Mistress To a Latin Lover

His distance left the door open to fear and doubt.

Was waiting this hard for everyone? Did other women feel this way when alone…did they wonder like she did? Did they worry? Doubt?

Did other women approach love with more confidence, with less fear?

If she’d felt deeply and truly loved would she have been more grounded, less nervous?

What would life have been like if she’d been his true love instead of a warm body in his bed?

And every time he left her, she prayed he’d say, I’ll call you. And then she’d pray, let him call. Let him call soon. But he never did. He made her wait. And wait.

And slowly it broke her. It was the waiting for love that reduced her to this.

“Maybe it wasn’t love,” Maximos said, his shuttered gaze resting on her face. “Maybe it was lust and you thought it was love.”

Her lips tugged, emotions sharp, too intense. “I know the difference,” she whispered, thinking that the past seemed light-years removed, their volatile relationship part of someone else’s life…someone else’s experience, and even though the good feelings seemed so far away, she knew there’d once been good feelings in this relationship.

She looked at him, seeing his dark beauty, the hard lines and edges of Maximos Guiliano. Tall, powerful, authoritative. A Sicilian man who didn’t compromise.

Her heart squeezed inside her chest. If only he’d compromised for her…

“I loved how I felt when I was with you,” she said after a moment. “I loved how I felt when I looked at you. You gave me joy. You gave me peace. When I was with you I wanted nothing else, nothing more. Every moment was precious, every moment meant so much to me.”

“Yet you never saw us in the future. You never saw us growing old together.”

She looked at him strangely. “Why do you say that?”

Lines formed on either side of his mouth and for a moment he didn’t answer. Then his head shook, his features tightening. “I know I wasn’t good for you, and I know I—and our relationship—had hurt you.”

The relationship had hurt. After awhile. After the limitations had become too narrow, too restrictive, too binding.

“You didn’t give me a future.” She couldn’t look at him anymore, the heartbreak back, the feelings so sharp and bittersweet. “You didn’t allow me to dream. You made it clear from the start it was sex, and I tried to be content with sex.”

She exhaled hard, and drew another breath, the air hot, aching inside her lungs. “But I fell in love with you anyway. I couldn’t help it. You’re not like anyone I’ve known before.”

“You’ve been pursued by many successful men.”

“It’s not your success that makes you fascinating. It’s you—your darkness, your complexity, your sharp edges. You’re… dangerous, Maximos. And I know it. I’ve always known it.”

“Danger’s that attractive?”

She looked out over the deep blue water, trying to think of an appropriate answer, but all she saw was the ad campaign Italia Motors had hired her to do for their European market. The ads had been dark, moody, sexual. Nothing light or playful in the Italia Motors branding and she’d gotten that directly from Maximos herself.

One look at him and she wanted to slide out of her clothes and into close contact with him.

One night alone with him and she’d wanted every night with him.

“You’re that attractive,” Cass answered, ruefully. “You’re that man every woman dreams about—the dark handsome stranger, the forbidden—and I wanted that.”

“Forbidden.”

She shrugged. “There’s always an appeal to that which is out of reach, to that which we can’t have.”

“But you did get me. You did have me.”

There was something in his voice, in his tone, that reminded her of how she used to feel when alone with him—desired, sheltered, adored. God, how she’d loved being with him, being loved by him. It was the best feeling in the world. “And I just wanted more.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t.

Maximos’s forehead creased, deep lines furrowing between his strong eyebrows and silence stretched between them, the silence stretching so long that Cass shifted. “I obviously shouldn’t have wanted more,” she added after a moment. “Me asking for more was the kiss of death, wasn’t it?”

“There was nothing wrong with you asking for more.” His voice was low, harsh. “I know you wanted more, needed more. I gave you very little.” He hesitated, glanced at her, features savage. “I gave you virtually nothing.”

He’d known.

Cass felt a flicker of pain, like the sharp edges of a palm frond brushing her heart, simultaneously cutting and caressing. He’d known.

She couldn’t see, the sudden sting of tears blinding her vision and Cass gripped the railing, her head so full of words and emotions that she didn’t even know where to begin.

How could love be so complicated?

As a child love had seemed so very simple. Emotion had been simple. You loved, you laughed, you hoped, you feared. Emotion had just been that—emotion. And you made your decisions based on honest emotion.

Then you learned.

You grew up.

You changed.

Love stopped being simple, direct, uncomplicated. Love became difficult. Dangerous. Complex. Love became something one could lose, something elusive and negotiable.

It became about behavior.

It became a reward.

It even became a punishment.

And for a moment Cass wanted nothing more than to be a child again with a child’s innocence and the pure heart of one still young, still trusting. Because love was better like that, when one trusted, when one didn’t worry and fear, when one didn’t anticipate pain. When one didn’t fear scrutiny never mind rejection.

Did anyone manage to grow up unscathed? Unscarred?

Did anyone reach adulthood—maturity—still trusting? Still centered? Still optimistic?

She wished she had. She wished she was more like the image she projected, the one with impeccable suits, flawless hair, dazzling success. On the outside she looked like the perfect woman. But the perfection stopped there. Because on the inside she wanted so much more.

On the inside there was a woman who’d never felt secure, never felt loved, and she’d picked Maximos to love her because if he—difficult, untamable Maximos—should love her then she was truly valuable. Lovable.

“Can I just interrupt for a moment?” Annamarie, Maximos’s middle sister, asked, joining them. She was cradling her infant daughter against her shoulder, one hand raised protectively to shield the baby’s head and neck from the sun.

“Of course,” Maximos answered, reaching to take his young niece from his sister. “I’ve wanted to say hello to this beautiful bambina all morning.”

Cass couldn’t watch Maximos with the baby. It was the last thing she wanted to see and she turned toward his sister who was looking at her with the strangest expression—surprised, as well as intrigued.

“I’m Annamarie,” his sister said, introducing herself. “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to meet you earlier. I think there was a misunderstanding—”

“It’s okay,” Cass interrupted, knowing what Maximos’s sisters thought, and as it was what they were supposed to think, the last thing Cass wanted from any of them was an apology. “I understand.”

“You’re an American?” Annamarie asked.

“Yes.”

“But you’re Italian is excellent. I can hardly detect an accent.”

“I hope so. I’ve lived in Europe for ten years now, five of those in Rome.”

“You like Rome?”

“Very much so,” Cass answered, tucking another loose strand of hair behind her ear. The yacht was moving at such a clipped speed that the deep blue water frothed with white foam. “It’s become home.”

“And Sicily?” Annamarie persisted. “Do you like it here?”

“It’s my first visit.”

“Your first visit? You mean Maximos has never brought you to his own country, to meet his own people before?”

“She’s going to Catania and Aci Castello now,” Maximos said calmly, gently patting the baby’s back.

“But what about Agrigento, Palermo, Mount Etna?” Annamarie protested. “Those are all important to our culture. You can’t possibly say you’ve visited Sicily if you haven’t seen more.”

“And I’d like to visit them,” Cass said, wanting to change the subject, nearly as much as she wanted to escape. She couldn’t handle seeing Maximos with the baby. It was too painful, too vivid of a reminder of what she’d lost. “Unfortunately I don’t travel as much as I’d like. I tend to get preoccupied with work.”

“Ah.” Annamarie nodded with a glance at Maximos. “Another workaholic. I’m always saying to Maximos, don’t work so much. You need to rest more, play more, but Maximos is very driven.” Annamarie shot her brother another reproving glance. “He is not very good at taking things easy.”

Cass smiled but she wouldn’t meet Maximos’s eyes. Instead her gaze dropped to the baby he was holding in his arms, the infant curled so contentedly against his chest, Maximos’s powerful hand cupping the back of the baby’s head, holding the infant easily, comfortably, cradling her as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Her chest tightened with heartache. She and Maximos hadn’t just had sex. They’d created life. They’d made a baby.

Their baby.

Cass watched Maximos return his niece to his sister, and the baby, dressed in a small pink outfit, crawled up Annamarie’s shoulder, tiny hands grabbing at her mother’s sparkly teardrop earring, studying the earring intently.

For a moment Cass couldn’t breathe, pain shooting through her, a lance of white-hot heat. That could have been me, she thought, that could have been me with our daughter.

“What’s wrong?” Maximos asked Cass as Annamarie walked away, excusing herself so she could feed the baby.

Cass looked at Maximos, but she didn’t see him, just the ultrasound, that first glimpse of the daughter that wasn’t meant to be. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing.” Because it was nothing now. Nothing she could do. Nothing she could change.

Even if she wanted to.

“You’re not very comfortable with kids, are you?” he asked.

Turning her head away, she stared out at the horizon of blue, trying not to scream at the injustice of it. “I like kids.”

She’d been thrilled she was pregnant. She’d been thrilled she was going to be a mother. Nearly thirty, it had felt right in a way she couldn’t explain…not even to herself. She was ready to be a mother, ready for this next step in her life. Maybe she was too strong, too independent to make a good wife, but she knew how to love and her baby would be loved.

Then came the ultrasound.

She had a daughter.

And her daughter wasn’t healthy. Nothing had come together quite right, limbs didn’t attach correctly—a hole in her tiny heart.

Cass had been dumbstruck. The doctor talked. Cass stared at the sonogram. Her daughter—her daughter—wouldn’t survive.

Sitting there in her robe, the cold gel drying on her stomach, time came screeching to a stop. After the doctor finally finished talking, she sat silent, her head buzzing with numbing white noise. And then the cloud cleared in her head and she was herself again. Tough. Determined. The fighter.

“How can I help her?” she’d asked.

The doctor’s brow creased. He didn’t speak. His expression grew more grim. “You can’t,” he said at last.

But it wasn’t an answer she accepted. This was her daughter. Her daughter…and Maximos’s. “There must be something.” She strengthened her voice, and her resolve. “Procedures done in utero.”

“It’s unlikely she’ll even survive birth. If she does, she won’t survive outside of the womb.”

Cass shook her head, furious. She wouldn’t accept a diagnosis like that, and she’d stood then. Brave, fierce, undaunted. “You’re wrong.” Her voice didn’t waver. “She’ll make it. I’ll make sure she survives.”

But Cass had been the one wrong. Two weeks later she woke up in agony. Rushed to the hospital, she miscarried that night.

“Do you want a family?” Maximos asked, ignorant that each of his questions were absolute torture.

“Yes.” Her eyes burned but she wasn’t going to cry, couldn’t cry about the devastating loss. Some pain went too deep, some pain caused insurmountable grief.

Losing Maximos had hurt—badly, badly—but losing their child had broken her heart.

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