And yet, this time, no word of warning. This time, with the quiet certainty of a man who knows, at last, after forty years of not knowing, what he'd come looking for in this life. And knows that if he loses it, it's lost.
I touched her wet hair, very slowly.
"Bella mia," I said softly, to her as she slept. "I'll bring your father back to you alive before the wedding. And you'll decide what we do with him."
She drew a deep breath in her sleep, and her hand tightened a little on my chest.
I turned off the lamp, and for the first time in fifteen years, I slept with a woman's arm around me.
CHAPTER 23
"A woman who sleeps with the enemy wakes up mistress of the house—or mistress of nothing."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I woke to the sun hitting his chest.
Not mine—his. I was lying on my side, my head against Luca's right shoulder, my hand open on the Latin tattoo on his chest.
The eight o'clock morning sun came in through the window and fell in a golden stripe right over the words, and for a few seconds I just lay there looking—not moving, not breathing too deeply—before I realized where I was.
His room. His bed. No clothes.
The white sheets were twisted around my waist. His sandalwood scent in my hair. The weight of his arm over my shoulder, holding me against him the way a man holds a woman when he's slept beside one his whole life—without thinking, without care, with the instinctive possessiveness of someone who can't imagine waking up alone.
I breathed slowly. And then his chest moved under my hand.
"Bella."
His voice was rough, his eyes still closed.
"Good morning. You're awake."
"I woke up when you did."
"You didn't move."
"I didn't want to."
I lifted my head and looked at him.
His black eyes opened. They took a second adjusting to the light and to the fact that I was there. And then he smiled—slowly, and this time without the hard scar at the corner of his mouth.
A new smile, one I'd never seen before.
"Bella mia. You're more beautiful in the morning than I calculated."
"You calculated."
"I calculated everything, Valentina. Weeks ago."
I laughed in spite of myself and put my face back against his chest.
His hand moved up into my hair, fingers running through it, very slowly.
"How are you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
