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“Dante.” Tally got to her feet. “This was—it was a mistake.”
He sat up, the comforter dropping to his waist. “What are you talking about?” he said, his voice sharp.
“I shouldn’t have slept with you.” She tried not to look at him as he rose from the bed, naked and beautifully masculine. “I—I enjoyed last night.” The look on his face made her take a quick step back. “But it shouldn’t have happened. I have a daughter. That makes everything different. I can’t just live for the moment anymore, I have to think of her. Of how much what I do affects her.”
“You’re a fine mother, bellissima. Anyone can see that.”
“I try to be. And that means I can’t—I can’t sleep with you and then go about my life as if nothing’s happened. I can’t—” Tally caught her breath as he reached for her. “You’re not listening.”
“I am,” he said softly. Gently, he brushed his lips over hers. “You don’t want your little girl to see her mother take a lover.”
“That’s part of it.”
“To live a life with her, and a separate one with him.”
Tally nodded. He was more perceptive than she’d given him credit for. “She won’t understand. And I can’t do something that will confuse her. Do you see?”
“Better than you think, cara.” He hesitated. “I only wish my own mother had thought the same way.”
The words were simple but they caught her by surprise. He had never mentioned anything about his past before.
“She took lover after lover,” he said, his mouth twisting, “if that’s what you want to call them. Sometimes she brought them home. ‘This is Guiseppe,’ she’d say. Or Angelo or Giovanni or whoever he was, the man of the hour. Then she’d tell me to be a good boy and go out and play.”
“
Oh, Dante. That must have been—”
“When I was six, seven—I’m not certain. All I know is that one day, she took me to my nonna’s—my grandmother’s. ‘Be a good boy, Dante,’ she said. And—”
“And?” Tally said softly.
He shrugged. “And I never saw her again.”
Tally wanted to take him in her arms and hold him close, but she didn’t. She sensed that the moment was fragile, that it would take little to tear it apart.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “That must have been—it must have been hard.”
Another shrug, as if it didn’t matter, but when he spoke, the tension in his voice told her that it did.
“I survived.”
“And grew into a strong, wonderful man.”
Dante looked at her. “Not so wonderful,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have left me three years ago.”
This time, she did reach out, even if it was only to touch her hand to his cheek.
“I grew up living with my grandmother, too,” she said quietly.
“In that little house in Vermont?”
She nodded. “My mother was—Grandma called her flighty.” She managed a quick smile. “What it really means is that she took off when I was little and never came back. My father had already done the same thing, even before I was born.”
Dante gathered her into his arms.
“What a pair we make,” he said gently.
Tally nodded again. “All the more reason that I can’t—why we can’t—”
