Hired: The Italian's Bride by Donna Alward Page A

your mother and father?”
    He came to stand beside her at the balustrade and they looked out over the hulking shadows of the mountains together. “I never knew my father, and I haven’t spoken to my mother in several years.”
    “Does it have something to do with why you’re so afraid of me?”
    She bit on her lip. She couldn’t look at him, not now. He wouldn’t understand about Robert, and her mother, and it would only make things awkward between them. Her feelings might be changing, but Luca definitely wouldn’t be interested in someone with so much baggage. He had a father and sister, and his whole business was based on family. They were from two very different worlds.
    “It doesn’t matter, Luca.”
    He linked his fingers with hers, and her heart soared. In tenminutes he’d treated her to more tender, caring touches than she remembered getting in her lifetime.
    It would be too easy to fall for him.
    “What about you? You must have a girlfriend…or girlfriends…lurking about somewhere.”
    She thought he’d take his hand away from hers, but he didn’t. “Not really.”
    “Oh, that’s right. You like playing the singles game. Do you really think you can do that forever?”
    He did pull away then, and his jaw tightened. She wanted him close to her so badly she knew she had to push him away. “I don’t particularly believe in love, Mari.”
    She smiled, but it was barely a curving of her lips. “That makes two of us.”
    His eyes, deep and dark, rested on her. The scent of his cologne wafted from his jacket so that she felt like he was touching her even when his hands were in his pockets. “What did it for you?”
    He would walk away, but perhaps that was best anyway. He didn’t need to know the story; he wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter. “When the one person who should love you doesn’t, it tends to shape you whether you want it to or not. So I came here, and built my own life. It’s all I have, Luca.”
    He nodded slowly. “And you think I will take it away from you.”
    She confirmed it by simply remaining where she was, her gaze steady on his.
    “I won’t.”
    “I won’t let you.”
    That tripped a ghost of a smile.
    “What about you, Luca? Why don’t you believe in love?”
    “My mother abandoned us…all of us…when we were children. I heard Gina crying herself to sleep every night. I saw my father’s anguish…and yet he still loved her. She divorcedhim and he gave her a settlement, but not once in all these years has she come to see Gina, or me. Or father. She walked off to a whole other life.”
    “You haven’t seen her since?”
    “Not once. Not even when Gina was married, or when her children were born.”
    “I’m sorry, Luca.” Mari’s heart ached for him. She knew what it was to feel insignificant in the eyes of a parent. “But your father…”
    “He did a wonderful job raising us, and running Fiori. But in the absence of her, Fiori became his bride. He’s fierce about keeping it under his control.”
    Mari reached out and touched his sleeve. “He doesn’t trust you.”
    “He thinks he does.”
    Luca wanted more. He wanted something for himself. Perhaps they had more in common than she originally thought.
    “So you came here to prove something.”
    He nodded, again slowly. She was mesmerized by the motion. The whole evening felt somehow like she was waking from a nightmare, complete with a sense of the surreal. He had touched her, and she hadn’t flinched or been afraid. He was only here for a short time, and somehow being with him helped. She’d be a fool to question that, wouldn’t she?
    “I never, never want to be in the position that father was. I don’t need any great psychoanalysis. I don’t trust love, not the long-lasting kind.”
    “So you satisfy yourself with temporary flings.”
    “I tried something more once. It only ended up hurting both of us. It’s better this way.”
    “What happened?”
    Luca hesitated and she sensed