Panic lanced through him that she might do just that. ‘your father would worry if he did not know where you were.”
‘Then 1‘11 tell him.”
‘And he will tell me.”
Her small hands made tight fists against her thighs.
‘Not if I tell him not to.” She didn’t sound completely convinced of that fact.
And she should not be.
‘No father is going to allow his daughter to remain unprotected when there is any risk she could be hurt by her own stubborn independence.”
‘so I won’t tell him”
‘And risk causing him another heart episode in his worry for you?”
An hour later, buckled into a seat on Salvatore’s private jet, Elisa stewed. What a Class A manipulator.
He’d known exactly what buttons to push to get her to agree to go to Sicily with him, but, even knowing she was being manipulated she would not change her mind. Papa would worry. She knew that. He was sick and she could not stand it if she was the reason something truly bad happened with his health.
Besides, she wanted to know why he had told Salvatore she was like Shawna. She was tired of just accepting the outsider’s role in her family. She wanted something more and it began with her father’s trust and belief that she was every bit as good a daughter as Annemarie. Somehow she would get him to see that.
She knew deep down that he loved her.
She needed to feel that love now not just be aware of its existence.
How different these thoughts were from the ones she’d always harbored about love and family.
Shawna had raised her to depend only on herself to rely on no one else physically or emotionally, because other people let you down. Elisa had learned the truth of that statement early on, right at Shawna’s knee.
Here Salvatore was invading her space, demanding she rely on him. He wanted her to depend on him, to trust him, but how could she? He’d shown her that, just as with the other people she loved in her life, she had only a minor role to play in his. That of lover, but not beloved.
He wanted to marry her because he felt guilty. If it had been for any other reason she would have jumped at the chance to build a life with him, to have the family she had never had. She craved the closeness she saw in other families the relationship that existed between her father Therese and Annemarie.
She was livid with Salvatore for tempting her with what she wanted most in the world, but knew she could not really have.
Because in a marriage without love she wouldn’t belong to him any more than she had ever really belonged with Shawna or her father.
They were on the road that led to the di Vitale estate outside of Palermo before Elisa realized Salvatore was not taking her to her father’s house.
Instead they pulled past the iron-gate entrance to his palatial home.
‘Why have we come here first?” Salvatore’s profile was grim as it had been since she had agreed with little grace to accompany him to Sicily.
‘you are staying with me.”
‘
No I am not ” He pulled the car to a stop in front of the huge old house. It looked like something straight out of a European guidebook a classic example of the opulent Mediterranean villa home of the wealthy from the previous century.
Salvatore got out of the car and came around to open her door. Although his big body shaded her from the sun hot air blasted her as the climate-controlled coolness of the car poured out through the open door.
She made no move to get out, leaving her safety belt buckled.
‘l’m not going inside.”
He sighed.