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And this time he didn’t think he could ignore the uncertainty and make it go away.
“I see how you’re looking at me,” Julienne said, and didn’t quite roll her eyes. Because she was not her sister. Not yet. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask anything of you that you can’t give, Cristiano. I married you knowing exactly who you are.”
And a week ago, a month ago, he might have accepted that. He might have nodded, thought that sounded like a perfectly reasonable bargain and carried on.
Tonight, those words sounded like an indictment.
But everything was different now.
Becauseshewas different, and he had made her that way, and he wasn’t sure that he could stand it.
He moved toward her, getting his hands on her body. Filling his fingers with the thick fall of her pretty hair, and then taking her mouth with his.
Because these were the only words he knew. This was the only passion that made sense to him.
This was the only way that he could make her sing with joy, for him.
And he proved it, to himself and to her, over and over again that night.
But in the morning, he left her with her sister, entirely too aware of the way she only seemed to relax once Fleurette was near. And he knew that as soon as the door closed behind him, she would once again light up the way she hadn’t for him—not since their wedding.
And it was with a sense of fatalism, or possibly surrender—not that he’d ever had such a sensation before—that instead of going into his office, he went to Tuscany.
When the helicopter delivered him to his usual spot near the villa, he did not go inside. He took one of the property’s hardy SUVs instead, and drove out into the hills.
An hour or so later, he wound around on a bumpy dirt lane, having left the cultivated part of the Cassara fields behind some time ago. And there the cottage sat, right where he remembered it, solid and defiant in the middle of nowhere.
Summer was coming, and the clearing where the cottage stood was carpeted with wildflowers. He walked toward the front of the small home, lecturing himself on the strange prickling he felt all over his body. It was not a wicked enchantment. She was not a witch.
Those had been the fancies of the boy he’d been, who’d been taught to hate her.
And it was only when he drew close that he realized that she was there. Right there. Folded into a chair on the front porch, watching his approach.
She looked wrinkled and wise, but her dark eyes still burned. She was dressed all in black, though he doubted very much that was any kind of nod to her widowhood. Her hands were like claws, her knuckles large as they clutched the head of her cane.
“You have the look of a salesman about you,” she said, and her voice was precisely as he recalled it. More robust than a woman should sound on the cusp of ninety, to his way of thinking, and threaded through with a deep and abiding dislike. “A Cassara salesman, no less. The very worst kind.”
“Hello, Grandmother,” he replied.
The old woman sniffed. “Whatever it is you’ve come to say, I’m not interested. I do not require assistance. I do not wish to be placed in a home with other old people. I will die as I have lived here, happily alone and usually left to my own devices—as God intended.”
“I didn’t come here to put you in a home. Or argue with you, for that matter.”
But it seemed she was making a list. “My health is none of your business, but it is excellent, since you’ve come looking. If you wish to develop this land, you will have to do so over my dead body. But never fear. I may be thriving at the moment but an old woman can only live so long. You may have to learn to wait for what you want—a trait no man in your family has ever possessed.”
“I don’t need your land. For God’s sake.”
“The last time you were here, boy, I thought I might make you cry. Is that why you returned? To test yourself against childhood nightmares? I’m delighted to try again.”
She laughed and that part he remembered too well. Because it wasn’t the demure, carefully cultivated laughter of the women he’d always known. He’d considered it unhinged when he’d been younger. But now, he understood.
It was joy. Pure joy, the kind Julienne shared with her sister and never him. It was uncontrolled. Untamed.
This is how men tell stories about women they can’t control,Julienne had told him.Whores. Witches.
His grandfather had made his wife into a witch. How had Cristiano never seen that? And Piero was the one who had been heralded as a hero upon his death. When what he’d been was a selfish man who did as he liked. Who selected the people he would care for—Sofia Tomasi, Cristiano—and discarded those he disdained, like the woman he’d married and his only remaining son.
Nor had he ever seemed unduly concerned about the consequences.
