large brood of siblings, he had only his younger sister. When he’d first received word that both she and Derrick Barone had been kidnapped, he’d alternated between panic and fury. He’d turned over every stone and then some in his effort to locate them. And once private detective Ethan Mallory had zeroed in on Derrick Barone as a suspect in the kidnapping instead of a victim, Steven had vowed to find the bastard and slit his throat if he had harmed a single hair on Bianca’s head. Not even the FBI’s threat to charge him with obstruction had made him ease up on his search to find his sister. But when Ethan, too, had insisted he was getting in the way and hurting the investigation instead of helping, he had finally admitted that he needed to back off. It hadn’t been easy—not when he was going crazy with worry over his missing sister. Finally, he had done as Ethan requested. He’d backed off and let the detective and the FBI do their jobs. Unable to do anything more to help Bianca, he had resumed his search for Maria, which he’d abandoned upon news of the kidnapping. But even locating Maria and being here with her now hadn’t eased his worries about his sister. Nothing would until he knew that Bianca was safe.

“It’s obvious from your expression that you know I’m right.”

“What I know is that if Derrick is the one responsible for Bianca’s kidnapping and he’s harmed her in any way, he’ll have to answer to me.”

“You see?” Maria pointed out, her voice filled with despair. “It’s started already. What possible chance would we have together when there’s so much hate between our families?”

Cursing his own temper, Steven struggled to rein in his emotions and reminded himself that Mallory would find his sister. Right now, Maria and their baby had to be his primary concern. “We can make it work. I know we can.”

“Be realistic, Steven. There are simply too many things against us. A marriage between us would be a disaster.”

“You’re wrong,” he insisted. “We love each other. We can make this work. I know we can.”

Maria shook her head, and the motion sent his temper spiking again.

“I can’t believe you’re willing to throw away what we have all because of some stupid old feud that has nothing to do with us.”

“It’s not just the feud,” she countered. “Look at everything that’s happened to my family just since we started seeing each other.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about all the things that have gone wrong this past year beginning with that fiasco in February with the launch of the new passionfruit flavor for Baronessa Gelati. And then there was the fire at our plant. Then Derrick and Bianca were kidnapped. And now, now Derrick’s been accused of kidnapping your sister.”

“And your point is?” he asked, not liking at all the direction in which she was heading.

“The point is there’s more bitterness between our families now than ever.”

“Maybe there wouldn’t be if your family hadn’t accused mine of sabotage,” Steven defended. While he had never shared in his family’s dislike of the Barones or bought into what he considered a silly feud, he knew his family well enough to know that they would never resort to something that was both illegal and immoral. And the sabotage and fire at the Barone’s business were both.

“Can you blame them?” Maria countered. “Look at all the tragedies my family has suffered because of the Conti curse.”

Steven swore at the mention of the curse. “There is no curse.”

“Try telling that to your Aunt Lucia since she’s the one responsible for putting the curse on my family in the first place.”

Gritting his teeth, Steven said, “That so-called curse was nothing more than the foolish rantings of a brokenhearted and angry teenage girl nearly seventy years ago. It isn’t real. There is no curse.”

“Why? Because you say it doesn’t exist? Well, I’ve got news for you, Steven Conti. Just because you don’t believe in the curse doesn’t mean it’s not real. It is real. I know it is.”

“Maria, love, listen to yourself,” Steven reasoned. He searched to find the right words to allay her fears. He didn’t believe in the Conti curse, never had, never would. As far as he was concerned the curse was exactly what he’d claimed—the lashing out of a brokenhearted teenager who’d been jilted. Yet over the years the stories about the curse had taken on mythic proportions. Well, he’d be damned if he was going to let some crazy superstition stand in the way of his and Maria’s future. “Think, Maria. Think. You’re one of the smartest women I know. Surely you can see that all this talk about a curse is… It’s absurd.”

“Maybe to you. But not to me. And not to my family. The curse exists, Steven. We Barones have been on the receiving end of it for far too long to pretend otherwise.”

Steven realized that Maria’s heightened emotional state due to her pregnancy might allow her to buy into the idea of the curse more easily now than she might have under other circumstances. But he had enough obstacles to overcome in order to convince Maria to marry him. He simply couldn’t allow that blasted curse to be one of them. “I’m not saying your fears aren’t real. I know they are. But the Maria I know and love would never let fear dictate how she lives her life.”

“It’s not only my life I have to consider now. It’s the baby’s life, too.”

Steven moved closer, stared down into her eyes. “Don’t you know that I’d never let anything or anyone harm you or our baby?”

“I know you wouldn’t. But there are some things that are beyond even your control.”

“So you’re willing to throw away our future and our child’s future on the basis of an old wives’ tale about a curse,” he accused, frustration eating at him.

“I told you. It’s not just the curse that’s the problem. It’s our families. They’re enemies. And with the exception of my cousin Karen, no one has any idea that we’ve been seeing each other, let alone that I’m pregnant. Can you imagine how my family is going to feel when I tell them that you’re the baby’s father?”

They’d be as shocked as his family would be, he admitted in silence. “So, it will come as a surprise. But once they realize how we feel about each other, they’ll come around.”

“They’ll think I betrayed them.”

Her words cut through him like a knife. Worse, he had a sick feeling in his stomach that it wasn’t just her family Maria was talking about. “Is that what you think, too? Do you think you’ve betrayed your family by being with me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“No, you claimed you won’t marry me because of our families and because of the curse. But maybe the real reason you’re putting up such a fuss is because you’ve had second thoughts about being involved with me. After all, I am a Conti.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means that maybe you’re wondering if your family was right about us evil Contis. That maybe you too think we’re behind all the problems your family’s had this year.” Gritting his teeth, he accused, “Maybe you think that I had something to do with the sabotage and the fire.”

“I don’t believe any such thing.”

“Are you sure?” Steven pressed, temper and hurt driving him.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

When she started to move past him, Steven stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “Prove it. Prove you don’t believe I’m the enemy, that you don’t regret what we’ve shared.”

Maria narrowed her eyes. “How?”

“Marry me. Right now,” he said, not wanting to give her any more time to think about all the reasons they shouldn’t be together.

“Now? You expect me to marry you right this minute?”

“Yes.”

“That’s crazy. We couldn’t get married today, even if we wanted to.”

“Sure we could,” he insisted. “All we have to do is find a justice of the peace. I’m sure there’s at least one somewhere in Silver Valley.”

“But what about our families?”

“We’ll go back to Boston and tell them together. After we’re married,” he informed her.

“No. No, we can’t do that,” she said with a shake of her head. “We couldn’t spring this on them like that. I can’t even imagine how they’d react.”

“Hopefully, they’ll offer us their congratulations.”

She shot him a reproachful look. “You know they won’t.”

“They might surprise you, Maria. Your family loves you, and my family loves me. They’ll want us to be happy. Besides, my mother’s been making noises about wanting grandchildren. She’s been on me to get married for years.”

“I doubt she had me in mind.”

“Maybe not. But she’ll get used to the idea,” Steven assured her. “They all will.”

“Including your aunt Lucia?”

“She’ll come around,” Steven told her and hoped he was right.

“She hates anyone named Barone. You can’t honestly believe that she’ll ever accept me as your wife.”

“If she wants to remain a part of my life and our baby’s life, she’ll accept you,” Steven told her. But he knew Maria was probably right. His aunt Lucia wasn’t likely to accept their union. As much as he loved the older woman, he wasn’t blind to her faults—the biggest of which was her all-consuming hatred of the Barones. Unfortunately, Lucia Conti had spent nearly seventy years nurturing that hatred. He’d come to the conclusion long ago that his aunt had chosen to close herself off to any chance of ever loving again and had opted instead to make him and his sister her surrogate children. Sad as it was to admit, he suspected that he and Bianca had filled the void of a husband and children in his aunt’s life. Aside from them and the restaurant, her only passion in life was her hatred of the Barones. As much as he would hate to lose his beloved aunt in his life, he would hate even more to live his life without Maria and their baby.

“Does the same hold true for your parents and sister?” Maria asked. “If they refuse to accept me as your wife, are you going to shut them out of your life, too?”

“If that’s what it takes for us to be together, then yes, I will,” he told her without hesitation. And he meant it. While he hoped it would never come down to having to choose between his family and Maria, he would do so if necessary.

And it would be Maria that he’d choose. Maria and their baby. “So what do you say? Will you marry me?”

Three

“All you have to do is say yes,” Steven urged her. He squeezed her fingers, implored her with those piercing blue eyes. “Say yes and we’ll go right now and find ourselves a justice of the peace to marry us. Then we’ll go back to Boston and break the news to our families. Maybe they’ll be happy about it, and maybe they won’t. However they decide to handle things will be up to them. The important thing is that you and I will be together—together with our baby.”

Maria stared at Steven. He made it all sound so simple, so easy. She loved him and wanted desperately to say yes and become his wife. But even if by some miracle she could persuade her family to accept a marriage between herself and Steven, she didn’t believe the Contis would ever condone such a union. And what about the curse? Perhaps Steven was right and it was nothing more than a foolish superstition fueled by overactive imaginations. But what if it wasn’t?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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