The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

She’d never felt free talking about this sort of stuff with her girlfriends at school. She’d always been too shy, but Martina had steamrolled right over her reticence and they had become confidantes.

Martina giggled. “Maybe not make love, but I have kissed a few.”

Hope’s heart twitched. She could not say the same. She’d hardly ever been kissed and never like Luciano kissed her except by him. She’d never wanted it with another man. “I suppose it must be love.”

“I knew it.” Martina clapped her hands. “You are going to marry him. Mamma’s sure of it, you know.”

“I know.” How could she miss it having been fitted for the wedding gown, for Heaven’s sake?

“She’s just dying for grandbabies.”

“What if I don’t want to get pregnant right away?”

“I don’t think Luciano would like that,” Martina said candidly, concern in her voice.

Hope secretly agreed. She was becoming more and more convinced that the reason he was considering marriage now, with her, was for those bambini every Italian male supposedly wanted.

“Well, it’s a nonissue at the moment. Your brother hasn’t actually asked me to marry him. Until he does, this is all conjecture.”

“Because you’re not sure he’s going to or because you’re still trying to convince yourself you don’t know if you’ll say yes?”

“Santo cielo! Had I known the swimsuit was so revealing I would have bought another one.”

“Ciao, Luciano. I think Hope looks smashing in the bikini, but you’re right. It shows a lot more of her than the one-piece she brought with her.”

Hope looked up at Luciano and smiled. “You’re both being silly. It’s very conservative for a bikini.”

And it was. The tank style top showed the barest hint of her cleavage and the hip-hugging short bottoms didn’t reveal anything like the thongs she’d seen on the local beaches, or even the high-cut brief bottoms. On her smallish figure, it was perfectly decent.

“Not conservative enough,” Luciano muttered in a driven undertone.

“If it bothers you so much—” she began to say.

“Don’t offer to change it. You must start as you mean to go on,” Martina exclaimed. “If you let him dictate your clothes now, it will never end.”

Dark flags of color accentuated Luciano’s sculpted cheekbones and warning lights blazed in his deep brown eyes.

“I was going to say, no one was forcing him to look, Miss Smarty Pants.” She smiled up at Luciano. “You’re back earlier than expected.”

“Si. We have been invited to a pool party at the DeBrecos’. My friend is celebrating the close of a business deal that has given him some trouble.”

“Marco is having a pool party?” Martina’s interest was definitely piqued.

“He is.”

“Am I invited?”

“Of course.”

She jumped up from her lounger. “I’ll go get ready. When do we leave?”

“In less than an hour, sorella picolla. Do not make us late applying makeup and effecting an elaborate hairstyle your first dive in the pool will wash away.”

Martina turned to Hope and rolled her lovely brown eyes so like her brother’s. “Men. Don’t you go changing your swimsuit to make him happy.”

“How could I? It was a gift and it would undoubtedly offend your brother for me to reject it in favor of my old swimsuit.”

“Do not bet on it,” Luciano growled.

Hope laughed. Would a man who did not want her be so affected by her conservative suit? She hoped the answer was no, but she was definitely leaving the suit on. If she could tempt him, at least a little, maybe he would reveal some of his feelings regarding her.

That optimistic belief seemed in vain as Luciano treated her to yet another dose of the courteous, non-touching companion of the past few days at the DeBrecos’ pool party.

Feeling desperate to provoke some kind of response, she took off her swimsuit cover and dug in her bag for a bottle of high-factor sunscreen. She turned to Luciano. Wearing only black swim shorts, every rippling muscle in his body was on display and it was all she could do not to drool.

Or trip him and beat him to the ground.

She extended the lotion to him. “Would you do my back? I think what I applied earlier is wearing off and I don’t want to burn.”

Luciano took the bottle, a strange expression on his face. “You cannot reach your own back, cara?”

It wasn’t her back she found impossible to reach. It was him! She tried for a nonchalant shrug. “It’s easier if you do it.”

She turned and presented her back to him, pulling her curly hair from the nape of her neck.