A Dark Sicilian Secret(56)

Again Jillian shook her head but then her composure cracked and murmuring excuses, she slipped from the room, rushing past everyone to push through the hall door to the outside terrace. It was a quiet night, the terrace lit by just the moon. Jillian paced back and forth before leaning against the stone balustrade to draw great gasps of air into her lungs.

Of course her family was Italian, and she still took pride in her Italian heritage. But her father…

She was so ashamed of her father. And so disgusted, too.

He’d sacrificed Katie to save his own skin. How could he do that to her? How could he do that to all of them?

What kind of monster was he?

“What did my father say?” Vittorio asked quietly from behind her, his footsteps so silent she hadn’t even heard him approach.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Then why are you so upset?”

She turned to face him. “He was so kind to me, but he wouldn’t be if he knew who my father was.”

“He probably wouldn’t like who your father was, but he wouldn’t hold it against you, cara. My father is a bigger man than that.”

“How did he get hurt?”

Vittorio leaned against the balustrade next to her. “He decided to leave the mafia.”

“So they shot him?”

“Yes.”

“How old were you when it happened?”

“Seventeen.”

“Just a teenager!”

“Yes.”

She heard something in his voice that made her look closely at him and she saw the shadow of grief in his eyes. “It must have been terrible for you.”

“It was.”

She waited for him to say more, hoped he’d say more because she so badly wanted to understand him, but he didn’t.

Instead he straightened, and held out a hand to her. “Come, cara, let’s return to the house, join the others again. Tonight is supposed to be a celebration, a chance to welcome you into the family. There will be plenty of opportunities to talk about the past, but tonight is about the present and our plans for the future.”

Hand in hand they returned to the dining room where everyone was just taking their places at the long tables. Jillian was disappointed to discover that she and Vittorio would not be sitting next to each other but across the large square table from each other.

But Vittorio did not neglect her during the lengthy meal. Instead she felt his eyes on her time and again, and more than once she felt as though he was seducing her with his warm gaze, using his dizzying physical presence to arouse her, weaken her, make her want him.

He didn’t realize she always wanted him.

He didn’t realize she would always want him as she’d fallen in love with him. Hopelessly in love.

While the family talked, switching easily between Italian, Sicilian and English for Jillian’s benefit, she tried to imagine life without Vittorio but couldn’t.

Looking at him now talk with his grandmother, remembering the way he held Joe, as well as the way he made love to her, she wondered how she could have ever thought him dangerous. Wondered how she could have doubted his integrity.

Vitt suddenly looked up, caught her gaze, and smiled a slow, intensely physical smile that made her grow hot and cold. He was so incredibly sexual. He did things to her that she couldn’t imagine any other man doing. And she liked how Vitt took her, possessed her, making her feel as if she really, truly belonged with him.

As if she were really, truly his woman.

As if she really, truly had a place here.

And she did want to belong to him, as well as belong here. It’d been years since she’d had a place to call home, much less a stable family.

Hours later when they were finally alone in their bedroom, Vittorio locked the door and dimmed the lights and Jillian smiled shyly. “You read my mind,” she said, moving toward him and unzipping her dress as she walked.

He’d been unfastening the buttons on his shirt but his hands stilled as her dress slid to her hips and then she stepped out of it.

Her pulse drummed as she unhooked her black lace bra and then dropped it on the floor next to her cocktail dress. She felt Vitt’s heavy-lidded gaze focus on her full, bare breasts, and her nipples tightened, puckering, and then his gaze dropped lower as she peeled off her black silk panties.

The air felt cool on her naked body and for a moment she wanted to cover herself but she didn’t. Instead she held her ground and stood before him in just her black high heels and the emerald choker. She let him look, let him get his fill, before she slowly approached him.