Page 23 of Skin Deep

Chapter8

Gigi

Ihated weddings. They always felt like a production to me.

Rehearsed lines. Props set on a stage. Everyone in costumes. Then…action!

I had to give it to my family, though, they celebrated weddings harder than most, and their feelings were genuine when it came to the happy couple. Unless it was someone who they didn’t approve of joining the family.

My mother’s sister, for example, married a man that my Nonna and Nonno didn’t approve of. He was a hard-hearted bastard from America who never had pity on his wife. Or his child—my cousin. Our family called my cousin Amadeo, but he went by plenty of aliases.

I’d been trying since the second I met Amadeo’s new wife—Mariposa—to figure out what he saw in her. She was plain, with a Roman nose, and a bit scrawny. In the expensive wedding dress, she glowed, but everything about the gown was exquisite.

Dress her in plain clothes and that was exactly what she was: plain.

My cousin was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen, and I’d seen plenty of those. He had hair the color of the night sky and startling blue eyes that seemed to come straight from the sea in Sardinia. When he was out in the sun, they were even more shocking against his tan skin. He was tall, with wide shoulders and a slim waist. More than the physical, he had a commanding presence about him that was as natural as breathing.

He was…close to perfect.

She was not someone I ever imagined with him. Her name was the prettiest thing about her, yet she requested that everyone call her “Mari,” other than my cousin.

And he adored her.

Every move she made, he watched, and when his eyes were not on her, his thoughts were. He would be deep in conversation with someone else, and I could see the trajectory of his thoughts—always going in her direction.

He would fight lions for her and kill in her name. He would be loyal to her for as long as there was a breath in him. He would honor the still-warm vows he made to her in church for the rest of his days.

Even though my cousin had risen from his personal ashes and become the man in front of me, I’d never seen him so taken before—with anyone or anything.

I couldn’t understand it. Was he seeing what the rest of the world was?

This plain girl who clearly adored him—I understood that. He was such a beautiful thing to look at. Where was the attraction, though? What pulled him to her? What made him decide to love her without boundaries for the rest of his life?

Beauty is only skin deep, yes, but I couldn’t see past it with her.

Maybe because I refused to. I was jealous. So jealous that this plain girl had what I wanted most in the world—unwavering love and devotion—and her physical appearance had nothing to do with it.

My world revolved around beauty and forever staying young. It was so much easier for her to know the true intentions of the people around her. She didn’t have to worry about falling in love only to realize that the person you fell in love with only fell in love with theideaof you.

Money, fame, and beauty blinds people, and being on the other side of it, I never knew who I could trust, who wanted me simply for… me. For what existed beyond the surface—the darkness of my days and all.

If life wounds left scars, I’d be a battlefield, but all people saw was the garden after the blood had seeped into the roots. My own pain seemed to nourish the beauty on the surface.

Tragic was what my mamma called it.

I met her eyes from across the party. Rarely did she take her eyes off me since I’d arrived in Sicily. After I jumped off the yacht and almost drowned, and she found out, she was trying to make me feel the weight of her pain by looks alone.

Sighing, I took a glass of wine from a server and decided to call it a night. My Nonno’s property in Modica was vast, and it hadcasefor all his children and grandchildren. It wouldn’t take me long to walk home and end this torture.

Trying to figure out why my cousin committed his life to Mariposa was only making me feel melancholy, and so was all this happiness in the air. It was suffocating.

My feet stilled when my cousin’s new bride started to dance with a man I’d never seen before.

He looked completely smitten with her. She looked awkward, like she wanted to slip out of his embrace and run away. He held tight to her, even though I could tell by the way he held her that he knew she wanted to put distance between them.

He was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. He was classically good-looking, like a mixture between Paul Newman, Cary Grant, and Gregory Peck. His face was chiseled. A director’s dream. But the fire in his eyes was a bit…pazzo.I wasn’t sure if it was because of the girl named Mariposa, or if that was the natural look in his eyes.

My stare gravitated to my cousin, who was sipping whiskey and watching the entire scene unfold.

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