A Dark Sicilian Secret(24)
Finished dressing, Jillian thanked Maria for taking care of Joe and then carried her son to the dining room. Vittorio joined her almost immediately and she watched as he entered the room in a crisp white dress shirt with dark tailored trousers. His black hair was again damp and neatly combed, his hard, handsome features set.
She should hate him. She should.
She couldn’t.
Because just looking at him, she wanted him all over again. Just seeing his beautiful face with that chiseled jaw and full, sensual mouth made her body warm.
Was it only an hour ago he’d parted her legs and covered her most sensitive skin with his lips? She remembered the way he’d sucked and licked and tasted her. It’d been wanton lovemaking. So very carnal. And yet it’d been exquisite, too. Who knew such pleasure was possible?
Yet desire came with a price. And hadn’t she learned by now that those who needed others gave up power?
And wasn’t she sick of being powerless?
Ever since she was a child, she’d been at the mercy of others. First, her father. Then, the government. Between twelve and twenty they’d lived in five different states with four different identities. Each new identity required a new image, a new name, a new history.
At first it’d been difficult to remember the script. Lee Black of Ashford, Oregon. Carol Cooper from Fountain Hills, Arizona. Anne Johnson, Fredericksburg, Texas. Jillian Smith, Visalia, California.
And then it stopped being hard, because she stopped caring. It was easier not to try to fit in. Easier not to make friends. Why bother to make friends when you’d soon have to leave them without a word of explanation, or the hope of ever seeing them again? In the government’s Witness Protection Program there was no such thing as change of address cards, forwarding phone numbers, email exchanges. In the Witness Protection Program you simply vanished into thin air.
That lack of stability, and lack of control, transformed her from the innocent, sheltered little girl she’d been, a girl who’d adored her father, a girl who’d felt so very safe, into the woman she was today.
From the time she’d left home to go to college, she’d had one goal—to be completely independent. She’d gone to graduate school after finishing Gonzaga University to earn a master’s degree in hospitality management, an advanced degree in the hotel and tourism industry, thinking it was a practical study, one that would catapult her to the top. Because the one thing she’d always wanted was power of her own. Power to choose. Power to travel. Power to become someone else.
And she’d come so close to having that power and freedom. In Istanbul she’d been delighted by her job, her apartment, her clever circle of friends. But then she’d met Vittorio, and accepted his dinner invitation and her life had never been the same.
She’d given up everything that one night without even knowing it.
“I still can’t get over the fact that you’re blonde,” he said, approaching her.
“It doesn’t please you?” she said, shifting Joe in her arms.
“It wasn’t done to please me.” As he neared her, his dark eyes met hers and held. “It was done to hide from me. It was done to keep him from me,” he added, nodding at Joe.
She held her ground, refusing to be intimidated. “True.”
“And you’re not the least apologetic.”
“I did what I thought was necessary,” she answered, aware that Joe was watching his father with obvious fascination. “But that’s behind us. We must close the door on the past. Now you’re my husband. My protector. I have nothing to fear with you at my side.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “And you have nothing to fear as long as you are honest with me.” His dark eyes burned her with searing intensity. “As long as I can trust you.”
And then he held his arms out for his son.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS JILLIAN relinquished Joe, her lips curved in a terrible self-mocking smile.
She had nothing to fear as long as she was honest with Vitt.
Which meant she had everything to fear because she could never be honest with him. She could never share her past with him, at least, not until she knew she was safe with him. Not until she knew she could trust him, because she’d be trusting him with her life.
It was that simple, because her secrets were that dangerous.
Look at what had happened to Katie. She’d shared the wrong thing with the wrong person and it’d killed her. Jillian couldn’t make the same mistake. Not when Joe needed her so much.