come down to that.”
Rosa leaned forward and looked at Franc. “Maria doesn’t come home often enough to suit me.” She looked him up and down and winked. “But I suppose I can’t blame her.”
Franc lifted an eyebrow at Maria for guidance.
She scrunched up her eyes and mouthed the word wait then turned to her mother. “You said others, who else is here?”
“Everyone. It’s a surprise, the whole family is here to spend Christmas together under one roof.”
Maria had a premonition of doom. No wonder her mother hadn’t been able to take the time to speak to her earlier. She wondered who’d be sleeping on the couch, her or Franc. But her mother hadn’t finished. “I’ve put you two in the small rooms at the end of the house.”
She looked at Franc again as if measuring him up. “Only single beds, I’m afraid, and the connecting bathroom is tiny, but I’m sure you’ll manage. The children can all squeeze into one room for a change. I expect they’ll like that better anyhow. I just hope we can put up with the noise.” She chuckled. “This is going to be a wonderful Christmas.”
For years after her abduction, her family had kept her close, their way of protecting her from the big bad world. Now, her mother had done an about-face with a vengeance.
What really bothered her was Mamma’s willingness to throw her into the arms of the first man Maria had ever brought home.
For the moment, all she could do was go with the flow and explain to Franc later. She squeezed his arm as they entered the large sitting room. “I’ll explain after,” she whispered, hoping Franc got her message and that his sense of humor was in line with her own.
The moment he entered the sitting room Franc realized he was outnumbered. The words enemy territory flashed before his eyes.
The huge sitting room ran the full width of the house and was practically bursting at the seams, adults, kids…cats. In self-defense, he bent to pick up the cat, giving his hands something else to do other than drag Maria out of there and back into his own comfort zone.
As his brain worked on his problem, he counted six children, my God, six, and five adults, not including the three of them entering the room.
Everyone talked at once, and the snatches of conversation he managed to pick up made no sense. Rosa brought a tall slim man with dark thinning hair, who, from the looks of him, couldn’t be anyone other than Maria’s father. Franc let the cat spring to the floor as everyone stopped talking. And stared at him. Now he understood what it meant to be put under a microscope.
“Franc, this is Pietro, Maria’s father.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind Franc heard a clang of metal gates shutting behind him. Trapped.
Everything in the room, the people, the atmosphere, all the kids, were perfect reminders of why he didn’t do the family thing. The urge to run a finger round inside his collar made his hand itch, but he kept it clamped by his side. It was all too much like sitcom material.
Pietro clasped his hand, shaking it heartily, with a hand that was as tanned as his face. His dark eyes creased into a hundred lines as his laughter kept time with the energetic pumping of hands. Hard calluses bit into Franc’s knuckles. Lean and sinewy, like the hands of a man who had worked hard all his life, they carried as little meat as the rest of the older guy’s body.
“Welcome. We thought Maria was never going to let us meet you. And tonight is the ideal time.”
There it was again. The family had him confused with someone else. Randy maybe, though that thought stung in spades.
Why didn’t Maria just come right out and tell them? Set them straight, for Pete’s sake?
He glanced at her; she shook her head, and left him none the wiser. He read embarrassment, and maybe a little confusion in her expression at her father’s effusive welcome.
As Pietro let go, Franc reached out for Maria, meshing his fingers with hers. For a couple of seconds he rubbed both sets of knuckles against his thigh on the off chance it would relieve the tension gripping him.
A damn futile course of action as it turned out. How could he have known it felt the natural thing to do, as if they often communicated this way?
His heart turned traitor, thudding against his breastbone as he found himself wishing it wasn’t a lie.
Escape.
A wiser man would have turned on his tail and run. Franc caught the inside of his cheek between his teeth as if grounding himself in the present instead of cloud cuckoo land where all this junk was happening to him. “So? Apart from Christmas, what’s so special about this evening?” Franc asked, before realizing he might have left himself open to some crazy suggestion.
Laughingly, Pietro slapped him on the shoulder. “You will find out soon, we’ve been waiting for you both to arrive. But first…” He turned to Maria. “Introduce Franc to the rest of the family while I open some wine.”
Then he turned to Rosa, saying, “Wineglasses, Mamma.”
Maria squeezed Franc’s fingers, stopping him voicing the question at the forefront of his mind. “Don’t let this lot scare you off, Franc. They can be a bit overpowering at first.”
“Like this situation, you mean.”
She studied his eyes. For all his abrupt statement of the facts, warmth softened their depths, making her knees go weak. “Can you wait until later for an explanation? Please? I don’t want to embarrass my parents. Mamma in particular.”
He released her hand, but the imprint of his remained as she waited to hear him say no. Instead, he looped an arm around her shoulders, stooping closer so no one else could hear, and whispered, “I intend to keep you to your word. And it had better be good.” That said, Franc continued to hold her against the lean muscled strength of his body as they moved farther into the room.
Last night, they’d danced almost as close, so the combination of aftershave and his peculiarly male muskiness filling her head was already fixed in her memory. But she hadn’t known a man’s body could burn with such heat. A heat so strong it made her want to melt into him and over him till she couldn’t tell where she began and he ended.
Her insides clenched and she almost cried out with the strangeness of the sensation. This was desire, and until Franc, she’d never known its effect could be so utterly physical.
The journey of a few feet seemed to have lasted a mile. Now, an arm’s length away from the generations of Costello, born in New Zealand, she warned him, “Okay, take a deep breath and keep in mind most of us are of Italian descent. If they ask anything embarrassing, just pretend you didn’t hear, and answer someone else’s question.”
He slightly pushed away, flicking her with a glance that said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
So, he was new to the game. He’d learn.
There didn’t seem to be as many of them with everyone sitting down, now he’d gotten over the hurdle of meeting them all, and the shock of having two more adults appear from the kitchen.
Way past their bedtime, the children still rolled around the faded Persian rugs, pushing, shoving, laughing and squabbling over toys, but no one appeared worried.
The sitting room was comfortably, yet tastefully decorated, suitable for a big family. Long and narrow, open French doors led to a tiled patio at the far end of the room where a breeze drifted in, lifting the sheer curtains hanging on either side.
“Quiet, you lot,” ordered Giovanna, a younger version of Rosa, who was married to Kris; she sat with a baby on her knee. Two of the older boys looked up for a second and went back to their game, and the noise continued.
Everyone, her sister, brothers and their various spouses were being very nice, too nice. Suffocatingly nice.
Look-how-good-it-is-to-be-married