Page 93 of Skin Deep

I sighed and stared out at the water. Again. A lot of this was by my own design. I was not shallow like everyone believed, but…empty. It was easy for me to confuse the world with the two.

“Do I deserve a love like yours?” I said to him, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a serious conversation with him about things that truly mattered. Or I did. It was years ago. I was a teenager, and he was in his twenties. Sitting in a Sicilian citrus grove on a hot summer night.

“If you tell me you believe he deserves you,” Amadeo said, “I will kill him.”

“Why?” I breathed out.

He refused to answer me until I met his eyes. “You remind me of my mother,” he said in Sicilian. “You are worth the sun in the sky, just like she was. You will not settle for less, like she did.”

“If I told you he was more?”

We stared at each other for a second.

He shook his head. “A portion of a man’s heart is useless. It’s all or nothing.”

All because he was convinced that Harrison was still in love with his wife. If I fell in love with him, while he loved her, Amadeo would consider it much less than what I deserved. But I could not say anything. I had to allow this to play out however it would.

How I wished I could start from the beginning. Tell him about Elias and the life I lived—all the things that didn’t sit right in my soul. So he could understand what Harrison meant to me. How he sat right with me.

He took my left hand and stared at the ring. He probably did not think anything of it because I always wore jewelry—and was not selective about the finger a ring went on.

“This ring suits you,” he said. “Like the sun.”

I opened my mouth to say it, to say the man who chose it for me knows that, too, but I didn’t. Nonno and his hardheaded theory came to mind.

“I’m staying, Amadeo,” I said. “I’m having fun.”

He nodded seriously. “Dangerous things are happening right now.”

“I know,” I said. “What about you? Dolce?”

His eyes turned hard. “Let’s walk back.”

I narrowed my eyes against the house. Cash Kelly stood out on the pier, along with Mari.

“Your man has taken sick,” he said to me when we approached.

“Taken sick?”

“Got the flu or something.” When he said something, it came out as someting.

Damn! That cold water his sister hit him with.It was spring, but it felt like winter.

I rushed into the house. Harrison was sitting on the sofa. His head hung and his face was flushed with fever. He wore a sweatshirt, but he was shivering. His brothers and sister all had their shirts covering their faces. I sniffed the air but did not smell anything bad.

Lachlan shook his head. “Mam always made us do this around each other if one of us got sick,” he explained, his voice muffled. “So she could try to avoid us all getting sick at once. Six of us—only two of them.”

“Bed,” I said to Harrison, setting my hand underneath his arm. Cash took the other and helped me haul him up. It was like he was drunk.

He looked at me. “You never answered me.”

“I did not give you much of a choice yesterday,” I said. Cash took a step back, as Harrison got in the bed. I bent down and let my arm slide out from underneath his.

He grabbed my hand before I got far. His fingers stroked mine, before stilling on the ring. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It was going to happen either way. Yes or no.”

I squeezed his hand. “Sì,” I said. “Sì!”

He gave me a drunk smile and closed his eyes, then groaned when Augustus tried to jump up on the bed. I had Gus follow me into the kitchen so I could feed him and get a pot of soup on for later.

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