“You offered to marry me to protect me. I turned you down, treated you like shit, and still you protect me – I know Mattia’sdecision to take the mark off me has come from you. Who does that? Who protects the man who snatched her off the street and then deliberately hurt her because he was so damned terrified of saying goodbye to her?”
Her eyes suddenly flew open and landed on his. Chin wobbling, her lips tightened.
He brought her clasped hands to his mouth and kissed the tips of her fingers reverently. “I thought I was showing you the truth of myself to protect your feelings, but it was my own feelings I was protecting. You got under my skin and burrowed into my heart. I could feel you in there, and I wanted you gone.”
She suddenly yanked her hands from his hold and turned her face away, hunching tighter into herself.
“When I look back on our time together, I see now that I couldn’t help but fall in love with you. You are funny and beautiful and smart… You areeverything, and I love everything about you. Everything I found annoying about you to start with, I miss. I miss everything about you, and I will do whatever you want, be whoever you want me to be, just, please, give me a chance.”
Her gaze snapped back onto him. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “A chance forwhat?” she choked.
“A chance to see if we can make it work.”
Make it work. Those three words echoed in Francesca’s head louder even than his word of love. Those beautiful, dark chocolate eyes were looking into hers with a softness she’d only ever caught glimpses of before. She longed to believe in that softness. Longed to believe his words. Longed for it more than she’d ever longed for anything.
“I believe your repentance is real,” she said, speaking slowly. “And if there’s anything to forgive you for, then it’s forgiven. The week I was your captive was the best week of my life, which is probably the weirdest thing anyone has ever said, but it’s thetruth.” She sniffed back tears with a defeated smile. “There’s something about you I react to that gives me courage without even thinking about it or rationalising it, and allows me to be me in a way I’ve never been before, but I’m sorry, Gino, I could never trust you.”
Something spasmed over his face.
“You’ve created a whole life that revolves around you. Even if you could find room in it for me, how could I trust you to keep me there? How long until you get bored of me? A couple of days? A couple of weeks? I’ve lived my whole life with my wings clipped, and now I finally have the freedom I always wanted, and…” She breathed deeply and shook her head, closing her eyes as the voices in her head warred with the beseeching ache in her heart. “I’m not giving that up, especially not for a man I’d have to share. Watching those women grope you and kiss you… I can’t live like that, not even for a day.”
In the silence that followed, all she could hear was the drum of her heart in her ears, and when she felt the warm hand palm her cheek, she was incapable of stopping the quiver that raced through her to feel his touch.
“I don’t know what the future holds, Chicca, I only know what I feel, and what I’m feeling is something I’ve never wanted.” His nostrils flared before the tip of his nose pressed to hers. “But I do feel it, and you feel it too, so how about we make one more deal?”
A whimper of pain caught in her throat.
He inhaled deeply and palmed her other cheek, framing her face. His eyes boring into hers, he said, “For this deal, we both go all-in. If you take the deal and take a chance on me, then I promise that for as long as we’re together, I will never clip your wings. I promise to be faithful to you. I promise there will be no flirting of any kind with other women, and I promise that there will be all the room you could wish for in my life.”
Her heart swelled and lodged in her throat.
How desperately, desperately she ached to believe him… Ached to believeinhim.
“Take the bet, Chicca. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. Neither of us has been in a relationship before, so who the hell knows, but I swear, I will do my damnedest to make it work. I swear.”
The sincerity in his eyes…
Oh, it made her heartsoar.
Without even thinking, Francesca pressed her mouth to his, breathing him in as she swallowed back tears. “I want to say yes, Gino, so badly you wouldn’t believe, but I’m scared.”
She’d never admitted to being scared before. Not since she was a little girl plagued by nightmares.
His fingers speared her hair and gently pulled her head back so their gazes fused. “I know you are. So am I, Chicca. I’m fucking terrified, but one thing I am completely certain of is that if we don’t take the gamble, then we both lose without knowing if we could have won.”
But if she made that gamble, she thought despairingly, then she was gift-wrapping her heart to him and hoping that odds bigger than any longshot would come in…
But she’d beaten the odds before, hadn’t she? That she was here in Naples with her future hers for the taking and not hiding away was proof of that. Was she really going to turn down the only chance of true happiness she might ever find because of fear of what the futuremightbring? Didn’t that just make her like her parents, hiding away for fear of what the shadowed world would bring them? Their fears had been well-founded, but what joy had hiding away brought them?
Francesca had always wanted tolive, and no one made her feel more alive than Gino. No one made her blood zing and her heart pump like he did. Maybe time would prove them all wrongfor each other, but what if time proved them right? Would she look back in a decade cursing Gino’s name or look back with wistfully happy memories? Better still, would she look back and then look around and find him still with her? Still loving her? If she didn’t take the gamble, the only thing she would look back on would be regret for not trying.
She held his stare for one more long moment and then touched his cheek. The soft bristles of his beard scratched beautifully beneath the pads of her fingers. And then she smiled. And then her swollen heart pulsed so hard it opened like a flower welcoming the sunlight, and she kissed him. “Okay.”
He pulled his face back a little, his forehead creasing. “Okay?”
Laughing, she nodded and kissed him again, harder, and slid her hands behind his head to clasp his skull. “Call me mad, but okay. Let’s do it. Let’s play the odds and go all-in.”
He just stared at her, his chocolate eyes boring into hers until the lines around them creased, and his mouth fastened to hers, plunging her into the deepest, most meaningful kiss of her life.
