Page 110 of Marry Me Not
My chest tightened.
“When he saw the burns on my arms, he stopped taking me on the hikes.” His voice was still controlled, but there was something underneath it now. Something old and bitter. “Somehow, he thought the proper response to finding out hiswife was putting cigarettes out on my arm was to distance himself from me.”
“I don’t understand how he could justify that to himself. My mom wasn’t able to protect Rafe, but she wasn’t the don. Your dad was. He had absolute power.”
Cosimo frowned, his gaze sliding toward the fire. “My mother had her own power over him.”
The rest of our food arrived before I could respond.
“Let’s not ruin our appetite with this discussion,” Cosimo said once the waiter stepped away.
I didn’t argue. For a man like Cosimo—private and secretive—telling me this much must’ve been difficult.
And yet he’d done it. He’d trusted me with information he’d vehemently refused to give me only weeks ago when I’d asked about him and his mother at Gino’s wake.
Warmth and hope converged inside my chest. The shape of what was happening between us was changing. From lust and want, to intimacy andneed. He might’ve hidden himself behind tall walls, but he was human like the rest of us. Humans craved to be seen.
I reached for his hand across the table and covered it with mine. “We’re going to get what we need tomorrow.”
His expression softened. Just barely. “Now that you’re here, these pottery workshops have no idea what they’re about to be up against.”
I grinned. “That’s right.”
He turned his palm face up, and our fingers intertwined. Heat bloomed between our hands, slipping under my skin, into my veins, flaring in his eyes.
My heart beat loudly inside my ears. I thought back to the room waiting for us at the hotel, to the tiny bed, to the plans for tomorrow we still needed to discuss.
The fear in me was fading, I realized.
And it was being replaced with anticipation and the certainty of moving toward something inevitable.
CHAPTER 38
COSIMO
The restof dinner moved into lighter territory.
The wine flowed freely, the food was excellent, and by the time Fabiana had eaten the last bite of dessert, we’d been in the osteria for nearly three hours.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sat down for a dinner like that with a woman. Maybe never. Even before I stopped entertaining women altogether, I’d never met someone I could talk to for hours without running out of things to say.
Once I decided to lower my guard with Fabiana, it was shockingly easy.
I listened while she told me about her years at boarding school. The friendships she’d made there. The projects in Geneva that had challenged her. The trips around Europe that had made an impression.
And she listened too. She asked questions that dug up old memories I hadn’t revisited in eons—winter holidays in Italy with my brothers, summer afternoons spent playing soccerwhen school was out, my first job at one of Dad’s old construction companies…
They were the things I didn’t tell anyone. Pieces of myself that I kept hidden away because that had always felt safest.
She’d told me she always felt safe with me. Just remembering that sent warmth running through my chest.
Tonight, I felt safe with her too. The alarms that always rang inside my head whenever I considered letting her in hadn’t disappeared, but they were quiet for now.
I wished I knew how long that would last.
The waiter brought the check.
“My God.” Fabiana glanced at the time. “It’s past eleven. We need to get back. We still have to go over our plan for tomorrow.”
