Hired:The Italian's Bride

“My Mariella,” he whispered, lifting a hand to her cheek and cupping it.

“Don’t,” she choked, her eyes drifting shut anyway. “Luca, I can’t take it. You said all you needed to yesterday.”

But he ignored her, cupped her other cheek and dropped the sweetest of kisses on her eyelids.

“That’s where you’re wrong. I said too much, and all the wrong things. You, Mariella Ross, made me a coward, and that’s not something I like in myself.”

His breath was warm on her forehead. “You’re not afraid of anything,” she whispered breathlessly.

“I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid of me, how I feel when I’m with you. And then on the drive to Calgary I realized how incredibly difficult it must have been for you to say what you did. And how you deserved better from me.”

She leaned back, searched his eyes. “And that’s why you’re here?”

“That’s what frightens me, Mari. You make me want to give you more. You make me want to be worthy and I’m terrified of failing. Again.”

“I don’t understand.”

He tugged on her hand and led her to the table and chairs that covered the space between the kitchen and living room. When she was seated he pulled a chair close and sat so that their knees were pressed together, the same way he had the night she’d told him about Robert.

“Mari, you deserve so much more than what I have to give. I hadn’t even given a thought to love, and everything that goes with that. You’re just now stepping out of the shadow of all you’ve been through. I said what I did because I was too selfish to end it like I wanted to. I wanted us to stay friends, and if not that, business associates that had shared something great.”

His thumbs grazed her knees. “You make me want things, things I haven’t wanted for a very long time. I thought I was making the right decision by leaving. For you, for me. I thought my reasons were right. But I was wrong. I had Charlie bring me back. And I spent all of last night trying to fix it.”

“You have to go to Paris.”

“No, cara. I don’t.”

He took her hands in his. She wanted to believe him, even when his words of yesterday still rang in her ears. He was here and for some reason being here was important. She had to believe that was because somehow she was important.

She absorbed how he looked; the tanned skin, the full mouth that didn’t smile, the cappuccino-colored eyes that had always been able to see into her. Somewhere along the way he’d become her ideal. She longed to cup his face in her hands and kiss him as he’d kissed her that last night in the alcove.

But he spoke, keeping her in her chair.

“You know that my mother left my father when I was very young. And though we had our father, I felt very responsible for Gina. And for my father at times as well, because I was old enough to see how our mother leaving had hurt him. Time and again I saw him ask for her love and she gave it, but the words were meaningless. He tried in every way he could but it wasn’t enough for her.”

“Did you think I didn’t mean what I said yesterday?”

“I’m not one for words, Mari. I need to be shown…I need to show. I said the words once…remember I told you about Ellie. I gave her my heart. And it wasn’t so much that I found her with someone else, you see. It wasn’t even that I learned she was only with me because I was a Fiori. It was that I’d trusted her, with my heart. It was my judgment holding me back. And I vowed not to trust it again. So when I started having feelings for you, I gave myself every justification and excuse in the book.”

Mari pictured a younger Luca, vibrant with being in love and having that crushed. She squeezed his fingers. “So you focused on work.”

“There was never a question of me working for Fiori. It is my heritage. A heritage built by my grandparents. I would feel I had let them down if I hadn’t stayed with the company. I would have felt as if I’d let myself down. I love Fiori. It is in my blood.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”

He let out a little sigh. “But I spent many years focusing on my job alone, avoiding people. And I didn’t know how to have both.”

She raised an eyebrow. She had the magazines to prove that his nonavoidance was well documented. Yet she knew he did have it within him. The way he’d held her as she cried proved it. Luca was capable of great feeling.

“Oh,” he chuckled, a smile flirting at the corners of his mouth. “I did put on a good show. But I never got close to anyone after Ellie. Never wanted to. Gina got married and started a family and I kept traveling around the world, watching out for our interests. But putting on a front takes a lot of energy, Mariella. You, of all people know that.”