before, Baron’s appreciation of her beauty had been wrapped up in his own pride of ownership. Something she had never been comfortable with, no matter how much she had thought she loved him.
Angelo looked at her as a man looked at a woman he could not look away from, not a woman he desired to show off to others.
The words unfurled inside her with a burst of pleasure and she savored them in silence for several seconds before replying. “Thank you.” She brought her hand up to trace the chiseled features of his face and down his neck to his collarbone. “You are a beautiful man.”
The corner of his lips quirked in amusement. “I’ve never thought of myself in those terms.”
“Most men don’t.” She grinned, feeling ridiculously happy for no reason she could discern. “However, you can trust me on this. Aesthetically you are extremely pleasing. Feature for feature you have the most masculine beauty I have ever seen. And I saw a lot of beautiful men in my former profession.”
“So, you think I’m the sexiest guy you’ve ever met?”
“Yes.”
“It’s those Sicilian genes.” The smug arrogance in his voice was more amusing than annoying.
She laughed. “Both of your parents must have been devastatingly attractive people.”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t you know?”
A dark shadow crossed his features and his mouth flattened into a grim line. “Yes, but it isn’t something I’ve thought about in a long time.”
“You don’t like talking about them, do you?”
“No.”
“Maybe it would help whatever bothers you so much if you did.” She was no amateur psychologist, but she couldn’t help feeling he kept too much of himself hidden.
Said the pot to the kettle.
She almost sighed, but bit it back. She wasn’t any better than him, but she had told him more about Baron than she’d even told her mother. And she felt better for it.
He traced the neckline of her dress, allowing his finger to dip into her cleavage for a breathless second. It felt amazing, just that small touch, but she sensed they were on the verge of something more important and she willed herself not to get sidetracked by how good it felt to be next to him.
“Angelo?”
“It’s too private.”
“Even to share with the woman you want to marry?”
An arrested expression came over his features and his gaze shifted from her breasts to her eyes. “You want me to talk about them to you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s important to you?”
“I think it is.”
He sat up, looping his arms around one raised knee and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Wherever you want.” She scooted into a sitting position beside him, glad for the warmth of the fire now that he wasn’t touching her.
Her nipples peaked from the cold air blowing in through the open doorway. She didn’t want it closed however. The sound of the surf was soothing.
“My dad met my mom when he was in Sicily negotiating a contract.” Angelo’s voice was void of emotion…no remembered pleasure, no residual pain, nothing. “He fell for her like a ton of bricks within minutes of their meeting. At least that’s how he used to tell it. He went after her as only a brash young man sure of what he wants can do.”
“You wouldn’t know anything about that,” she teased.
He shrugged, not even cracking a smile at the small joke. “It’s not the same. This was love—the kind you hear about in fairy tales I guess.”
Something clenched inside her at his words.
He’d fallen silent, maybe sensing her inner turmoil.
“Go on,” she urged.
“Dad talked Mama into marrying him and returning to the states with him.”
“That sounds pretty romantic,” she had to admit. She might not believe in love and happily ever after for herself, but it sounded like his parents had certainly known what that was all about. “Were they happy?”
Pain spasmed across his face and laced his voice when he spoke. “Yes. They were deeply in love for all the years of their marriage, but Dad died of a heart attack when I was twenty. Mama was lost without him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was, too. She didn’t know how to run a company and I was still in school. I wasn’t ready to take over the reins.”
“That would have been hard for you.”
“Even harder when I realized what that had cost us.”
“What did she do?”
“She hired someone, a man who came highly recommended. He was brilliant and seemed to really know his business. I liked him. I worked alongside him at the company during my summer break that year. I thought he was teaching me the ropes so I could take over as soon as I graduated.” Self-disgust dripped from Angelo’s words.
“Is he the one responsible for you losing your family company?” she asked with an awful premonition.
“Yes.”
“Because he wasn’t as good as you thought?”
“Because he was a lying, using bastard who did whatever it took to get what he wanted.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“He seduced my mother into selling him the company at half its worth and then dumped her.”
The words hung in the air with poison still capable of causing pain. Tara could feel it. She hurt.
This guy had been worse than Baron. She shuddered at the thought. She hadn’t thought they got any slimier.
“He was ten years her junior, but it didn’t matter,” Angelo went on, his voice flat now. “She was so grief stricken, she was easy prey for him and all the while I thought he was being a good friend to her while I was away at school.”
“You blame yourself.”
“Not as much as I blame him.”
“So, he just walked away from her after he got his hands on your company?”
“Not before destroying my mother. He mocked her for believing a man a decade younger would want to marry her. He ruined her sense of honor and womanhood.”
