Valentino's Love-Child

She shook her head, not in negation, but as if she couldn’t think what to say. “Why are you here, Tino?”

After last night she could ask that?

“I miss you.” There. The bald-faced truth.

“I don’t see why you should.” She stiffened, drawing herself up into a ramrod sitting posture. “You still have your hand.”

Shock struck him like a bolt of lightning, making it hard to breathe for just a second. “That is crude, and implies our relationship is nothing but mechanical sex.”

“We no longer have a relationship.”

He did not accept that, but to say so would violate their initial agreement. He decided to change the subject instead.

“Are those the pieces my mother is salivating to see?” he asked, referring to several cloth-covered shapes around the room.

“Yes. I told her she could see them when they are finished.”

Sharp curiosity filled him. “She likes to see your work in progress.” He wanted to see Faith’s work.

“Not this time.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want her to see them before they are cast and glazed.”

“You are using the clay as models?”

“For some. There will be a numbered series cast before I break the mold for several, but some will be fired as is and be one-of-a-kind pieces.”

“I know very little about your process.” Even less than he knew about her.

“True.” She didn’t look inclined to elaborate.

But didn’t most people enjoy rhapsodizing about their passions? From the way her work took over her home, he assumed her art was Faith’s biggest passion. “Perhaps you would care to change that now?”

“I don’t think so.”

Her negative response stunned him. Though why it should, in the face of the way she’d been behaving, he didn’t know. He kept expecting her to go back to acting the way she had until a few short weeks ago. “You don’t feel like talking about your work?”

“I don’t feel like talking to you.”

“Don’t be like that, carina.” He didn’t want to examine the way that made him feel, but it was not good. “We are friends.”

“That’s not what you told your mother.”

Must she keep harping on that one moment in time, an answer to his mother’s questioning he was past regretting and into mentally banging his head against a wall? “I was protecting myself, I admit it. But I was trying to protect us too, Faith. What would you have had me tell her?”

“The truth?”

“That we are lovers?” He did not think so.

She glared, her eyes snapping with anger and something akin to disgust. “That wouldn’t be true, though, would it?”

“We are lovers, perhaps on hiatus, but still together.”

“You are delusional. We are not and never were lovers.”

“Now who is being delusional?”

She stood up, her hands fisted at her sides. “You have to give more than sex to be considered someone’s lover. We were sex partners. Now we are past acquaintances.”

“That is not true. We have more than sex between us.” After all, that “more” had cost him the sleep of several nights.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, our friendship.”

“Again, let me refer you to that afternoon by the pool at your family home. You told your mother we were not friends.”

“I made a mistake.” There, he had said it. “I am sorry,” he gritted.

“That was really hard for you, wasn’t it?”

He just looked at her.

“Admitting you were wrong isn’t your thing.”

“It doesn’t happen very often.”

“Being wrong or admitting it?” she asked with dark amusement.

“Both.”

“I don’t suppose it does.”

He too stood, taking her by the arms and standing close. “Let me back in, Faith. I need you.” Those last three words were said even less frequently than an apology by him.

Tears filled her eyes. “I can’t, Tino.”

“Why not?”

She just shook her head.

“Tell me what is wrong. Let me make it right.” He felt like he was drowning, but that wasn’t right. He did not want this thing between them to end, but if it did, it shouldn’t be this wrenching.

“You can’t make it right.”

“I can try.”

“Can you love me? Can you make me your wife?”

Something inside him shattered. “No.”

“Then you can’t fix it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

FAITH spent the next few days in a borderline state where the numbness of loss fought the tendrils of hope each day her pregnancy continued. She missed Tino. She wanted him—both emotionally and physically. She craved his touch, but not in a sexual way, and he didn’t want her to give him anything else. She wanted to be held, cuddled and comforted as her body went through the changes pregnancy brought. She wanted someone to talk to in the evenings when she found herself too tired to create but too restless to sleep.

She had not realized how much his presence in her life staved off the loneliness, until he was gone. She found herself in a pathetic state of anticipation every time she spoke to Agata, hoping the Sicilian woman would drop news about her oldest son.

Faith’s morning sickness had gotten worse the past few days, but she was more adamant than ever she would not give up her job teaching. She’d lost Tino. She didn’t think she could stand to lose her only contact with his son, as well. When had the little boy become so important to her? She didn’t know, but she could not deny that the love she felt for the child growing inside her was in equal intensity for the emotion she felt toward her former lover’s son.

One evening, almost a week after Tino had left

her apartment, she got a phone call from Agata.

“Ciao, bella. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“You were not home today.”

“No, I went shopping in Marsala.” She’d needed to get out. To be around other people. There were moments when she felt she was going mad from loneliness.

“I stopped by hoping to have lunch.”

“Oh,” Faith said with genuine regret. “I’m so sorry I missed you.”

“Yes, well, I would only have begged you to show me your work.”

Faith laughed. “Soon.” She knew just how she was going to announce her pregnancy to her dear friend, but not until the risky first trimester was past.

How she was going to tell Agata that the baby was Tino’s was less clear however.

“I would like that.” There was an emotional note in Agata’s tone that surprised Faith, but maybe it shouldn’t have.

She’d never known another human being as connected to her art as the older woman. Not even Taylish had understood the emotion behind the pieces the way Agata did.

“So, how about lunch tomorrow?” Agata asked.

“That would be lovely.”

They rang off and Faith turned to face her empty apartment, wondering if her newfound evening nausea would allow her to eat an evening meal.

Valentino’s mother took the seat beside where he watched his son frolic in the pool with his papa.

The worried expression on her face concerned Valentino. He knew she had planned to call Faith. “Mama, what is the matter?”

His mother twisted her hands in an uncharacteristic display of nerves but did not answer.

“Mama.”

She looked up as if just realizing he was sitting there. “Oh, did you say something, son?”

“I asked if there was anything the matter.”

“Nothing bad. Well, there may well be ramifications, but I’m in a quandary and do not know what to do.”

“About what?” he asked with some impatience. Was this about Faith?

His mother sighed heavily. “I did something I should not have.”

“What?”

“I do not think I should say.”

Valentino waited patiently. He knew his mother. She would not have said anything if she did not want to confess to someone. Apparently, he was that someone. And if it was related to Faith in any way, he was glad.