LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Will you let me see the results of this inspiration?” Agata asked. “I am still waiting to see the pieces you made while Rocco and I were in Naples.”

      Faith’s hand dropped to her stomach, like she was nervous. “I’ll let you see them all eventually. You know that.”

      “You promise? I know how you artists are. Especially you. If you think a piece is not up to standards, you will pound it back into clay.”

      That strained smile crossed Faith’s beautiful features again. “I can’t promise to keep something I hate, but you should be used to that by now.”

      His mother gave a long-suffering sigh, but she hugged Faith warmly. “I am. You cannot blame me for trying, though. You have spoiled me, allowing me access to your work before you do others.”

      Faith’s laugh was even more strained than her smile. “You are my friend.” Even though he was wet from the pool, she hugged Giosue goodbye, as well. “I will see you next week in school.”

      Her leave-taking of his father was the usual kisses on both cheeks. But she simply nodded at Tino before turning to go. Though it fit in with the facade of casual friendship he had tried to create, he felt the slight like a blow to his midsection.

      He understood being careful in front of his parents, but this went beyond that. Had it been deliberate? Or was she simply doing her part to allay suspicion? Unfortunately, he could not ask her, nor could he request a more warm goodbye without looking suspect himself. They would have to talk about how to act in front of his family, as it was clear that was going to be an issue in the future. He was only surprised it had taken so long for the matter to arise, now that he knew how close she was to his mother and son.

      That was secondary as he watched Faith walk away, and he had to fight everything in himself not to go after her.

      “And you worried your mother was developing a tendre for TK,” his father said with a big, amused laugh.

      “Never say so!” His mother shook her head. “Sometimes, my son, you are singularly obtuse.”

      “But he is good at business,” Giosue piped in, as if trying to stand up for his deficient father and not knowing exactly what to say.

      Apparently everyone else in his family knew Faith’s life more intimately than he did.

      He was determined to rectify that ignorance. Starting now. “Mama, what did she mean by saying that the father was holding the baby in my statue?”

      It was one of the reasons he loved the piece so much. It showed the father having a tender moment with his child as well as his wife.

      His mother’s pause before answering gave him time to realize what a monumentally stupid question that had been to ask. He had just gotten through admonishing himself regarding this very topic and here he was drawing attention to it.

      No doubt about it. Faith Williams messed up his equilibrium and made mush of his usually superior brain function.

      There was nothing wrong with the way his mother’s brain was working, however. “Do you mean the statue that I bought you? The one that you keep on the bureau in your bedroom, Valentino?” she asked delicately like a cat licking at cream.

      “Yes, that is the one,” he said with as much insouciance as he could muster under his mother’s gimlet stare.

      He offered no explanation and, surprisingly enough, she did not demand he do so. He could read the speculation in her eyes as easily as a first-year primer.

      She looked down at her hands as if examining her manicure, which was incidentally perfect as usual, before looking back at him. “I’m not sure that is something she would care for me to share with you.”

      He wasn’t about to be deterred after the huge gaffe he’d committed to get the information. “Mama,” he said with exasperation. “She told me to ask you.”

      “Si, well, I suppose. You know she lost her husband to a car accident six years ago?”

      “I know she is a widow, yes.”

      “She lost her child in the same accident.”

      “How horrible.” It had nearly destroyed him to lose Maura; if he had lost Giosue as well, he did not know how he would have stood it.

      “Just so.” Mama reached out and hugged her wet grandson to her. “She sells her artwork under TK as a tribute to them. Her husband’s name was Taylish and her son would have been named Kaden.”

      “Would have been?”

      “She was pregnant. And from what she said, that was something of a minor miracle. Her life has not been an easy one. She was left an orphan by her mother’s death years earlier. She never knew her father—or even who he was, I believe.”

      “Life has enough pain to make joy all the sweeter,” his father said with the same pragmatism he spoke the well-used Sicilian proverb, cu’ avi ‘nna bona vigna avi pani, vinu e linga.

      He who owns a good vineyard has bread, wine and wood.

      The Sicilian people were a practical lot. The fatalism of their cultural thinking reflected in the fact that Sicilian vernacular had no future tense. Just past and present.

      Regardless of his pragmatic heritage, Valentino found it almost debilitatingly painful to discover that his happy-go-lucky Faith had such a sorrow-filled past. Her optimistic nature was one of the things he found most attractive about her. She made him feel good just being around.

      To discover that her attitude was in spite of past agonies, not because she had never had any, was so startling as to leave him speechless.

      “I think Signora Guglielmo wanted to be a mama very much,” Giosue said. “She loves all the children at school, even the bratty ones.”

      His son’s observation made Valentino chuckle even as it made him sad for the woman who had to find an outlet for her nurturing nature with other people’s children.

      He remembered her once telling him that she believed she was not meant to have a family. He had assumed that meant she thought she was not cut out to be a mother. He had not minded knowing that at all, as it assured him she would not expect marriage and children someday down the road. Now he saw a far more disturbing meaning behind the words.

      When Faith had said she wanted more from him, she truly had meant more. She wanted what she had thought she could not have. A family.

      And the only way he could give it to her was to break a promise that for him was sacred.

      It was not an option.

      But neither was letting her go so she could find that with someone else.

CHAPTER SIX

      FAITH DROVE LIKE an automaton toward Pizzolato. They’d met? They knew each other?

      Each word Tino had used to answer his mother’s innocent questions had driven into her heart with the precision of an assassin’s dagger. And the wounds were still raw and bleeding. As they would be for a very long time.

      How could he dismiss her as if she meant nothing to him?

      But she had the answer to that, an answer she wanted to ignore, to pretend no knowledge of for the sake of her lacerated heart. She only wished she could do it—that she could lie to herself as easily as she had deluded herself into believing things were changing between them.

      He could dismiss her as someone of no importance in his life because that was exactly what she was. She was his convenient sex partner. Nothing more. Friends? When it was convenient for him to think so, but that clearly did not extend to times with his family.

      They’d met. The words reverberated through her mind over

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