Page 32 of His Innocent's Passionate Awakening

Family. If only Nonno knew how short a time she would be a part of the Ferrantelli family. Artie smiled and squeezed his hand back in a gesture of warm affection. ‘Yes, Nonno. I’m family now.’

* * *

An hour or so later, Luca drove Artie to his sprawling estate in Tuscany a few kilometres from the town of San Gimignano, where fourteen of the once seventy-two medieval towers created an ancient skyline. The countryside outside the medieval town was filled with sloping hills and lush valleys interspersed with slopes of grapevines and olive groves and fields of bright red poppies. Tall pines stood like sentries overlooking the verdant fields and the lowering sun cast a golden glow over the landscape, the angle of light catching the edges of the cumulous clouds and sending shafts and bolts of gold down to the earth in a spectacular fashion.

Artie drank in the view, feeling overawed by the beauty to the point of tears. She brushed at her eyes and swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘It’s so beautiful...the colours, the light—everything. I can’t believe I’m seeing it in real time instead of through a screen or the pages of a book or magazine.’ She turned to him. ‘Do you mind if we stop for a minute? I want to stand by the roadside and smell the air and listen to the sounds of nature.’

‘Sure.’ Luca stopped the car and came around to open her door. He took her hand and helped her out of the car, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, creating attractive crinkles near his eyes. ‘It’s an amazing part of the country, isn’t it?’

‘It sure is.’ Artie stood beside him on the roadside and lifted her face to feel the dance of the evening breeze. She breathed in the scent of wild grasses and sun-warmed pine trees. Listened to the twittering of birds, watched an osprey ride the warm currents of air as it searched for prey below. A swell of emotion filled Artie’s chest that Luca had helped her leave the prison of her past. ‘I never thought I’d be able to do things like this again.’

Luca put an arm around her waist and gathered her closer against his side. ‘I’m proud of you. It can’t have been easy, but look at you now.’

She glanced up at him and smiled. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘I can think of a way.’ His eyes darkened and his mouth came down to press a lingering kiss to hers. After a few breathless moments, he lifted his mouth from hers and smiled. ‘We’d better get going before it gets dark.’

Once they were back in the car and on their way again, he placed her hand on the top of his thigh and her fingers tingled at the hard warmth of his toned muscles beneath her palm. ‘Thank you for being so sweet to Nonno,’ he went on. ‘He already loves you. You remind him of my grandmother.’

Artie basked in the glow of his compliment. ‘What was she like? Were you close to her?’

His expression was like the sky outside—shifting shadows as the light gradually faded. ‘I was close to her in the early days, before my father and brother drowned. Their deaths hit her hard and she lost her spark and never quite got it back.’ His hands tightened on the steering wheel, making his knuckles bulge to white knobs of tension. ‘Like my mother, being around me reminded her too much of what she’d lost. I was always relieved when it was time to go back to boarding school and even more so when I moved away for university.’

Artie stroked his thigh in a comforting fashion, her heart contracting for the way he had suffered as a young teenager. She was all too familiar with how grief and guilt were a deadly combination. Destroying hope, suffocating any sense of happiness or fulfilment. ‘I can only imagine how hard it was for all of you, navigating your way through so much grief. But what about your mother? You said she lives in New York now. Do you ever see her?’

‘Occasionally, when I’m there for work.’ His mouth twisted. ‘It’s...difficult being with her, as it is for her to be with me.’

‘I don’t find it hard to be with you.’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She bit her lip and mentally cringed as heat flooded her cheeks. Next she would be blurting out how much she loved him. Words he clearly didn’t want to hear. Love wasn’t part of their six-month arrangement. Romantic love wasn’t part of his life, period.

Luca glanced her way, a smile tilting the edges of his mouth and his eyes dark and warm. ‘I don’t find it hard to be with you either.’ His voice was low and deep and husky and made her long to be back in his arms. To feel the sensual power of his body, the physical expression of his need, even if love wasn’t part of why he desired her. But she realised now her desire was a physical manifestation of her love for him. A love that had awakened the first time his lips touched hers, waking her from a psychological coma. A coma where she had denied herself the right to fully engage in life and relationships. Locking herself away out of fear. But she was free now, freed by Luca’s passion for her and hers for him.

‘Will I get to meet your mother? I mean, is that something you’d like me to do?’ Artie asked.

A frown formed a double crease between his eyes. ‘I’m not sure it will achieve much.’

‘But what if I’d like to?’

He flicked her a brief unreadable glance. ‘Why do you want to?’

Artie sighed. ‘I lost my mother when I was fifteen. It left such a hole in my life. I can barely watch a television show or commercials or movies with mothers in them because it makes me miss my mother all the more.’

‘You have no need to be envious of my relationship with my mother,’ Luca said in a weighted tone.

‘At least you still have her.’

There was a protracted silence.

Luca released a heavy breath. ‘Look, I know you are only trying to help but some family dynamics are best left alone. Nothing can be changed now.’

‘But that’s what I thought about my fear of leaving the castello,’ Artie said. ‘I lost years of my life by giving in to my fears, allowing them to control me instead of me controlling them. I never thought I could do it, but you helped me see that I could. Maybe it’s the same with your relationship with your mother. You shouldn’t give up on trying to improve the relationship just because it’s been a little difficult so far. What you went through as a family was horrendously tragic. But you still have a family, Luca. You have your mother and your grandfather. I have no one now.’

Luca reached for her hand and brought it up to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to her fingers. ‘You have me, cara.’ His voice had a note of tenderness that made her heart contract.

But for how long? Six months and no longer.

And then she would be alone again.

* * *

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