LITMIR.BIZ

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and, try as she might not to just yet, she started to come to him.

      ‘Don’t,’ Sophie begged, because once Luka came it was over, but his tide was coming in.

      She knew from the only body she truly knew—his.

      His moan was one of pain as he released because it signalled the end, but even in the last throes Sophie might have lost her heart but her head remained and she looked into his navy eyes as he offered her one last chance.

      ‘‘Will you fight for us?’ Luka asked.

      He pulled out, he dressed and then he dressed her and he asked her again. ‘Now, with what I have to tell you, will you fight for us as you promised?’ He went on, ‘Will your words still be kind and wise when we face a test?’ He placed a gram of gold in her hand and it felt like a weighted ball, with no burden lifted, as he handed it over to her.

      ‘I found it when my father died. I came back to Bordo for the funeral and I was going through my father’s things.’

      ‘Your father did this... You...’ She halted, tripped over her words. She tried to remember she was fighting for them but she was breathless on the ropes in her mother’s corner.

      ‘You see, Sophie, with this you can win every row. You can take the shame of what my father did and give it to me over and over. But I can’t live like that. The reason I will never marry you is this—I have lied under oath to protect your family. It didn’t work. I have lied on the Bible, I have attempted over and over to edit the truth. No more. I will not stand in a church and lie and take you as a temporary wife when the truth is I will love you for ever.’

      Anger, rage, fury, hissed at an unknown target.

      ‘I don’t care if you’re poor. I don’t care if you have lied, cheated...whatever...’ Luka continued. ‘You do what you have to to survive but I know my limits, Sophie. I know I love you. I accept you but I cannot compromise with this. I cannot take more of his shame. I cannot say sorry any more for a person I am not. Know that.

      ‘I love you,’ Luka said. ‘I love the life we could have, but I care about myself too. I have dreams and ambitions and I will never be brought to my knees again for that man.’

      ‘Luka, how long have you known?’

      ‘When he died.’

      ‘And you never guessed before then?’

      This was her mother who had died—her mother!

      ‘I need to know. How long have you had your suspicions?’

      ‘I can remember your mother coming to our house. She was angry at my father for trying to get them out of their home. Your father had warned her they should leave yet she refused...’ Luka tried to look with adult eyes at a child’s past and then he lost his cool.

      ‘I won’t let you do this to us, Sophie,’ he shouted. ‘You want facts? I found out for sure a year ago. I have known for a lifetime he was rotten to the core. If you want a dissection then get a dead frog—they don’t bleed and anyway their blood is already cold. Mine’s warm. My heart beats. I won’t let you do it to me.’

      She came out fighting then.

      Sophie pushed herself off the ropes that bound her and entered the ring.

      For them.

      ‘You criticise me for comparing you to your father, yet over and over you compare me to my mother. Not just you,’ Sophie said, ‘but my father, the whole town does. “She is like Rosa...”’ The only sound was silence. ‘I am like her, just as you are like your father. But you are not him. You are arrogant, you are clever and you are strong, but you are good. I am fierce, I have a temper, but I would listen when the man I love told me that we had to leave. Did I march to your father and demand Bella’s freedom of choice?’ Sophie shouted. ‘No. I offered to and when she said no, when she said she must stay, I respected her choice...as I have to respect that you can’t marry me.’

      ‘I can never be your fake husband, Sophie.’

      She looked at him.

      ‘Can we get past this?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. Questions were swirling, dates and times and anger and blame, and Luka smiled at her honest answer.

      ‘You get to decide, Sophie. I’ll be there today. Jilt me if you think I deserve it for what he did. Score your point for your fleeting victory but I win because I know you will regret it for ever if you don’t show up today. No one ever shall, or ever could, love you as much as I do.’

      ‘You love me so much that you invite me to end us—?’

      ‘I love you so much,’ Luka interrupted, ‘that I won’t relegate us to a poor future. I would rather have sex with a stranger for the rest of my life than lie next to you cold and blaming. I would rather have half a marriage, half a life, half of me, if I cannot have all of you. For you to deny me that part of you...for you to hold me hostage...’ He shook his proud head. ‘Fight with me about things if you want to, be every inch Sicilian. Call me on what my father did once. I might get that, but if you call me on it twice...’

      And Luka dared accuse her of being Sicilian!

      ‘I don’t give second warnings,’ Luka said. ‘My father was responsible for the death of your mother. I will not let his sins, or your anger, bring me to my knees. If you walk into that church,’ Luka warned, ‘then you’d better know that it’s for ever. You only walk towards me if you can love me more than the shadows of our past. If you can’t, then it is better for both of us that you walk away.’

      Luka did the nicest thing then.

      Her breast was precariously close to falling out again so he redid the tie to her halter-neck and rearranged her dress. He looked after her in a way that no one ever could and he demanded that she match that care.

      Always.

      ‘Show up or don’t,’ Luka said. ‘Hate me at your own peril.’

      ‘What will you do if I don’t turn up?’

      ‘Nothing,’ Luka said. And it was, for Sophie, the darkest response he could deliver. ‘If you don’t show for our wedding then nothing will happen, not ever. I will wish you luck for the future, I will accept that our love could not survive. I’ll be proud of you for having the guts to admit it and,’ he added, ‘I will get on with my life.’

      He left her on the rocks.

      He left her spinning like a Catherine wheel.

      There was a retort she could deliver.

      A proud last word, perhaps.

      There was comeuppance still to be had.

      Or there was a shiny new future?

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      ‘YOU LOOK WONDERFUL,’ Bella said.

      It was possibly the most beautiful dress in the world and might, Sophie knew, remain unseen.

      He had left her with seven hours to grow up.

      She was down to twelve minutes.

      ‘Are you scared he won’t show up?’

      It was no longer a town of secrets but what had happened on the beach Sophie had kept to herself.

      This was between her and Luka.

      She was scared that she might not. Scared that her rapid tongue could not hold its fire.

      Sophie pulled out the necklace.

      I love you, she said in her head to her mother. I come from you but I am not you.

      ‘It looks like the one in the photos that your

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