An Invitation to Sin(36)

Taylor touched his face. ‘You've never talked about her.'

‘She worked so hard to make him love her.' His raw confession startled her and she eased away so she could look at him.

‘You don't have to tell me this.'

‘I want to. I want you to understand. But I'm not good at this-I've never talked to anyone.'

‘Why do you say she was fake?'

‘He hurt her again and again and she just came back for more and tried  to be who she thought he wanted her to be. He travelled a lot and I used  to dread him coming home. She went from being a relatively stable  normal parent to an insecure mess. She'd walk into my room at all hours,  sometimes she'd even wake me up, and she'd always be dressed in  something different, wanting to know how she looked. "You have your  grandfather's sense of style, Luca, tell me if this works. Will he like  me in this?"' His handsome face revealed the strain. ‘For a while, when I  was very young, I actually thought that to be loved you had to wear the  right clothes. And every time my father rejected her she'd study his  latest girlfriend and try and copy the look and she'd ask me again, "Is  this better? Do you think he'll like this?" And when he didn't I always  blamed myself. Maybe if I'd told her to wear pink instead of cream. Or  wear her hair up instead of down. Maybe if I'd got it right, she  wouldn't have spent the whole night crying.'

Appalled, Taylor slid her fingers into his.

He'd shouldered responsibility for his parents' marriage. He'd taken on his mother's pain.

‘No wonder you didn't want commitment.'

‘To me, commitment meant being responsible for someone's feelings. It  meant tying yourself in knots to be what someone else wanted you to be.  It was about losing your sense of self. I had to watch her suffer every  single day of my life growing up.' His voice was raw. ‘I saw that love  was manipulative and painful. I decided early on I didn't want that.'

‘No. I can see why you wouldn't.' Taylor hesitated and then put her hand  on his cheek. ‘I'm no expert, but if love exists I don't think that was  it.'

‘I know it wasn't.' He leaned his forehead against hers and she gave an unsteady laugh.

‘What a pair we are. We did this to give us both respectability. Thanks  to me, your respectability has been blown apart. I don't think it quite  worked out the way either of us planned.'

‘I'm bored with being respectable. It makes me irritable. I want to be  who I really am and I want to be it with you.' Sliding his hand around  her back, he pulled her hard against him. ‘How do you feel about doing  this for real?' He breathed the words against her lips. ‘We can spend  the rest of our lives being disreputable together. We can live wickedly  ever after.'

It sounded so impossibly good that tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘Is that really what you want?'

‘Yes. I love you, Taylor Carmichael Corretti. I love you for better and  for worse-preferably worse, by the way.' His eyes glittered into hers.  ‘I love a bad girl. Think about it-if I marry you we can spend the rest  of our lives shocking people.'                       
       
           



       

She kissed him, half laughing, half crying and loving him more than  she'd thought it was possible to love a person. ‘We'll be tomorrow's  headlines.'

‘You're with me now. You don't care if you're tomorrow's headlines. Come  on, Teresa, let's go and break a few rules together, with or without  clothes. Your choice.'

She was smiling but the feeling of warmth grew and spread through her veins. ‘Do you mean it? What you just said?'

‘About it being real? About wanting to marry you? Definitely.'

‘No one has ever loved me before. No one. You're not just worried about losing the new face of Corretti?'

‘This isn't just the face of Corretti-' he stroked her cheeks with his  thumbs, his eyes warm as he looked at her ‘-it's the face I want to see  every night when I go to sleep and the face I want to see every morning  when I wake up.'

The lump grew in her throat. ‘I never knew you were so poetic.'

‘Neither did I. I'm shocking myself.' He grinned and kissed her on the mouth until she pulled away.

‘I love you too, but I'm worried I'll destroy your reputation. What about the board-'

‘The board can sort themselves out. I've proved I can do it. I've  increased their profits. Besides, hotels are boring.' He stifled a yawn.  ‘It's time my brother Matteo came back and got on with the job he's  paid to do. All this respectability is making me uncomfortable. The  other day they used the word sobriety in the same breath as my name. Can  you believe that?'

Taylor gave a choked laugh. ‘But what will you do? You're so brilliant and talented-will you focus on the fashion business?'

‘I'll do what I do best which is living life to the full. Want to live it with me, dolcezza?'

She didn't need to think about it. Not even for a second. ‘Yes,' she said simply, ‘yes, I do.'

‘Bene. In that case I take you, Taylor Carmichael, to have and to hold,  to sin and misbehave with until too much hot sex doth leave us  breathless and knackered. How does that sound to you?'

Laughing, unbelievably happy, she wrapped her arms round his neck. ‘It sounds just perfect.'