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“Huh?”
He gave Sabina a closed-lipped grin. “My watch needed to be reset, and Helen did it for me while I ran an errand. She must have reset the office clock, too. Then she pointed out the time to me and said I’d better hurry. Our little detective must have figured out O’Reilly would be here.”
“How does she—oh, never mind.” Sabina adjusted her hat so that it blocked the sun from her eyes. “So, what, she figured out he was coming instead of Mary and thought you’d see it and break up with me?”
He gave her a squeeze. “No, Bean, I think she must have thought you’d need a little help getting away from him.” When she made no response to that interpretation of events, he sighed. “She apologized for the way she acted on the Fourth. She had apparently just gotten a letter the day before and learned that her father’s seriously ill.”
Sabina harrumphed out a breath. “Well, if that’s true, I guess it excuses her. A little.” They cleared the line of trees around the perimeter of the park and stopped at the Nash. He opened her door for her, but she just turned to face him, clutching her bag in front of her. “Aren’t you going to ask me what he was talking about?”
His fingers tensed on the door. If he’d had any question of what she meant, the anxiety in her eyes would have answered it. “No.”
No relief softened her features. “Why not?”
He forced himself to swallow. “Because it doesn’t matter, Bean. I already know it went too far, and I forgive you. I don’t need details.”
“Even if I had…?”
Neither the pained expression on her face nor the wariness in her voice told him whether the question was hypothetical. He swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat and forced back the instinct that demanded to know so it might judge. With a silent, urgent prayer, love filled the recesses in its stead. “Even if you had.”
Her eyes flooded with affection instead of relief. She reached for his hand. “I didn’t. But if you could have forgiven that, I’m willing to believe you forgive this. I…I know how serious this sort of thing is to you. Given what we come from and…”
Lorenzo sighed and leaned into the side of his car. Her fingers were still in his, and the warmth that coursed through him was only partly from residual adrenaline. He took a moment to study her, to see her as O’Reilly did, or as any stranger in the park would: the sculpted hair, the expensive clothes, the gorgeous face, the figure that would make any man take note. He still didn’t regret his decision to respect her—he’d known their engagement would be long, and he’d known how hard it would be to remember that decision if he could hold her, kiss her whenever he pleased. But they only had a few weeks until the wedding. He wasn’t going to forget himself in that amount of time, at least not when they’d been so open about the risk.
More than that, he didn’t want Roman O’Reilly’s kiss to be the thing that bullied its way into her mind at night when she was drifting off to sleep. He tugged her closer, slid an arm around her waist. “Me tisoru.”
His pulse pounded like someone trapped behind a locked door in a burning building. It would have been easy to crush her to him and show her what fire, what kisses he had held back for years. But her hands shook, and vulnerability shone out from behind the heat in her eyes.
He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “I love you. No matter what has come before, no matter what comes after this. I love you, and I will spend a lifetime proving it to you.”
She rested a hand on his cheek, her fingers warm and soft. Her gaze was just as much a caress. “My Enzo. You’re unlike any other man in the world. Please believe that there’s no one else who could ever hold my heart like you always have. I forgot that for a while—but I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
His answer was to lean down and brush her lips with his once and then again. When she kissed him a third time more insistently, he accepted the invitation. She probably heard the blood humming in his veins. Certainly she would have felt the harmonic resonance of his nerves through the hand on her waist. Perhaps it struck to life the matching chord in her, or perhaps she was just in tune with him, because her response was quick and consuming.
The hand on his cheek moved to press against the back of his neck, pulling him in even more. The hum in the back of her throat spoke of desire. He’d have been willing to bet her heart raced to keep up with his. Love for her sang through every cell of his body and into his soul, drowning out the birds in the trees and the noise of passing cars.
It couldn’t, however, block out the humored voice that intruded a minute later. “You know, if it were anyone but you two, I might be offended at coming across such a scene in a public park. Luckily, I’m so happy to see you guys lost in each other that I’ll overlook the impropriety.”
Sabina barely pulled away and didn’t bother looking over at the newcomer. “Go away, Izzy. We’re busy.”
Isadora’s chuckle sounded so tired that Enzo nearly peeled his eyes away from Sabina’s face to look at her. “I see that. Where did Mary run off to?”
“Got me.” Sabina narrowed her eyes at Lorenzo’s mouth and wiped at his lip with her thumb. Seeing the color that came off, he scowled. If they kept this up, they’d have to have a little chat about lipstick. “She never showed—sent Roman in her place.”
“Roman?” Isadora muttered something Lorenzo didn’t catch and then pronounced, “I’m going to smack that girl. Are you okay?”
Sabina chuckled. “How do I look?”
Isadora sighed. “If you see her, will you ask her to please come home?”
That finally made Lorenzo look her way, and what he saw made his gut churn for this girl who had nearly been his sister. “Your mother?”
Isadora pressed her lips together, but tears still pooled in her eyes no matter how fast she blinked. “I don’t think she’s going to last through the night. Mrs. Zumpano is sitting with her while I look for Mary, but… She needs to come home. She needs to say goodbye.”
Sabina stepped away from him, hand held out for her friend. “I know her usual places. We’ll go look for her, okay? We’ll find her.”
“And I’ll drag her home kicking and screaming if I have to.” Dredging up a sad smile, he added, “Joey would want me to.”
Isadora nodded, mouthing a thank-you even though no sound came out. She turned and hurried back toward her family’s building.
Lorenzo opened the Nash’s door for Sabina. “Well, doll. Looks like you and I are hitting the speakeasies tonight.”
Despite the sobriety in her eyes, the corners of Sabina’s lips twitched. “Who’da thunk it?”
He chuckled and helped her in, closed the door behind her. Then he shoved a hand into his pocket, let his fingers tangle with his rosary, and prayed the Holy Spirit would lead them straight to Mary, wherever she was.
