“I think we’re going to spend a lot of time working on meditation.”
She loved the genuine laughter in his voice. Just the fact that she could make him laugh after his disclosure made her happy. Taviano, like his brothers, was a gentleman. He was very used to getting his way. He could buy and sell small countries. He owned anything he wanted. In the time she’d been around the Ferraros, she’d come to realize, for all their wealth, the core of who they were came down to one thing—family.
When the doors were closed, they were very different from the men and women they showed to the public. They might appear to live glamorous lives. They raced cars and attended all types of charity functions. They were invited to every party. They jetted around the world, chasing the best snow, the best view of the northern lights, whatever it was they seemed to have gotten in their heads that day, or they visited cousins to party.
They always wore their signature suits, looking handsome, and Emmanuelle, stylish and beautiful. They were the Ferraros. Untouchable. They smiled, but those smiles were rare and certainly didn’t reach their eyes, which made them appear all the more mysterious and dangerous. Rumors were abundant, mostly because they were beyond wealthy and their origins were Italy and Sicily, so they had to be in organized crime; others said they were self-made, but no one knew how their massive fortune had been acquired.
Nicoletta had seen them completely differently from the personas they projected to the world. Behind closed doors they were a close, loving family. Aunts and uncles to little Crispino, they vied for his attention and spoiled him until Stefano objected and removed him from them and spoiled him by becoming a gym, allowing his son to climb all over him, making his brothers, sisters-in-law and wife laugh at him.
They genuinely laughed together. They preferred to spend their time together. They cooked meals; in fact, she’d learned that Taviano was an excellent cook. Francesca loved to cook, and the two of them were usually the ones to put together the meals so they didn’t have to eat out, where others could intrude on their privacy.
When Vittorio had introduced Grace into the family, she had been accepted immediately. More than accepted, she had been embraced by the various family members, as had Sasha when Giovanni had married her. Lying there, with Taviano wrapped so closely around her, Nicoletta realized that his family had accepted her as well. She had been the one to hold back.
“I wish you’d had a choice,” she murmured. She was so sleepy she knew he probably couldn’t understand what she was saying. Her words sounded, even to her own ears, as if they were blending together.
His arm tightened for a moment around her waist. “There’s always a choice, piccola.”
“Not if you’re a rider, it seems.”
He used a remote with his free hand and brought down privacy screens to black out the windows so they could sleep in when the light came in the morning. “There’s always a choice, Nicoletta. I’m not Eloisa. As much as I love being a rider, I had a choice from the beginning whether or not to allow my shadow to tangle with yours. I will admit, I didn’t realize it would happen so fast, but I still made that decision. After that first knot formed, I could have stayed away, but I didn’t. You were the one without a clear choice because you didn’t know the consequences until I told them to you. I couldn’t do that right away for obvious reasons.”
“Taviano, why did you—”
“Go to sleep, tesoro. We’ll be sorting through quite a few things in the morning. I’m tired and I need to lie down.”
She had a hundred more questions for him. Mostly, she needed to know if he really thought that he could fall in love with her. In love was far different from loving. She had no doubts that Taviano loved her. She knew that he did. She felt it every time she was with him. She not only loved him; she was in love with him. He was always going to be her “only.” The one. She wanted to be the same for him.
She knew the moment he finally fell asleep, his body relaxing fully against hers. He was warm. Not just warm, almost hot. His arm was a weight around her waist, but she found she liked having it there, when she’d always wanted to be able to run at the least sign of danger.
It was strange to be lying in bed knowing she was Nicoletta Ferraro, Taviano Ferraro’s wife. She found that the idea gave her a little thrill, when before she’d been so upset that she’d let him talk her into it. Now that Taviano had shared his past with her, given her something no one else but his witch of a parent knew, she felt as if she belonged with him. She fit. Maybe not perfectly yet, but she could have his back.