disappointed, she swiped her hand across her mouth and injected a hard-won note of outrage into her reply. “Why did you then?”
“I couldn’t help myself.” He hesitated, and if she hadn’t known him to be the most confident man she’d ever met, she’d have thought him unsure he should utter his next words.
At length, though, he went on, “I find myself drawn to you. You touch me—against my will, I might add—with your selfcontained grief. I see the way you swallow when the pain almost gets the better of you, and I wish I could comfort you. But I forfeited that right a long time ago, and of the many things I regret having done, it’s that I’ve given you no reason to trust me now.”
Another silence, this one full of brooding frustration, before he burst out savagely, “Dio, if it were within my power, I would have us meeting here for the first time, with no painful history to sour your view of me!”
“We were both young and foolish, Paolo,” she said, an unsettling stab of guilt attacking without warning. She was the injured party, the one who’d given up everything—or so she’d told herself these many long years. Yet in line with other recent self-insights, as she watched him, listened to him, she suddenly wasn’t quite so sure.
“But I was the greater transgressor.” Fleetingly his hand ghosted over her hair and down her face. “You were little more than a child, Caroline, and so anxious to please that it disgusts me to remember how I took advantage of you. If I had a daughter, I would kill the man who dared to treat her, as I treated you.”
Tell him! Say the words: You do have a daughter, Paolo, and a son, as well! Then let the chips fall where they may. Dare to believe that the truth can indeed set a person free.
The urge to confess rose, as strong and surprising as her earlier guilt. She had to bite her tongue not to give in to what was surely the ultimate folly. A moment’s lapse in judgment could cost her everything because, no matter what he might say now, his repentance would surely turn to outrage when he learned the secret she’d kept from him all this time.
“You do not answer me,” he said, a world of weary regret in his voice.
“What do you want me to say? That I forgive you?”
“No. That’s asking for far more than I deserve.”
His candor was killing her! Too ashamed of her hypocrisy to look him in the eye, she stared again at the swath of moonlit sea. “No, it’s not. In the last week, we’ve both learned that life’s too short to waste it bearing grudges. So let’s forgive each other, Paolo, for the mistakes we’ve both made.”
“What are yours?” he asked, with just a trace of humor in his tone. “That you were too beautiful for your own good? Too sweetly appealing for mine?”
Humbled yet again by his selfderision, she said, “I chose to be a stranger to my own flesh and blood, just as you accused me of doing. I stayed away from my niece and nephew, when I should have made an effort to grow closer to them.”
“You’re here for them now, cara.”
Yes, but deep in her heart, she was terribly afraid she’d left it too late. Her children didn’t want to know her.
They turned to Lidia to dry their tears and sing them to sleep. They ran to Paolo when it hit them that Ermanno could no longer be there for them. Even Salvatore occupied a special place in their hearts, regardless of Callie’s belief that he was far removed from the typically warm, loving Italian patriarch they deserved. When all was said and done, the Raineros were her children’s true family, and she had only herself to blame for that.
Blinking away the persistent threat of tears, she said, “I mean nothing to them. You said so, yourself.”
“They are afraid to love you.”
Another wave of pain engulfed her. “Afraid? Why?”
“Because they have learned too early what it is to have the very foundation of their lives knocked out from under them. As they see it, their parents have abandoned them, and so might you. You are kind and tender with them, everything a loving aunt should be. But they are not, I fear, willing to risk another loss, so soon after the first.”
“So how do I rectify that?”
“By not turning their world upside-down with impossible demands. Do not ask them to open their hearts to you, just because you happen to be their mother’s sister. Don’t be in too big a hurry to rush back to America. Rather, stay here in Italy long enough to earn their trust. Do that, and their affection will follow.”
“That could take months.”
He shrugged. “So? You already said you’re prepared to take a leave of absence from your work. Have you had second thoughts, and decided Gina and Clemente aren’t worth such a sacrifice?”
“Of course not! But—”
“But you have your own life, one you share perhaps with a lover?”
“No.”
“Then what’s so important about your schedule that everything has to conform to it, regardless of how it might affect other people’s?”
Seeing herself through his eyes, she cried passionately, “You don’t understand!”
“Then make me,” he said. “You say you want what’s best for our niece and nephew—”
“I do! I want to give them the kind of security that comes from knowing that they are deeply and irrevocably loved, even though their parents have died.”
“Which is exactly what I also want for them. So why, if we’re in agreement, are we fighting each other?”
“I don’t know!” she cried, frustration spilling over. He knocked all the starch out of her convictions with his powerful line of reasoning. “I can’t think straight when you badger me like this!”
“Is that what I’m doing, Caroline? Badgering you?”
No, you’re reinforcing a whole host of self-doubts about what I thought were entrenched beliefs in my rights, and I can’t deal with that, especially not with you sitting so close beside me that I forget to be prudent.
“Am I?” he said again, running his knuckles along her jaw in a caress so tender that it undid her.
Her vision blurred. “No,” she said, blinking furiously. “I’m feeling overwhelmed, that’s all.”
“Understandable.” Another pause followed, this one humming with a different kind of energy, before he said thoughtfully, “Given our common goal, can we not find a way to work together, instead of in opposition?”
Tamping down an improbable surge of hope, she said warily, “Exactly what is it you’re proposing, Paolo?”
“That you give me one year. Put your career on hold and take that leave of absence and live here. With me.”
“With you? You mean, in your house?”
“Exactly. At present, I own an apartment, but for the children’s sake, I would buy a villa on the outskirts of Rome. A place with a garden where they could play—one close to where they lived with their parents, so that they could attend the same school, and keep the same friends. In other words, I would make a home for them—and you.”
“You can’t possibly be suggesting that the four of us would all live under the same roof?”
“Why not?”
“Because your father wouldn’t allow it, for a start!”
“My father does not dictate my choices, Caroline. I am my own man.”
She didn’t doubt that for a moment. “Perhaps. But he’d never accept my place at your side.”
“He’d