“You can’t have me,” she whispered against his mouth, as tears stung her eyes and filled the back of her throat. “You Marcellos have taken enough.” She wrenched away and nearly tripped over her full lace skirt in her need for distance. “It’s over, Gio. We’re through—”
“Not by half,” he ground out. “We have a family.”
“You’re not part of it anymore.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You can’t cut me out. Your sister didn’t leave a will. She didn’t indicate that she wanted you to be Michael’s guardian. You have no more legal right to him than I do.”
“But I want him more.”
“That’s not true. I want him very much. He’s all I have left of my brother, which makes him infinitely dear. Unlike you and Juliet, I didn’t have a complicated relationship with Antonio. There was no guilt or anger, no envy or resentment. From the time he was born, he was my brother and best friend. I sat with him as he died, and it killed me watching him suffer and fade. His death wasn’t quick, either. It took him weeks to go, and even as great as his suffering was, I grieved terribly when he was gone. I still miss him profoundly.”
His words came at her, one after the other, and it was overwhelming his passion and love—love he’d never shown her. She shouldn’t be jealous, but she was. Rachel had wanted Gio to love her that much, but he never did.
“No, I didn’t rush to Seattle with open arms when I learned of Michael,” Gio added. “But I had to be cautious about this claim that he had a son there. A dozen different women claimed they’d had his son or daughter. A dozen different claims to process. A dozen different women who wanted a piece of Antonio’s wealth. It was bad enough to lose my brother, but then to deal with all of this desperation and greed?”
Rachel flinched, aware of how desperate she’d been when she’d arrived in Venice on Gio’s doorstep. “Desperation doesn’t make a person bad!”
“No, but it does make one suspect.”
“You should have told me this right away. You should have sat me down on that first day in your mother’s favorite salon and laid out the facts—”
“Buon Dio, Rachel! You had called the paparazzi. You invited the media to my doorstep. How was I to trust you?”
She shook her head, thoughts muddled, hating that he could tangle her up, make her question everything all over again.
Gio closed the distance, hands settling on her shoulder, his skin so warm through the thin lace of her gown. “We have both made our share of mistakes, but we won’t make another one today. We will marry, and we will be a family for Michael. You may feel hurt, and you might be angry with me, but you can’t allow your anger to hurt Michael. Our baby.”
Our baby. The words rippled through her, and she exhaled at the truth in the words. Gio somehow always cut straight to the heart. Maybe it was his engineering mind, or maybe it was his way of problem solving, but it felt as if he’d taken a lance to her, cutting away the garbage and nonsense and revealing what was essential and true.
Michael was theirs. He wasn’t Juliet’s any longer, nor was he Antonio’s.
They were both gone. They would never return.
“We will love him and protect him,” Gio said, one hand slipping up over her neck, his fingers spreading across her jawbone, cradling her face as if a jewel or flower. Every place he touched tingled, her skin flushed and sensitive. “We will not be destructive or selfish. We will put aside our differences and do right by our son.”
She stared up into Gio’s brilliant blue eyes, seeing him, all of him, not just his dark good looks, but his heart. His fierce, hard heart. He was brutal and relentless and he’d smashed her hopes and dreams. “I loved you,” she said numbly. “And I gave you my heart, but I’ve taken it back. It’s not yours. It will never be yours again.”
His thumb stroked her cheek as it met the edge of her mouth. “We can work through this. And we will, after the wedding.”
Her lips quivered at the caress. He stroked down again, lingering at the curve of her mouth. She didn’t know where to look. She certainly couldn’t look into his eyes, not anymore, and so she stared at his mouth and chin, her chest filled with rage and pain. Why had she ever come to Italy? Why had she thought that Giovanni would be the help she needed? She closed her eyes to keep tears from forming. “I won’t forgive you.”
“It’s not as bad as that, il mio amore.”
“It is as bad as that,” she corrected, trying to pull away.