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Which meant they needed a church wedding.
Fast.
Jillian dressed and blew dry her hair with care. She was just putting on earrings when a knock sounded on the door and she opened the door to discover Maria in the hall with Joe.
“Mama,” he said, smiling and reaching for her.
What a lovely surprise! Jillian took her baby from Maria and hugged him tight. His small sturdy arms wrapped around her neck and she kissed his neck, his cheek, loving the sweet smell of him. Her baby. Her boy.
“Signore, Signor d’Severano has said dinner will be served in fifteen minutes.”
“We’re dining with Joe?”
Maria shook her head. “I do not think so. I believe it is just you and Signor, although he thought Joseph could join you for the first few minutes.”
“Come in, then. I’m almost ready. Just need to finish styling my hair.”
In front of the mirror in the bathroom, Jillian gathered her blond hair, shaping and pinning it into a soft French twist before stepping back to examine her reflection. With her fair hair up, and in the soft silver knit top and dark pewter slacks, she could almost pass for elegant. The top and slacks were big on her, items left over from her transition wardrobe following Joe’s birth, but with pink lipstick, silver bangles on her wrist and a sophisticated hairstyle, she looked polished. Serene. Strong.
Serene and strong was good, because when she joined Vittorio for dinner, she had a purpose.
She was going to convince Vittorio that they needed to marry again, but this time in a beautiful ceremony in his hometown, in his family’s church, in front of his community of family and friends.
She wasn’t sure how he’d react to the proposed ceremony. She only knew she had to convince him it was necessary.
Finished dressing, Jillian thanked Maria for taking care of Joe and then carried her son to the dining room. Vittorio joined her almost immediately and she watched as he entered the room in a crisp white dress shirt with dark tailored trousers. His black hair was again damp and neatly combed, his hard, handsome features set.
She should hate him. She should.
She couldn’t.
Because just looking at him, she wanted him all over again. Just seeing his beautiful face with that chiseled jaw and full, sensual mouth made her body warm.
Was it only an hour ago he’d parted her legs and covered her most sensitive skin with his lips? She remembered the way he’d sucked and licked and tasted her. It’d been wanton lovemaking. So very carnal. And yet it’d been exquisite, too. Who knew such pleasure was possible?
Yet desire came with a price. And hadn’t she learned by now that those who needed others gave up power?
And wasn’t she sick of being powerless?
Ever since she was a child, she’d been at the mercy of others. First, her father. Then, the government. Between twelve and twenty they’d lived in five different states with four different identities. Each new identity required a new image, a new name, a new history.
At first it’d been difficult to remember the script. Lee Black of Ashford, Oregon. Carol Cooper from Fountain Hills, Arizona. Anne Johnson, Fredericksburg, Texas. Jillian Smith, Visalia, California.
And then it stopped being hard, because she stopped caring. It was easier not to try to fit in. Easier not to make friends. Why bother to make friends when you’d soon have to leave them without a word of explanation, or the hope of ever seeing them again? In the government’s Witness Protection Program there was no such thing as change of address cards, forwarding phone numbers, email exchanges. In the Witness Protection Program you simply vanished into thin air.
That lack of stability, and lack of control, transformed her from the innocent, sheltered little girl she’d been, a girl who’d adored her father, a girl who’d felt so very safe, into the woman she was today.
From the time she’d left home to go to college, she’d had one goal—to be completely independent. She’d gone to graduate school after finishing Gonzaga University to earn a master’s degree in hospitality management, an advanced degree in the hotel and tourism industry, thinking it was a practical study, one that would catapult her to the top. Because the one thing she’d always wanted was power of her own. Power to choose. Power to travel. Power to become someone else.
And she’d come so close to having that power and freedom. In Istanbul she’d been delighted by her job, her apartment, her clever circle of friends. But then she’d met Vittorio, and accepted his dinner invitation and her life had never been the same.
She’d given up everything that one night without even knowing it.
“I still can’t get over the fact that you’re blonde,” he said, approaching her.
“It doesn’t please you?” she said, shifting Joe in her arms.
“It wasn’t done to please me.” As he neared her, his dark eyes met hers and held. “It was done to hide from me. It was done to keep him from me,” he added, nodding at Joe.
