LITMIR.BIZ

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steps to bring closure to his family’s distress.

      When she at last reached her bedroom and closed the door, he returned to the terrace to finish his brandy, and pick up where he’d left off with his earlier musings. He’d always believed a man was responsible for directing his own destiny, but that he’d stumbled across such an ideal solution of how best to fill the hole left by Ermanno’s and Vanessa’s deaths, struck him as nothing less than serendipity.

      Admittedly he entertained some reservations about his proposal. Try though he might, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Caroline harbored a secret of such momentous proportions that it might one day hurt his family. But that merely made marrying her that much more urgent. As her husband, he’d be in a position to effect some damage control.

      There were other advantages, too. Whatever faults she might have, one thing remained unalterably clear: she was devoted to the twins, and ideally suited to share the responsibility of looking after them.

      Furthermore, she was unattached, as was he. Even if he’d been seriously involved with another woman, he’d heard enough horror stories to make him reluctant to ask a stranger to step in as surrogate mother to his brother’s children. But Caroline was family. Her blood ran in the twins’ veins, just as thickly as his. Whatever their differences, in this one matter they were united.

      If she was secure enough in the marriage, if he could make it so good between the two of them that she’d want to stay when the year was up, wouldn’t that be enough to neutralize whatever threat he feared she posed for his family? Wouldn’t it, in fact, be the best possible outcome for everybody, including the children?

      Last, of course, there was the kiss—another unforeseen event which had affected him deeply. In that kiss, he’d tasted something of the ingenue he’d so carelessly cast aside nine years ago, and in his world, that kind of innocence was a rare commodity.

      He hadn’t asked her if there’d been other lovers since him, because he hadn’t needed to. It had been there for him to see in her dazed surprise; in the nervous fluttering of her pulse, and her startled, uncertain gaze. A woman of experience did not respond so skittishly to a kiss, or to the suggestion of married intimacy.

      And yes, there was that, too. Sharing a bed. Seeing her naked in the tub. Touching her in the privacy of their room, with lamplight casting golden shadows over her cool, smooth skin. Losing himself in her soft, warm folds, under cover of night.

      The mere thought was enough to leave him hard and aching.

      A sound penetrated the night; a thin, pitiful wail drifting down from one of the bedrooms behind him. Leaving his glass on the stone balustrade, he raced inside to investigate.

      He was halfway up the stairs when he heard it again, coming from Gina’s room, at the end of the upper hall. The door to his parents’ suite remained closed, a sign that his mother had managed to fall asleep, after all, but Caroline’s stood ajar. Following the thread of light spilling over the floor from the room next to hers, he found her bent over Gina’s bed, attempting to gather the child into her arms and soothe her.

      “Hush, darling,” he heard her murmur. “It was a bad dream, that’s all. You’re safe now.”

      But Gina was inconsolable. “I want my mommy,” she sobbed.

      “Mommy’s gone to heaven, but you have me, precious,” Caroline crooned. “You’ll always have me. I’ll never leave you, I promise.”

      For a moment, he thought Gina was going to accept her. Just briefly, she rested her tearstained face against her aunt’s shoulder. Then she saw him standing on the threshold, and she pulled away, stretching out her arms to him, instead.

      “Go away!” she cried to Caroline. “I don’t want you, I want my Zio Paolo.”

      Caroline recoiled as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. Without a word, she rose from the edge of the bed to make room for him, and started toward the door.

      “Don’t leave, Caroline,” he begged, catching her by the arm as she passed. “Let’s do this together.”

      But, “You heard her,” she said. “She wants you, not me.”

      “She wants her mother, cara mia, and her father, too. I’m her third choice only.”

      “And I’m nothing,” she muttered brokenly, tearing free from his hold, and ran blindly from the room.

      He let her go because there was misery enough in the atmosphere at that moment, and Gina needed comfort. But once the child had settled down again, he stopped outside Caroline’s room and knocked.

      She didn’t answer, but she’d left it too late to pretend she was asleep. He’d already noticed the seam of light showing under her door, and heard her crying softly.

      “You might as well answer, Caroline, because I’m coming in, anyway,” he said.

      After a second of heavy silence punctuated only by an occasional sniffle, she spoke, her voice still muffled with tears. “What for? To rub my nose in the fact that my niece would rather deal with the devil himself, than with me?”

      “Let me in, and we’ll talk about that,” he replied, not about to engage in any sort of discussion with a closed door between them.

      She cracked it open an inch. “What’s the matter?” she inquired bitterly as, taking advantage of the moment, he lost no time stepping quickly into the room and closing the door securely behind him. “Afraid you might be seen fraternizing with the enemy?”

      “Yes. The last thing either of us needs just now is for one of my parents to show up. My mother has enough to deal with, and my father would jump to the wrong conclusions. He has rather old-fashioned ideas, one of them being that unmarried female guests do not entertain men in their rooms, at least not when they’re staying under his roof.”

      “That must have cramped your style over the years. No wonder you were so fond of the cabana on the beach.”

      If he hadn’t known he’d only make matters worse, he’d have laughed at the picture she made. She stood there defiant as a child, hurling insults at him in an effort to stave off another onslaught of tears. She held a wad of sodden tissues balled in her hand, her eyes were all puffy and pink, and her dainty little toes peeped out from beneath the hem of a white embroidered nightgown she’d surely inherited from some oversize Victorian ancestor.

      “Caroline,” he said mildly, careful not to betray so much as a smile, “I am not your enemy, nor do I consider you to be mine. This evening, I asked you to marry me, and I’m not here to tell you I’ve changed my mind. Rather, I hope that you now see the wisdom of accepting my proposal.”

      “Actually I don’t,” she hiccuped, her words interspersed with a volley of ragged sobs. “Ginahates me, and so does Clemente. They’ll hate you, too, if you make me their stepmother.”

      “But I cannot take care of them alone, cara. I need your help, and whether or not you believe it, so do they.”

      “They need their mommy,” she insisted, an observation he’d have thought was plain enough for anyone to see, but which, for some reason, brought about an even more violent outburst of tears from her. Turning away from him, she retreated to the bed, collapsed in a heap on the rumpled covers, and buried her face in her hands.

      He made a fatal mistake, then. Moved beyond words, he went to her. Lowered himself next to her on the mattress. And unwisely chose to cradle her in his arms.

      Her tears splashed warm and salty against his neck, leaving his shirt collar damp. Her hair teased his senses with the fragrance of sweet-smelling shampoo. Her slender frame shook uncontrollably against his chest. And he was lost, all his honorable intentions to give her space and time to consider his marriage proposal, reduced to smoldering dust.

      She was a woman in need of a man. And he was not a man to turn away from a woman in need—especially not when her name was Caroline Leighton.

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