“Don’t be nervous,” Maria urged Lauren when she realized how intimidated Lauren was. “He’s a family friend. He marries all of us and would be insulted if Paolo hadn’t asked him. Although he’s a little put out with the speed. I can’t imagine what Paolo paid him to waive the banns. When my brother makes up his mind, though, don’t even think of getting in his way.”
“Is this a wedding?” Alys nearly leapt out of her skin. “When Mama said to wear my church dress, I thought it was for mass.”
Paolo reached a hand to Alys’s curly head. “Didn’t you make me promise that when I married, you could be my flower girl? Vittorio brought bouquets and everything.”
Vittorio greeted Lauren with a lazy kiss on her cheek, looking slightly hungover and unabashedly amused as he handed over the flowers.
Alys grasped her posy in reverent hands, her adoring eyes lifting to Paolo. “Oh, Uncle, I love you.”
They all laughed, but Lauren grew teary-eyed at the same time. Of course Alys loved him. Who could resist a man who kept promises to little girls? Whether he kept promises to big ones, was the question.
She was distracted from her fears as they entered the reverent building and she was introduced to the archbishop. The ceremony was under way seconds later.
And it was too easy. Lauren had done the fairy-tale thing with Ryan, working herself into knots over every small detail of the huge event, agonizing through the ceremony with so many eyes upon her while her own focus kept slipping to the brooding man on Ryan’s right.#p#????#e#
This was intimate and solemn and very much between the two of them. Which made it almost too big for Lauren to handle. She was hypersensitive to his concerned frown as he took her cold hands in his warm ones and massaged lightly to warm them. She began to well up as Paolo looked into her eyes to make his vows. It was too impactful. Lack of sleep, she tried telling herself, but her throat was one big lump of hope that he meant these vows. By the time he kissed her, she was trembling with the effort not to reveal how susceptible to him she was.
He wrapped his strong arms around her and drew her in, promising to square up all her loose edges with one warm, comforting embrace.
“Are you okay?” he murmured.
She wasn’t. Everything about this was too right, leaving her deeply disturbed by how skinless he felt. She hid her expression by tilting her head down.
“It’s just the baby making me emotional,” she whispered in excuse, and felt a tender kiss brush her temple.
They broke apart as Maria announced she had to get back to the rest of her children. “Are you coming to the house?” she asked Paolo.
“I’ve already made my apologies to Mama. I promised Lauren I’d take her south for our honeymoon. We’ll be back in a week.”
They were in the air to Sicily within thirty minutes. Something must have shown on Lauren’s face as she returned to her seat after changing in the very well-appointed bedroom on the private jet because Paolo gave her a laconic grin before rising to take his turn. “I don’t want to be interrupted and we’d have to take our seats to land.”
Oh. She was that obvious, was she? It took everything she had to act naturally as they ate a light lunch. Every cell of her being was locked on him, filling the air around them with an aura of sexual tension.
Once they landed, Paolo murmured something about her desire to see his country as he instructed their driver to take them on the coastal route from Catania to Taormina. The scenery was pretty enough, offering glimpses of clear blue waves lapping at stretches of sand and rocky escarpments interspersed with pockets of village life and tourist havens. Lauren appreciated his thoughtfulness, but she was ever aware of the silent man beside her, seemingly gripped in a similar stasis of impatience.
They climbed something the driver called Monte Tauro. The road entered a charming village high off the water and the grandness of the position and view of snowcapped Mount Etna prompted a wonder-filled “Oh” of reaction out of her. They passed a tram making a steep decline to the water and she craned her neck.
“It saves hiking down to the beach. The water is warm year round. We could swim if you’d like,” he said.
“You expect we’ll leave the villa?” she joked, her nerves strained to screaming pitch by the suppressed desire crackling between them.
Paolo laughed with rich appreciation and crushed her hand in his, fingers weaving between hers in a determined grip of possession. The car stopped and he pulled her out behind him into a sunny courtyard where bougainvillea bloomed in bursts of red on spidery green tendrils clinging to the stone walls of the house.