Her nipples peaked from the cold air blowing in through the open doorway. She didn’t want it closed however. The sound of the surf was soothing.
“My dad met my mom when he was in Sicily negotiating a contract.” Angelo’s voice was void of emotion…no remembered pleasure, no residual pain, nothing. “He fell for her like a ton of bricks within minutes of their meeting. At least that’s how he used to tell it. He went after her as only a brash young man sure of what he wants can do.”
“You wouldn’t know anything about that,” she teased.
He shrugged, not even cracking a smile at the small joke. “It’s not the same. This was love—the kind you hear about in fairy tales I guess.”
Something clenched inside her at his words.
He’d fallen silent, maybe sensing her inner turmoil.
“Go on,” she urged.
“Dad talked Mama into marrying him and returning to the states with him.”
“That sounds pretty romantic,” she had to admit. She might not believe in love and happily ever after for herself, but it sounded like his parents had certainly known what that was all about. “Were they happy?”
Pain spasmed across his face and laced his voice when he spoke. “Yes. They were deeply in love for all the years of their marriage, but Dad died of a heart attack when I was twenty. Mama was lost without him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was, too. She didn’t know how to run a company and I was still in school. I wasn’t ready to take over the reins.”
“That would have been hard for you.”
“Even harder when I realized what that had cost us.”
“What did she do?”
“She hired someone, a man who came highly recommended. He was brilliant and seemed to really know his business. I liked him. I worked alongside him at the company during my summer break that year. I thought he was teaching me the ropes so I could take over as soon as I graduated.” Self-disgust dripped from Angelo’s words.
“Is he the one responsible for you losing your family company?” she asked with an awful premonition.
“Yes.”
“Because he wasn’t as good as you thought?”
“Because he was a lying, using bastard who did whatever it took to get what he wanted.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“He seduced my mother into selling him the company at half its worth and then dumped her.”
The words hung in the air with poison still capable of causing pain. Tara could feel it. She hurt.
This guy had been worse than Baron. She shuddered at the thought. She hadn’t thought they got any slimier.
“He was ten years her junior, but it didn’t matter,” Angelo went on, his voice flat now. “She was so grief stricken, she was easy prey for him and all the while I thought he was being a good friend to her while I was away at school.”
“You blame yourself.”
“Not as much as I blame him.”
“So, he just walked away from her after he got his hands on your company?”
“Not before destroying my mother. He mocked her for believing a man a decade younger would want to marry her. He ruined her sense of honor and womanhood.” His fist hit the floor. “I thought he was my friend, but when I found out he’d been screwing my mother, I wanted to kill him.”
“You didn’t.”
“I might have. I was angry enough and there are a lot of primitive urges passed down by my Sicilian ancestors, but I was too busy dealing with her suicide.”
Horror clawed through her heart and she felt nausea well up inside. “She killed herself. Over him?”
“She still loved my dad when this monster came into her life. He used her loneliness against her and when it was over, she felt she’d betrayed Dad’s memory. She came from a very traditional Sicilian home and she couldn’t face what she’d done.”
“Did she tell you this?”
“She left a note…wanted to explain to me so I wouldn’t hate her. God knows I never hated her, but she couldn’t live with herself…with the memories, the humiliation and hell, probably the loneliness.”
“So she gave up?” At least her mom had kept fighting. No matter how many mistakes in judgment she made about men, she’d never given up and abandoned Tara.
“He killed her.” The words came out like bullets and she knew Angelo believed them implicitly.
Tara didn’t say anything. In a sense he was right, but in her opinion, his mother had let him down, too. Women got hurt all the time by men they trusted. Just look at her own mom…and her own past. His mom’s choice had been cruelly selfish toward her son, but Tara couldn’t condemn her…had no interest in doing so.