Page 31 of The Convenient Cosentino Wife

Clare had no idea of the heaviness of his thoughts as Rocco was outstanding company that day. A good driver, he put her at ease, and the warm air and sunlight made her relax and tip her head back, savoring all that was good.

She didn’t unplug very often. She stayed busy to keep from thinking or feeling too much, as truth be told, she worried about things, worried about the future. She tried to do everything well, but it was impossible. There were always things that slipped through the cracks. She prayed Adriano would have all his needs met, but she was human and he would grow up and need more than her one day. He’d become a boy and require an education and he’d have to find his place in the world. She just prayed he’d find the world easier than she had.

Rocco glanced at her. “You were smiling a few moments ago. What happened? What are you thinking?”

She turned her head toward him and smiled faintly. “How can you read me so well?”

“I have always been aware of you,” he said simply. “Even when I didn’t seem sensitive.”

“You mean, even when you were beastly?” she teased.

He grimaced. “Especially then.”

“But why?” she asked, facing him more fully, or as fully as she could with the seat belt holding her secure. “I’m sure you know why. Can you try to explain?”

“You won’t like it. I don’t like it.”

“Try me.”

“I was jealous. Jealous that you and Marius had found so much happiness.”

“Oh, Rocco! I’m sorry,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “That was never our intention.”

“No, of course not. It was my problem, not yours.”

“But no one likes to feel like a third wheel, especially when you and Marius had been so close.”

They reached Ladispoli far more quickly than Clare liked. It had been wonderful being in the car, feeling free for the first time in ages, especially as a tour bus was parked at thecastelloand hordes of people wandered around with cameras.

They escaped the crowds by taking a walk along a seawall and it was there Clare brought up his proposal, which had been constantly on her mind. “IfI agreed to marry you, Rocco, you misunderstand I am not ready for a physical relationship. You are essentially a stranger and I need time to get to know you. It might take a long time before I’m comfortable around you. Perhaps years. I don’t know. You’d need to be patient with me, and patient with us becoming a family as it won’t be natural or easy. Adriano will adapt relatively quickly, he’s just a baby, but...” She swallowed hard. “I will need more time. The physical makes me uneasy. I know we kissed, but there’s a big difference between a kiss and being naked.”

Especially with you, she mentally added. Rocco was so intense and the sparks between them were overwhelming. She didn’t want to be overwhelmed. She craved the safety she’d known with Marius.

“I am not marrying you because I can’t find sexual partners elsewhere,” Rocco said calmly. “I’m not marrying you to please to gratify some sexual need. I’m proposing marriage to provide permanence and stability for Adriano. I am marrying you so that he will have a father, not that he didn’t have a father, but a father who will be present, a father who will love him, and be there to support him, always. You and I might not always see eye to eye, but I hope we can agree to put him first, and focus on doing what is best for him.”

Clare leaned against the wall, stone rough but warmed by the sun. “I feel exactly the same way.”

“Good. He doesn’t need to be caught up in adult dramas. It’s confusing for children and unfair to be pulled between two people who should be mature.”

She glanced up at him, trying to see behind the sunglasses shielding his eyes. “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

Rocco shrugged. “My parents—my father and Marius’s mother—had some quarrels in the year before they succumbed to their illness. The quarrels were loud and carried. I was old enough to know that the storm would pass, but it was hard for my brother to hear the fighting and storming around.”

Clare had heard plenty of yelling as a child, only it was her father who did the shouting, and her father who gave the commands. The women in his life never really stood a chance. It was one of the reasons she loved Marius so. He was easygoing and nonconfrontational. Marius hated conflict and they’d never really had a fight—neither of them wanted one, and so if things grew tense, they just moved forward. She wondered now how that would have worked if he’d lived. Was that the best way to handle problems in a marriage? “I’ve only had one significant other, and that was your brother. He was my first real boyfriend, and my only sexual partner.” Clare stared out at the ocean as she shared this, embarrassed by the revelation but thinking it important Rocco know and understand. “I’ve been a late bloomer my whole life, and I hadn’t wanted to be intimate with anyone until I met him. I can’t even imagine intimacy with anyone else.”

Much less you, she silently added.

The words were never spoken aloud, but they hung in the air between them.

He nodded after a long moment, his gaze sweeping over her, a slow scrutiny from head to toe. “When we marry, there will be no one else in my life, no other woman, just you. I think it’s important you know that.”

His scrutiny made her hot, and her skin prickly. “But maybe there should be,” she said, flushing, “because if it is years until I am comfortable with you, I’d hate to think you’re being denied...company.”

“I’m a man, not a child. I can handle desire. I know how to manage needs. That should not be your worry—”

“It’s not my worry,” she interrupted tersely, pushing away from the wall. “I just don’t need one more thing to feel guilty about.”

Silence followed, the silence so long and heavy that Clare found herself squirming inwardly.

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