Gio, she knew he was the perfect godson. As one woman had explained in lurid detail at another party, unaware that Pia stood behind her, he was a perfect lover.
No, scratch that, the woman had been aware that Pia was there and had taken a petty satisfaction in making sure Pia overheard.
In front of Milan and Gio and his family, he was the attentive boyfriend or lover or whatever the hell it was that they were pretending to be. Every day, he sent her flowers or candy or some other treat. When she’d asked if he’d bought her a subscription for a gift club for the next few years, he’d snarled something in Italian.
She’d had her answer, which festered. She was nothing but a painful chore for him, an item on his damned to-do list.
Between a huge deal VA was cooking with a manufacturing company in Japan and his time with Alyssa, he was hardly available anyway. Their pretense was barely a blip in his life. Whereas for Pia, every carefully orchestrated touch was torture. Every moment she spent in his company, she was caught between wanting to run away and desperately wanting more.
As if that wasn’t enough, Raphael came to see Gio most evenings. Sometimes, it was a quick chat under Gio’s watchful eye.
Sometimes, they dined outside with the spectacular view of the setting sun drawing pink and orange mirages on the lake. If there was enough light or if Gio petulantly demanded that he hadn’t seen enough of them together that week, Pia joined them. She brought out a piece of wood and worked on it quietly while listening to Raphael relay the news and politics of Vito Automobiles.
He spoke with a deep, confident voice, his Italian soothing to her ears. Even though she only understood a few phrases, Pia heard his passion for his work, his affection for Gio in the way he relayed tidbits about people they both knew.
She could just sit there and listen to his voice endlessly.
Pretending that all the hours she spent in his company gave her rights over him, while pretty much every woman snidely commented that it was the Vito Heiress that had snared him, grated like salt on a wound. As if she didn’t know that Raphael wouldn’t have looked at her twice if not for the fact that she was Gio’s granddaughter.
On one such scheduled outing, she’d persuaded Raphael to bring Alyssa along. She adored that little girl, and to her shame, Pia desperately needed a buffer—there was only so much one-on-one she could take with Raphael before she did something crazy.
Raphael had returned after a week-long trip and any hopes she’d had that she would be over him were dashed to tiny bits when she saw him striding up the pathway with a squirming Alyssa on his shoulder and his mouth stretched in carefree laughter.
They spent the next two hours with Alyssa at a gelateria in Menaggio, another one of the picturesque villages lining up Lake Como. Pia held a chubby, sticky and sleepy Alyssa in her arms while Raphael parked the car in front of his mother’s house.
When he asked to take her back, Pia shook her head, loving the feel and weight of the little girl. Despite her mother’s absence in her life, Alyssa was such a darling little girl that Pia couldn’t help but fall in love with her.
And every time she was with Raphael and Alyssa, Pia couldn’t fight the rightness of it. Couldn’t fight the longing that drowned her. As if she were the piece of the puzzle that he and the little girl were missing.
But it was ridiculous. Even if he asked her, she didn’t want to be with a man like Raphael, did she? Ruthless, rigid...
Raphael leveled the strangest look back at her.
“Show me the way,” Pia said in a husky voice. Only when she followed him down a quiet corridor did she realize that the house was empty and her only buffer was snoring slightly.
“I’ll get her into her pj’s,” she said to Raphael.
Again, that intense, almost searing look.
“You can trust me with her, Raphael,” she burst out, a tight knot in her throat. “I adore her.”
His mouth tightened, as if she’d threatened his very safety. “My mother should have been here. She knew I had plans tonight.”
“You don’t want me in Alyssa’s life,” she said, busying herself by looking through the drawers for clean pj’s. It wasn’t personal, she told herself. But it was a lie.
She wanted things personal between them. She wanted him to tell her private things, things he never confided in anyone. She wanted him to tell her what his ex had done that he didn’t trust any woman anymore.
She wanted their facade to be true. She wanted to be the woman that Raphael forsook any other woman for, that Raphael broke all his rules for.
“I get that. Believe me, I do. I think you’re a wonderful father. She won’t wake up. And you can go call your mom while I settle her down.”
Instead of reassuring him, her words made him look even more forbidding. With a short stiff nod, he walked out of the room.
By the time, Pia had cleaned up and changed Alyssa, the sun was beginning to set. Making a face, she pulled her damp T-shirt off her chest.
The moment she walked into the outer lounge, Raphael stood up. His gaze took in her wet T-shirt. He scowled. “You should have called me when she woke up.”
“She didn’t. I had some trouble working those monstrous taps at the tub and splashed myself.” It was the first time they had been alone since that episode at his sister’s house. Pia wiped her damp hands on her jeans, butterflies partying in her stomach. “Didn’t you have an engagement to get to? I can stay until your mother comes back.”
“Teresa will be here any minute. Then I will drop you off and continue to my engagement.”
Pia nodded, unease climbing up her spine. It was the way he said it. It was the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Who are you meeting?” she asked. She tried for nonchalance but wasn’t successful.
“It’s an old friend who’s in town. We have a standing engagement when she’s here. I completely forgot about it. But since she’s here—”
Pia’s heart sank to her toes. “She? It’s a woman?”
“Si.”
“Is she single?”
“Si.”
It was like getting blood out of stone.
“So this engagement is sort of a date?”
His silence told Pia everything she needed to know.
Walk away, a part of her screamed. Turn your back on this, on him, came another warning.
But dear God, she’d make herself crazy imagining all kinds of scenarios. “If it’s a date, won’t she talk about it later? You know, to someone who knows Gio? Wait, doesn’t she know that you...you’re supposed to be engaged?”
“I’m sure she’s heard the gossip now.”
“And yet, she called you?”
He
